Author's Note: When I meant certain manga elements, I meant a really small percentage(: Also, thank you for all the reviews and favourites, they mean a lot to me!

I don't anything from Naruto, but Taiga's an original character.

Taiga crashed to the ground with Naruto sprawled directly on top of her. They both gave a simultaneous yelp and Naruto quickly jumped onto his feet while Taiga rolled over into a crouching position, breathing heavily.

"Damn it," Taiga panted as the hyperactive teen in front of her gave a cocky smirk, not at all out of breath, both of them ignoring the previous awkward position.

It was a nice, bright morning at one of Konoha's many training fields, and exactly a week since Taiga had met Naruto, Kakashi and Sakura. She was currently practising her taijutsu with her teammate, Naruto. Or more like she was being thrown around while Naruto made it seem like no big deal.

"Your stamina and taijutsu skills are really lousy, you know," Naruto said as he offered a hand to Taiga.

Taiga accepted the gesture and allowed Naruto to pull her up. "Yeah, they must be if you can beat me this easily..."

"Please, I'm awesome and you know it!"

Taiga had no retort to that statement, because it was in fact true. Naruto was pretty decent when it came to taijutsu, not to mention his seemingly never-ending stamina that allowed him to keep going strong. Taiga, on the other hand, was downright lousy in terms of her physical stamina and taijutsu skills. She had never seen the need to practice anything else but her ninjutsu, seeing as it was so powerful anyway.

Kakashi and Sakura walked up to the pair of blondes. The jonin was actually quite disappointed in Taiga. He'd expected her to be some sort of genius after she was able to pass the bell test so quickly, but that image was quickly shattered once he'd seen her have a taijutsu spar with Naruto the day after. He was trying to reason with himself that Taiga being able to obtain the bell from him in record time was just a fluke, for the sake of his pride.

"Taiga, we're going to make you work on your stamina," Kakashi said, earning an immediate groan from her. "You'll be training on this with Naruto every single day in the early morning. You are to keep up with him as you both do laps around Konoha."

"Urgh, the whole 'laps around Konoha' thing makes you sound like Gai..." Taiga winced. She still hadn't caught her breath yet.

Flashback

Team Seven had just arrived at their training field in the morning ready to train when something that looked remotely like a green whirlwind came rushing straight for Kakashi and collided into him.

When all the smoke from the collison had cleared up, an irritable Kakashi was found on the ground, unable to move because his legs were tangled with another man's. That man was dressed in green spandex and had a hairdo that sent shivers up Taiga's spine.

"I'm sorry, Kakashi, my eternal rival! I miscalculated my dynamic entry!" The man sobbed as Kakashi untangled himself and directed a one-eyed death glare at him.

"Gai sensei!" Another voice called out as three other shinobi who were a year older than Taiga ran up to them.

Taiga racked her brain to remember what other information Sasuke had told her. The freak who landed on Kakashi was Gai, the Gai look-a-like was Lee, the girl with the two buns on her head was Tenten and the stoic-looking guy was Neji.

Gai jumped up. "I'm okay, Lee!" He said, giving his signature 'nice guy' pose to his student before directing his attention back on Kakashi. "Now, what shall we do? One thousand push-ups, or my personal favourite, five hundred laps around Konoha on our hands?"

End of flashback

Taiga remembered that incident really well, especially the mentally scarring image of Gai and Kakashi together on the ground. Lee was very nice and polite to her, though Taiga could tell he had a thing for Sakura. Tenten didn't leave much of an impression on her, but she seemed nice enough. Gai, needless to say, just freaked her out, but seemed harmless otherwise. It was Neji that she felt she needed to be careful around. Although she already knew from Sasuke that Neji wasn't one of the warmest people you'd meet, he seemed to carry a certain dislike for her, almost as if he expected her to do something bad. Taiga reasoned later that Neji was one of the smarter ones around Konoha, and she would need to put in extra effort to gain his trust. She just hoped that there were more trusting idiots than calculative people in this village.

It was Kakashi that winced this time. "Don't insult me like that..." He muttered and hung his head low.

"Well, let's begin now!" Naruto said enthusiastically. After all, this was probably nothing to him and it was a perfect chance at watching Taiga suffer as she'd hurled her fair share of insults at him during the past week or so.

Taiga resisted the urge to remind Kakashi of Gai's last dynamic entry as Naruto dragged her away.

Naruto glanced to his left as he ran along the border of Konoha to check on how Taiga was doing. He wasn't surprised to see her panting and breathing heavily. They had been running for about half and hour, which was a considered a very short time for ninjas.

"How did you travel all the way from Iwa to Konoha if your stamina is this lousy?" Naruto asked, fully aware that Taiga probably would be too out of breath to even say anything.

Taiga just glared at Naruto, and showed him the finger.

"Now, what did you just do?" Naruto's eyes gleamed mischievously as he began to speed up, just to spite Taiga for her rudeness.

Taiga's eyes widened as she realised Naruto was getting faster. She rapidly shook her head. "I-i-it.... wa-was a h-h-handseal..." She choked out feebly.

Naruto chuckled and slowed down his pace again so Taiga could keep up. He liked Taiga more than he did a week ago when he first met her. She was quite amusing and vulnerable at times, mainly when she was in pain, but she could also be extremely intimidating and cold. He accepted her as a teammate, but probably not as a friend just of yet. Sometimes, things with her seemed a little bit off, and Naruto felt as if he couldn't fully trust her, but then he'd keep telling himself not to judge her for being Deidara's sister or how she behaved because of her rough childhood. He could safely say he knew what it felt like to be judged for something he had no control over.

A tug on his sleeve pulled him out of his thoughts. Turning to his left, he realised Taiga had already stopped using her legs and was hopelessly clinging onto his sleeve while he dragged her along. He took that as the cue to stop and Taiga immediately collapsed.

"It's not good to lie down immediately after you run, you know..." Naruto said, pulling Taiga up to her feet where she swayed dangerously, clutching a nearby tree for support.

Naruto expected some sort of retort, or at least a glare, but what he didn't expect was for Taiga to leap right at him out of nowhere with a sudden burst of energy. He shut his eyes, placed his arms over his head and braced himself for the impact. Taiga was scary when she was annoyed. However, the blow never came. Instead, there was the sound of a couple of explosions, muffled cries and two dull thuds on the ground.

As Naruto opened his eyes and lowered his arms slowly, the first thing he saw was Taiga right in front of him, although her back was turned, facing something that he couldn't quite see as his vision was obscured by her thick, blonde ponytail in his face.

"You okay?" Taiga turned to the side, allow Naruto full view of two bodies lying on the ground in front of them. By the looks of it, they were dead. Various parts of their bodies had been blown off, and blood was splattered all around them.

"Don't look so shocked," Taiga said with a casual wave of her hand before collapsing on the ground again from fatigue. She showed him a shuriken that she held in her hand. "Those guys were aiming right for you, so I had to do something, right?"

Naruto took the shuriken in his hand and inspected it. Surely enough, this looked like it was from the unknown ninja as it was custom made, so it was highly unlikely that it belonged to Taiga. "What did you do to them?"

"I... blew them up," Came the shaky response. Naruto took that as a sign of Taiga being unwilling to kill them. "They were drenched in water and sweat from the journey through the dense forest surrounding this area."

Naruto stared at the Taiga. She was still panting on the ground. "Thank you."

Taiga's head snapped up. "Huh?"

"I said thanks." Naruto grinned somewhat awkwardly. "You know... For saving me."

A smirked formed on Taiga's lips. She thought that she should be given an acting award, but instead just said, "Does that mean we stop training for today?"

That statement earned a real grin from Naruto this time. "Fine, but just this once. However, you're gonna help me drag these corpses to the Hokage tower for investigation."

Later that night at approximately two o'clock in the morning, Taiga was still wide awake as she finished up her daily report to send to Akatsuki and Sasuke. She re-read the letter once more before heading out to meet Sai.

Hi everyone,

Things have been going well so far. The plan today went smoothly, I'm now training privately on stamina with Naruto every morning by running laps around Konoha. Naruto doesn't suspect a thing and just thinks that I saved his ass out there. Konoha hasn't been able to identify those two that Sasori sent, let alone figure out which village they're supposedly from. I suppose you guys had Kakuzu do some work on them with his stitches, huh? But anyway, I think that Naruto's beginning to trust me more now. He almost found out about the true extent of my jutsu, though, so I had to come up with a lie about how they were drenched in water and sweat from the forest to avoid arousing his suspicion. Sakura has been gullible as always, and Kakashi is barely around anyway. I still haven't bumped into Neji since I first met him like I said already. Other than that, nothing else worth noting happened today.

T.

Deciding the report was good enough, Taiga slipped out of her apartment discreetly. She travelled swiftly and silently, well hidden by the shadows along the streets of Konoha. She was heading to her daily meeting point with Sai. As she neared the designated area, she already sensed Sai's presence, though his form was completely hidden by the surrounding darkness.

Taiga didn't need to say anything as she arrived as Sai had sensed her presence too. The two shinobi never uttered a single word or made the slightest sound as they worked quietly. Sai took the report from Taiga and using his own special jutsu, re-wrote it, changed its form into a paper bird and sent it on its way. Taiga took back the letter; she would destroy it once she got back to her apartment. After exchanging a brief nod, Sai and Taiga went on their separate ways, leaving no traces of them meeting up.

If Taiga had to describe her relationship with Sai, she would say that he was probably the closest thing she had to a friend right now in Konoha. He was one of the two Konoha ninjas that knew where she really was from and what her purpose was. Sai was always friendly to her and found ways to help her out. He always met up every night with Taiga, faithfully keeping her secret and helping her with her job, and she was thankful for that. He seemed trustworthy, too, and Taiga felt that her secret was safe with him.

Before she knew it, Taiga was already back at her apartment. She blew up her report, leaving nothing of it but fine ashes and got ready to sleep.

She groaned as she thought of what Naruto would have in store for her stamina training the next day.

Thank you for reading! Don't forget to review. I love reviews(: