Twenty years ago in Konoha…

"What! Are you seriously going to be going on this mission, knowing how dangerous it is?" a ten year old Kakashi said to his only remaining teammate, not including his sensei.

"Hey, just because I am not a Jonin does not mean I cannot take care of myself! We are not going on anything that dangerous. Though we are at war, so every mission we take is dangerous," his teammate yelled back.

"I have trained since then and I think I've gotten better. Something like that is not going to be happening again and it's not as if I am going alone. There will be others with me," they sighed. Getting Kakashi to trust them was getting harder and harder ever since the events of 'that' mission took place. They always wanted his attention and now that they had it was kind of annoying at time but it was nothing like they dreamed at all.

"I know. It's just that I am worried about you. I am going to protect you in his place though I cannot do that if go mission like this without even telling me. I could have applied to go with you," Kakashi told them.

"No way! You cannot do that! You and sensei are needed on more important missions then just simply meeting up with a spy that's only about mile behind enemy lines," they yelled back.

"Hey, it's time. We have to get going if we want to make to the meeting place in time," their teammate for the mission told them.

"I am coming. Just give me a minute," they reply back. "Look, Kakashi, I cannot promise you that I will be coming back. This is a war we currently in and we are ninjas so there is a possibility I might not be coming back but I am still glad that you worried about me. I'll just use that as motivation for me to come back alive, right?" they said before leaving him behind to join her team for this mission.

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Just behind Land of Earth's border…

'So far, so good,' Kakashi's teammate thought. Their team had arrive in the Land of Earth without a problem, and since it was just the country that the attacking Iwa ninjas were coming from, they shouldn't have had to worry that much about being attacked but letting one's guard down because of this would be stupid idea.

"Huh? This is the meeting place, but I do not see them anywhere! Just pile of rumble," a leaf Chunin said once they made to the meeting point.

"This is not a pile of normal rumble. Look again. There is a leaf Hiate mixed in with it and I clearly see what appear to be body parts," the team leader said.

"Hey, Medic, come over here and look at this," the team leader asked, only for them all to turn and see that their Medic was now a statue with shocked look on their faces, not from being attack by whatever petrifaction jutsu was used on her, but from seeing the pile of rumble just like them seconds ago.

"Sorry, but there's no medic in the world that can repair that guy. He was no longer human the moment I smashed him. Though, this one might be avoiding such fate as long they stay in one piece," the Iwa ninja said before throwing the petrified medic at their team, pinning one them underneath her stone form.

"Looks like you're useful after all, just not in the way you might have thought," the enemy ninja laughed. He then went about to petrifying the rest of the team and smashing them to bits. They were about to do the same to the medic when they noticed scratches they were given before petrifying and crushing the team leader. The scratches were beginning to cause that area of their body to go numb. Forgetting about the medic, they rushed off to get help, though they never made it. They collapsed dead from the deadly poison injected into them and the fact that rushing to get help only sped up the process, thus killing them ever faster.

The medic was saved by being the only one on their team not to get crushed into pieces; however, they weren't out the woods just yet. There was no one around that undo the jutsu which did not become undone with the Iwa ninjas' deaths, thus she remain in that spot on the ground, standing there and staring vacantly at nothing

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Twenty years later…

It had been five days since Naruto had left to go stop Orochimaru from obtaining his goal or simply killing him if he had already.

For most of that time, Sakura remained in bed and Ryo just told everyone that she was not feeling good and needed a lot of sleep because she had come down with the flu. He surely could not tell them the truth that she was unable to move become Naruto was not in five mile radius to supply with his chakra. He would on occasion take control of Sakura and make her move around, mostly when room service came by to change the sheets and various other times. As for how he was making her move, that was through the use of demonic Kugustu Naruto had before she became fully conscious again. Though unlike before, she was semi-conscious, thus Ryo had to control her every moment, which would been hard even if he was a Kugustu master. Though, it was rather hard explaining why she never changed her clothes from day to day because there was no way he could do without seeing her naked. Although she was nothing more then an inanimate puppet at the moment, Ryo still respected her privacy that and he was worried about what his sensei, let alone Sakura, herself, would do to him if they had found out about seeing her even partial naked again. The first time he had an excuse since it was during a test on her ability to repair herself.

It was on this fifth day since Naruto had left that Ryo was walking around town with Sakura following closely behind. He needed some fresh air but claimed it was Sakura. It was during this walk that he had happened to overhear two guys talking.

"You know the marble leaf nin is going to be up for grabs soon. The rumor goes that it is really a girl that had been transformed into a statue twenty years ago during the Third Great Shinobi War," the first said.

"Yeah, that rumor is interesting, but it's probably catching a good price from someone. Those earth nins that came to town after hearing it would be sold here. If I did not know any better, I say they actually believed that it really a petrified girl rather then just a hunk of finely craved marble" the second said.

"Tell me about it! If that statue was really a Konoha Ninja turned to stone, then why did Hidden Earth Village lose to Konoha with jutsu like that? Even the Yellow Flash and Copycat Ninja would be given a run for their money," the first said

'Wow! This is certainly a shock,' Ryo thought to himself. He would have never thought that a human would have been able to pull off a petrifaction jutsu. 'From the way they talked about her, she might still be in one piece. There were those that obviously wanted her as trophy. Rich humans always like that, but she might not stay in one piece that way if one of the Earth Nin managed to get their hands on her.'

'Alright then, it's settled. I am just going to have to make sure that I restore this girl to normal after rescuing her from be sold off to the highest bidder, only to face the possibility of being destroyed,' Ryo thought. He could not just leave the girl to her fate of a continued existence as trophy or end up a pile of rumble.

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Later that night after 'convincing' the two he had overheard talking about the petrified girl, Ryo was standing on roof of the building where she was being held. To conceal Sakura and his identify, he covered their faces with masks and all black clothing that they wore over their clothes they already had on. While he wanted to save the petrified girl, he didn't want to cause more problems for Naruto, Sakura, and himself if at all possible.

'All right. This is the spot,' Ryo thought and he could detect the very faint charka signature of the petrifaction jutsu coming from the girl. He then had Sakura use her tail covered in iron sand and enhanced by her charka as a drill to make their way into the room.

"Things just keep on getting more interesting. When they said you were a girl, I actually expected a teenager like Sakura here, but you're around my age! Well, the age of my human appearance, at least," Ryo said quietly because he did not want to alert any more guards at the moment.

The statue girl in question had short hair that just barely made it to their shoulders and on the both sides of her face were these two skinny rectangles. She was dressed in what looked like a long sleeve shirt and pants where the right leg stopped around her knee. The symbol on the forehead protector was that of the Konoha. Also, it could be told that they had been cleaned and shined regularly. The marble still looked fresh and there were no sign of dust anywhere on her. The title on her pedestal read: 'The startled leaf girl that did not even see it coming'.

"Now to get you out of here and then possibly restore you, if that's possible at all," Ryo said and stood in front of her, looking at her stone form.

"Hey, you two over there! What are doing with my property?" a man in his late thirties to mid forties said as he saw Sakura taking the girl under one arm and then jumping back up the hole. Before the man could move any closer then he already was, Ryo used a smoke screen to escape through the hole in the roof.

Once back on the roof, he then made Sakura, who was carrying the girl, to follow him as they ran into out of the city and back into the forest. There was no way that he could stay in the town now and would have to send Naruto a message that he took Sakura left because he wanted to save another girl that in similar situation as her, in a way.

Within a rather large hollowed out tree, Ryo collapsed to the ground. Traveling forty miles in ten minutes was tiring enough at his current power level, but making Sakura do the same while carrying a marble statue that possible weighed three hundred pounds was tough. Sakura then collapsed to the ground as Ryo had released his control over her, which was the only thing keep her going at the moment.

"Okay. Now then to take a break to recover from controlling Sakura as long as I did and traveling this far so fast before attempting anything else," Ryo said slowly and he managed to pull himself up and turn so he could see if anyone was coming.

"Hopefully, I'll recover before sensei gets back. I'm going to have to have Sakura repair the damage she has gotten from me making her use her tail as drill and her hands from being forced to travel so fast," he sighed. He looked at his pink haired companion and how the cracks in her tails and hands appeared as scratches thanks to the genjutsu covering her.

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A few hours later…

Ryo was feeling enough of his charka had been restored that he could undo the petrifaction jutsu that transformed this girl into the statue that was at the moment.

"You are lucky that I heard about you when I did. It seems that I can do use the counter jutsu and return you to normal, but another week and it would have been too late," Ryo said as he could tell from the charka signature of the petrifaction jutsu. The fact that it was very faint meant that it was about to vanished and once that happened then this girl would be a statue forever.

Ryo then placed his hand on her forehead and then focused his charka to flow through the statue girl's body, reverting it from solid marble back to flesh and blood. As this was happening, Ryo turned to where Sakura was sitting against the side of the tree with her head down. While both Naruto and he knew how to do this, this was something that only worked on the Leaf Nin in front of him. It would not work on Sakura because this girl's original body was turned to stone, while in Sakura's case, her original body minus her hair and eyes was discarded and her charka transferred into her current wooden body.

"Huh?" the girl said as she wondered what was going on. The last thing she remembered was seeing a pile of rumble, and from her point of view, could see very clearly that it was no ordinary rumble; they were stone body parts. However, before she could even get over the shock of the sight before her eyes, she felt someone touching her back then everything went black. Turning around now to see who it was, she saw that no one was there at all.

"Whoever used that petrifaction jutsu on you has been long gone," Ryo told her and took a good look at her in her original state. The girl had brown hair and eyes and those rectangles on her face were a greenish color. Her shirt and pants were both black in color.

"Do you think I am stupid? There's no such thing as a petrifaction jutsu that can turn people to stone!" she said.

'Well, not completely to stone, anyway since there were ways to change the body into something else. Yet petrifaction meant that they would become completely made of stone,' the female ninja thought.

"Really? How do explain the fact that your shoes are glued to a pedestal meant for a statue?" Ryo asked.

"I am not…" she said. However, she then looked down to see that her shoes were indeed glued to a pedestal just like Ryo had said.

"You're telling the truth that I really was a statue. Then that feeling I felt was really the jutsu being used on me?" she asked and the green hair boy just nodded his head.

"The startled leaf girl. That's what I was called as statue?" She yelled as she took her feet out of her shoes to get off her pedestal, strangely curious at what she was called while a statue.

"Well then, what your real name? Mine is Ryo and over there is Sakura," he said, introducing the two of them.

"My name is Rin. Could you tell me where we are, how much time has past, and if Konoha won the war against Iwagakure?" the girl named Rin asked.

"Well, we are in large hollowed out tree in a forest inside the country about Northeast of Land of Fire, and since you do not know the outcome of the Leaf/Earth war which ended with the Leaf's victory, I would say about twenty years have past since you've been transformed," Ryo informed her. He had nothing but time on his hands since Naruto left, thus he read up on the events that happened during the time he was out of control.

"Two decades! I've been a statue for almost twenty years!" Rin said, pretty much in shock that it was really twenty years from her last memories.

'Kakashi! What about Kakashi?' Rin thought. He must have been worried about her and probably thought she was dead all this time. She could not possibly even try to come back like she promised him if she was statue of solid stone.

She was about to ask about her teammate when she looked over at Sakura and noticed something was off.

"Ummm…Ryo, was it? I do not know how to say this, but I think your friend seems dead. She does not seem to be breathing," Rin said. While she could not see past Naruto's genjutsu that Sakura was under, but being a highly skilled Medic ninja that was genjutsu type like Sakura, she could slightly see through the genjutsu enough to notice Sakura's chest not moving.

"Sakura is fine…ummm… resting. Why don't you look again?" Ryo told her, though while doing this, he placed Rin under a genjutsu to making her see what he was saying.

'I hope Sakura is fine, but I am going to have to tell Naruto about this,' Ryo thought. While the seal worked with Naruto inside its radius leaving and staying outside of it for prolong periods of time, this was something that had been tested.

"What are you doing?" Ryo asked when he noticed Rin was bowing toward him.

"I have not thanked you yet. It was because of you I am no longer some stone sculpture on display where you found me," Rin said.

"Well, actually, you were about to be sold off probably to some earth nin that would have even kept you a trophy or did something worse, like destroy you," Ryo told her.

"All the more reason I should thank you. I probably owe you my life and you changed me back," Rin replied.

"Rin, can you please guard Sakura? I sense someone coming," Ryo said

"Of course! I may be a medical ninja but that does not mean I cannot defend myself. I am Chunin, after all," Rin told him.

"Hey, wait! I just came to get you as told by Naruto!" the red toad summon Gamakichi said as he used his kunai to block the one Ryo made from charka-harden ice he created from water that in turn created out of thin air.

"Gamakichi, is that really you?" Rin asked. She could not believe that he had changed so much since she had last seen him. He was now human size, wore black gloves and his jacket now had a fur collar

"Rin? You're alive and still the same age as when you went missing! But how? Everyone was sure you had died, especially Jiraya and Kakashi. Man, Kakashi is surely going to get kick of this when he hears that you're still alive!" the toad said, rather shocked at seeing the girl hadn't aged a day in twenty years.

'So Kakashi is still alive? That's good,' Rin thought and was about to ask about him when Ryo interrupted her.

"To make a long story short, it involved the petrifaction jutsu being used on her twenty years ago that was just undone a few minutes ago. Though what's this you said about that Naruto sending you?" Ryo asked.

As for how Ryo even knew Gamakichi, the truth was, he did not actually know him personally, but he knew of him since Naruto told him that he had contract signed the Frog contract and was able to summon frogs because of it.

"Yeah, he's not being allowed to leave because of his injuries so he sent me to get the two, well, three of you now. You sure were a pain to find! Do you know that? Judging from Sakura's condition, I'd say you used her in your rescuing of Rin," the human size toad said.

"You do not think that Naruto-sensei is going to get too mad, do you? Rin could have been destroyed or worse stuck a statue forever if I just left her," he asked.

"More then likely yes, but you did it to save someone and would have left her unguarded if left to do it alone, so I guess that keep him from getting too angry at you," Gamakichi said.

"Come on, Rin. We should get going," he said and had Sakura climb onto his back as he did not want Rin knowing the truth about her really being a puppet or him being a demon for that matter.

"Sure," she responded and started to follow him, but her legs then gave out from under her.

Placing Sakura down, he then picked up Rin and placed her on the summon frog's back.

"This could be a side effect of reverting you back to normal. It could take some time before your charka network is back to normal since that's how you were transformed in the first place. Though, since it did happen once you returned to normal, I just thought it wasn't going to happening. It seems that I was wrong in that guess," Ryo explained to her.

Rin in response simply nodded and she held on to the frog all the time, wondering why Sakura hadn't moved a muscle other her chest which was actually just Ryo's genjutsu since getting on his back or why she even need to be carried in the first place.

"Alright, take us to where sensei is then, Gamakichi," Ryo said and the frog then went off in the direction towards Naruto's current location.

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I would like to thank:

Froggy-slice and Chaos master mage for reviewing my story

oblivionprince, deathica666, Froggy-slice, Chaos master mage, and ted009 for adding this to their Favorite story list