The next day after they all went to bed they were awoken by the sound of Inari greeting his grandpa. Well Sasuke, Sakura, and Kakashi were, but Naruto had already gotten up and was helping Tsunami with the breakfast. The three of them went down stairs to see Inari glaring at them.

"What are you doing here?" he said.

"Inari don't be rude. These ninja helped your grandpa and brought him here safely," said Tsunami as she and Naruto put the plates on the table.

"Mom don't you see these people are going to die. Gatou and his men will come back and find them and wipe them out," said Inari as he turned to face his mother.

Since he was facing his mother he didn't notice as Naruto crept up behind him and patted his head. "Don't worry little one," he said, "We'll defeat Gatou and his lowly men and become the next heroes of this place."

"Ha," said Inari, "There's no such thing as heroes. You're just full of stupid ideas. If you want to stay alive you should go back where you came from."

At this Naruto smiled, "Perhaps I could leave. I could just abandon you for my own safety, but that's not the way I live. I once heard these words and ever since I have never forgotten them. If you care about something protect it. Even if you have to put your life on the line protect it with both arms. Never give in. I intend to keep to those words even if I die. If you want us to leave so badly then we will, but tell me, Inari, do you want your grandfather to die so badly." Then Naruto walked out of the room without eating his breakfast and left the house leaving Inari crying and Tazuna and Tsunami gasping in surprise.

Inari ran out of the room as Tsunami asked, "How did he hear those words?"

"He heard them a long time ago," said Sakura.

"But why would he want to protect us? He doesn't even know us. Why would we be precious to him?" she asked.

"Naruto is a weird person," mumbled Sasuke, "He believes that all life is precious. He doesn't want to kill anyone."

"Then why doesn't he try to protect you two when you guys are fighting? Does he not think that you are important to him?" asked Tazuna.

"We are important to him," said Sakura, "He would do anything it takes to protect us."

"He just trusts that we are strong enough to fight on our own. If we were actually in danger he would move in an instant to take the blow for us," said Sasuke, "And when we were fighting in the woods, Tazuna-san, you needed his protection much more than we did."

Then, without another word, the two of them began to eat. When they were done they left the house to follow Naruto saying that when Kakashi was ready to train them they would be waiting.

Kakashi found the three of them in the woods with Sasuke and Sakura napping just as they had been when he first met them. "Alright time to wake up," he said and was again disappointed as the two of them woke up slowly. Naruto stood and moved forward just a step as he watched his sensei. A moment later when the other two had completely woken up they stood by Naruto. Kakashi sighed, "You three need to work on your awareness. What would you have done if I had attacked you while you were asleep?"

"Then I would have woken them up sensei," said Naruto.

"And how would that be any different from when I woke them up?" asked Kakashi as he raised his visible brow.

"It's a conditioned response," answered Sakura, "When we are attacked Naruto feels the need to wake us up so we immediately wake up, but when this doesn't occur and we are in no danger, but we should be waking up, then Naruto doesn't wake us up and we don't feel the need to wake up so quickly."

"What will you do if Naruto isn't around to wake you up?" asked Kakashi.

"Then our minds are on full alert and we don't completely fall asleep. If we're not completely asleep then we wake up really easily," she answered.

Kakashi sighed. These students of his were giving him a lot of headaches. "Alright training starts now. Your team is very well balanced with both offense and defense, but what will you do if you get separated? Sakura and Sasuke you need to work more on defense in this training, and Naruto you have no skills in offense at all so you rely on defense. This is not a good trait for a ninja. You have to practice on your offense instead of always allowing them to attack you while you defend."

The three students nodded and went to stand in a triangle. "Sakura," said Naruto, "You first."

Sakura launched herself forward with chakra in her fisted hand waiting to blow up on whoever she hit, but she didn't attack Naruto like she usually did. Instead she headed towards Sasuke who easily dodged it by moving to the left and hitting her arm downward so that she would lose her balance. However, she didn't lose her balance. Instead she quickly drew the chakra out of her hand and pushed it towards her foot where she was trying to kick Sasuke. Sasuke jumped backwards.

This continued for a while and Kakashi was satisfied by Sasuke's defense, but he was not happy that neither Naruto nor Sakura had listened to him. Naruto just stood in the background watching the two of them fight. "What are you doing?" he asked them.

The fighting stopped and all three of his students looked at him. "We're doing as we were told," said Sakura.

"You, Sakura, was told to work on your defense not your offense," growled Kakashi.

"You can't have both of them working on their defense at once because they won't have an offense to defend against," said Naruto.

"That's why you're supposed to be working on your offense so that they can defend against you," sighed Kakashi.

At this Naruto's eyes grew a shade darker and he glared at his teacher. "I refuse to attack my friends, Kakashi-sensei. I refuse to kill them. I was working on my offense just as you told me to. I just wasn't working on it the way you do. Now if you don't mind we were training just as you asked us to and unless you want to train with them they will have to take turns working on their defense."

"Naruto you shouldn't get so angry at him. This is only training, and he didn't know that you would never attack us. It isn't really his fault," Sakura said as she came up to stand behind him.

"I know," sighed Naruto as he turned to look at her. He gave her a smile before turning back to his teacher with his eyes back to their normal shade that gave the sky a run for its money and said, "I'm sorry Kakashi-sensei. Just please don't ever ask me to attack my friends. They're the only thing I have and I don't want to lose them."

"Your friends won't hate you just because you attacked them in a training practice," said Kakashi.

"You never know," Naruto answered, "I think Tsunami-san is making some food for us. Let's go back." With this he ran off to go see if there was any food, and sure enough when they were all in the house they found Tsunami in the kitchen making them some dinner.

Team 7 had been in the land of the waves for a few days and they had already heard about what happened to Inari's father. Naruto had gone out every moment that he wasn't doing anything to train. Kakashi had tried to follow him to see his training, but would always lose him and be forced to return. When he would walk through the door he would receive a snicker from Sakura and a smirk from Sasuke.

On this day Naruto had decided to lie down and close his eyes for a bit. Haku found him sleeping on the ground and for a moment he watched the sleeping boy carefully. Finally he crouched before the boy and reached out his hand to grab his neck.

"That's against the rules of our deal," said Naruto with his eyes still closed.

Haku immediately took back his hand. "You're awake!" he gasped.

"I never fell asleep," answered Naruto, "Are you here to collect herbs for Zabuza-san?" Haku looked over to his basket which he had not started to fill yet and then slowly nodded his head. "Would you mind if I helped?" asked Naruto as he sat up and smiled at Haku.

"No," said Haku warily.

"I won't attack you," Naruto said with a smile as he began to collect the herbs needed, "Like I just said: it'll be against the rules of the deal." Haku nodded and they went to work on collecting herbs.

"Naruto," said Haku after a while. Naruto made a small sound telling him to continue. "Why do you want us to join you?"

At this Naruto smiled brightly and said, "Because you could be precious to me."

"What?"

"You could be precious to me. You could be my friend, but only if you give me the chance. That's why I made the deal. We all want you guys to be our friends."

Haku smiled and they began to collect the herbs again. When Haku's basket was full he went away and Naruto began to train again.

When Naruto returned that evening the food had just been placed on the table so he sat down and began to eat. He was aware of the child who was staring at him though.

"In a few more days," said Tazuna, "the bridge will be finished. I have you to thank for that."

"You've all done great," was Tsunami's worried reply, "but you still got to be careful."

"I've been meaning to ask you this, but I haven't had the chance until now. Why did you stay and protect me even after you found out I'd lied to bring you here?"

"There's a quote from the first hokage that we all remember," said Sakura.

"Those who stray from the path of justice," said Naruto.

"Have no courage," said Sakura.

"But under the wing of a strong leader," said Naruto.

"Cowardice cannot survive," said Sasuke.

"This is one of the many sayings that we all live by. We've even memorized it," Naruto said with a smile. Though he didn't say the other reason why they memorized it and many other sayings. In the future the three of them often used these sayings as ways to identify each other before they had learned the jutsu that connected their minds.

"But why?" said Inari as tears began to stream down his face, "All this stupid training is just a waste of time. Gatou's got a whole army. He'll beat you down and they'll destroy you. These cool things you all say, they don't mean anything. No matter what you do, the strong always win and the weak always lose."

"Speak for yourself," said Naruto, "It won't be like that for us."

"Why don't you be quiet? Just looking at you makes me sick. You don't know anything about this country. You're just butting in. Always laughing and playing around, you don't know what it's like to suffer and be treated like dirt!"

"No I don't," said Naruto quietly, "but you don't know what it's like to be treated lower then dirt. Not even worthy enough to be stepped on. You keep crying all the time like you've been going through the life that is the worst. You know how your life goes, but you know nothing about ours. We have suffered plenty. Sakura is always made fun of because of she's different then all the other girls. Sasuke lost all of his family except his parents to a massacre that was performed by his own brother," he paused for a moment, "You're one of the luckier ones. At least you have a family. I've had to grow up without one for all my life. I've had to deal with people glares and taunts. You have a whole village on your side, but I have a whole village that hates me. I constantly have to deal with being beaten up just because of something I can't control. For a long time in my life I didn't even have friends. So get out of your own sob story and see what you have instead of what you don't." With this Naruto stood and left the room.

"Inari," said Sakura, "My story isn't all that bad, but we do know what it means to suffer. We know what pain feels like, but the difference between us and you is that we learned how to deal with it and smile at the end of each day. And that is all because Naruto taught us how. If we hadn't met Naruto we would probably be wallowing in the depths of despair right now."

"If you compare all of our pasts Naruto's is the worst, but I've never seen him complain about. He just endures it and lives his life happily without any regrets," said Sasuke.

Both Sakura and Sasuke left the room leaving everyone shocked into silence. Even Inari was speechless though his tears were falling faster than they had been before.