Disclaimer: If I owned NARUTO (tm?), I would go throw myself off a cliff in ecstasy, which would mean I would be at the bottom of a cliff right now in about ten thousand peices. Or, in other words, dead. Or, in other words, not able to write this chapter.
CHAPTER 3: HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!
It was already night, but the sun still hung stubbornly in the western part of the sky, making it seem like late afternoon. The slowly fading sunlight shimmered on the ebony hair of a young girl hurrying towards the laundry center in an odd half-jog/half-shuffle, causing the keys hanging precariously from her pocket to jolt violently with each step that she took.
Keeping a wary eye on the keys, the girl was prepared to react when a particularly violent jolt shook the keys out of their pitifully weak placement--or so she thought. Instead of managing to immediately free a hand to catch the falling keys, she yanked out her hand in a wrong direction and got her hand stuck in the laundry basket handle, which nearly upset her balance and lost her chance of catching the keys with ease, not to mention hurting like hell.
After a few frantic grappling moments involving deployment of her fast reflexes and using some interesting impromptu juggling techniques, she managed to resecure her grip on the basket with her right wrist still trapped by the basket handle, which greatly limited the freedom of movement for that arm. Her left arm was wrapped tightly around the basket for extra support and she had miraculously managed to catch her keys between her elbow and her side.
Rather than just letting the keys fall to the ground and then set down the basket to pick them up, however, the stubborn streak inside her refused to let the keys fall. She was too lazy to set the basket down, bend over, pick up the keys, and then having to pick up the basket again and move on, especially when she could have caught the keys perfectly in the first place.
So in this awkward manner, she slowly, slowly inched torwards the laundry center, painfully careful lest any slight movement cause the keys to fall from her tenacious grip. Halfway to her destination, she dejectedly realized that it would probably have been much more time-and-energy-saving to just have let the keys drop and pick it up normally, as opposed to creeping forward in the silly way she was now, but she was too vexed to care and continued to plow on obstinately.
So intent she was on preventing the keys from falling that she didn't even realize that she was holding her breath. Quietly and carefully, she moved forward inch by inch, until at last she reached the entrance to the laundry center. There, a low shelf extending from the doors offered a spot to rest her laundry basket so she could remove her keys from between her elbow and side and put them back into her pocket.
With a smirk of triumphance that only one as stubborn as she could feel after completing such a totally useless stunt, she picked up the laundry basket, keys securely tucked away in her skirt pocket, and walked into the laundry center to face the strangest and most unforgettable sight of her life.
The scene only lasted less than a second, but in her mind's eye it was frozen there for as long as she lived.
Kakashi, Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura were standing in the room, with Sakura and Sasuke in the process of pulling out clothes--that most obviously did not belong to them, making their actions illegal--from a random clothes dryer. Naruto was halfway through pulling on a black T-shirt that was...a bit too small for him. Sakura was staring in shock at this very skimpy ladies' evening gown as if wondering whether the miniscule strip of see-through cloth actually counted as an item of clothing or not. Sasuke was staring at a brightly colored, rainbow patterned T-shirt that said "I hate myself and I want to die :)", his face torn between an expression of disgust, disbelief, and reluctant amusement.
That was the scene she took in. Had it lasted a moment longer, she was sure that she would have burst out laughing at the insanity of it all. Or fell down on the floor choking in an attempt to laugh...had it lasted any longer.
But that was before she saw the kunai headed straight at her.
A/N: If I continued to write the next scene, I know I'd get carried away and be unable to finish it in one day, and I felt that I had to update, so I cut this chapter short. Hope you still enjoyed it though. If anyone's reading, that is...