Hello! I'm late, what a surprise. :/
Anyways, enjoy!
Recap: Kaosu informally interrogates Naruto and Sakura. She also points out Sasuke's choice of hairstyle.
Kaosu slides into her place at the table and Tsunami sighs, "Careful Kaosu."
She smiles, "I know!"
Naruto comes in a second later and sits down between Sakura and Kaosu.
Tsunami looks at the ninja, "Is your sensei awake?"
Naruto nods and Tsunami leaves to give some supper to Kakashi.
After a moment Sasuke realizes he's being stared at by Naruto, "What do you want?"
Naruto appears thoughtful for a second, "Turn your head to the side for a second."
Grumbling Sasuke does so and Naruto bursts out laughing.
"What?" Sasuke glares at his teammate and the small girl who was trying to stifle her laughter.
Sakura growls as she prepares to defend her Sasuke-kun, "Naruto.." she readies a punch.
The laughter drains from Kaosu's face as she blocks the punch for Naruto. Shocked Sakura doesn't pull back and instead stares into Kaosu's eyes.
"Don't" Kaosu says calmly before sitting back down. The room was dead silent, all of them staring at the girl who surprises them again by smiling,"I'm hungry, can we eat?"
Tazuna nods as Tsunami returns and Naruto gets up from the floor. Supper was spent in silence except for the boys asking for more helpings of the soup Tsunami had prepared.
Finally Inari finishes and puts away his plate, "Why are you guys here anyways?" (Oh boy get ready for the small child angst...)
Naruto laughs, "What do you mean? We were hired to protect your grandfather, that's what we're going to do."
"You don't stand a chance against Gato!"
Inari...
"You'll just get yourselves killed!"
INARI...
"You should just go home!"
"INARI!" The words burst from Kaosu's mouth who immediately covers it with a look that suggests she is close to tears. Without another word or glance she quickly runs to her room, closing the door with a bit more force than necessary.
All of the members were shocked once again, Inari recovers first, "I'm going to my room."
No one stops him as he leaves.
"What was that all about?" They all turn to the doorway and there stands Kakashi, leaning heavily on the door frame. Quickly Naruto and Sakura jump up and help him to Kaosu's recently vacated spot.
"Well, I suppose you do have a right to know.." Tazuna quickly speaks about Kaiza, his role in Inari's and then Kaosu's life. Gato's swift takeover, Kaiza's public execution followed by the disappearance of anyone who really even spoke about an uprising. He finishes by saying that the bridge's construction was slowed to a crawl and that it was their only hope.
The leaf ninja sit and digest the information presented to them. "Okay" says the jonin, "I just have to say something and now is as good as ever."
The other look at him expectantly and he sighs, "Zabuza is probably still alive." (DUN DUN DUN!)
The dawn saw 5 people heading into a grove of trees. 4 of them were yawning hugely and the other was on crutches.
"Kakashi-sensei? Are you sure you should be training us, you still haven't fully recovered."
The jonin eye-smiles, "Please don't patronize me, I know what I'm doing."
The smallest one rubs an eye as she speaks, "Speaking of which, what are we doing?"
Sasuke huffs, "Why are you here?"
She shrugs, "I want to know what you're doing."
"If you're going to have any chance against a man who killed dozens of people before he was trained I need to train you." Kakashi says wearily.
The three genin groan, it was too early in the morning for them to understand anything from that sentence other than, 'training'.
Their sensei stops in a small clearing surrounded by straight, strong, tall trees, exactly what he was looking for. "Okay watch closely."
The children nod sleepily and Kakashi turns to walk towards one of the trees.
He easily channels the necessary chakra to his feet and walks up the tree trunk before going under one of the lower branches and tilting his head to look at the children who were staring up at him.
He must be using chakra to stick to the tree.
Pfft. I can do that.
Child's play.
Cool! If I do that I'll impress Sakura-chan for sure!
"Do you know how I'm doing this?"
Sakura immediately launches into an explanation of chakra and it's uses. By the time she wraps up the two boys have already started running at their respective trees.
"Here" Kakashi hands a kunai to the girl, "Use it to mark your progress like the boys. You don't seem like you would need my help."
She nods and concentrates on her feet, moving chakra to them before running at the tree. She makes it about 3/4 of the way to the first branch on her first try, farther than either of the boys. With a small smile she adds a bit more chakra and tries again.
Kakashi looks up from his book to see Kaosu gazing wistfully at his students, "Do you want to try?"
With a start she nods and Kakashi motions for her to come closer. "First I'll need to check your chakra levels, you may not have enough to do this for very long and I don't want you hurting yourself."
Before she steps within arm's reach Kaosu quickly tries to repress some of her chakra. Feeling weakened she steps forwards and allows Kakashi to rest a hand on the middle of her seeing Kakashi's visible eye widen slightly she knows her ploy didn't work as well as she hoped.
This girl has almost as much chakra as Sasuke. It's not that much, but for a child of this age, and a civilian to boot...
He forces a smile, "Don't worry you've got plenty of chakra to do this exercise." He hands her a kunai, "You know what to do by watching them?" With a nod the girl walks across the clearing to a tree next to Naruto's. Who are you? he silently questions the girl's back.
There, that feels like a good place to leave off. After such a long break from fanfiction I really shouldn't be taking another one, but next week I'm in Calgary for videogames with cousins. Oh I guess it's also Christmas so, yeah. I'll update if I can but don't feel bad if I don't. :)
