Wow! I got such good responses! Arigato, minna!
But what everyone really wanted to know about was the pairings. I haven't decided on pairings, really. I was originally going to start posting and then let you guys pick! ; My favorites, as you feared, are NaruHina and SasuSaku, BUT, that doesn't mean I won't change it (I always did feel a little bad for Kiba, anyway! And this fic even started as an excuse for Sakura and Lee to hang out!) So as far as pairings go, nothing is set in stone. For now, let's go watch the poor little Gennins being tormented some more, shall we? D
The Disclaimer—I can't have Naruto?! Awww! What about just Lee and Sasuke? Ahh—Kishimoto-san!! What are you doing with that shot-gun?! 0.o; (Obviously, Naruto is not mine.)
--Chapter 2: Time winds down
"'To-chan! 'To-chan! Look here! Aren't the leaves pretty? 'To-chan?"
"Now, Itachi, stand up straight. No son of mine is going to look like a slob at the festival. Straight, I said! Do not start this again."
"...are you listening to me, To-chan?"
"Itachi, here. This is a good friend of mine, he's very influential in the-"
"Do...you even know I'm here? 'To-chan...look at me...""SASUKEEEEEEEE!!!" How quickly those bittersweet memories disappeared when your closest friend was screaming at the top of his lungs in your ear, "OI!!! Sasuke!! Did you hear me?! I said hurry up! I wanna get some food before the crowds come!" Naruto hopped up and down a few times in frustration, the large, clear, and still empty leaf bag flailing in the chilly autumn breeze.
The famed Uchiha glare made another appearance. After a memory like that, Sasuke was feeling even grouchier about the oncoming festival. He was in no rush to finish this mission and hurry time along like his partners
"Sasuke-kun, Naruto, hurry! I don't know when he'll be coming back!" Sakura shouted from her position high up in a tree. Over the last week, the trio had figured out a pretty good strategy for the daily annoyance of leaf raking. Sasuke, with his superior speed, would rake the entire lawn into one massive pile. Then Naruto would use his patented Kage Bushin no Jutsu and split into a few hundred clones to bag the pile. Sakura was lookout, making sure Kakashi-sensei didn't wander over and catch their scheme. It was all very clever, or so they thought, and made the job go twice as fast. As it stood, this house was the very last of the missions on their list before the festival break, and they were half done already.
Naruto, who had seen a few of the festival booths setting up, was dying to get this over with and go enjoy some food, "Come on, already!! What's your problem?! Sasuke!!"
"Alright!" the raven-haired ninja snapped back at him. Reluctantly, Sasuke went back to raking the pile, but all the while his mind wandered. Every year it was the same thing...damned festival. He wished they would just stop holding it all together.
The blonde shinobi watched him impatiently, arms folded across his chest and a foot tapping on the ground. He couldn't wait a second longer! Naruto quickly molded some chakra and crossed his fingers, "Kage Bushin No Jutsu!" A puff of smoke, and suddenly thirty Narutos were attacking the disheveled pile of leaves as if it were a gigantic bowl of Ramen, "I'm not gonna wait all day for you, Baka! I wanna get going already!"
Sasuke just huffed, "Fine. Do whatever you want...dobe..." The Uchiha heir tossed his rake across the yard, stuffing his hands into his pockets and leaning up against a tree trunk. The expression on his face was a mystery; something of a cross between unbridled anger and deep-rooted sorrow.
Of course, no change in Uchiha Sasuke went unnoticed. Sakura shifted her emerald eyes from her watch for a moment and down at the brooding Sasuke. "Sasuke-kun...what could be bothering you...?"
"Hello there." Sakura's thoughts were very abruptly interrupted, and when she turned her eyes away from Sasuke, she was eye to eye with the masked ninja Kakashi, "What's this? Trying some short-cuts are we?"
"YEEEEEE!!!" the shock sent the kunoichi tumbling from her perch and, by some coincidence, onto the actual Naruto. The blonde's clones quickly poofed back into nothing more than smoke and air.
Sasuke just glanced up at the Jounin as his two teammates attempted to untangle themselves from one another.
"Well now." Kakashi took in a deep breath, reaching a hand into his pouch and producing his usual reading material. The masked ninja's single exposed eye carefully watched his book, as he spoke, "This is no good. Only two of you are getting the work done. Go back and open up those bags of leaves, you are going to rake this whole lawn all over again."
There was a loud groan from the three Gennin.
Being that it was midday already, it was finally time for Shikamaru to get out of bed. With a loud yawn and a grunt, the shadow-wielding shinobi climbed out from under his sheets, rubbed the back of his hand against his eyes, and gradually made his way across the room to his clothing. How troublesome all this leaf raking was. They had been assigned to these kinds of missions for nearly a whole week already, and it was becoming annoying. He was, after all, at the Chuunin level already. Why should he have to do these kinds of missions? Of course, Shikamaru's cell had also adapted their own method of raking. Chouji just had to run his Meat Tank technique around in circles until all the leaves were swept into one massive pile. But then Shikamaru and Ino had to pick all those leaves up as the chubby ninja staggered around dizzily.
"Mendokuse..." Shikamaru mumbled to himself as he straightened out his flank jacket, "We've collected more than enough leaves for the fire. Maybe I'll just go back to sleep..."
"Shikamaru!" a very loud and commanding voice echoed into his room, making poor Shikamaru flinch instantly, "Are you still asleep?! Young man, you have missions to complete! Get going!"
"H-hai, 'Ka-san! I'm going!" he knew better than to talk back to his mother, and so the Nara heir instantly strapped all his weapons and scrolls in place and took off out of the door.
Once away from his house, however, Shikamaru slowed to his usual pace. No need to hurry, the leaves certainly weren't going anywhere. "Mendokuse, mendokuse...women are such a pain! Even my own mother. Geez..." As he shuffled lazily along his way, Shikamaru's eye caught sight of some of his former classmates. He spied Cell 8 through a crack in some villager's fence, engaged in the same kind of leaf lunacy that all the other Gennin were. It seemed like a good enough excuse to waste time, so Shikamaru wandered over and folded his arms onto the fence post to watch.
"Oi, Akamaru! Speed it up! We're almost done for today!" Inuzuka Kiba sped around the lawn, his clothing covered from head to toe in scraps of dead leaves. His little companion, the white puppy Akamaru, yipped an agreement and went chasing after his master. Both man and dog reached a pile of leaves, stooped over, and started shoving hand-fulls of leaves into a bag.
Shikamaru raised an eyebrow silently, thinking that Kiba was becoming a little too much like a canine for his own good. The lazy shinobi glanced from the dog-trainer to the infamously creepy Aburame Shino.
Shino was leaned up against the far side of that fence, his hands buried in his jacket pockets, his face hidden as ever by those sunglasses and his high collar. It seemed at first that Shino was not doing a damned thing; just relaxing and letting Kiba go nuts. But a closer inspection showed a pile of leaves very close to him being lifted and bagged by invisible hands. The heir to the Aburame clan had ordered his bugs to pick up the leaves for him, even if they could only do it one leaf at a time.
"Lucky for him. He never has to lift a hand to do anything..." Shikamaru mused to himself; suddenly wondering if having bugs live under your skin wasn't such a bad idea after all.
The last member of Cell 8 was not as fortunate as Shino. Hinata, for all the Byakugan's great power, was stuck with the task of raking. Being able to see right through objects was of little help in a mission like this, and the shy Hinata just ran the rake back and forth to make piles for Kiba and Shino.
The lazy Shinobi quickly grew tired of watching this. Even just seeing someone else doing this much hard work was too troublesome for him. Just as Shikamaru was considering heading over to his own mission, a hand clapped vary hard against his back, knocking the wind out of him.
"Shikamaru! What're you doing here!?" the hand would of course belong to the single most hyperactive ninja in all of Konoha, Uzumaki Naruto, "Don't you have to go rake up leaves too?"
"Naruto..." the shadow shinobi glared, quickly catching his breath and pulling himself away from the fence post.
Naruto's loud voice almost instantly caught the attention of his Number one fan, Hinata, even if it did take her a while to gather up the courage to go say hello, "N...Naruto-kun...H-hello..."
"Ahhh? Hinata?" the clueless fox-boy paid little attention to Hinata's furious blush and shy finger poking. He reached up and scratched at his blonde head, "Why are you hanging around Shikamaru? I thought you were in the cell with that dope Kiba."
As soon as Naruto said it, 'that dope's dog went over and took a bite out of him, "I heard that, you jerk!" It was not so much the dope comment that brought Kiba stomping over towards them, as it was the fact that Naruto was speaking to Hinata. He wasn't allowed to speak to Hinata! Kiba snarled, gritting his teeth together as Naruto unsuccessfully attempted to pry Akamaru from his leg.
Sasuke and Sakura, who had of course been following Naruto, could do little more than sigh and shake their heads as the orange-clad ninja hopped around and shouted. "Baka!" Sakura spoke up, "Do you just like picking fights with everyone?!"
It wasn't long before Kiba and Naruto got caught up in a shouting match. Hinata shyly waved a greeting to the other members of Cell seven, and Shino coolly made his way over to the source of the racket.
"Bastard!"
"Loser!"
"Dog-faced jerk!"
"Sic 'im, Akamaru!"
"OWWW!! Hey, fight fair!"
Shino cleared his throat loudly for attention. Calmly and slowly, the bug ninja's deep voice filtered out through his shirt collar to address his partner, "Kiba. That is enough. There is no reason to start a fight now. We still need to finish our mission, after all." The assembled Gennins-- and Shikamaru of course, who had stayed only to kill a little more time before he would have to pick up leaves—silenced, all eyes turning onto Shino.
Kiba could just feel his eye twitching, "Why that little--! I'm the Leader here, not him! Where does he get off acting like that!"
Naruto just blinked a few times, not really thinking about what Shino had said, but wondering if Shino had any eyeballs behind those glasses. Or did he just have two spiders? It was all very confusing for the short little blonde.
Realizing Naruto's limited attention span had expired, Kiba turned, puffing his chest out as he passed by Shino and back into the yard full of leaves.
Shino was ready to follow suit, but was blocked by the dog-trainer's back Kiba had halted as Hinata's meek voice once again spoke out, "Anou, Naruto-kun...? Who...who were you planning to take... to the...the Festival dance?" She turned several different shades of red, but at least she had gotten the question out.
Naruto's innocent blue eyes closed in confusion, "...take? I have to take someone?"
Kiba was ready to kill Naruto out of jealousy. Sakura was ready to kill Naruto for his stupidity. Even Shikamaru started wondering if he shouldn't just Shadow Imitate the dopey blonde off a cliff.
But before anyone could smack some sense into the little fox-boy, Sasuke snapped.
"All of you and your damned festival!" cold, angry onyx eyes trained on all the rest of the ninjas, "I'm so sick of hearing about it! I swear, the next one who so much as mentions it in front of me is going straight to the hospital!"
A hush fell over them. Hinata shied away from his overly scrutinizing glare, ducking slightly behind Kiba for comfort. Shikamaru wanted to just leave...how did killing time suddenly become so troublesome? Naruto just stared over at the Uchiha, still slightly confused why he would have to take other people to the festival. They could just walk there themselves!
Out of them all, Sakura was the most sympathetic. Something was really bothering him about this festival, and all she wanted to know was what. She wanted to ask; despite the dirty look he had trained on them all. The question was on the tip of her tongue, but before she could even open her mouth, Shino stepped in front of the clearly angry shinobi.
"Uchiha Sasuke. Just because you chose to be a miserable person does not mean you have to make everyone around you miserable too." Shino's voice was calm and even as always. Even staring down an enraged Sasuke, the Aburame heir didn't so much as blink...at least, no one saw him blink, "Whatever problem you have with the Leaf Festival does not affect us. If you want to be this big of a jerk, go somewhere else to do it."
Most of the others stared at Shino, eyes wide and mouths hanging open. Not that he didn't have something of a point, but still, did he have a death wish? Naruto was the first to find enough sense to speak, "Shino, go easy on- "
"That's it." Sasuke's voice sank into a dark hiss. He had heard more than enough. Slowly taking up the copied stance of Lee's taijutsu, he lowered his head so that an eye was hidden within the shadow of his pitch-black bangs—Sasuke's anger had found an unlikely new target.
"Shino. I'm going to shut your mouth for a very long time."
Sasuke angst! Sorry, but he is one of my favorite characters in the series. After reading my first chapter, a friend of mine started wondering how everyone else would deal with picking up leaves—so I came up with this! Plus, I had to get a few more of the characters into the fic.
All for now! Remember to review and tell me what you really wanna see! Also, if I'm using a little too much Japanese, please tell me to stop! ;
Vocab-
'To-chan Daddy/ Father
Oi Hey
Dobe The worst. Sasuke's favorite insult for Naruto.
'Ka-san Mom/Mother
Mendokuse Troublesome
Anou Uhmm...