chapter 11
a new friend
"You'll catch a cold sleeping in a place like this." The kind voice and a gentle shake to his shoulder roused Naruto from his sleep. The first thing that registered clearly in his mind was the person who had woken him.
She was a girl, about Hikari's age, but even prettier than the young kunoichi, dressed in a light pink kimono. There was something about her eyes that made him like the unknown girl right away.
The second thing he noticed was that it was daylight, early morning to be exact. Waking up after sunrise wasn't something the blonde was used to; he must have damaged his body more than he had thought in last night's training to have needed to sleep so long. A quick check showed that everything was fully-healed and working fine. Now he should probably say something to the girl staring down at him with caring brown eyes.
The boy sat up. "Thanks for the concern, but there's no need to worry about me. I don't get sick easily, and besides, I like sleeping outside." He smiled at her. It really was nice to find a person he had never before met caring about his health.
She looked amused. "Oh really? It looks to me more like you just laid down there out of exhaustion."
Naruto gave her a sheepish grin. "Well , yeah. I was out training last night, and I guess I kinda overdid it."
He saw her eyes go to his headband, then back to his face. "Training? You're a ninja, then?"
He grinned widely. His status as a ninja was something he took great pride in. "Yep! I'm Uzumaki Naruto, genin of Konoha and future Hokage! What's your name, miss?"
Apparently she found something he had said funny, as he could hear the laughter in her voice as she answered. "I'm Haku. It's nice to meet you, Naruto."
Haku. A pretty name for a pretty girl. "Nice to meet you, too, Haku. Say, what are you doing out here this early?"
She gestured to the basket on the ground next to her. "I'm collecting herbs. A close friend of mine was injured while he was at work the other day, and the herbs are to help him heal faster."
Haku's shift in mood as she spoke showed clearly just how much she cared for her friend. "I happen to know a bit about plants. Mind if I help?" The genin actually did know a little about different types of plants and herbs. He'd gone through three books on the topic as part of the reading Asuma-sensei had him doing every day. He'd picked plants because they were related to gardening, which he enjoyed.
"Feel free. I'm looking for ones that look like this." She picked one of the herbs out of her basket to show him.
"Ah! I saw some of those growing just over this way a bit." Naruto led her to a patch of various grasses he'd passed by last night while stumbling away from the site of his kage bunshin battle.
On arriving, the two spent several minutes just picking herbs in silence, before Haku decided to restart their conversation. "You say you're going to become Hokage? That's a fairly lofty goal."
Despite the words themselves, her tone told the boy she wasn't mocking him. "It's my dream," he responded simply.
For a brief moment, she had what could almost be called a wistful look on her face,then it was gone. "Your dream, huh? Why do you want to be Hokage, though?"
He hadn't really though about the reasons behind his dream since well before he became a ninja. Still, though, his answer came without hesitation. "There's a few things. At first, I wanted it so that people would acknowledge me, see me for myself, instead of... I never had any parents, or really much of anyone to care for me, you see, so growing up was hard. Now, though, I think I'm doing it more for my sensei. He died, believing in me and my dream; I have to show the world that his belief wasn't misplaced. Finally, I care for Konoha, its people and what it stands for. I want to be Hokage so that I can protect them all."
"So you follow your dream for others, then." Her brown eyes were held a serious, thoughtful look now. The statement itself was a bit confusing though.
"What d'you mean?" Naruto asked.
"It is my belief," she said, "that a person can become truly strong only when protecting someone precious to them. I think you understand that."
Thinking about it, he seemed to remember Hokage-Jiji saying something similar once. "Yeah, I do."
Haku smiled. "Well then, I, too, will believe in your dream, Uzumaki Naruto, genin of Konoha and future Hokage." She paused for a moment, then her expression turned curious. "Say, what's a Konoha genin doing all the way out here in a poor place like Wave Country? Or are you not allowed to tell?"
"No, it's okay," the orange-clad boy answered. "My team and I are out here assisting another genin team. They ran into trouble during their mission, and their jonin sensei and one of the genin were badly injured. Kakashi-sensei isn't gonna be back in good condition anytime soon, and Shino'll probably take at least a week before he can walk again." Some instinct tucked away inside him somewhere made him exaggerate the masked jonin's condition. His former classmate, though, really was as bad off as he had said. "What're you here for, though? I can tell you don't live here."
The pretty girl seemed surprised. "Really? How can you tell?"
"You don' have that same dull, tired, hopeless look that all the people here do. If I ever get the chance, I'm gonna kill Gato for what he's doing to this place," he growled out the last bit.
Haku looked a bit unnerved by the sudden display of anger. "I... see. I'm here helping my uncle. I only got here a few weeks ago, and I usually stay out of town, so the depressing aura hasn't gotten to me yet. This is enough," she pointed at the basket now full of herbs, as they had kept picking them the whole time. "Thank you for the help and the conversation."
"You're welcome." Seeing that she was about to leave, the boy felt compelled to say something more. "Hey, Haku. Even though we'll probably never see each other again, d'you think we could be friends?"
She smiled at him. "Certainly, Naruto-kun. Friends it is. And who knows, maybe you will be wrong, and we will meet again somewhere." She started walking away, then turned to look over her shoulder and add one last thing. "Oh, and by the way, I'm a boy."
Naruto's brain ground to a halt as it took in this new information, leaving him standing there stunned as his new friend walked away, laughing at the way his mouth had become a perfect 'O' of surprise.
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Kiba was, yet again, unsure of what to do with himself at the moment. Asuma-sensei had assigned him the task of guarding Tazuna today as he worked on the bridge. He couldn't even help with the work; a lot of the stuff required the doer to actually know what they were doing, and any basic labor would use up energy, energy he'd need to protect everyone and hold out for reinforcements if the bridge were attacked.
"Hey, Kiba." It was worse than just that, though. Sakura was with him.
"Hi Sakura." The pink-haired girl had been relatively quiet the last couple days though, thankfully. And Naruto's... whatever that had been... at dinner last night had made her slightly quieter still that night and this morning. Apparently it was wearing off.
"Arf! /Sakura forgot about me again?/" Akamaru asked from on top of his head.
"Oh yeah, hi to you too, Akamaru," she added to the dog, too late, before sitting down next to them on the side of the bridge.
Come to think of it, she hadn't been too annoying during this mission. Probably because most of her time was spent elsewhere, with a clone of Asuma-sensei going through her accelerated stamina-building program. Sensei had downright refused to tell any of them just what he had the girl doing, saying that it was specially designed for ninja in Sakura's situation and that any of the rest of them attempting it would either have no significant results or severely damage their bodies in the process. Whatever it was, though, it was clearly working, as the girl could now last trough a regular training session.
"You know, I've had a lot of stuff on my mind lately. May I talk to you about it?"
This was officially one of the weirdest moments of his life. First of all, Sakura was being polite. Secondly, she was wanting to talk to him. That was two things Kiba had never seen before happening at the same time. He wasn't sure what to do.
"Rff. /Why not listen to whatever she has to say? Nothing better to do right now/" his companion suggested quietly.
"Sure, go ahead. But first, why me? Wouldn't Ino be better to talk to about this stuff?"
The perfume-scented girl sighed. "Normally, yeah. But some of this is about Ino."
The dog boy immediately moved away in fear. "Oh no! You're not involving me in any of that girl stuff! No way am I gonna get on Ino's bad side!"
Showing her more violent side, she hit him on the head. Hard. "Stupid! This is serious! She said some things the other day that, well, they got me thinking. Questioning stuff I've believed for a long time. And now... Well, I'm not really sure I know what to do with myself anymore."
He'd never seen anyone looking quite as lost and confused as she did while talking. Despite hating her guts, Kiba felt he had to cheer her up. It was his duty as a fellow Konoha ninja. "Y'know, the one you want to talk to is probably Naruto. He's amazing at motivational speeches. The knucklehead's not here right now, though, so I guess I'll have to do.
"Do you have a dream in life?" He didn't wait for the girl to answer, instead just going right on. "During the mission we were on just before coming here, I killed someone. Naruto and Ino were doing something that needed their full concentration, and it was my job to protect them. There were some other ninjas attacking us. Asuma-sensei took care of most of them, but one got past me and was heading for my teammates. I chased after him, and when I caught up to him, I killed him.
"He was a boy, about our age. He had been following orders, fighting for what he believed in just like we were, and I killed him. Later, after it was all over, Sensei came and talked to me about it. He said that... that as ninja, killing is something we'll have to do sometimes. We shouldn't like it, though, and never do it unless we have no other option. And whenever we do kill, it should be to protect our dreams and the dreams of our friends.
"I'm telling you all this because, after it happened, I felt the way you look. Lost, confused, questioning why I was doing what I did. But Asuma-sensei reminded me. I have a dream, a goal I'm trying to reach, and no matter what happens, I've got to keep that goal in sight and keep working towards it.
"Umm, hopefully that helped and didn't just depress you."
Sakura smiled. For a second, she even looked kinda cute, before the Inozuka banished that thought from his mind. "Yeah, it was helpful. Thanks for talking. I'm going to go see how things are going over there now. Bye Kiba, Akamaru." She started walking towards the part of the bridge she had pointed to.
"Bye."
"Arf! /Bye, Sakura. That didn't turn out too bad, did it?/"
"You're right, boy, it wasn't so bad. Weird." And now he was back to doing nothing again.
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Before going back to the hideout, Haku had taken a walk through town. Contrary to what he had said to Naruto-kun that morning, he had in fact never been there. It was just as bad as he had feared. Every face reminded him of his own, back when he had been living on the streets. Every child brought back memories of the time before Zabuza-sama had found him. To think that they were helping the man who had caused this...
But that didn't matter. He was Zabuza-sama's weapon, his tool. Zabuza-sama's dreams were his dreams. A shinobi had no room for emotions.
Which made him wonder just what he had been doing with the short blonde. While the intelligence he had gleaned from the boy would be invaluable, he had gone far past the point of simple information gathering. Talking about dreams, agreeing to become his friend; it would hurt when the time came to fight Naruto.
But for now, he needed to speak to Zabuza-sama, to give him the herbs and information. He walked into the room where his master lay, still in bed recovering.
"Zabuza-sama, I have returned."
The man turned his head towards the door. "Haku. What took so long?"
"I met someone while out picking herbs. A ninja. It seems Konoha has sent another genin team as backup. The boy believed me to be an ordinary girl and gave up some information during casual conversation. Hatake Kakashi will not be in fighting condition as soon as you will; that cut you put on his chest must have nicked something important. And the one genin you injured is alive, but will not be recovered for several weeks."
Zabuza-sama considered all this. "Hmm... That still leaves us with five genin, two of which are complete unknowns, and a jonin we know nothing about. The chances of him being on level with the Copycat are low, though. What did you learn about this boy you met?"
Haku paused. Telling him about the friendship part would be pointless, so he chose to leave it out. "His name, as he says, is Uzumaki Naruto. He is young, the same age as the other three, and not at all suited to life as a shinobi. Much too kind, open, and trusting. And he wears bight orange. Physically, it was hard to tell much, given the situation. The baggy jacket ad pants he wore hid his frame fairly effectively. His chakra capacity is fairly high, though, as I could sense it without much difficulty."
"I see," the man said. "So we'll be up against five genin and one jonin tomorrow. Looks like we'll need the Demon brothers; it's a good thing we freed them before the Konoha ANBU got there. Now that that is out of the way, why don't you get started with your herbs?"
Haku sighed mentally; he had hoped that the increase in the number of opponents would convince Zabuza-sama to abandon the mission. No such luck, though. As much as he himself had misgivings about what they were doing, it was not his place to bring them up. A good weapon does not argue with its master. He got to work on the man's injuries. 'Tomorrow would be an eventful day.
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comments: (note that the comments for chapters 1-16 were written well after the chapters themselves)
This chapter was really just a brief interlude before the big fight. The Naruto Haku scene at the beginning is one I've always liked a lot, so I hope I did it justice and showed how my Naruto's different experiences made it play out differently.
The scene after that, with Kiba and Sakura, was a point that had me stuck for a while when first writing the chapter. I needed to do something, so I decided to take the two characters least likely to interact and put them together. Personally, I think it worked out pretty well, considering the confused state I'd left Sakura in last chapter.
The final scene, as usual, is there to wrap things up and setup for the next chapter, as well as giving a further glimpse into Haku's mind.
