Only 4-5 reviews for the last chapter? C'mon guys, help me out here! (For those of you who did review, thank you.) Maybe it's because I didn't write "Please review." at the end of the previous chapter. (Seems that had some bad results.) Do review, folks! It really does help me out.
Disclaimer: ...Do I really need to say it?
"Hey, Sakura!"
"Naruto, be more quiet! Whisper!"
"Oh, sorry. Hey, Sakura!"
"What is it?"
"I think I see a rabbit over there!"
"Naruto, that's a stick, not a rabbit! Are you blind?"
"Woah! Maybe I am...I sure hope not!"
Naruto and Sakura were lying down on their stomachs in the forest, looking for rabbits, squirrels and anything else that was edible.
"This is boring. I'm outta here!" Naruto said as he rose up, only to scare off a nearby rabbit that was coming closer to one of their baited traps.
This almost caused Sakura to also rise up and smack Naruto, but instead she just remained on the ground and cried to herself silently, for that had been the 7th animal that Naruto had scared off within an hour.
"Hey, what's up with you, Sakura-chan? Well, I'm going to look for some better food. See you around!"
Naruto walked away deeper into the woods, searching around for something else to eat. He suddenly spotted a deer nearby, eating away at ferns.
"Alright! I found something!" Naruto grinned as he started to approach the deer. "I bet Sakura will be real happy when she sees the food I got!
And did Naruto throw his kunai at the deer? No. He instead got down all fours and began to imitate the deer by eating the ferns, figuring if the deer could eat it, then so could a ninja. Naruto chewed for a second before spitting the ferns out.
"This is gross!" Naruto spat as he stood up and turned towards the deer, half shouting at it.
"How can you eat this disgusting crap?" Naruto cried, his loud voice scaring the deer off, still stupidly unaware that he had let the real food that was standing just 5 feet away from him escape.
Naruto shrugged and walked on for a while. Some time later, he spotted something that stood out among the brown and green shades of the forest; Red mushrooms with white spots stood, beckoning to the hungry shinobi. Naruto stooped down, picked a mushroom, and took a bite of it.
"Not great, but it tastes better than that fern. And mushrooms are in a lot of foods, so it's probably fine!" Naruto concluded as he picked a bunch of mushrooms and carried them back to the campsite.
"Sakura-chan and Sasuke are going to be so happy to eat these for a change instead of dead rodents!" Naruto grinned as he made his way back to the campsite, munching on a few mushrooms as well. As he approached the campsite where Sasuke was still lounging and Sakura had just returned, he began to feel a bit funny.
"Wooow, something doesn't feel right." Naruto said, staggering a bit.
"Naruto, why did you leave Sakura?" Sasuke asked annoyed.
"Believe me, I was better off left without that idiot! I actually managed to trap 3 mice and find some berries." Sakura told Sasuke as she lay the berries and mouse on the worn down wooden picnic table.
"Oh yeah! Guys, I got us mushrooms to eat! They'll probably taste real good when you cook them!" Naruto said, showing the mushrooms to his team-mates.
Sasuke looked at the suspiciously colourful spotted mushrooms in the wobbling Naruto's hands.
"Naruto, I don't think those are-" Sasuke started.
"Hey Sasuke, I feel weird..." Naruto said in a slightly airy voice.
"You idiot! Don't tell me you ate those mushrooms without us checking if they were okay!" Sakura cried.
"Well, just a few." Naruto replied.
"Well, just a few can be enough to knock you dead." Sasuke warned Naruto.
"Die? Don't say it's so! Me no die! Gahr! Frogs!" Naruto shouted out, making weird gestures.
"Oh great! He's already going crazy from eating those things." Sakura groaned, shaking her head
Naruto stumbled around for a moment before stopping and looking at Sasuke with a half-dazed look in his eyes.
"Sasuke, sweetie...you're looking lovely tonight!" Naruto said in a rather loopy sounding voice.
(A/N. I can hear the SasuNaru fans cheering now...)
"Durh! Armadillo!" Naruto randomly shouted and began to laugh.
"Ok, let's not panic!" Sakura said, obviously starting to panic. "Naruto! How many fingers am I holding up?"
Sakura frantically held up three fingers in front of Naruto's face. Naruto stared for a few seconds before replying.
"Ur...blue!"
Naruto then lost consciousness and fell over on the ground, twitching.
"You better go put him in the tent. I'll go get some water." Sasuke told Sakura.
"Wait for me!" Sakura cried, not wanting to be left alone with the crazy-and-now-passed-out shinobi.
Sakura quickly placed Naruto in the tent before running after Sasuke. They both ran down to the lake to get the water, passing the crazy old man's campsite on the way.
"Yah'll pay fer what yer little blonde friend did! Yah'll paaaaaaayyyy!" The crazy old man wheezed as he shook his fist at Sakura and Sasuke when they ran past.
"What the hell was that about?" Sasuke asked.
"Naruto took that old hillbilly geezer's boat this morning and got it stuck out in the middle of the lake. The old guy's really mad and creepy now." Sakura explained. "But you'll protect us from him, right Sasuke-kun?"
"Yeah, sure...whatever." Sasuke replied, not crazy on encountering the crazy old hillbilly man again.
They arrived at the lake, collecting water for the ill Naruto and ran back to the campsite, passing the old creepy man again, who shouted more creepy threats at them.
"He's really starting to scare me!" Sakura shivered.
"He's just as raving idiot. He won't hurt us. He's too old to do any harm." Sasuke assured himself and Sakura.
They arrived back at the campsite and rushed into the tent, splashing water onto Naruto to bring him back to his senses.
"It's not working! If we don't make him better, Kakashi-sensei's going to murder us!" Sakura wailed.
"No he won't. He's too laid-back and lazy to do that." Sasuke assured her. "But there's one other thing that might get Naruto to wake up."
Sasuke took his hand and slapped Naruto hard across the face. Naruto gave out a startled yelp.
"I've always wanted to do that." Sasuke smirked.
"It seems to have worked though." Sakura said, relieved that they got a sane reaction from Naruto.
"Just a little longer, sensei." Naruto mumbled as he groggily opened his eyes.
"I'm not your sensei, you idiot. It's me, Sasuke."
"Sasuke? What are you doing on my sleeping bag? Get off!" Naruto growled as he made an attempt to push Sasuke off, but only managing to lightly roll himself into the Uchiha.
"He's still weak, but at least we know that he's got his senses back." Sakura sighed in relief.
"Luckily, he didn't eat very many mushrooms. He should be ok." Sasuke added.
Naruto nodded, "Yeah, those mushrooms were weird…can I have some more?"
"No!" Sakura and Sasuke both shouted in unison.
"But I'm still hungry! Can we eat something now?"
"He's weak, so we better put some food into his system quickly in case those mushrooms have any after effects that mess him up any further." Sasuke said.
"Good idea. I'll make up lunch for all of us." Sakura replied, stepping out of the tent.
So Sakura cooked the mouse, fish, and prepared the berries she collected. When she was done, she brought some to Naruto.
"Ok, Naruto. Eat up." Sakura told the blonde genin.
"But I don't want to eat a mouse or fish! I want ramen!" Naruto
"We don't have ramen, remember? Now stop being picky and just eat the meat and berries!" Sakura commanded in a more impatient tone of voice.
"No mouse! No fish! Ramen!" Naruto continued to sit with his arms crossed, making a pouty face. Sasuke walked into the tent.
"What's the problem now? It's not the mushrooms acting up again, is it?"
"Probably not, but he refuses to eat the mouse, fish, or berries. He says he wants ramen." Sakura explained to Sasuke.
"Well, we don't have ramen. We only have fish, mice and berries." Sasuke told Naruto.
"I'm sick of eating rodents and fish!" Naruto grumbled.
" ...Alright then. Fine." Sasuke said as he took the plate of mouse, fish, and berries off of Naruto's lap. He took the fish and shoved it in Naruto's mouth. Naruto freaked out, pieces of fish flying from his mouth.
"Mmrf! Sasuke! You're-gak!-making me choke!"
"You've got to eat or you're going to die, and if you die, Kakashi-sensei's going to blame me! So eat if you wish to live without seeing mine or Sakura's fist or foot in your face!" Sasuke commanded angrily.
"And you better finish eating it because it's the only fish we've got, and we don't want it going to waste!" Sakura added.
"Warn me before you stuff something down my throat next time, will you? I almost choked to death!" Naruto shouted angrily as he finally chocked the fish down.
"Naruto, just eat the damn mouse and berries now." Sasuke said in a deadly tone of voice.
Naruto reluctantly took a piece of mouse meat, mashing it up with the berries, and took a bite.
"Hey! If you mash the berries with the mouse, it doesn't taste half as bad!" Naruto exclaimed.
"Eww! Mice and berries mixed together? Gross!" Sakura frowned, making a face of disgust.
"At least he's eating it. Whatever makes him eat his food is good." Sasuke said.
As soon as Naruto was finished, he bounded out of the tent.
"How does he do that?" Sakura cried.
"Alright! I feel better already! Let's go do something fun!"
"Yeah right. Like what?" Sasuke asked.
Naruto pointed to Michael, the SUV, smiling. "We could-"
"No, Naruto! We are not going to steal Kakashi-sensei's vehicle and mess around with it and crash it into a tree or a ditch." Sasuke said sternly.
"Or a lake!" Sakura added, glaring at Naruto to put emphasis on what Naruto had done with the crazy old man's boat.
"Well, not a bad idea actually! But that wasn't what I had in mind. I was thinking of getting that canoe off of Michael so we could go canoeing in the lake." Naruto told his two team-mates.
"That's...not a bad idea actually." Sakura nodded.
"But how are we going to get that thing off of the car?" Sasuke pointed out.
"There are three of us. We can do it no problem. Believe it!" Naruto replied with confidence.
"Well, I suppose we could give it a try. It's not like we have anything else better to do." Sasuke said.
"Well, we could climb that mountain that I wanted to climb yesterday instead of canoeing." Naruto suggested.
"NO!" Sakura and Sasuke both shouted, feet still aching from dropping stones on them.
"Alright, then let's go canoeing!" Naruto cheered.
With that decided, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura positioned themselves so they could get the canoe off of Michael. In the process of bringing the canoe down, however, Sakura's back gave out under all of the weight, causing her to drop the canoe on Naruto's foot. So with two people out of the action, there was no way Sasuke would carry the canoe solo down to the lake. So they left the canoe half propped up on Michael and half lying on Naruto's foot.
"Hello? Hey guys! The canoe's crushing my foot and it really hurts!" Naruto shouted.
Sasuke managed to lift the corner of the canoe off of Naruto's foot as Sakura painfully crawled back to the tent to rest her injured back.
"What are we going to do now?" Naruto asked, rubbing his sore foot. "I'm bored!"
"Well that's too bad for you." Sasuke replied.
"But seriously! What are we going to do all day?"
"I don't know. Go figure that out by yourself."
"Fine then. I'm going go try to crash Michael into a tree now!"
"Anything but that, you moron! Though it's not like you could do that anyways without the keys or gas."
"Then let's go do something! I'm sick of doing nothing! Admit it, you're bored too!"
"Not really, I have my music to listen to."
Naruto groaned in defeat as Sasuke walked into the tent to plug his headphones into his ears and turn on his mp3 player/iPod/whatever, only to remember that it had run out of batteries a few days ago.
"Damn! Forgot about that...I should've told Kakashi-sensei to go pick some batteries up while he went to go get the food." Sasuke grumbled.
So with that option out, Sasuke left the tent and stood before Naruto. "Alright. Let's go take a look around the lake since we have nothing else better to do."
Naruto let out a shout of glee as he leapt into the air. This walk was definitely something that Sasuke wasn't looking forward to. And there would be a good and painful reason later on why he wouldn't.
To be continued...
Now please please please review!