Ok, chapter 11 is here.

I sort of changed my mind about something: I'm not even going to bother using 'kun' and 'chan'. I'm only going to use 'san' where I see appropriate and the same goes for 'sama'. So yeah.

Enjoy!


Chapter 11:

Two People Join the Mission

They ran through the forest as quickly as they could, Naruto in the lead, Shikamaru in second, Ino in third, and a Naruto clone in the back. Shikamaru said that would confuse the enemy, and what he said went at the moment.

"Shikamaru! I see Sakura!" Naruto cried suddenly.

Sakura waved to her companions, happy to see someone that wasn't a cloud ninja. The three of them came to a stop in front of her as the Naruto clone disappeared.

"Sakura, what happened?" Ino asked, looking at the blood splattered all over Sakura's clothing.

"I killed a Cloud ninja," Sakura replied. "Is that so bad?"

"I think she's asking why you're covered in blood," Naruto pointed out.

Sakura looked herself down. "I killed a Cloud ninja," she said again, shrugging a little.

Shikamaru sighed. "We've been sent on a troublesome mission to drive the Cloud ninja back to their country," he explained. "Are you going to help or are you going to go back to Konoha?"

"I'll come," she answered after a moment of thinking.

"Ok. You can be behind Ino. Naruto, we don't need the clone anymore," Shikamaru ordered.

They got into the new formation and headed off to where Kakashi was last. When they got to the last Kakashi-sighting place, Sakura heard a faint rustling in the bushes behind her. She signalled to Shikamaru that she was going to check it out and proceeded when he gave her the thumbs up.

She crouched down and got up close to the bush while Shikamaru, Ino and Naruto set up a quick trap. Naruto held up three fingers. They would go in three seconds. Then there were only two fingers. Then one.

Sakura threw a kunai in front of her and then jumped into the bush herself. She could see a dark shadow jump into the tree above and followed it immediately. Naruto and Ino were shouting at her to bring the person into their trap, but she couldn't make out clearly what Shikamaru was shouting. She threw four shuriken one after another to lure the subject into the set trap. To her delight, it fell for it. It jumped away to avoid the shuriken and was an inch away from the trap when Sakura found herself hanging upside down inside of the net the others had set up as the trap.

"What happened!" she yelled in frustration.

"I didn't want to get caught in a trap so I put you in it instead," a dark and familiar voice said from behind her.

She swerved her body around so that she was looking straight into the dark eyes of Sasuke. Naruto was laughing his head off along side with Ino, and Shikamaru was desperately trying to hide the grin on his face. Sakura blushed as Sasuke cut her down from the net and blushed even harder when she realized Shikamaru had known Sasuke was there the entire time.

"And you didn't bother to say anything!" she yelled at him.

She was turning red in the face, and it wasn't only because she was mad. She had gotten in kissing range of Sasuke. How could she do that? Lee would kill her if he found out. He even freaked out seeing her kiss her mom good-bye, so how would he deal with Sasuke? She didn't want to think about it. She closed her eyes and changed the subject.

"Shouldn't we find Kakashi-sensei?" she asked, hoping Naruto would get the point and help her out.

"I think we should check on the path to Kumo," Sasuke suggested before Naruto could even open his mouth.

"That sounds like a good place to at least start to look," Ino agreed.

Shikamaru sighed. "It's going to be a troublesome way, but let's go," he said. "Sasuke, I'm putting you in second place and…"

He never finished. Sasuke was already running down the path closely followed by his two team mates. Ino stood beside Shikamaru and blinked.

Shikamaru sighed again. "Race you to ahead of Sasuke?"

"You're on!"

Ino started ahead of Shikamaru but they evened out eventually. They never did get ahead of Sasuke, and neither did Naruto, much to his dismay.

"So there you guys are," Kakashi said from the shadows.

Naruto and Sakura jumped a little and Shikamaru and Ino had to dig their heels into the ground to stop themselves. Sasuke just stood there. Kakashi had been busy tying up three knocked out cloud ninja with the help of a biting Pakkun. The little dog had grown maybe an inch or two, but he looked no different.

"Where'd you guys go?" the little dog asked, tugging on Sakura's medical apron.

She chuckled slightly when he ran around to Kakashi's legs, spitting out the blood. Ino pouted. Kakashi was acting like her and Shikamaru didn't exist. How dare he!

"Pakkun," she said, waiting for Sakura to nod at that being his name. "Sakura, Sasuke and Naruto had to go get help."

She was talking in a tone a baby might like, and Pakkun didn't like being treated like a puppy. Naruto hid behind Sakura, Sakura hid behind Sasuke, but soon went and hide behind Kakashi due to Sasuke disappearing. They all plugged their ears and stood by for fireworks.

"I am not a puppy anymore!" he roared at a wide eyed Ino, fangs bared. "I'm older then Kakashi, and that's pretty old! Now, if you want to treat me like a puppy still, do it in Hell!"

Kakashi had to pick up the small dog before he could go after Ino and forced him to vanish. Everyone let out of the air they were holding and finally could breathe again. Shikamaru supported Ino until she recovered and Sasuke could be seen out of the corner of Naruto's eye. He threw him a dirty look before bursting out laughing with Sakura.

"You got lucky, really lucky Ino," Naruto managed to say. "Kakashi-sensei stopped him before he did any real damage. Next time you won't just have to get your ears tested at the hospital."

Kakashi sighed. "Can we get back to the mission now?"

Ino snapped out of her daze and nodded. Shikamaru muttered something about the whole thing being too troublesome and Sakura jumped up to where Sasuke was.

He looked at her suspiciously before turning back to Kakashi. Naruto didn't want to be left out of his group, so he jumped up too. Ino sighed. Why was Chouji always out on some sort of 'private' mission with Asuma? She felt so left out without the sound of his chip bag crackling in the background. Judging by the look on Shikamaru's face, he felt the same way.

"Alright; Ino, Shikamaru, I have a surprise for you two," Kakashi said with a silly look on his face.

Shikamaru looked at Ino, and she looked at him. What kind of surprise could a person like Kakashi have for them? He pointed to a bush and a fat boy stepped out, a bag of chips in hand.

"Chouji!" They both shouted at the same time.

The other boy lifted a huge hand to wave, but immediately thought that hand was for eating with, so he grabbed another handful of chips instead.

"That's Chouji for you," Ino thought, sighing as he put the empty bag in his pocket and grabbed another one.

"Asuma left him in my care," Kakashi explained. "He'll be part of our mission for the time being. By the way Shikamaru," he added. "I'm in charge now. You can suggest things only now."

"Fine," Shikamaru said, running over to lead Chouji to the place Ino and him were standing.

"Kakashi's acting weird," Sakura thought. "He must be excited about an interesting mission since so long," she concluded.

"I've gotten rid of the ninja in this area," Kakashi continued. "If we keep going toward Kumo, we should be able to stop them."

"Our orders from Tsunade-sama were to drive them back to Kumo, not stop anything," Sasuke spoke up.

Kakashi nodded. "That's what I meant. Ok, so Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto will move forward from here, Ino, Shikamaru, and Chouji will go a bit to the right of them. If you were to run into any cloud ninja, do you think your group would be ok?"

"Of course!" Naruto said right off the bat.

"Yeah, if Chouji got serious maybe," Shikamaru said out of the corner of his mouth.

"Good. I'll stay behind a little bit just in case something does happen," Kakashi told them. "Now go!"

And with that, the two groups moved out, all thinking the same thing:

Can we really trust him as Kakashi?