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Disclaimer: I don't own Hunter x Hunter or Naruto.

Preparation x and x Purpose

It was a beautiful morning in the village of Konohagakure. Everywhere you looked, people were walking and making their rounds for the day. Shop owners opened up shop. Restaurants switched their signs to "open." And, like clockwork, ninja were once again chasing a little blonde boy across the village rooftops.

"HAHA! Too slow!" the boy said as he dodged another ninja's attempt to grab him. He had slightly tanned skin with deep blue eyes and three whisker marks on each cheek. His navy blue t-shirt and blue sandals starkly contrasted his bright orange pants, bright yellow hair and the green goggles on his forehead. "You're just mad that you can't pull off the things I can!"

"Get back here Naruto!" said Ninja #1.

"You can't keep pulling stunts like this!" said Ninja #2.

"We're taking you to the Hokage! If you keep resisting you'll be in serious trouble!" said Ninja #3.

Yeah right. The old man had barely scolded him for way worse pranks, so why would he seriously punish him just for throwing colored smoke bombs in people's shopping bags?

Naruto looked back and stuck out his tongue mockingly. "You'll never take me alive bastards!" he said before throwing a smoke bomb, jumping off the roof to the ground below and using transformation jutsu to turn into an old woman. He sat on a nearby bench and waited until the Ninja left the area to drop the jutsu and start making his way home.

"Lost them easily again. And they're supposed to be full-fledged ninja? Give me a break!" he thought as he walked. Now he was just bored and was getting nothing but annoyed and disgusted looks from all the villagers around him. "Here we go again... There's just no end to it huh?" Sadly, he had good enough hearing to understand what they were mumbling about him.

"Did you hear what that brat did this time?" Oh boy.

"I did... the demon set off bombs in people's shopping bags! Typical!" Smoke bombs. They left out the smoke part, but Naruto didn't bother correcting them.

"Why does the Hokage continue to let him stay here? He's such a nuisance!" He asks himself that everyday.

"Not to mention downright dangerous! Who knows when those stupid pranks will turn into murders!" Why do they think that?

"He's just biding his time acting like a little kid until he's ready to strike!" Why don't they get it?

"They need to put a leash on him like the animal he is..." Isn't he a person too?

"I wish somebody would just kill him already. Or better yet, he should kill himself. He's such a nuisance!"

That last line caused Naruto to instantly tune out his surroundings and keep his head down. He started walking faster and faster until he was at his favorite swing in front of the academy. Even on the weekend, his time off, he can't help but come back here when he feels himself getting sad. Going home is no good, it feels empty and his landlord is always pestering him. He refused to cry this time so he settled for just sitting on the swing and looking down at his feet, thinking. Thinking about what he possibly could've done to deserve this.

After a while of moping, he went back home and ate a cup of instant ramen and contemplated what he was going to do with himself. Pretty soon, he would be a ninja. One step closer to reaching his dream of becoming the Hokage. One step closer to being acknowledged and changing all the negative opinions about him. But he wasn't getting any closer to being Hokage by doing pranks and feeling sorry for himself. And yet, he always found himself doing those exact things to fill the void. After throwing the empty cup in the trash, Naruto got started on his daily exercises. As he did his one hundred push-ups, the one thought that kept him going was the vision of him being Hokage surrounded by people who love him.

Around this same time, in the near empty Uchiha clan compound, a raven haired boy was standing on a dock before a small lake. He wore a high-collared blue shirt with a red and white fan on the back, white shorts, white armguards and shinguards with blue straps, and blue sandals. He repeatedly went through the same sequence of hand seals before blowing a steady stream of fire from his lips. After one last time, he became slightly satisfied.

"Ok... I've finally gotten this and the phoenix flower jutsu down well enough that I can start focusing more on learning other techniques and improving my overall abilities." He began making his way to leave the compound. "Having a wide array of skills is essential to becoming powerful. I'm sure that man had mastered this jutsu and plenty others before I'd even got started. I'm way behind." If one was watching, they would've seen his eyes harden in dark resolve. "But I can't give up. I must kill Itachi by my own hand if it's the last thing I do. I have no other purpose but that." Unfortunately, he didn't notice anyone approaching him until it was too late.

"Hi Sasuke-kun!" Great. It was this pink-haired fangirl again. He slowly looked over at her and was almost disgusted by how much she was smiling. He looked away from her and kept walking with the hope that she would get the hint and leave him alone. As if that ever worked.

"What do you want?" Sasuke asked after a while of her silently following him. Sakura looked unsure of herself for a moment before mumbling something about going on a date. Oh. Nothing of importance. Go figure. "Not interested. Leave."

"But Sasuke-kun you look like you could just use some company right now!" When he turned to look at her coldly, she flinched and tried to correct herself. "Not that you need me or anything.. but I thought it would just be nice if I tagged along wherever you're going bec-"

"Enough." Sasuke gritted out. This girl has been getting on his nerves for a while now. It was even worse because she wasn't like this at the beginning of the academy. She was shy until she broke out of her shell and started acting like the other ones. "Do as you like but don't expect me to entertain you or whatever you had in mind. I'm just going to buy something." He turned and walked away without sparing her another glance. Sadly, he could still hear her footsteps right behind him.

Sakura, meanwhile, had a downcast look on her face. Ever since she developed a crush on Sasuke, she had tried nonstop to get his attention. She tried to grow out her hair to please him. She tried to get good grades to please him. She even went as far as to cut off her friendship with Ino because of their conflict over the boy, even if that wasn't the only reason. But he doesn't seem to be warming up to her.

She chanced a glance up at Sasuke. Honestly, she didn't really have as big of a crush on him as she used to. It was more of a curiosity at this point. She had heard rumors about what happened to him, but she didn't know the whole truth. There was this darkness and mysteriousness about him that she was drawn to for some reason. She found herself wanting to know more about him. She shook her head. Should she even be focused on this right now?

"Yes." Great. Now her inner was awake. Wasn't it a bit too early? "Hey! Don't ignore me! HEY!" Sakura promptly ignored her.

They had finally made it to a small weapons shop which Sasuke entered without a word. Sakura followed him inside and gasped. All around her was an array of interesting weapons in tiptop condition. Kunai, shuriken, senbon, swords, paper bombs—you name it, it was there. She had never been in a weapons store before, the academy provided them with all the basic ninja tools they needed. Sakura looked back at Sasuke and saw that he was speaking to the man behind the counter.

"Ah! Sasuke-san! What will it be this time?" The man asked.

"Two Demon Wind Shuriken and some more ninja wire." Sasuke said, already pulling out money. The man quickly went in the back room to fetch the weapons while Sakura just stared at Sasuke in amazement.

"Sasuke… how do you know how to use those weapons? Those aren't exactly basic, we didn't even really learn how to use them in the academy!" The class had briefly gone over what they were and read in the textbook what they were used for but had never actually gotten any hands on practice. Did Sasuke have an outside teacher?

Sasuke looked at her in something between annoyance and disappointment. "Have you never thought of teaching yourself? We have access to a whole library filled with books on Shinobi life and skills." It was true. Sakura, being a bookworm herself, had seen them in the library every time she went. Though, she usually just ignored them and settled for her cheesy romance novels. "I don't know what your motivation is, but if you truly want to be a shinobi I suggest you put in extra training. Enemies aren't going to baby you because you 'only learned the basics in the academy.'" At that, the man reentered with the weapons and Sasuke turned to face him, leaving Sakura to her thoughts.

Of course, Sasuke was right. They only had two weeks left at the academy before they graduated and became real ninjas. That thought both excited and scared Sakura. Excited because she was the top scoring kunoichi in her class when it came to intelligence, hand signs and chakra control. Since Sasuke was the rookie of the year, she had a hunch that she would be put on a squad with him. It scared her though because it meant that she wouldn't be a kid anymore and would be a real ninja dealing with real ninja things like fighting enemies. She knew she would have teammates and wouldn't have to fight alone but she felt like she wasn't ready.

After all, she didn't even have any real motivation for becoming a ninja. She was just a girl from a civilian family whose parents only humored her request to join the academy because they thought it was a temporary phase. To be honest, it probably WOULD have been a temporary phase if she hadn't developed a crush on Sasuke and a rivalry with Ino. Those two things, she realized, are what kept her on this path all this time. But now that she thought about it, they were very shallow reasons. Were they worth the risk of being thrown into a dangerous world and potentially losing her life? Sasuke didn't even care about her and Ino was stronger than her.

"What can I do for you young lady?" The man at the counter suddenly asked. It took Sakura a second to realize he was talking to her.

"Oh! Me? I... um..." Sasuke was staring at her blankly. "Nothing. I just came here with Sasuke-kun. Sorry."

"Scratch that." Sasuke said. Sakura wondered what he meant, but he just turned to the man at the counter. "Could you get some ninja wire for her? I'll pay." Sakura's heart swelled at his kindness until Sasuke gave her a look that clearly said 'don't get the wrong idea.'

Once the man left, it was dead silent until Sakura mustered up the courage to speak. "Sasuke-kun… why?" Sasuke stared silently for a few moments, making her blush, before he turned away.

"You're weak." Wow. Sakura already knew that but hearing Sasuke say it so plainly hurt. She had to try harder to tune out Inner, who was raging in her head. "But that's going to change. Why? Because since you have the highest kunoichi grades in our class, you're probably going to be placed on my team. I don't want a teammate that can't handle themselves in any way," he said before looking back at her. "At least this way, you can use ninja wire and weapons to learn to make traps and provide support instead of battling up front. Holding your own in an actual battle would be asking too much of you."

Sakura knows for a fact that that's the most Sasuke has ever spoken to her at once. But before she had a chance to really process what he said, the man came back with the weapons in a bag and handed it to her. After paying, Sasuke walked out of the shop and she followed. They were now walking in silence in the direction of the Uchiha Compound.

After a few minutes, Sakura spoke. "So... Sasuke-kun?"

"Hn."

"What do you think I should learn in order to be a better teammate to you?"

It was silent for a moment before he replied. "Things that would help you stay out of my way. For starters, make sure you're good at the substitution jutsu. Work on your speed so you can be better at running away. Not much else I'm asking from you." Sakura's heart sank at how little faith he had in her and her eyes dropped low.

"Is that all I am to him? Just someone in his way?" Inner was getting louder, but Sakura kept pushing her to the back of her head. She looked up at Sasuke's back curiously. "In his way of what though? Is he trying to just keep me safe.. kind of?" Sakura felt like there was a lot more to Sasuke than she saw on the surface and she didn't know what to think. But she did know one thing.

She knew she couldn't just settle for what he told her to do.

"The reason why I'm a nuisance to him is because he sees me and probably every other girl in our class as weak." She thought with a finger resting on her lip. "A bunch of girls with good looks and grades don't matter to him. If anything, he would be interested in someone who proves their usefulness where it counts!" Ignoring the fact that she had been missing such a simple conclusion for years, Sakura smiled. "When we become ninja, that's when my chance will come to get him to acknowledge me and maybe even start talking to me. My chance to understand him more. Until then, all I can do is train. I heard Genin only do D-rank missions at first... meaning we probably won't be on a real mission for a while. I have time! I have to use it wisely."

Unbeknownst to her, Sasuke already knew the gist of what she was thinking. She was going to use surpassing his expectations as motivation to improve her ninja skill. That's exactly what he wanted. He wasn't lying when he said he didn't want a useless teammate and he would do whatever it takes to get her to become more capable. At least he wasn't stuck with someone like Naruto.

Once they made it to the entrance to the Uchiha compound, Sakura stopped. "Sasuke-kun…" Sasuke turned slightly to look at her. "Thanks for letting me come with you and for buying me this. I'll get better, I promise! You'll be impressed!" Sasuke smirked and Sakura blushed.

"I'm counting on it," he said before walking away. Sakura watched him go for a few moments before turning away herself. It was still early in the day and she now had something to do. Next stop: the library.

"For the last time, kenjutsu is sword-fighting not illusion techniques! Illusions are genjutsu! How many times are we going to go over this Gon?"

"Well this is all too much to learn at once! It'd be better if I slowly learned one at a time instead of just going over all of them so fast!"

Killua sighed. Gon was by no means stupid. Childish, naïve, and just plain weird—but not stupid. The problem was that he was more of a hands on kind of learner which is why they had been in a library for the past week with Gon still getting confused by the same concepts. Bisky had left some time ago to go eat lunch and Kite was off God knows where while Killua tried to tutor Gon as much as he could. Which was, as he was beginning to see, not very much.

"Gon. Just think of illusions for gen and swords for ken. Ninjutsu are like hatsus and taijutsu is hand-to-hand combat. There is a technique to memorizing things."

"I know! I know! But you're acting like that's all there is to memorize! They want us to memorize all these shinobi laws and regulations and history and ughh" Gon's head fell down on the desk while smoke came out of his ears. "Becoming a hunter didn't involve all this studying! It was all hands on experience! It's like homeschooling with Mito-san all over again..."

Killua felt for him. He, too, was getting bored with just reading in a library everyday and memorizing material from the books the Hokage had told them to read. But he found it fortunate yet an odd twist of luck that not only did people in this world speak the same language, but the writing in their books were almost the same as in their world. And if there was anything different, Bisky and Killua could decipher it.

"Hey look on the bright side..." he started, "At least we don't need to learn as much of the stuff on chakra since we don't use it. I heard that most of the academy's teachings are based on chakra and ninjutsu. Since we're skipping over most of that and only learning what we need to know, it's not as bad." Bisky had taken it upon herself to learn in depth about chakra though. She found it very interesting, apparently.

"But still! We've been given three weeks before we have to take that written exam and practical exam. We only have two weeks left! I'm sure we can pass the practical exam, especially since we have Bisky on our side. But the written one is really stressing me out..." Gon said. As much as Killua hated to admit it, Gon at this rate was going to fail. Maybe he should find another way to help him learn.

He sighed and got out his chair to stretch but accidentally collided with someone behind him. He turned around and saw that he had knocked a girl to the floor. "Hey! Watch it!" she yelled.

Her most obvious trait was her long pink hair with a red ribbon tied over the top of her head. She also had emerald eyes and was wearing a red dress with dark green shorts and blue sandals. Compared to the other people he'd seen here, this girl looked very outlandish. "Oh, sorry. Didn't see you there," he said simply before turning back to Gon. "Anyways..."

"Anyways? That's it? You knock a lady down and all you do is give a half-assed sorry and then dismiss her?" the girl said while standing up and crossing her arms indignantly. "You could've at least helped me up!" "Break this bastard's nose!" A tempting idea, but overboard, Sakura thought.

"Oh." He once again turned back to Gon. "Anyways..." Killua smirked and laughed mentally when he heard her growling behind him.

Gon laughed nervously. "Killua… it's not nice to provoke people." Before Killua could retort, Gon turned to the girl. "Don't take it personal, he's like that with everyone. But I'm Gon! And this is Killua! What's your name?" he said with a smile.

Sakura found herself blushing at the cuteness of this boy. His smile and his eyes were just too bright. It took her a moment to get over both their weird names and the boy's shine before she stuttered out "S-Sakura. Sakura Haruno."

"That's a beautiful name! It suits you perfectly too!" Sakura didn't know if he was doing this on purpose, but she felt her blush deepening. Even Inner was gushing at him. She saw Killua's shoulders tense, but she wasn't sure why. "You should sit with us Sakura! I always like making new friends!" No matter how cute this boy was, she was here with a purpose she didn't want to delay any longer. She had to improve herself. It was already long overdue. Even if she didn't know exactly why she was doing it.

"I would like to be friends... but sorry, I can't right now. I came to the library with the purpose of bettering myself. I'm becoming a ninja in two weeks you see..." Gon looked amazed and Killua turned around to look at her in interest.

"Wow! You're going to be a ninja? Us too! We're studying for our written test right now!" At this, Sakura had to take a closer look at the boys. What did he mean? She had great memory and she was sure she never saw them at the academy or even in the village a day in her life. She hadn't heard about shinobi who were homeschooled before becoming genin either... was he messing with her?

At her skeptical look, Gon explained more. "You see, we're new to the village and just got here last week. But we have a special agreement with the Hokage that lets us become ninja at the same time as you guys as long as we learn stuff like the shinobi laws and all this." He said while pointing at the textbook in front of him. Sakura recognized the page he was on from a textbook she read in the academy. "I'm not very good at studying though..." he laughed embarrassedly.

It seemed like he was telling the truth, and the boy's amber eyes DID look very honest. She couldn't see this boy telling a lie. But still... "But why would Hokage-sama just let you become ninja immediately after entering the village? How could he trust you that quickly? And since it seems like you're just studying for the written test, does that mean you already know how to use jutsu?"

This girl was smart, Killua noted. That was annoying. "He trusts us because we were brought into the village by somebody he trusts," he said. When Sakura looked at him, he continued. "There is a jounin in this village that Gon knew from since he was a kid. We met up with him recently and he offered to bring us back to the village so we could have some place to stay. We ended up becoming ninja because that's what Gon wanted to do. And we're no strangers to fighting, so we only need to study for the written test."

Sakura couldn't help but feel like there was more to it than that, especially with how he dodged the jutsu question. But something in Killua's eyes challenged Sakura to ask more. Wisely, she decided not to. Instead, she said, "Well... I could help you study in a way that you're sure to remember it." Gon looked hopeful while Killua looked annoyed but skeptical. "I used to get extra credit from teachers for tutoring students who learned in different ways. Reading a book in a library all day isn't the only way for you to learn the material. I can help you learn it really fast too."

"Really?! Thank you Sakura-san!" Gon said in the cutest voice Sakura had ever heard. "You're a lifesaver!" The three of them sweatdropped when the old librarian lady came over to 'shh!' them.

After a few moments, Killua spoke again. "What's the catch?" He didn't believe for one second that this girl was just helping out of kindness.

"Well you two said you knew how to fight right?" Gon nodded and Killua just stared at her. "I'm book smart and have good chakra control. I'm one of the top students in my class for those reasons. But, when it comes down to physical abilities and combat skills, I'm terrible. I figured we could help each other."

Gon looked ready to agree but Killua jumped in again. "We don't have time to waste by training you. We only have two weeks left for Gon to remember all this information."

"And I'm telling you that with my help, he could probably have most of it down in a week. It's just about finding a method that suits him." Sakura paused before continuing. "I'm not asking you to be my senseis or anything. I just want you to help me improve my physical strength, speed and taijutsu skills even if only a little bit. Spar with me so I can get used to fighting someone else. Because when I become a ninja, I'm going to have to fight someone by myself at some point. I have to be ready," she said.

Killua looked at Gon for his thoughts on the matter. "Yes! We'll definitely help you Sakura-san!" Sakura nodded with a smile and Killua looked at him for a moment longer before dragging his calculating eyes back over to her.

After assessing her for a moment, he smirked. "It won't be easy you know."

"Neither will being a ninja. I didn't really start thinking about that until recently, but it's time I started taking things more seriously."

"You sure you're ready?" Killua asked.

Sakura took a deep breath and nodded. "I'm ready." And she was referring to more than just training.

Chapter 3 End