…I am seriously considering whether or not to continue with this fic. Since no one ever reviews, I don't know whether it sucks or not. I don't even care if it's a bad review, any review would prove to boost my self-confidence for the rest of the fic, which is FAR from over. With that in mind, here we go!
Chapter 3: The CatchBack in the dormitories, most of the girls hurried around the room, excitedly throwing articles of clothing and miscellaneous items into their respected bags.
"Which one?" Sakura raised a blue and a green dress in front of Ame.
"……" Ame appears to be in a daze as she packs.
"Hey, Ame?" Sakura turns to the next closest person. "Hinata, same question."
"Um…well…I…like both." As she finishes this statement, she quickly leaves the room to gather more supplies.
Temari looks on with disgust, "last I checked this was training, not a pageant."
Ino, who had been silent up to this moment, packing her own beauty supplies, suddenly chided in, "yeah, besides," she says, zipping up her pack, "you're wasting your time. Sasuke-kun already proclaimed his love for me."
It took Sakura a total of two seconds to jump over her bed and tackle Ino on the opposite side of the room.
As Ino and Sakura proceeded to scuffle on the floor, Temari leaves to report back to her team, shaking her head as she goes out the door.
"Oh, you're ready? Good." Ten Ten's voice can be heard from the hall. She sticks her head in the room. "You guys should really hurry, we have to be there in five minutes."
As Ten Ten leaves, Hinata returns to the room to gather the last of her supplies when she spots Ame still packing. And, some rather unusual equipment at that. "Umm…Ame…t-that's a shovel."
"Oh, so it is." Ame replied while still placing the small plastic shovel in her bag. Her thoughts seemed to be far, far away from the room at the moment.
"Right, w-well y-you'd better hurry, y-you'll be late if you d-don't." She quickly exits the room. Outside, she meets Shino and Gaara at the door.
"Is Ame inside?" Shino inquired trying to see around Hinata into the open door.
"Sh-she should be o-out in a m-minute." Hinata brushed past her former teammate to meet her new group.
Inside, Ame had finally succeeded in packing, though with what contents she wasn't too sure of. She swept her rather large pack onto her back and took one final intake of the room backing away from it towards the exit. She began waving dramatically, "good-bye room, good-bye comfort" she grasped the door handle and turned it, "good-bye glare less days goo-AHH!" She fell backwards onto her pack. The door to the girls' dormitories usually required some effort to open, but not when it was already left slightly ajar. Having thrown her weight against the door, Ame had found herself flying backward, falling on the floor, and greeting the faces that met her upturned face. "Oh, hi there. Ready to go?"
Shino shook his head as he offered a hand, 'you haven't changed since we were children', he thought. "Kakashi-sensei told us to go inform the Hokage that we are all departing. Apparently, she's required to be there."
From the look on their faces, Ame could see they clearly detested being treated like messenger boys. "Listen, it doesn't take three people to get one. You both go on ahead, I'll go."
Gaara spent no time disagreeing and promptly walked off. Shino, using a little more tact, at least pretended like he was giving it consideration before agreeing and following in Gaara's footsteps.
The Hokage wasn't a hard person to find. Ame found her in her office; face down on the desk with a bottle of some suspicious liquid grasped firmly in her hand. Ame reached out to rouse her, but before her hand could reach Tsunade's shoulder, her wrist was caught.
"What is it?" The Hokage said, annoyed by her nap interruption.
"Your conscious presence is required by Kakashi-sensei," she said with grimace, the hold the Hokage had on her wrist was brutal.
"Come on then," Tsunade replied, getting to her feet and releasing her grip. "Let's get this over with."
When Ame and Tsunade reached the group, Kakashi was nowhere in sight. Ame found Shino and joined him while Tsunade stayed in the back.
"Where is he?" Ame questioned peering around.
"In there", Shino replied bluntly, nodding toward the forest they were facing.
"In the assignment starting today," Kakashi's voice echoed from somewhere within the dense forest, "you will all be competing against each other in a little game of capture the flag. For those of you who are new to this, I'll explain. You capture other people's flags while protecting your own. Sounds easy, right? But, there's a catch." His voice came closer as he approached the edge of the forest. "Say hello to your new best friends." He emerged from the thick foliage with a cage in hand. Five beady-eyed squirrels with different colored cloths around their necks gazed up at them. "Meet your flags."
"What! Kakashi-sensei, you can't be serious!" Naruto exclaimed disbelievingly. "You can't really expect us to use these rodent as flags right? They move too much."
"But, if we capture them, it will be just like having a stationary flag." Lee pointed out.
"Ewww! I am not touching one of those things!" Ino squirmed as she shifted slightly backward.
"Don't worry, Ino. You can't." Kakashi's eye crinkled in an apparent smile.
"What!" Everyone said in unison.
"You can't. Touching your own squirrel will result in an immediate disqualification from the assignment." Kakashi chuckled at the bewildered looks of the students.
"But sensei, I don't understand. Why?" Sakura asked.
"In a normal mission, you may have to protect an actual person." He explained. "If this is the circumstance, you can't just pick up your charge and carry them with you. You have to track them."
"You said that we'd be competing, what do we get if we win?" A typical Sasuke question.
"During this assignment, we will be evaluating your team's skills." Kakashi answered. "This week will determine the level of the missions you will be given. The winning team will get more difficult missions, while the worst team may get to walk my dogs."
Tsunade impatiently walked to the front of the group. "Now I need you all to line up so I can place the seals on you."
"Do what?" Kankurou expressed everyone's puzzlement.
"Oh, heh heh." Kakashi laughed sheepishly, "I was getting to that. In addition to not touching the squirrels, to make it more challenging, the use of chakra has also been prohibited."
The silence that followed was just as thick as the forest in front of them. The students looked from Kakashi to the Hokage, praying for one of them to break face and shout "April Fools!"
"The Hokage has perfected a new technique which she will be putting on each of you in turn to prevent any chakra from being able to manifest outside of your skin. No chakra whatsoever will be able to escape your bodies."
Gaara was the first to break from the shock. "Absolutely no chakra can escape?"
Kakashi saw who was speaking and understood what he was really asking. "Yes Gaara. The Hokage's technique will make it impossible for energy to be released. Which also means that you and Naruto will not be able to revert to any form of demon. I believed I answered your true question with that."
He nodded.
Ame felt as though Kakashi had just spoken another language. She poked at Shino's shoulder, which just happened to be eye level with her. "What's going on?"
"Gaara will be able to sleep on this assignment." He answered shortly.
"And this is different then normal I take it?" She was given no response.
"Now, everyone line up."
Ten Ten was the first up. Tsunade had her extend her left arm as she proceeded to start a complicated series of hand seals. As she finished the last seal, she bit her index finder and slapped it down on inside of Ten Ten's bicep. After a second, small black lines began creeping their way down the inside of Ten Ten's forearm. It ceased movement at her wrist and she was left with black vein like lines imprinted on her arm, which Tsunade explained were the chakra channels in her arm.
When everyone had been properly sealed, Tsunade healed her still bleeding finger and walked back toward the village saying nothing more than a simple, "good luck."
Kakashi brought their attention back to himself. "In case of an emergency, and you quickly need to manifest your chakra, bite your middle finger and place your middle and ring finger on the inside of the wrist that has the lines on it. Then say, dispel. The lines will vanish in one minute and you will be able to use your chakra again. In that minute, everyone's markings will burn. Ame, Shino, if that happens, your first priority is to make sure Gaara is awake. Now, teams, come choose a squirrel."
Once each team had relayed to Kakashi which color they had, he untied the door to the squirrel's cage, but kept the door shut. "When this door opens, the assignment will begin. Everyone ready?"
No one said anything.
He released his hold forcing the door closed, "begin."
Woot! Yeah I know it took a long time to update, but…we kinda…lost the story. Yep…don't know where my notebook went. So anyways I'm having to rewrite everything….AGAIN, so please, just bare with me. Reviews would be greatly appreciated. And yes, after this little "assignment" the real plot line begins. So review and I'll write faster…don't and well we could be stuck on this chapter forever! And we DON'T want that now do we? Anyways, peace, love, and happiness!
(P.s.: I started typing this chapter before I lost the notebook and I just looked up at my beginning statement…hmmm…I think I'm getting redundant…sry!)