I don't own Naruto.
IMPORTANT: I know this is a bit of a torturous thing of me to do…A six month time skip has taken place between the previous chapter and this one. Not everything will be explained immediately, and what happened in the six months will be revisited in later chapters. It's a literary device thingy. Just read.
Strings Reattached
Five Figures approached the gates of Konoha.
"I should probably tell you," said the taller one in front, "there have been a few notable changes since you left…"
"What changes?" came a quick reply from a female voice.
"Well, about six months ago, an 'incident' occurred, which caused the Hokage to retire. I won't get into the details, but I will say that he took a sudden interest in his Grandson's training." He paused for a moment.
"Anyway, he called in a favor from one of his students, asking her to be the new Hokage. It took quite a bit of money and sake, but she was finally convinced to take the job. However, his timing wasn't very good, because the ceremony conflicted with the Chunnin exam. All citizens of Konoha had to be in attendance, so he was forced to have the chunnin exam moved elsewhere. Do you understand what this means?"
"You talk too much, sensei…" came an uncaring reply from one of the figures.
He shrugged off the comment and continued with his speech. "It means…that all your old classmates are still genin too! You'll have to compete against them, of course, but it will be good for you to see some familiar faces."
They had now reached the gates, which were wide open due to the upcoming chunnin exam, though still guarded well. Before the guard could ask anything, the tall one handed him five pass permits. They contained much less information than the guards were accustomed to, but had still been approved by the Hokage. Both guards simultaneously pictured her with a sake bottle hidden under her desk, signing any paper handed to her. Suppressing sighs, they looked over the ninja carefully.
The tallest in front appeared to be their teacher. He looked relatively old, with dark hair. He wore ordinary looking clothing, and had a backpack on. The guards knew they had never seen him before, but he still looked oddly familiar to them. Of course, that was the point of genjutsu.
The one on the far left was a fairly short boy, wearing a black jacket with a hood covering his hair. He was grinning widely, and had whisker marks on his face that may have just been a trick of the light. He wore dark green pants, with plenty of pockets on them.
To his right was a girl of about the same height, with raven-colored hair, wearing a creamy-white jacket with no identifying marks on it. Her jacket was left unzipped, revealing a black shirt underneath. She was wearing black pants, but the most identifying feature was the pair of rectangle rimmed glasses she wore. She was looking down at the ground in front of her nervously, causing a glare on the glasses to hide her eyes.
The third was another girl. She had short pink hair, confident emerald eyes, and was dressed entirely in red and white. She carried a red bag by a strap that hung diagonally across her body from her shoulder. She had bandages wrapped around both of her arms, which reached from her wrists to her shoulders.
The last ninja wore a black t-shirt and black shorts, and his arms and legs were completely wrapped in bandages. His hair and eyes were both black, and he had a mocking smirk on his face.
"Village?" one of the guards asked, finally done looking them over, noticing their blank headbands.
The tall one was the one who replied. "The Village Hidden in the Past".
"Good. I see you've already gotten word of the new law the Hokage was just able to get passed." The sickly looking ninja scribbled something on his clipboard before continuing. "A few teams hadn't known about it, and had to send for another genin from their village. I take it one of those four is a medic-nin?"
"Of course." Shimei replied half-heartedly, while really hoping that one of the four knew at least some basic medical ninjutsu.
"Okay. Your team is now registered to take the Chunnin exams. The first exam will take place at eight on the second floor of that large building two days from now." He pointed to a large building nearby, the Ninja Academy. "Do you need help finding a place to stay until then?"
"Not thanks, H-" Shimei answered, having to stop himself from saying the man's name. Yep, young Hayate Gekko hadn't changed a bit, except for the slight increase in height.
"We've already got a place."
The five arrived at an abandoned part of town not long after. It was a familiar place, the place where an entire clan had met its end at the had of one of its own members: The Uchiha Residence.
"Okay everyone, we're here! Find a room and make yourselves at home!"
Sasuke sent an angry glare at his sensei. "Hey! This is my place, so don't act like you're in charge of it!" He paused, thinking of an order to give… "What he said." The others turned and continued to search for rooms.
Sasuke walked silently towards the main building. His head was swimming with memories of his childhood, of the misery he suffered in this place. He realized it didn't seem as bad now. He knew the truth. Still, a feeling of loneliness haunted the empty complex.
Sakura wasn't far behind Sasuke. She had followed him hoping he would help her find a room, but when she noticed his blank expression, she decided to leave him to his thoughts, and follow silently.
It didn't take long for Sasuke to lead them to two adjacent rooms, to the right of the building's entrance. As Sakura, looked around her new room, she wondered if the others had any trouble finding some rooms. She was pretty sure they didn't know their way around, but they had left at a normal medium-fast pace, unlike Sasuke. Oh well, maybe Sasuke would back to his old self after they unpacked.
Naruto and Hinata sat at the edge of the dock, their feet hanging over the water. Hinata's head rested peacefully on Naruto's shoulder as they stared out over the pond.
"Naruto-kun? They- They don't have to find out we're sharing a room, right?" Hinata asked, reluctant to bring up the subject.
"No, not yet." he answered, allowing her to relax. The others still didn't know they were a couple, after all, they only just met back up a few days ago.
A splash drew their attention. They looked around but they were still alone. A fish had just jumped in the pond. "Let's go back to the room now. We still need to unpack our stuff before dinner." Naruto suggested, standing up. Hinata sighed softly when her head had to leave his comfortable shoulder. But he was right, and she was hungry enough to not want to be late for dinner.
Their room was just around the corner from the pond, at the back of the building. It wasn't the biggest room, but it was still of good size, and was probably the nicest. To the left was the pond, and to the right, at the end of the hall, was the kitchen. However, the kitchen had been cleaned out of food, and the five of them had arranged to meet out front and eat out for dinner.
Shimei stumbled out of the poor looking house just inside the entrance of the Uchiha sector. He hadn't wanted to walk all the way to the main building, so he just took up residence in the nearest house. Why did I have to say an hour? Why not three or four, or tomorrow maybe? Well, that nap wasn't much, but I guess I shouldn't complain about getting food.
"So where are we gonna eat?" he asked the genin, patching up his half-faded genjutsu.
"Ichiraku's! Definitely Ichiraku's!" Naruto proclaimed, remembering the delicious smell of ramen that wafted from the small shop. His heart sunk when he was barely outvoted by one vote.
"Nah…I want…" Shimei put a finger to his chin in an attempt to think. "Let's get barbeque."
"Sure." Sasuke approved, Sakura nodding in agreement. All the while Naruto was shouting angrily while Hinata attempted to hold him back from attacking one or both of the other two guys. The scene was ignored by the other three as they turned to leave.
After Hinata calmed Naruto down a little, they headed off towards the BBQ place, Naruto pouting and complaining the entire way.
"Cut it out, Ino. You know that's just how Shikamaru is." came a voice through a mouthful of food. A skinny boy across from the speaker had his head propped up on his hand as he stared lazily out the window.
"Well he could at least help for once instead of trying to tell us what to do while he lays around like nothing matters!"
Sasuke had just stepped through the doors, but nearly tripped over Sakura when he immediately left after seeing where the shrill yell came from. "Sakura-chan, it's one of them."
She looked at him like he was crazy for a moment, as did the others, before she peeked inside. "What? You mean Ino?"
"Maybe if…" Sasuke mumbled to himself as rearranged his hair into a style that made him look strange.
"Sasuke, what are doing now?" Naruto asked, obviously still upset that he could be eating ramen right now.
"Naruto, we agreed not to draw attention, remember?" Sakura said catching on, and placing a low-level genjutsu on herself to change her hair and eye color.
It took him a minute, but he remembered. He already had his hood up though, so he waited impatiently for the others before running in and seating himself at a booth. Ino looked up at Sasuke as he walked passed, but luckily, she didn't seem to recognize him.
"Hmm? Ino, something wrong?" Shikamaru asked, more in search of information than out of concern.
"No, it's nothing. I'm just seeing things again." He knew exactly what was wrong. From the time she was assigned to his team, every time she saw someone with dark-hair she would yell something such as 'Sasuke-kun! You're back!' or 'I knew you would come back for me!' He had to put up with it for several months before she finally accepted that Sasuke wasn't coming back. Now he only noticed her eyes light with hope for a second before they dulled again as reality caught up. He didn't like seeing her like that, and would have tried to console her if it wasn't so troublesome.
But this time, he had also thought for a moment that it had really been the young Uchiha, casually walking into a Konoha barbeque restaurant. He quickly threw out that possibility, and focused on more important things. That was a team of four shinobi that had just passed by their table. That would be the competition in a couple days.
"…and that ramen was really good, but not quite as good as the ramen from…"
So much for getting information on the enemy. Shikamaru thought after hearing them talk about food for several minutes. It's like a conversation with Chouji…
"Hinata-chan, why don't you visit your family tomorrow? I'm sure they miss you." Naruto asked as he lay awake in their large bed, Hinata laying only a foot or so away.
"Well, I would like to see them, but…but I don't think they'll even remember me. It seems like it's been so long, and I left without telling anyone. They probably wouldn't want to see me…"
"I'm sure they want to see you. It will be fine. I'll go with you, and afterwards, I'll treat you to ramen at Ichiraku's."
"Arigato, Naruto-kun." She knew the ramen was more for him than it was for her, but he was going to help her visit home, and it was the thought that counts, after all.
Within a few moments, the last two of the group drifted into a deep sleep, tired out from their long journey to Konoha. Sasuke, however, wasn't enjoying his sleep as much as the others.
Sasuke stood in the empty void he had visited many times in the last half-year. It wasn't the void itself, but the same memory of it that had shown up many times in his dreams due to the training he had endured.
True, it was a rather unusual use for genjutsu, but in the world of Tsukuyomi, he could be fed huge volumes of information in what was really only a matter of seconds. His head ached as his body was forced through the motions of a variety of jutsu and fighting styles. Such a way of training had taken quite a toll on his mind, but the results were amazing.
In one week alone he would have usually mastered at least five difficult jutsu, as well as an entire fighting style. His body knew them so well that it could perform them instinctively, allowing him to strategize as he fights.
Another part of his training had been to awaken his sharingan. His brother would perform one of three different ninjutsu. Sasuke would have to identify it by the hand signs in order to avoid it. His brother's speed was so great that his hand signs went unseen by the average eye, so through this training Sasuke was able to awaken his sharingan.
At the moment, Sasuke was running through a defensive taijutsu style. Each time the faceless ninja attacked, Sasuke would retaliate by blocking with such speed and force in the right location that his opponent would sustain injuries. After only a few counters, the enemy was left unable to attack, and faded from existence as a new enemy materialized for him to fight.
Sasuke smirked, this was only a dream, a memory of Tsukuyomi, not the actual thing, but aside from the painful headache…it was pretty fun.
End of chapter 7
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Well, how was it? Don't worry, you will get to see what took place during those sixth months. I know there are a lot of questions I left unanswered. But you don't want to read about six straight months of training, do you? So just sit back, relax, and enjoy the upcoming chunnin exams.
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