New Revelations Chapter 8

WOW THANKS FOR ALL THOSE GREAT REVIEWS! I'm glad I have so many diligent readers out there! I took kind of a long break before really getting into this one, and it's a little shorter (only by half a page!) of my usual length. READ AND REVIEW!

It didn't take the group much thought or effort to find Lee, he was where he would always be, his little spot in the forest practicing punches and kicks on the same unfortunate tree stump.

"Fuzzy eyebrows doesn't waste any time does he?" Naruto mused out loud.

Sakura glared at him, then shouted her greeting to Lee. "Hey Lee-san! Mind some company?"

Konoha's beautiful green beast, looked up in surprise. "Sakura-san, Naruto-kun, and Gaara-san!" He waved. "I was afraid I would have to wait until tomorrow for a sparring partner!"

Gaara tried rather unsuccessfully not to roll his eyes, "Uzumaki said you only just got out of the hospital, shouldn't you be taking it easy or something?" It wasn't really Gaara's nature to care, but Lee's words after the fall of Kimimaro had gotten him into thinking more along the very lines in which he used to avoid.

"My sensei told me that luck is part of real strength."

"That busy-body…"

"He's not a busy-body! That was because of my own cowardice! Stop talking about my sensei like that!"

"You too…if the one you admire is insulted you become enraged…you fight for them."

Lee grinned wholeheartedly, "They actually said the exercise would be good for me!"

Naruto was all for it. "I'll spar with you Fuzzy Eyebrows!"

Sakura sighed, as much as she tried, Naruto still insisted on referring to Lee as Fuzzy Eyebrows. "You're hopeless."

Lee got into his fighting stance, "Okay Naruto-kun, but I won't go easy on you."

Naruto smiled. "Same here."

"He's far too overconfident." Gaara commented with a smirk. After all he himself almost wasn't capable of defeating Lee.

Sakura nodded, "He's always been like that. Although in a way it pushes him to try even harder if he loses." She crouched down, with her back against a tree. "In some cases, just watching him would motivate me to want to do my best."

"Is that why you wanted to train with the Hokage?" Gaara glanced down at her.

Sakura looked up at him for a few seconds before answering. "No, well not entirely, I've always wanted to be a medical ninja, but when we were in our three man cells, I was always lagging behind everyone. My chakra control was great, and I could perform jutsus perfectly, but I lacked real skills when I was on the battlefield." She paused momentarily to watch Naruto and some of his shadow clones attempt an assault on Lee, who landed a spinning kick on them, making them disappear.

"When I would watch Naruto, I wished I could be more like him. Even if the odds were stacked totally against him he would give it his all, instead of giving up. After everyone returned from the mission, and I heard about all that had happened, I knew that if a medical ninja had been there, we could have put up more of a fight."

Gaara noticed her face became more serious once the mission was mentioned. The fighting spirit he had sensed earlier about her was coming to light again.

"I wanted to go with, but I knew that if I had gone in my current state I would have only been a burden." Her face hardened. "Once I heard that the mission was a failure, I wished even more that I had been stronger, so that I could have fought, maybe I could have made even the slightest difference. After I left the hospital that day, I sought out the Hokage and asked her if I could study under her as her apprentice, and that's what I've been doing ever since." She looked up at him with a smile, the hard expression she wore moments before, completely melted away.

"I see." He replied simply. Some of that happiness, he concluded, was just a mask she wore, to disguise what she was really feeling. Inside she was hurt about something, this he could see plainly when she spoke of the failed mission. What exactly that was, he had no intention of prying into at the moment. He turned his attention back to Lee and Naruto's fight just in time to see Lee dodge past all of Naruto's shadow replications and land a finishing blow to his chest.

Naruto flew back several feet, and found himself unable to get back up. His remaining shadow clones disappeared in small poofs of smoke.

Lee walked over and helped him to his feet, "You've gotten stronger Naruto-kun, we should do this again sometime."

Naruto stood up breathing heavily, but with a smile on his face, "Sure thing!"

Lee grinned and gave him his best 'nice guy pose.' "It's a promise!" He looked over at Gaara. "Next time you and I should have a little rematch too Gaara-san!"

Gaara smirked. "I'll think about it."

Naruto hobbled back over to Gaara and Sakura, "We'll let you get back to your training Fuzzy Eyebrows." He called behind him.

"Yosh! See you guys later!" Lee waved and then commenced practicing kicks on the tree stump.

Sakura sighed, "Naruto you're a mess, hold still you've got a hole in your jacket." Focusing her chakra into her index and middle fingers, she refused the fabric back together.

Naruto was in awe. "Whoa Sakura-chan! That's awesome! Did Old Lady Tsunade teach you how to do that?"

Sakura smiled, "Yup!"

"Wow! Do ya think you can come over to my house, I've got tons of shirts and pants that you can fix!"

The smile turned into a frown. "No." After all she wasn't his personal seamstress!

"Ah-oh…" Naruto sulked.

Gaara stared at Sakura. She really did possess great chakra control to do something like that so effortlessly. He remembered her match in the Chuunin preliminaries. Back then, he saw nothing extraordinary about her, in fact, he had thought she was pitifully weak. That was only a few months ago, to have obtained skills like this so quickly? She definitely had to have been holding back. There had to be something inside her that reacted, keeping her from releasing her full potential.

Naruto yawned. "I'm gonna go home and hit the sack, gotta get up early to train tomorrow. NIGHT!" He waved and wandered off towards his apartment.

"That guy! To be so noisy even in the midst of exhaustion!" Sakura thought as she watched him leave.

Taking advantage of Naruto's departure, Gaara confronted Sakura. "So sealing fabric was one of the things the Hokage taught you?" He asked.

Sakura sighed, "Yeah, don't tell me you've got a pile of clothes at home you want me to fix too?" She teased.

Gaara made a face. "No, seeing as the sand protects me, my clothes are virtually unscathed. Surely you knew that."

"Oh, that's right, I almost forgot." She smiled, slightly embarrassed.

How could she forget? She was fully aware of his monstrous capabilities, fully aware of the demon he housed…and she was so easily able to look past that? He had held her in his death grip, almost crushed her to death…didn't that bother her? She truly had to be one of the most interesting people he had ever come across.

"Right now the Fifth has me working on focusing my chakra to fix things like that for now. It's kind of the building blocks of being a medical ninja because they have to reconstruct cells and reconnect nerves of their patients. It's pretty complicated stuff, but I'll manage."

He nodded in response. "You said that watching Uzumaki gave you the motivation to do your best…" he took a few steps forward. "I want to see it. I want you to show me how you've progressed."

End of Chapter 8

Whew! 8 is done! Another cliffhanger ending by me! Well kind of. Will Gaara ask Sakura to fight him? Will Naruto ever get his clothes all stitched up? Will Lee leave the poor tree stump alone? The world may never know…

GAARA: Of course you know! You're writing this abomination!

LIZKUN: What are you complaining about? You've been perfectly in character throughout this entire fic so far.

GAARA: I don't like my actions being dictated by someone other than me.

LIZKUN: Too bad get used to it, you're stuck until whenever I wrap this up.

GAARA: Meanie!