Chapter 7: Unexpected Surprises
Tracy, Stephanie, Robert, Jon, Caroline, Lawrence, and Bao all gather at the training grounds once again. It has been three days and the group has already gotten the hang of Chakra molding. The seven of them wait anxiously for Ebisu's arrival, for today was the day they would move to the next step in their training. After what seemed like forever, the sunglasses-wearing ninja appears in a puff of smoke and stands before the group with a smile on his face.
"Now," he began. "Are you all ready for the next step in your Ninja Academy training?"
"No duh," exclaims Tracy who was already bored.
Ebisu growls in irritation as his eye twitched involuntarily.
"Allright then," he says, trying to maintain his composure. "Let us head on over to the forest."
The group follows their teacher out of the village and into the wilderness beyond the village gates. When they have gone deep enough, Ebisu stops the children in a sizable clearing.
"What are we doing here?" wonders Jon out loud.
"You guys…" began Ebisu, a gleam running over his sunglasses. "Are going to climb these trees."
Six pairs of eyes stare at the chuunin-level ninja in response, minus Tracy who seemed to be staring off into space.
"Climb trees?" exclaims Bao. "How are we going to do that? Grow claws and scurry up like squirrels?"
"Nope," replies Ebisu, adjusting his sunglasses. "You're all going to climb the trees by simply walking up the trunks."
Again, he was shot with surprised stares from the same six children.
"Let me explain," he began. "Your first lesson was to control your own Chakra. This exercise accentuates that."
"Meh?" Robert blurts out, confused.
"First, gather up Chakra on the sole of your feet," instructs Ebisu. "Then use the Chakra to attach your feet to the trunk of the trees. The purpose of this exercise is to train you to keep a constant amount of Chakra in a concentrated spot. It's a lot easier than it sounds. The hard part is knowing how much Chakra to use and focusing that Chakra onto your feet."
With worried sighs, the group set to work with each person picking out their own tree and following the instructions the ninja gave them. As Ebisu watches the children, he notices one of them was nowhere to be found. He scans the area at ground level before looking up into the trees and finding one of the girls sitting up on a very high branch nonchalantly. He glares tensely at the girl, instantly recognizing who she was.
That Tracy girl, he thought. She's managed to master the exercise in less than a minute. She's no Naruto; she's got more of a Sasuke personality. This might be troublesome for me if the other kids start feeling inferior to her. Perhaps I should talk to Kakashi-senpai about this.
As he watches over the other children, Ebisu makes sure to keep an eye on Tracy. Though she's not doing anything besides climbing up to the top of the tree and back down to the same branch with ease, Ebisu wants to make sure she doesn't go off and do anything on her own.
By the end of the day, only Robert, Stephanie, and Bao have gotten the hang of the tree-climbing exercise mainly due to their martial arts experience back in their world. Caroline, Jon, and Lawrence on the other hand have managed to get up about a third of the height of their trees but not much further since they had little to no martial arts experience back in their world. Feeling confident, the three of them hope to master the tree-climbing exercise along with the others tomorrow.
As the group walks back to their apartments, Lawrence looks over at Tracy again. She was walking and talking to Stephanie, Bao, and Caroline once again, but something feels amiss. It wasn't the bruise on her shoulder, but something else; whatever it was, it filled him with worry.
That night, the group had dinner with Naruto in one apartment along with Priscilla and Kevin. They all had instant noodles and spoke of each other's personalities and life events.
"Yep," said Naruto. "Sakura-chan, Sasuke, and I still don't know what's behind Kakashi's mask."
"I'm sure he's totally hot behind that mask," swoons Stephanie.
"Same here," adds Caroline as well.
"I'm sure Kakashi doesn't look that great," spoke up Bao, crossing his arms.
The two girls shoot glares at the tall boy, who instantly cowers in fear.
"Kakashi's the one with the eye covered, right?" asks Robert.
"Yes," answers Tracy.
"I'm lost here," says Priscilla, feeling quite awkward.
"You're not the only one," assures Kevin, feeling equally awkward.
"Yep," adds Lawrence.
Jon simply slurps up his noodles as he listens in on his friends.
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After dinner, everyone decides to show Naruto some of the party games they played back in their world. Among them was the ever-so-popular charades which aroused roars of laughter throughout the apartment. Not wanting to participate in the festivities, Lawrence decides to go to one of many groves of trees scattered throughout Konoha. There he practices the tree-climbing exercise, hoping to at least get an idea of how to do it adequately. He manages to get up into the leaves of the tree before a couple of small flexible branches slap onto his head, sending him falling onto the ground on his back. Growling in frustration, Lawrence gets up and goes up the tree again, determined to at least get halfway up the tree or maybe even two-thirds of the tree's height.
As he went into the leaves portion of the tree, the clumped branches slap into his face. When it was too much for him to handle, he loses focus of his Chakra and falls to the ground on his back once again. Groaning in pain, Lawrence looks up at the tree to find his vision of the plant blurry. Sighing in exasperation, he gets up to walk to the watering hole nearby to wash his face. Taking off his glasses, Lawrence cups some water into his hands and splashes it onto his face. Wiping the wetness off his face with shirt-dried hands, he suddenly realizes his vision has gotten drastically better. In fact, it was as if he had regained his 20/20 vision again.
"What the hell?" he wonders as he casually looks into the water at his shuddering reflection.
His eyes open wide in shock as soon as the water became still again. He rubs his eyes to make sure he wasn't just seeing things and stares back at his reflection again. Sure enough, the reflection showed the irises of his eyes as bright red instead of the usual brown he's always had. Around his still black pupils were thin black outlines of circles and on those circles were two black dots on each eye. Upon closer examination, the dots had little tails on them, making them look like the yin half of the yin-yang symbol without the white dot.
"What the fuck is this?" he exclaims in surprise at the sight of his demonic-looking eyes. "How am I supposed to change my eyes back?"
Almost as soon as the thought of wanting his eyes back pops into his head, Lawrence's vision became poor again as his new eyes fade back to his regular normal eyes. Still in shock at his unexpected change, Lawrence cleans up his glasses and puts them back on, returning his vision to normal.
"That was weird," he says out loud, standing up and walking back to the apartment.
On his way back, he sees a boy walking towards him. The boy had a Konoha forehead protector on, indicating his status as a certified ninja of the village. Hanging over the headband was the boy's raven-colored bangs that extended down to his chin. The unknown ninja's outfit consisted of a blue shirt and white shorts that went below his knees. On his arms were white sleeves with blue bands on the top and bottom of the sleeves. He also sported the same weird shoes that pretty much everyone in the village wore.
As the two of them came closer, Lawrence could clearly see the boy's solemn black eyes that seem to possess the ability to look deep into a person's soul. As the boy walks past Lawrence, the boy stops and spoke up.
"You there," he says.
Lawrence stops in response to see what the boy had to say to him.
"You're one of those kids from another world, right?" asks the boy.
"Yeah," answers Lawrence. He turns to look at the boy, who didn't make a move as he shows his back to him. "Who are you?"
"You shouldn't ask for someone's name before you introduce yourself," said the boy.
Lawrence stiffens at the boy's response. Apparently social etiquette is a lot different here than back home.
"Lawrence," he introduces himself. "And you're…?"
"Sasuke," responds the boy. "Uchiha Sasuke."
"Sasuke, huh?" repeats Lawrence. "You're that guy that my Anime fanatic friends talk about a lot."
"Do they?" wonders Sasuke. Then he quickly changes the subject. "Who's the girl with the white hooded t-shirt?"
"She's a close friend of mine," replies Lawrence, feeling a little heated up. "Her name's Tracy."
"Tracy," repeated Sasuke. "So that's her name."
"Why do you ask?" wonders Lawrence.
"No reason," answers Sasuke. "Just curious, that's all."
With that, the Uchiha boy walks off as Lawrence continues his way to the apartment.
"What was that all about?" he wonders.