(A/N) Hey so here's the chapter I promised yesterday, hope you guys all like it. School starts in a week so I'm not sure if it'll hinder or help my story writing. After all, more classes=more homework=less time to write, but on the other hand, more classes=more being bored in school=more free time to write and brainstorm. You can see how it'll go either way. We'll just have to wait and see I guess.
Disclaimer: Some of the dialogue in this chapter and the last one were taken straight from the anime because you just can't rewrite some of the best lines in the show. They're awesome for a reason. That being said, I do not own anything except for Kore, because she is adorable. The song is Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift, and although it does not belong to me, it describes Sasuke and his life pretty well.
CHAPTER 11
"Oh my god it's seven o'clock we're late now we can't be ninjas we're late and we missed the test-"
"Naruto, calm down. Hatake Kakashi is well-known for being notoriously late to every appointment. Believe me, we've got time." I stated, continuing to make my bed like I had been before Naruto had burst into my room. Naruto stopped to catch his breath. He stared at me for a moment, before running into Sasuke's room.
"Teme something's wrong with Kore she thinks that we aren't late and we are and now we won't be ninjas how am I supposed to be Hokage if I'm not a ninja-" I heard Naruto's babbling cut off abruptly and frantically ran into Sasuke's room, worried he'd knocked the blonde unconscious. An annoyed, half-dressed Sauske was covering Naruto's mouth with one hand, and holding a kunai in the other./
"Dobe, knock." He said firmly, eyebrow twitching. I giggled, covering my mouth with my hands. The two boys jerked away from each other, bright red and refusing to look at each other in the eyes.
"Do you-do you want me to come back later?" I choked out, trying not to be overcome with laughter. Naruto began spluttering while Sasuke glared darkly at me. I darted out of the room into the kitchen. Minutes later, both boys joined me, fully dressed and still pink in the face. I tried not to snicker as they say as far away as possible from each other. All three of us ate breakfast before gearing up and heading down to training ground 7. We waited for almost an hour before Kakashi showed up, Sasuke and Naruto playing a card game while I read a book.
"You're late!" Naruto cried, pointing an accusing finger towards the man reading an orange book. Kakashi sighed before snapping his book shut and lovingly tucking it away into a pouch.
"Sorry about that. I was on my way here when a black cat crossed my path, and I had to take the long way around." All three of us stared at him in disbelief.
"LIAR!" Naruto screeched, pointing an accusing finger at Kakashi. He sighed at Naruto's loudness. /
"Do you see these bells?" All three of us looked down at Kakashi's waist, where two bells dangled from red strings. "You have three hours to grab these bells from me in order to pass. If you do not come at me with the intention to kill me, you will not pass." I frowned at him; something seemed fishy about this scenario.
"But Sensei! There are only two bells, and three of us!" Naruto cried, pointing towards said bells.
"That's correct. Only two of you will pass." Kakashi gave us an eye smile, tilting his head slightly to the side. We stared at him in shock.
"B-but Genin teams are made of three Genin and a Sensei. How can only two of us pass?" I sputtered.
"We mix the teammates who pass into new teams of three." He gave us that annoying eye smile again. "Also, whoever does not pass will be tied to the post and will not be allowed to eat lunch. You have three hours starting now." With that, Kakashi vanished, giving us a sense of déjà vu. Does he do that often? I thought frantically, kicking off into the trees to hide.
I watched Sasuke dive into the bushes and Naruto rush into a clearing. I shook my head partially in amusement and partially in frustration as Naruto outright attacked Kakashi. I was impressed when he created over a dozen Shadow Clones to rush Kakashi all at once. They were dispelled immediately, but it was still an impressive move. I snickered as Naruto growled when Kakashi began to read his explicit novel in front of the blonde, ignoring him completely. After Naruto got a beat down in the one-sided fight, he walked into an obvious trap. It was a bit disappointing for me, especially since I knew that Naruto was amazing with traps himself.
I squeaked and fell backwards as Kakashi appeared in front of me. He smiled in what I think was supposed to be a nice way, then formed a hand seal. A wave of leaves swirled around me, causing me to close my eyes. When I opened them, I was on the ground, and Sasuke was crawling to the tree in front of me.
"Kore…please…help me." He pleaded, several weapons sticking out of the heavily bleeding wounds on his back. I gagged and began shaking, staring at the bloody smear he left behind as he dragged his broken body along the ground. Taking a deep breath, I tried to steady my nerves before reaching into my hip pocket for some bandages. As I approached my wounded friend, leaves began to swirl around me once more, clearing away to show me in the same tree I had been before. I nearly smacked myself on the head when I realized what that had been. A genjutsu, of course. I moved from the top of the tree to the bottom without ever moving, I should have noticed that! I sighed and rubbed at my eyes. I was too busy being concerned with Sasuke's wounds to realize it was an illusion. I need to pay more attention next time.
Looking up, I saw Sasuke hiding in a bush across the clearing from me, while Kakashi stood barely a yard away from the tree I was in, his back turned towards me. I stayed hidden and watched Sasuke come out to fight Kakashi, finally making him put down his porn. Satisfied that Kakashi was otherwise occupied, I headed over to where Naruto hung upside down by his ankle. I cut him down and held a hand over his mouth, motioning for him to be silent.
"Where are Kakashi and Teme?" Naruto whispered in my ear, the two of us looking around. I groaned silently as I realized I had forgotten to remember where they were. Naruto grinned at my dilemma before pointing to my eyes. I was confused for a moment before I understood what Naruto was trying to tell me. Embarrassed about not thinking of it sooner, I squinted and looked around the training ground. /
I saw a glimpse of Naruto's bright gold chakra, but he was careful to stay behind me while I looked. We had learned from experience that close proximity while looking for chakra hurt my eyes if the chakra was too strong. I kept circling until I saw a colored white figure dart from the treetops to the ground five yards away. I pointed in that direction, and followed Naruto in rushing over. By the time we got there, Sasuke had been buried in the ground and Kakashi was nowhere to be seen.
Naruto began yelling at the trees, demanding Kakashi come out and fight him, while I tried to dig Sasuke out of the ground. He got stuck, and I had to interrupt Naruto's rant to ask him for help. Naruto grumbled and Sasuke insisted he could get out on his own, but we managed to pull Sasuke out of the hole. Almost as soon as we had, Kakashi appeared in a cloud a smoke. Our heads whipped towards him, as we all slide into the Academy taijutsu ready stance. The alarm clock Kakashi had brought rang loudly, signaling the end of our chance to get the bells, and the end of our test.
"No!" Naruto cried out in despair, realizing that we hadn't passed. Sasuke kept a blank look on his face, but I could see the anger and disappointment in his eyes. I was disappointed too. All that effort, and we wouldn't even get to become ninja.
"You all…passed!" Kakashi said cheerfully. We stared at him in shock.
"But we didn't get the bells. That was the only way to pass the test, it was the only rule." Sasuke said flatly.
"This test was not about retrieving the bells, it was about teamwork. In the ninja world, those who break the rules are trash, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than trash." Kakashi explained to us. I hesitated before asking him.
"Does this mean we're all ninja now?"
"Yes it does." His eye curved into a crescent as he smiled at us. Naruto shouted in joy and began jumping up and down. He grabbed me and spun me around, startling me into laughter. He put me down and turned towards Sasuke, his face lit up in glee. Sasuke began backing away slowly as Naruto advanced on him. I giggled before running past Naruto to tackle Sasuke in a hug. I knocked him to the ground, and Naruto jumped on us afterwards. We all started laughing, helping each other up from the tangled pile of limbs. I saw an odd look in Kakashi's eye when I looked up.
"Is something wrong Sensei?" I questioned, squirming away from Naruto's excited grip. "Nothing. You're all just really happy you were made ninjas, aren't you?" He asked rhetorically. I nodded, knowing he was trying to divert my attention, and I let the look in his eyes drop. For now.
"Of course we are. Becoming ninjas are the only way we can achieve our dreams." I explained.
"If you want to achieve your dreams, you'll have to become better ninja. In order to do that, you need to work on both your strengths and your weaknesses." Kakashi told me. By this point the boys had wandered over and were listening as well.
"What weaknesses?" Sasuke sneered infuriatingly. I hung my head as Naruto rounded angrily on him. Sasuke must be pretty mad about Kakashi tricking us, if he was snapping back at him.
"Sasuke, you need to be more willing to accept help from people, especially your teammates. You may not always want the help, but you will someday need it. Work on working together with your teammates, and to admitting your faults. The only thing worse than a useless ninja is an arrogant one."
"You should have seen him when we first took him in. He really was a teme." I muttered, blushing when Kakashi turned to stare at me for interrupting him. I was pretty sure he was glaring at me, even if I couldn't see most of his face.
"Kore, you need to be more observant and calmer in battle. You freaked out when you saw Sasuke bleeding in my genjutsu, and that was the most obvious one I knew. You did admirably at trying to calm your panic in order to help him, but the fact remains that you were still fooled and you still panicked. Panicking on the battlefield can cost you your life, or someone else's. Work on seeing through and breaking genjutsu. "
"Sorry." I said quietly. I looked down at the ground, ashamed at his words. I knew I should have done better in my performance, but I hadn't had any training in seeing though a genjutsu. All that had been taught to us at the Academy was how to dispel one, not how to see through it, except look for anything out of the ordinary. Which, admittedly, I had not done. I winced as Kakashi turned towards Naruto.
"Naruto, you have a horrible habit of running into a situation without observing your surroundings first. You fell for an obvious trap, and rely on Shadow Clones too much to fight for you. Like Kore, you need to learn to observe the area around you, and come up with a plan before leaping into action. Work on thinking before acting, and observing your situation." Kakashi turned to walk away, his speeches on what we should each work on over.
"Sensei? Would you like to come eat dinner with us?" I asked, tugging on the corner of my hat.
"Yeah! We're going to Ichiraku's! Believe it!" Naruto cheered. Kakashi got the same odd look in his eye as Naruto cheered loudly.
"I can't. I have to be somewhere else." There was a swirl of leaves around him, and he was gone.
"Anyone else hungry?" I asked quietly, trying to take our minds off the fact that our sensei had essentially blown us off. The boys nodded and took off to Ichiraku's, leaving me to contemplate why Kakashi didn't want to come with us. What happened to teamwork? I wondered to myself, running to catch up with Naruto and Sasuke. By the time all three of us had eaten, showered and gotten into bed, the incident had slipped all of our minds. Almost, any way.
"Kore? Why did Kakashi leave so quickly?" Naruto asked sleepily. "Was it because of me?"
"No, it wasn't you. He probably just had some top secret ninja business he had to do, and he couldn't tell us because we are Genin." I assured him, stroking his hair back. I was sitting on the edge of his bed, which had been dragged into Sasuke's room, along with mine. Sasuke's nightmares had come back, and it was an unspoken rule in our apartment that if any of us had a nightmare more than two nights in a row, we all slept in the same room in order to wake the poor person. We used to share a bed, but when we got too big we just began dragging our beds into the person's room.
"Can you-can you sing us a song?" Naruto's request was punctured by a yawn. I glanced at Sasuke, unwilling to sing if he didn't want me to. After all, he was the one with the recurring nightmares.
"Sing my song." He commanded me, closing his eyes and turning over onto his side. I smiled sadly at him; Sasuke only ever reverted to being rude and arrogant when he was sad, angry or scared. I climbed into my own bed and got comfortable before starting to sing.
I remember tears streaming down your face
When I said " I'll never let you go"
When all those shadows almost killed your light
I remember you said, "Don't leave me here alone"
But all that's dead and gone and passed tonight
Just close your eyes
The sun is going down
You'll be alright
No one can hurt you now
Come morning light
You and I'll be safe and sound
I didn't have an exceptional singing voice, but I wasn't tone deaf and I could remember the songs from my other life, pitches and all. Each of us had our own lullaby, which I would sing whenever someone had a nightmare. We fell asleep that night listening to the haunting, bittersweet lyrics of a young boy hurting and the dream he tried to drown in music.
(A/N) So anyone who was wondering about Kore's whole seeing-chakra-eye-thingy and wanted to see it again, there you go. Hopefully it will be explained in the next chapter. No, it is not a kekki genkai, and yes, it was inherited. Someone pointed out that it was a bit Mary-Sueish for her to have that, but it's almost like a sensor-type nin. It's got both benefits and drawbacks, just like every other advantage people have out there. I've also been reading a lot of stories lately that all they seem to do is rag on Kakashi and his teaching ability. I honestly think that since he was teaching the son of his old teacher it would be hard for him to look at Naruto, let alone teach him. He seems to show signs of survivor's guilt to me, and probably wanted nothing to do with Naruto, especially with him looking so much like Minato. I'm trying to incorporate this into my writing, but I'm not sure I'll be able to get it across subtly, so I just wanted to let you all know down here.
(A). In elementary school, I made a monster mask for our Halloween fair. My art teacher thought it was so good that she put it on the board with some others. My dad thought it was hilarious, so weeks later, he runs into the playroom where I'm watching TV with the mask on, and bangs pans together while screaming. It freaked the hell out of me then when I was a kid, but it's really funny now.
(Q). Does anyone have a favorite type story or fanfiction? Fantasy, Fiction, AU, Humor, ect?/span/p