Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or Naruto!
Danny was sleeping peacefully when all of a sudden he felt odd sensation on his shoulder. He brushed it away. He felt it again, this time with a little more force. He blearily opened his eyes and was met by a giant pair of eyebrows! He jumped out of the bed, startled.
"Lee!" He whispered furiously. "What are you doing here?"
"Training! The power of youth waits naught!" He whispered back.
"Ugh…what time is it?"
"Four-thirty." Danny sighed.
"Fine…let me get dressed." Lee turned around while Danny threw on a fishnet shirt and put on his cargo pants and kunai pouch. He quickly scribbled a note to Naruto and the two boys left the apartment.
"It's a lot easier to move around with these weights on this morning than it was last night," Danny noted.
"You see? The power of youth prevails yet again!" Lee exclaimed exhuberantly.
"So…how do we begin training?"
"We shall commence warm-ups with a marathon," Lee stated. Danny stared at him.
"Are you serious? As in, a 26-mile marathon?"
"Yes! And if we cannot complete the marathon, then we must do 400 kicks on the wooden posts by my squad's training grounds!"
"Okay…I guess we'd better finish that marathon, then…" Danny said with a sigh, resigned to a day of agony. They began running.
They had reached the main gates of Konohagakure after about half an hour, and jogged right through the partially opened stone gates. Since this was Danny's first time leaving the actual village, he stayed a little bit behind Lee.
It wasn't long before the exhaustion began setting in. Danny was honestly surprised that he'd lasted as long as he did with those weights on. However, he was beginning to get seriously winded at this point and absolutely needed to stop.
"Lee? Can we…take a short…break, please?"
"Yes!" The spandex-clad lad exclaimed. He stopped running and began jogging in place. "Let us take a break and do 300 push-ups!" He immediately lay down and began doing the push-ups. Danny groaned as he descended and joined him.
"298…299…300" Danny gasped as he and Lee stood up. Lee wiped some sweat from his brow.
"What an excellent break; thank you for suggesting it. Now, back to our marathon!" He took off running. Danny's legs were wobbling at this point, but he somehow forced himself to follow after Lee. After what seemed like forever, the two of them approached a small shack. Lee jumped excitedly and sprinted up to the shack, with Danny in tow. The halfa slowly made his way over to the building, and crashed exhaustedly on the ground in front. An ancient woman came out of the shack.
"Why hello, Lee!" She said.
"Hello! My friend and I have reached the halfway-point of our marathon. I think he might need some of your Curry of Life to sustain him for the return journey."
"I see," she said, and nodded her head sagely. She re-entered the curry store and when she exited, she was carrying a plate of a bubbling black liquid that had pieces of…something floating around in it. Lee positioned Danny so that he was lying face-up and his feet were in the direction of Konohagakure. The old lady took a ladle-full of the curry and slowly poured it into Danny's mouth. Lee rubbed his throat and forced him to swallow it.
For the first few seconds, nothing happened. Then, all of a sudden, Danny's face turned bright, bright red.
"HOT!" He shouted as he jumped up into the air. "HOTHOTHOTHOTHOT!" He immediately began sprinting as fast as he could back in the direction of Konohagakure in search of water to quench his burning thirst. Lee laughed excitedly at his antics.
"The flame of youth burns strong in him! Arigato, old lady!" He shouted back to her, and then took off after Danny.
"I will never forgive you for this," Danny growled as they stood next to three wooden posts in a clearing inside of Konohagakure. After having sprinted all the way back, they had proceeded to punch and kick the posts mercilessly. Right now Lee was adding another set of weights to Danny's arms and legs.
"That is correct! For you will find no fault for which to forgive me! You will definitely come to thank me for making you stronger!" Danny sighed for what felt like the billionth time that day, and groaned as he tried to get up under the additional weight.
"So what now?" He asked, already dreading the answer.
"I shall teach you the konoha senpuu, or Leaf Whirlwind!" Lee answered excitedly. He and Danny each stood in front of the desired posts and began practicing whirlwind kicks. After a couple of hours, Danny was really starting to get the hang of the Whirlwind, in addition to a few other moves.
"Uh, hey…" a higher-pitched, feminine voice said, sounding somewhat confused. Surprised, the two spun around and came face-to-face with a brunette girl that had her hair in two buns, and was wearing a pink, Chinese-style tank top, black shorts, and two scrolls placed in scroll pouches on her shorts.
"Why hello, Tenten!" Lee exclaimed.
"Uh, hey, Lee. Who's your friend?" Tenten asked, confused at Danny's presence and slightly perturbed at Lee's overexhuberance.
"This is my new acquaintance, Danny. Danny, this is my teammate, Tenten!"
"Nice to meet you, Tenten."
"You too, Danny. I hope Lee isn't working you too hard."
"Nah," Danny said, shrugging. "It's not so bad once you get used to it."
"Who's the new kid?" A new voice asked. Its owner, a boy with long, brown hair and bandages covering his right arm and leg, came over a hill to meet the other three.
"Neji, this is Lee's new friend, Danny," Tenten said.
"I have an idea!" Lee suddenly exclaimed. "Perhaps we should test out Danny's newfound skill by having him spar against Neji!"
"I don't know, Lee…" Danny said slowly. He noticed that this Neji had the same eyes as Hinata. Hyuuga eyes. Not only would he probably lose to someone who could use the jyuuken style, but he was fairly sure that Neji could use the byakugan, and the last thing Danny wanted was anyone seeing his chakra network and figuring out that he himself possessed the byakugan.
"Why not, Danny? I am confident that you will be victorious! The power of youth shall prevail!"
"Yeah, but…" he addressed Neji, "I've been training all day and I'm exhausted. It would be an insult to your pride if you had to fight against someone in my condition." If Neji really was a Hyuuga, Danny figured, then appealing to his pride would surely work. He was right.
"I agree with Danny," Neji said. "It wouldn't be right to spar at an opponent that has diminished strength." Lee sighed.
"Very well. Shall we train again tomorrow, Danny?" Danny rubbed the back of his neck. If he agreed, then tomorrow would be as bad as today. But if he refused, Lee would probably cry or something.
"Sure, Lee," Danny said. "I'd love to train with you." He sighed as Lee jumped for joy. He bade the three of them farewell as he made his way back to the main part of Konohagakure. He entered Naruto's apartment and plopped down on the couch.
"So, what did I tell you?" Naruto's voice suddenly came at him, making him jump. He sank back into the couch, exhausted.
"You were right…that was the toughest day of my life…and these weights aren't helping…" Naruto shrugged.
"Rest up, because you still have to train with Hinata tonight." Danny groaned at the thought of still more training, but he was too exhausted to argue. He sank into the couch and was out like a light.
Naruto shook him awake once the sun went down. The two of them met up with Hinata by her own group's training grounds, which was basically identical to all of the other training grounds Danny had been to so far. Despite her nervousness at Naruto's presence, she had Danny activate his byakugan and the two of them practiced jyuuken strikes against the wooden posts. Danny noted wryly that the posts came apart faster when using jyuuken than when using Lee's traditional form of tai-jutsu. Even so, he recognized the importance of knowing both styles of fighting. Tai-jutsu would come in handy if he ever ran out of chakra while he was in the middle of a battle.
After the long and exhausting day, Danny finally sank into bed thinking that he could sleep for a thousand years. Unfortunately for his sleep-deprived body, he opened his eyes the next day and came face-to-face with a man wearing a bird mask. He yelped and fell out of his futon.
"The Hokage wants to see you," he said, and then vanished. Danny placed a hand to his racing heart and shook Naruto awake.
"mmm…ramen…what?" He groaned as he slowly came to.
"A guy wearing a bird mask just woke me up," Danny stated.
"Mask…oh, he must've been ANBU."
"What?"
"ANBU. They're, like, the elite. They serve directly under the hokage."
"Ah…that would explain why he came…he told me that the hokage wanted to meet with me."
"WHAT? In that case, we'd better get everyone else!"
"What do you mean, 'everyone else'?"
"Sasuke and Sakura! C'mon, let's go!" Naruto dragged him out of the apartment and the two of them ran to Sakura's house and then to the Uchiha complex. The four genin, once they'd been assembled, all entered Hokage Tower and entered Sarutobi's office.
"You didn't have to bring all of Squad 7 with you…" the hokage griped. "Anyway, there's a very important reason why I called you here today, Danny."
"What is it? Does he have an important mission he has to go on?" Naruto asked excitedly.
"Sort of," Sarutobi admitted, and then became serious. "Danny, it's time for you to go home."