"You know, you still haven't told me how you managed to pass."
"Hm?" Naruto looked up from admiring his shiny new hitai-ate to grin at Ino. "Actually Iruka-sensei reevaluated me and realised that I had a lot of hidden potential. Turns out I could have been top of the class alongside you and Sasuke if I'd tried hard enough."
"If you're going to lie at least make it believable." Ino rolled her eyes. "Anyway, I'm hopeful that I'll get to be on a team with Sasuke. The two top students would make the most promising teammates."
"Ugh. I was hoping to be on a team with you, but if it's with Sasuke no thanks." Naruto grumbled. "I'd rather be with creepy Shino or Chouji."
"Aw, I can see you three making a great team." Ino said with mock sweetness. "I'm sure Sasuke and I will find a way to manage without you."
Naruto totally had a good retort ready, but Iruka walked in and called for quiet, so he settled with glaring at Ino, who remained unbothered.
"First of all, I want to congratulate all of you. As of today you are all shinobi. To get here you faced difficult trials and hardships, but that's nothing. What comes next will be far more difficult. Now you are only genin, first-level shinobi. All genin will be grouped into three man squads. Each squad will be led by a jonin, an elite shinobi."
A three man squad? Huh, maybe Naruto would end up with Shino and Chouji after all. Still a better team than whoever got stuck with Sasuke.
"We want each squad to have a balance of strength and abilities, so that's how we set them up. I will now announce the squads! Team 1: Kotoki Miadzaki, Hikyuu Sanosuke and…"
Naruto sighed impatiently as he waited for his name to be called out. Honestly, he didn't really care who he ended up on a team with, other than Sasuke. His mind was filled with more pressing matters, about the demon that was apparently sealed inside of him. He still couldn't bring himself to fully process the bomb Mizuki had dropped on him. It shed a different light on so many incidents in his life, and Naruto was still struggling to understand all the implications of being the Kyuubi's host.
"Team 7: Naruto Uzumaki…"
Oh! He perked up. This was it!
"…Kaori Shinzuko…"
Who? Naruto glanced around, eyes finally noticing the girl near the back of the class. Oh. He'd never really talked to her much before, but at least she wasn't-
"…and Sasuke Uchiha."
Well fuck.
Ino and Iruka-sensei would yell at him for thinking such a rude word, but really there was no better one to capture the soul crushing despair he felt at being paired with the most stuck up, annoying, and pretentious guy in the year. God, he hated Sasuke.
And apparently they were teammates. Yay.
"Team 10: Ino Yamanaka, Shikamaru Nara and Chouji Akimichi."
At this point Naruto may have started hysterically laughing, partly due to his own terrible teammate and partly due to the matching look of horror on Ino's face.
"Man, the universe has a messed up sense of humour doesn't it?"
A day and one prank on his jonin sensei later, Naruto was sitting on the rooftop with his new teammates, facing Kakashi Hatake. So far, the man had made very little impression on Naruto. He was just weird.
His teammates also hadn't made much of an impression on him. He already knew Sasuke was a jerk and so far he hadn't seen a huge personality change. His other teammate had been quiet, and the most noticeable thing had been when Naruto had caught a flash of pink hair in the corner of his eye. When he turned and looked properly, he saw mysterious ghost girl sitting at a desk. A second later she changed into his new teammate.
The girl randomly appearing wasn't anything new to Naruto, but she had always been in her own space, watching or cheering or talking to thin air. This was the first time he had actually mistook someone else for her.
As they sat on the rooftop, he couldn't help glancing at Kaori, wondering if her black hair would suddenly change to pink again.
"Alright, why don't you introduce yourselves? One at a time."
When no one spoke up, Kakashi sighed.
"I guess I'll go first so you can see how this works. I'm Kakashi Hatake. Things I like and things I hate… I don't feel like telling you that. My dreams for the future… never really thought about it. As for my hobbies… I have lots of hobbies."
Well that was useless. This guy may think that his team were a bunch of idiots, but so far Naruto wasn't getting a great impression of him either.
"Ok, your turn. You on the right, you first."
"I'm Naruto Uzumaki! I like instant ramen in a cup, and I really like the Ichiraku ramen noodle shop. But I hate the three minutes you have to wait after pouring water in the ramen cup. My hobbies are eating different kinds of ramen and comparing them, and my future dream is to be the greatest Hokage!"
Kakashi's gaze was impassive; Naruto honestly couldn't tell what he was thinking. Maybe he was unimpressed, or maybe he too had experienced the greatness that was Ichiraku ramen and was lost in reminiscing sweet memories.
"Alright, next."
"My name is Kaori Shinzuko. I like playing Shogi and hanging out with my friends. I dislike when my big sister gets to do important clan stuff and I don't. My dream is to surpass… a certain someone."
She was glaring in Sasuke's direction, but judging from the look on his face he was as confused as Naruto. Not that Naruto kept tabs or anything, but he was pretty sure Sasuke had interacted with this girl even less than Naruto had. So like… what was her problem? It felt like a pretty contrived dream, maybe to make her look more interesting to their new sensei.
Also no offence, but being Sasuke's rival was Naruto's thing. They'd established it through years of silent yet intense glaring.
His eyes flickered from Sasuke to Kakashi to Kaori, and he almost jumped out of his skin when green eyes looked back at him. She had pink hair and a red dress instead of the dark hair and black clothes Kaori was wearing. He blinked again and his teammate was back, staring quizzically at him. All he could do was shrug sheepishly and look away.
Boy, that was going to take some getting used to.
A cloud of poison drifted across the cavern. Sasori watched it calmly from the ground, while Deidara flew above on one of his birds. From the entrance to the cavern, Pein and Konan also watched the battle below.
Senbon flew out of the holster Sakura's arm, all aimed towards Sasori. He tugged on his chakra strings, and the Third Kazekage flew out to defend him, his iron sand forming an impenetrable shield against the senbon. They rebounded off the iron, some of them flying upwards and clipping Deidara's bird. He yelped as it began to spiral downwards, one of its wings torn up. The Third Kazekage flew across the room towards Sakura, who leapt up to avoid it. Wooden hands shot out of the puppet and began pummelling her, until she was nothing but a bruised and bloody mess. Just as he was about to deliver the killing blow, she disappeared in a puff of smoke, and the real Sakura reappeared from the ground, unharmed.
Sasori let out a small disappointed grunt, and then continued attacking.
The fight mostly consisted of Sakura dodging Sasori's attacks and throwing a jutsu his way whenever she could. Sasori mainly used the Third Kazekage puppet to block Sakura's attacks, and neither of them was able to land a good hit on the other. This went on for a few minutes, until a series of explosions shook the chamber.
"Deidara, what do you think you're doing?" Sasori growled.
"You're not getting anywhere! Your art isn't beating her at all, so now it's my turn, yeah."
"Idiot!" Sasori snapped. "You'll bring the whole cavern down on top of us. At least kill the brat first before burying the rest of us."
"Alright, alright. I'll end this." Deidara's eyes gleamed. "With a bang, yeah!"
His right arm shot out, and a tiny bird flew towards Sakura, who immediately began making hand seals. She finished just as the creature reached her and detonated. For such a small creature, it generated a huge explosion. The heat reached Sasori inside his puppet body, and even Konan felt some of it from her observation platform at the top of the cavern.
When the smoke cleared, two half-crumbled earth walls were visible, with a slightly dirty Sakura panting for breath behind them. Sasori immediately tugged on a chakra string, but stopped when a commanding voice echoed through the cavern.
"Enough." Pein said, his eyes locked on Sasori.
Deidara flew down with a grin, looking at the destruction with proud eyes. Sasori merely glared at Sakura, no doubt disappointed that she was still breathing.
"That was the longest fight yet, wasn't it?" Pein murmured to Konan.
She nodded, her eyes on Sakura. The girl slowly stood up, wiping the dirt and sweat from her forehead and nodding respectfully towards Deidara.
"You think she's ready."
"I need to know. We both need to know. It's been seven years or so since we took her in, I think it's time we found out just how far she's come."
Sakura felt the familiar thrum of anticipation as she knelt in the briefing room. She enjoyed sparring with the Akatsuki, enjoyed the look of annoyance on Sasori's face when he was unable to kill her, but missions were the real challenge. Assassinations, intel gathering, tracking targets, she loved the sense of accomplishment and power after every successful mission. Occasionally she'd feel a slight bit uncomfortable if the mission was very immoral, such as murdering children, but it was never enough to stop her from completing every assignment they gave her.
Today, it looked like it would be another assassination. Konan was currently flipping through a bingo book, which meant it would probably be a powerful shinobi. A few years ago, Sakura would have been nervous. Now she was just excited. Channelling the few emotions that refused to be silenced into her work as a weapon had greatly increased her efficiency, and had also given some form of peace to her mental turmoil. It probably wasn't the healthiest way to deal with her life as a tool of the Akatsuki, but honestly she doubted any psychiatrist could help her at this point.
Eventually, Konan turned and handed her the bingo book. Sakura looked at the page in front of her and saw a masked man with a Konoha hitai-ate and a shock of spiky silver hair. She'd heard of him, even seen his picture before, but looking at his picture there was something intriguing about him. Perhaps it was his deliberately mysterious appearance.
"Kakashi Hatake." Pein announced. "One of Konoha's most talented shinobi. He graduated the Academy in a single year, and became a jonin at twelve. Recently he has been given his own squad of genin to look after."
"You see Sakura, you are a prodigy of the rarest kind, but there are others like you, as few as they may be. Itachi is one of them, Kakashi another, but unlike you he has lived a longer life, and has more experience. That's why we think he would be an interesting opponent for you."
"Understand that this is not an assassination mission." Pein's eyes bored into Sakura. "Not only is Hatake talented, but as we said he has years of experience and wisdom that you cannot match. This is less of a test that you must pass and more of an experiment to satisfy our curiosity. Find him and kill him if you can, but if you lose or cannot beat him, you have permission to retreat."
"Understood sir."
"Good. You may go. Report back here once it's done."
Sakura flickered out of the room, mind whirling. This was the kind of mission she dreamed of, where the only goal was to test her ability. She had never thought that Pein would approve of a mission like this, but here she was. Would she lose? Possibly, but there was only one way to find out.
First of all, she needed to track down some of the Akatsuki's Konoha informants, to find out just where she could corner Kakashi for a fight.
"So you're telling me he's on a mission?"
Shin nodded as he sipped his tea, keeping a careful eye on the young girl in front of him. He'd only interacted with Sakura once or twice before, but her reputation amongst those who served the Akatsuki was legendary. Some didn't believe she existed, that she was as much of a tall tale as God and his angel. But Shin knew better. This girl was dangerous, and worked directly for the Leader, so if she wanted information Shin was determined to be as helpful as possible.
"That's right. Hatake and his whole team of genin are escorting this bridge builder to Nami no Kuni. It's a bit of a difficult mission for some kids fresh out of the Academy if you ask me, especially since they won't just be facing civilian criminals."
Sakura leant forward, her eyes gleaming. Shin resisted the urge to shrink back into his seat, because behind the muted shine to her green eyes he could feel a predator locking in on her next prey.
"You're saying he has shinobi against him? Tell me who."
Shit, shit, shit. This was not how Naruto expected his first C-rank mission to go.
He had been so excited too. Finding cats and painting fences with annoying teammates and an equally annoying sensei had not been Naruto's idea of shinobi work. This mission at least allowed him to show what he was capable of.
So far Kakashi had done most of the work, but Naruto and his teammates had helped him fight Zabuza, and now the rouge shinobi was collapsed by a tree. Naruto was trembling, whether from adrenaline or fear he wasn't sure.
Was Kakashi going to kill Zabuza? Zabuza definitely wanted to kill them, but in his current exhausted state he wasn't a danger, and the thought of witnessing his sensei murder a defeated enemy was unpleasant.
But he was a shinobi, and it was his job to protect this bridge builder, no matter what. Naruto hated the fact that he couldn't think of another way to protect Tazuna from Zabuza other than to kill the defeated shinobi, but there didn't seem to be a smart alternative.
He watched sadly as Kakashi steeled himself. For a man facing death, Zabuza didn't look particularly scared, more impatient than anything else. With a mind-set as tough as that Naruto could see how the man could become such a strong and feared shinobi.
As Kakashi raised his kunai, two senbon came flying out of nowhere, sticking into Zabuza's neck and killing him instantly.
"Interesting."
The entire team froze and turned to face this new voice. Standing on a tree a little distance away was a girl.
Naruto felt his blood run cold. The whole world around him seemed to blur, and the only thing in focus was the girl in the tree. He could feel Sasuke and Kaori tense beside him, heard Tazuna curse and saw Kakashi turn to face the new figure, but none of it seemed to matter when he got a look at the girl's face.
This wasn't just a girl. This was the girl. The ghost girl, the one who had been haunting him for years, was balancing on a branch a few meters away. Naruto felt his head begin to pound, because she was real, she was alive, and she was standing right in front of him.
Only…she was different.
It was definitely her, but she was a little shorter than the girl in his head, and her body was thinner, but with more lean muscle on it. Her hair was cut to her shoulders, and unlike his vision of her she didn't keep it tied back, so it covered her forehead instead. She'd always been wearing bright colours when he saw her, shades of red and pink that complemented her hair. There was some sort of red pattern on the haori she wore, but for the most part her clothes were duller than he had imagined. All of the little differences paled in comparison to one huge change.
Her eyes.
In his hallucinations, the girl had always had bright, lively eyes, similar to his own. Sometimes she'd be angry, sometimes she'd be curious, sometimes she'd be excited, but her green eyes always sparkled with energy. Naruto had often found himself distracted during class when she appeared, just watching her eyes move around the room. To him, her eyes and everything that lay behind them had made her seem more real, more alive.
The girl in the tree, her eyes were dull and lifeless. They observed the scene in front of her coldly, like a shark assessing its next meal. She gave no emotion, just a cool, quiet calm, with something dangerous lurking underneath it. Naruto had imagined meeting her plenty of times, all the various ways it could happen and what he could say.
He'd never dreamt he would fear her.
But the thing was, this girl wasn't alone. In her hand she held the body of a child their age, clearly dead. The child wore a mask, and Naruto couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl, but by the way the body limply dangled from her hand and the crooked angle of its neck, Naruto was certain the child wasn't breathing.
He felt like throwing up.
"It appears these two were working together." The girl tossed the body down, and it landed on the ground with a sickening flop. "A skilled shinobi like Momochi should have heard my senbon coming, and the fact that he let them hit him means it was probably a set up. This fake Kiri shinobi was going to pretend to kill him with his own set of senbon, and then retreat to safety with the body. Lucky for you, I took care of them both."
"Who are you?" Naruto growled, unable to hold it in any longer. "How could you just kill them so easily?"
The girl looked at him, and for a second Naruto thought he caught a flash of… something. Recognition, maybe? Wariness? Then her eyes turned to Kakashi and it was gone.
"I see the battle has taken quite a toll on you. I doubt you're up to fighting another one."
"I don't particularly want to." Kakashi said with icy calmness. "But if you threaten my team or the mission then I'm fully prepared to go another round."
"It wouldn't be much good with you so weak." the girl replied. "So rest easy, right now I am neither your friend nor your enemy. Until you are at your full strength, I won't interfere."
Those sounded like parting words, but Naruto couldn't let it end like this. He needed to know who she was, why she was haunting him, and why she was so different in his imagination. This could be his only chance to finally solve this mystery, and the thought of it slipping away filled him with angry frustration.
"Wait!" he cried, and she paused, turning to look at him.
Her eyes met his, and he held her gaze, hoping she would recognize the pleading, desperate stare he was sending her. Why wasn't she saying anything? Did she not recognize him the way he did her?
"Who are you?" he said, and then again. "Who are you?"
The girl stared at him. For ten long seconds she stared at him.
Then she tipped backwards, and let herself fall off the tree branch.
"No! Don't go!" Naruto raced forward, but she had disappeared. He sprinted towards the woods, but was forced to stop when he felt a hand grab his head.
"Naruto, Naruto stop. Let her go, there's no point chasing her."
"Kakashi sensei." he looked at Kakashi, feeling his desperation rise. "Who was she?"
For the first time since they'd met, Kakashi looked regretful.
"I don't know."
Oh. He didn't know.
So that was that then.
His ghost girl was real, he'd seen her in the flesh, and then she'd disappeared. The answers he'd been seeking for so long had been all right in front of him and now he was left with nothing.
Naruto felt his knees give out and he let himself fall to the ground. He could feel Kakashi watching him in concern, but right now the emotions bubbling inside him were too hard to contain.
Naruto let his head hit the dirt, and then he screamed.
Sakura felt her heart pounding as she raced away from Kakashi and his team. She hadn't expected her introduction to be as difficult as it had turned out to be.
Just who were those kids, and why had they created such a strong reaction in her?
The bridge builder and Kakashi had been manageable. The builder was a civilian, and Sakura had been too caught up in the thrill of it all to feel any strange emotion towards Kakashi.
But the girl, she had been unusual. There was nothing out of the ordinary with her, but something about her made Sakura uncomfortable. It was this strange sensation that the girl just didn't belong there, on the mission, on that team. Completely ridiculous, yet the more Sakura watched the stronger that feeling grew.
And then there was the dark haired boy. Up until now, Sakura had been certain that attraction was something her training had wiped out of her long ago. But that boy, he made her feel something that she thought could be similar. It was more than just lust though, something about him made her heart ache, and she couldn't understand why.
And the other boy. The one that had asked her to wait, the one that had stared at her with such desperate eyes, and a question hanging unspoken between them.
Do you know me?
Yes, she wanted to say, yes I know you.
But she didn't. She didn't know his name; she didn't know a single thing about him other than the fact that he was Kakashi's student. But something in her felt like this was a lie, and she was certain the boy felt like that too. It had been a struggle to maintain her blank façade when he stared at her with such desperate blue eyes.
Who are you?
Have we met before?
How do I know you?
This wasn't good at all. It had been a long time since her amnesia messed up a mission for her, and she refused to let the growing headache interfere with her goal. She would rest up and let Kakashi do the same. By the time he was ready to fight, she would have gotten rid of this headache and the strange sensations that encounter had created.
She'd learnt to stop chasing uncertainties long ago. She didn't know who that boy was, or why she felt this way towards him. What she did know was the order Pein had given her, and the mission she had to complete. She would ground herself in what was solid and real, instead of veering towards the hazy emotions and orange tinted dreams her amnesiac mind used to give her.
She would kill Kakashi, and deal with his students if she had to.
Tree climbing was hard. It required focus, and Naruto really didn't have much of that at the moment. His mind was elsewhere, back at the encounter with the ghost girl days ago.
Kaori had eventually got the hang of it and retired to Tazuna's house for the night, but to Naruto's surprise Sasuke was still struggling to climb. If anything, he looked distracted too.
Ino's words from ages ago popped into his head, that maybe the ghost girl affected Sasuke too. It would explain why she followed him around a lot, but Naruto had never liked that theory, because he was slightly petty and the ghost girl was his hallucination, not Sasuke's.
But now, things were different. The girl was real, and Sasuke was his teammate, so if he knew something about her he could help Naruto find her and get some answers.
"Hey Sasuke." he said, when they were both taking a short break from fruitlessly running up trees. "You're normally way better than me at this sort of thing, why haven't you already gotten this down?"
"Tch." was Sasuke's oh-so-helpful reply.
"Is it because of what happened to Zabuza? Because to be honest that girl scared me too, and not just because she killed that fake Kiri kid. There's just something about her…"
He trailed off, carefully watching Sasuke's reaction. He seemed conflicted, like there was something he wasn't sharing. Tact had never been Naruto's strong suit, especially when it came to Sasuke, but he didn't want to screw this up.
"Sasuke," Naruto said hesitantly "do you know that girl?"
Sasuke's head snapped up to glare at him, all worry and conflicting emotions replaced with irritation.
"What? Don't be stupid dobe, why would I know some crazy rouge shinobi?"
He got up and stormed off, leaving Naruto to sigh in frustration. Apparently Sasuke was a dead-end. Maybe the nerves had just gotten to him.
Or maybe… Naruto thought about how he and Ino became friends. She'd never seen this ghost girl, but she'd known something about her. Something had made her believe that Naruto wasn't insane, and maybe Sasuke too was affected by that something. The girl was connected to all three of them in some way, Naruto could feel it.
But why was she connected to him more than the other two? What was it about Naruto that let him see visions of her? Judging by her appearance and personality when she'd appeared for real, the visions he saw were of a life she'd never even lead. How was it possible?
When he closed his eyes to think, tendrils of orange fire danced behind his eyelids. His eyes snapped open, but all he saw were trees.
Naruto groaned and got to his feet. Glaring at the tree in front of him as if it could fix all his problems, he charged towards it.
He couldn't figure it out right now, but what he could do was learn how to walk up trees. Next time he saw her, he would at least make sure he could chase after her.