Summary: Neji x Sakura Meet Haruno Sakura, a typical junior high school prankster. When her prank got out of hand, the school principal decides to assign Sakura a mentor. Sakura thinks it's going to be a hell but things might not be as bad as Sakura thinks. AU and hopefully not too much OOC

Genre: Drama/Romance

A/N – Author's Note

Italic - thoughts and/or emphasis on the word

Bold – emphasis on the word


Troublemaker

Chapter 4: The Training Begins

Sakura walked down the street toward her mentor house. "I wonder what she is like. All the houses here are so big. She must be rich." Sakura followed the instruction on a piece of paper that Tsunade gave her this morning, and it led her to a dojo. She stood there staring at the huge front door with awe, but also in confusion. "This place is HUGE, but wait…this can't be right. This place is a dojo, why would she (A/N: Sakura thinks her mentor is a girl) live in a dojo, unless she works here or something."

Sakura continued to stare at the dojo until she realized that she could go check if this place is the right place or not. Sakura walked closer to the door and next to it was the mailbox. She saw the sign that said "Hyuuga" on the mailbox. Then she immediately realized that this dojo belonged to the Hyuuga family, which meant Hyuuga Neji lived here.

Sakura backed away from the dojo for about ten feet, and then continued to stare at it. "Why would Tsunade-sama give me the direction to Hyuuga-senpai house? Unless she wants me to…unless Hyuuga-senpai is really my-" Sakura could not even finish her sentence in her mind. It took Sakura a whole five minutes to absorb in the details, and then she decided to walk to the front door and ring the bell. Unfortunately, she didn't have the guts to do it, and so she just stood there like a statue. That was, until a voice came out that brought Sakura back to reality.

"What are you doing?" asked Neji.

Sakura was startled by Neji and she couldn't even answer his question correctly. "H-Hyuuga-s-senpei…I…uh…I…"

"Answer my question, Haruno." He said a little louder.

Sakura took a deep breath before answering in a very fast speed. "Tsunade-sama told me to come here, and when I did came I was surprise that it led me to this dojo and I took a few minutes to think whether I should ring the door bell or not or wait for someone to come out, but then you showed up startling me and I couldn't answer your question properly and I-" Sakura was cut off by Neji.

"Ok, that's enough. I understand the rest."

"Umm, Hyuuga-senpai…what do I do now?"

"You can run around the park once to get to know the place."

"Why?"

"You will start your training tomorrow, and you will have to run around the park everyday and then learn all the basics of self-defense."

"Why should I?"

"If you can put so much effort in making those pranks, so why don't you put those skills to good use by learning self-defense. After all, you are a girl. And it might come in handy later on."

"Oh." She said barely above a whisper. Sakura couldn't protest against him. She did promise her mom and Tsunade that she would listen to her mentor. They thought that the mentor knew what is good for her; so if Neji wanted her to run and learn self-defense, then he must have his reasons. So with last thought, Sakura didn't waste anymore time and she started to run toward the park.

As Sakura was running around the park, she noticed that there was no one around. The place looked old, and perhaps abandoned. She stopped for a brief minute to catch her breath. Then she spotted a tree house on the far side of the park. The park wasn't very big and the ground space was smaller than the other parks. If Sakura had to guess the distant from where she was and the tree, then her estimate would be around 120 feet. (A/N: Is that a good length or is it too short? Well anyways, you get my point)

Sakura started to run again, but as she ran, she couldn't keep her eyes off the tree. There was something about that tree that really intrigued her. She kept her eyes on it until she couldn't see it anymore when she was too far away.

When Sakura reached the dojo again, she saw Neji was leaning against the door with his eyes closed, and arms folded. Without opening his eyes, he spoke up.

"What took you so long?" he said as if you knew she was there already, and she was.

"Sorry, I…uh…" she couldn't tell him that she was interested in the tree house at the park, so she stayed silent and hoped that his question would go away.

"Starting tomorrow, you are to finish running within fifteen minutes or else you will have to scrub the entire floor of the dojo." Neji stated and he stood up straight. This indicated that he was serious. But Sakura was shocked and started to glare at him.

"What! You are supposed to be my mentor, not like my prison guard."

"A job of a mentor is to improve and help ones learning ability. But in my case, I am to keep you out of trouble. And if that means that I have to keep you occupied by making you scrub the floor, then I will do it."

Sakura was silent. She couldn't think of what to say, so she just said her good bye to Neji and walked home after he told her to meet him tomorrow after school. He said that the training will start tomorrow.

--

Sakura came to Nej's dojo the next day after she said her good bye to Naruto. When she arrived, the door was slightly opened, and so she thought that Neji left the door opened for her. Sakura stepped inside the dojo and to her amazement, no one was there.

"Hyuuga-senpai?" Sakura called out, but there was no answer.

Sakura thought that Neji could be in the main hall, and so she started to walk off to the main hall. But there was a problem; she didn't know where the main hall was. So the more she walked around, the more she thought she was lost in her mentor's dojo.

Sakura was about to give up and return back to the front entrance, but then something caught her eyes and she halted and turned to the direction of a certain hallway. At the end of the hall way, she could see an opened door and inside looked pretty big. Sakura thought that it was the main hall, and so she rushed to go see it.

When she arrived at the room, she was once again disappointed because there was no one there. Sakura was exhausted from all the searching, and so she decided to take a seat and leaned on the wall. While Sakura was leaning on the wall, she felt something behind her, so she decided turned around to see what it is.

What Sakura saw was indeed a surprise, but what got her attention even more was the person in the photo. The girl has the same eyes as Neji. Her hair was short and it was blue, unlike Neji's hair, which is kind of brownish-black. Sakura pondered about that for a minute, until a voice spoke out and surprised the living day light out of her.

"Haruno, what are you doing here?" asked Neji.

Sakura regained her postured and answered her mentor. "You said that I was supposed to meet you here everyday after school at this time. But when I got here I didn't see you and so I came in and check. Then somehow I ended up here in this room."

"You should know better then to walked in uninvited. But now that you're here, let's get started." Neji said to Sakura, and then he started to walk away from the room.

Sakura looked at Neji, and something curious was stirring inside her and she just had to ask Neji what or rather who it was in the picture.

"Wait up, Hyuuga-senpai." Sakura walked faster to catch up with Neji. And when she was close right behind him, she spoke up.

"By the way, Hyuuga-senpai. Who was that girl in the picture that hung in the room?"

Neji thought it was a pointless question, but if he doesn't answer her, she might bug him about it for the rest of the day. So Neji decided to answer Sakura question.

"She's my cousin, Hinata."

"Oh…I see. No wonder she has the same eyes as you. How come I didn't see her at our school?"

"That's because she went to an all girls school." said Neji.

"I see. Is she nic-" Sakura was cut off when Neji suddenly halted.

"We're here." He said.

"Here? Here where?"

"The place where you will be doing your training."

"Ohh…" Sakura said. Then she took a look at the surrounding area. There were a couple of trees and a small pond. It looked like a perfect place for whatever she'd be doing.

"Let's start off by doing some stretching and then twenty-five push-ups."

"Okay." Even though Sakura obeyed his order, she thought twenty-five push-ups was a lot.

Sakura started to stretch her arms and then her legs. When she felt that she had done enough stretching, she got on the floor and started doing her push-ups.

"One." Sakura was mentally keeping tracking of her number of push-ups. "Two."

While Sakura was doing her push-ups near the tree, Neji was sitting on a rock and his mind went back to the time where he agreed to be Haruno Sakura mentor.

Now why did he agree to be her mentor again? Let's go back four weeks ago.

Flashback (In case no one remember; part of the flashback was from chapter one)

"Ah, Hyuuga Neji, you're just in time. Come in." said Tsunade; breaking the mental dual of the two students.

"Yes, ma'am." he said while look toward the principal, but then shifted his eyes back to Sakura again.

"Your foot." he said abruptly.

"Huh?" she said in confusion while looking at her foot and traced where is was at. It turns out that her left foot was on top of his left foot.

"I-I'm so sorry, Hyuuga-senpai!" she shrieked out.

"Aa…" he said before walking off to the principal office.

Naruto and Sakura watched as Neji went inside the office.

"Aa, I see you met Sakura already, eh?" Tsunade asked.

"You mean Haruno? Yes, I know her."

"I see that would make things easier."

"I don't get what you are trying to get at, Tsunade-sama."

"Have a seat, Neji." Tsunade said. Then Neji took a seat and waited patiently for Tsunade to continue.

"I have received the notice from the Tono High School. They said they would love to have you attend their school."

"Thank you for telling me that." Neji said, and then he motion to stand up but then Tsunade spoke up again which made him sit back down.

"Although, they are satisfied with your performance here; they felt that you don't have enough experience with people."

"What do you mean by that, ma'am?"

"You see, they told me that there is a catch in order for you to fully get accept into their school." she said and putted an emphasis on the word catch.

"And what, may I ask, is the catch could be?" Neji asked, with a hint of annoyance.

"Like I said before, they don't feel that you have interacted with people much, and therefore they ask me to help you be someone's tutor or mentor."

Neji stayed silent for a while after Tsunade gave him the information. He was thinking of a way out of this, but knowing the people from Tono they won't let him refuse their deal. Especially when they know how badly Neji wanted to get in their high school.

Neji consider the idea for a minute, but he has to know who that person is going to be. "Who do you have in mind, Tsunade-sama?"

Tsunade gave Neji a smile before answering his question. "Haruno Sakura."

End of Flashback

Sakura was doing push-ups on the floor until she felt tired and took a break. When she looked up, she saw Neji was looking at the clouds with an expressionless face. She then recalled that she had a really difficult English homework and she doesn't know how to do it.

"Well, I guess this is as good of a time as any. He's not doing anything." Sakura thought.

"Um…Hyuuga-senpai…?" Sakura said. Upon hearing his name Neji snapped out of his train of thoughts and looked at Sakura.

"What is it?"

"As a mentor, you suppose to help me with school work too, right?" Sakura asked.

"Yeah."

"Well then, can you help me with my English homework? I don't understand it at all."

Neji gave out a sigh before he gave her a nod, which indicated a yes. Sakura got up from the floor and took out her homework from her backpack and handed it to Neji.

For the rest of the afternoon and until early evening, Neji tried his best to explain the stuff to Sakura. And thus, the first day of Sakura's training ended.


A/N: I like to give a big friendly hug and thanks to my beta reader's narutofan4ever and Avini. They really help me with my grammar. Thanks again you guys. And while I'm at it, I like to thank you for all who had review for me. I really appreciate your support for this story and I hope that future chapters won't disappoint you.

Next Chapter: The Deal

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