"Sasuke! Get your ass out here! You're late!" Naruto shouted, banging on the Uchiha's door.
"Idiot, I'm never late," Naruto spun around to see a fully ready Sasuke leaning against the short wooden fence of the Uchiha compound.
Naruto sighed. "Let me guess, you've been there the past fifteen minutes, thoroughly enjoying watching me shout my lungs out at an empty house."
"Catching on to me, are you?"
Naruto ignored him. "Come on, Sakura and the students are already at the Gate," he muttered, shoving his hands into his pockets and turning away.
"How do you know that?"
Naruto rolled his eyes and tossed something over his shoulder to the raven. "This is a mission, how do you think I know?"
"Hn," Sasuke replied, adjusting the earpiece. "We need to talk to Tsunade-sama, these transmitters are a little too girly for my taste," he slipped a finger underneath the necklace-like voice transmitter and tugged a little.
"Suck it up, wimp, real men can wear necklaces and still be manly," Naruto teased, exiting the home, Sasuke behind him.
"Well, that rules you out, you're almost a girl without the necklace! With it, heh, you're girlier than Sakura."
"You-!"
"NARUTO, SASUKE!!!" Sakura's furious voice exploded in their ear, causing them to physically react to the noise.
"Sakura-chan! Turn your volume down!" Naruto complained, rubbing his ear.
"GET YOUR ASSES HERE NOW! I CAN HEAR EVERYTHING YOU SAY, AND NOW I'M GONNA DRIVE YOUR SEXIST FACES INTO THE GROUND! ON TOP OF THAT," she added, "YOU'RE LATE AGAIN!"
Naruto and Sasuke shared a suffering glance, then leapt to the rooftops and sprinted to the South Gate.
"Sasuke-sensei!" two of Sasuke's genin waved to him, calling out in bright voices. Even Katsu looked a little livelier. Naruto grumbled and Sasuke smirked.
"Naruto-sensei!" Naruto looked up in curiosity to see Kumari smile hesitantly, but genuinely.
"What?" Naruto heard Sasuke mutter under his breath. "I could have sworn that Kumari-chan hated him yesterday."
"One at a time, but they'll all learn soon enough," Naruto grinned to himself. "Oi, Kumari!" he called in greeting, just before landing a few meters away.
" . . . Naruto . . . !! " Naruto's spine stiffened as he heard Sakura's looming voice from behind him.
"S-Sakura-chan! It's not my fault! Someone decided it would be fun to watch me yell at a door for fifteen minutes straight," he glared at Sasuke, who simpered into the green collar of his vest. His eyes wandered back to the petal-haired kunoichi. She held her angry gaze for a moment longer, but let it melt into snicker.
"Was it funny?"
"I swear he was about to break down the entire house, not just the door. Although just to spite it, he might have burned the door."
Naruto crossed his arms over his chest and frowned as his best friends enjoyed his humiliation.
"Hm, from what I've seen and heard, Naruto-sensei shouldn't be a sensei," Naruto caught the slightest sound of Seiya whispering to Kumari.
"You've heard completely wrong then!" she replied defensively. Affection for the genin drew up the corner of Naruto's mouth. "And as for what you've seen . . . get your eye sight checked!"
She flipped her hair as she snubbed the green-eyed genin, brushing past him with superiority, striding up beside her sensei.
"Kumari . . ."
She shrugged. "You're my sensei, whether Seiya-kun thinks you're worthy or not."
" . . . Arigato," he smiled down at her.
"Oi! Sasuke, Sakura, I'm not waiting for you!" he called over his shoulder, completely serious. His gaze was determined, set on something far away, bending down to be ready to spring into the forest.
Both jonin sobered immediately. "Hai, let's go," Sakura agreed, assuming the same position.
"As if I couldn't catch you anyway," Sasuke copied both of them, even crouching on the same knee.
"Let's go!" Naruto roared, vaulting into the branches with incredible strength.
After a total of three seconds, Naruto could no longer keep his restrain, and drove far ahead of the group. The genin had been sprinting on the ground to keep up with their tree-hopping senseis, and were all surprised to see how much speed Naruto was gaining.
"Naruto! Don't waste all you're energy, we're hardly out of Konoha!" Sakura's voice came in his ear. Naruto replied with a grunt.
"Naruto, don't be rash," Sakura warned. "You-"
"Shut up Sakura-chan," Naruto growled into his transmitter.
"Come back here and say that to my face!" she challenged.
"Sakura-chan, I meant what I said to Tsunade-baachan last night. Konohamaru is my little brother. Stay out of my way," he warned her.
"Uzumaki Naruto, have you forgotten half of the point of this mission?" Sasuke's voice was cold and icy.
"There is no half of the mission, there's only one goal."
"Wrong as usual, moron. Our teams need to learn team work, do you deny this?"
Naruto did not respond, he just clenched his jaw.
"As I thought, now, as the greatest Shinobi team there ever was or will be, don't you think it might help if we set a bit of an example for our students?"
Again Naruto could not argue.
"Well then, slow down and come back with us, we aren't abandoning Konohamaru by staying with our students, who, I might add, have had too little training to keep up with half that pace."
Slowly, reluctantly, Naruto began to decelerate, and eventually fell in step with his team. Not a word more was spoken about thesubject. Naruto kept his jaw tight, forcing himself to focus on something other than the sluggishly slow pace set by the genin on the ground. Naruto could literally feel the growling beast inside him, begging to take over. He absent-mindedly clutched his stomach.
"Naruto-sensei?" Kumari asked, timidly looking up to him, bringing Naruto back enough to realize he was breathing laboriously, and had actually fallen behind the rest of the group. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to stop the nauseating tug at his gut, and his hand did not lift before Sasuke and Sakura turned over their shoulders to see this gesture.
"We're taking a break. Now," Sasuke stopped instantly upon seeing this, as did Sakura.
"Yes," she agreed.
"We've just started!" Naruto kept going.
"Naruto, stop now or we'll make you stop. And we will stop you," Sasuke said calmly but ominously.
The jinchuuriki hesitated a moment, but did as told, leaping back a few branches to regroup with his teammates.
"We haven't been going long enough," he stated, trying to blink away any speck of red in his eyes before meeting with those of his friends.
"Incorrect, we've been going for nearly twelve hours. More proof of the fact we need to stop, you've lost sense of time," Sasuke sounded almost bored.
Confused, Naruto looked to the sky only to see a brilliant array of colors bleeding into one another. Half a sun sparkled over the western horizon. " . . . fine," he growled. "We'll break for the night." He dropped to the ground, balancing on the balls of his feet and one hand.
"I'll take Raito and Ayami to get fire wood, Sasuke-kun, you oversee camp-setup." Sakura was about to leave with Sasuke's students when she twisted her neck back around to look firmly at Naruto. "You rest," her eyes narrowed, obviously suspicious that he would do no such thing.
He growled menacingly under his breath but nodded.
She smiled and disappeared into the woods with Raito and Ayami behind her.
"Hn. Kumari, you make sure Naruto does as told," Sasuke ordered, throwing an extra glance to Naruto. "Everyone else, let's start setting up."
Naruto threw his head back against the tree under which he was slouched, forcing deep, calming breathes into his lungs.
"Naruto-sensei?" He lifted his head to find Kumari with a canteen in her hand, outstretched to him.
He took it and nodded, "arigato, Kumari."
She shrugged, and sat down in front of him on her knees. She turned her head away from him, a slight flush on her cheeks. "So, that's what you meant?"
He had to focus a moment, but then nodded. "Yeah." He gave a small, almost tired smile. "I really should listen to Sakura-chan. She knows what's best most of the time." He shifted his weight and began to get up. "I'm feeling better, might as well get up and do something."
"Naruto-sensei, you just said you should listen to Sakura-sensei, why don't you rest some?" Kumari reached out as his weight shifted uneasily.
He sighed, regaining his balance. "I guess I should, but I don't want to sit. I think I'll go speak with Sasuke about the mission at hand. Go help the others," he began walking away.
"Sasuke," he called, coming upon the dark haired Uchiha.
"Feeling better, dobe?"
"Yeah." Sasuke regarded the blond a moment, but this was all Naruto was willing to say about the subject. "What exactly are the specifics of this mission?" he asked.
Sasuke's brow furrowed. "I'm not sure, Sakura was the one to meet with Tsunade-sama. We'll just have to wait, though soon enough we might have to look for her, no one takes this long to find firewood."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm right here," Sakura said irritably, dropping in front of them.
"Who shoved a stick up your-" Naruto was silenced by a life-threatening look from the pink haired jonin.
"I've never known someone to nearly spear themselves four times while collecting firewood, Raito . . . Anyway," she stood up, her eyebrows knitting together. "Even Tsunade-sama doesn't know much. The mission is very vague. But Konohamaru is gone. There was evidence of a scuffle, broken windows, tables smashed, personal property destroyed, as well as a corpse. It is unidentifiable for many reasons. There was no obvious indication of what village said Shinobi was from. And . . . disturbingly enough there were no fingerprints, nor a . . . face."
Naruto blinked. "What?"
"The body didn't have a face," she repeated.
"As in . . . it was maimed?"
Sakura shook her head. "Well, he was maimed, but there were no facial features. No eye, nose mouth . . . nothing."
"Then why the hell did we get told to go to Hoshigakure? It's one of the most dangerous places there is!"
"You think we're going there for no reason?" Sakura snapped. "Hmph. There was a bingo book, very ripped and mutilated, but on one of the pages, Hoshigakure was scrawled in blood."
"Why would Konohamaru get taken there?"
"No one said he was taken," Sasuke pointed out.
Naruto clenched his fist. "Are you implying-"
"I'm not implying anything, but you can't rule out the possibility," Sasuke cut him off. "Anyway, Hoshigakure hasn't made news in such a long time, it's surprising this would be the place."
"Not when you think about it," Naruto corrected him. "The thing about the poisonous gases make for a perfect hideaway, assuming they could get their hands on gas masks, or if they had an extremely skilled wind element affinity. Though I have my doubts their affinity could be that strong. I could probably make it, but by the time I got there, I'd be so drained, I'd have zero chance of fending anyone off for more than a few seconds. Not to mention getting another person over there could possibly completely drain the user midway."
"Gas masks it is then," Sakura nodded. "This is a shady mission. We've got to watch the genin carefully."
"Hm," Naruto half-laughed.
"What?" Sakura demanded.
"You underestimate me, Sakura-chan. I always protect precious people."