Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine, and I don't know how many times I have to reinforce this.

"Naruto," Kakashi said for what must have been the fourth time in the past three minutes, "go back to the house and rest. " The jonin's fingers drummed restlessly on his elbows in an irritated rhythm. However lively Naruto appeared to be, the bandages on his mid-riff spoke for themselves in a fresh red splotch. It was small as of yet, but the last thing the teacher needed was for his charge to re-open the wound.

"…now." the Hatake amended, not sounding as intimidating as he had intended.

"No!" the blonde argued, standing his ground with a Sakura-induced lump on his head. A breeze graced the clearing, making the empass more dramatic than it should have been. Naruto Uzumaki bit down on his lower lip. For reasons involving the vitality of meeting with Haku, Naruto couldn't obey his teacher's orders. Not that he'd want to, anyway. The wound that caused him such an amount of trouble was only a third of what is was the evening prior. Besides, he NEEDED to pass out for this plan to work.

Naruto took great care to be annoying. If he endeared his teammates in the next few minutes, it would be dangerous to the chain of events that were needed for Naruto's quest for less bloodshed. He would fight with Sasuke, climb the tree with his chakra and prove them all wrong and THEN allow the lethargy he had so skillfully fought off take him. If his team was irritated enough, they would leave him there for Haku to find.

"Naruto, go back to bed!" Sakura scolded, joined by a nod of agreement for his royal highness, Sasuke.

"No freaking way!" Naruto yelled, pointing at his Uchiha rival accusingly, "I can do whatever he's doing with my hands tied!"

Sakura's face began to contort into a snarl. Sasuke looked like he'd just eaten something highly unpleasant, and Kakashi was forced into an exasperated sigh that Naruto was quite accustomed to.

"Fine, Naruto, but after you see it, it's back to bed with you." he conceded, speaking as if Naruto were less than five years old and asking to observe a lunar eclipse past his bedtime.

"Deal." Naruto held out his hand to shake on it, and was promptly ignored by the gray-haired shinobi who point at a tree. After a split second, his index finger wandered to a more specific focal point. A kunai was lodged in the bark fairly high in the air. With no small amount of satisfaction, Naruto noted that Sasuke's elevation markings were nowhere near the objective yet.

"Sasuke is climbing this tree by focusing chakra in his feet. If he uses too little, he won't be able to climb it, and if he uses too much, he'll be propelled off the tree, and…," the adult trailed off to the sound of Sakura shrieking at Naruto irritably.

"Naruto! He said you could SEE it! Get down from there!" the pink-haired adolescent shouted, just two feet to the right of a very unhappy Sasuke. The look on their faces were almost as entertaining to Naruto as the results of what would later be affectionately referred to as the 'Nutcase' incident. From his position on the tree, he regarded his comrade with a triumphant grin.

"…Naruto, when did you get up there?" the teacher asked calmly, fairly certain that the boy had cheated in some way.

"While you were talking, Kakashi-sensei." the smiling youth replied, eyeing his pointy objective.

"…Did you know it's rude to leave when someone's speaking to you?" the jonin asked again, masking his surprise at Naruto's abilities with his odd way of speaking.

Ignoring his instructor, Naruto plucked the kunai from it's lofty pirch and beamed at his accomplishment.

"So, should I leave it here for Sasuke-teme or take it down?" he asked mischievously, aware that the horizontal position of his body was putting some strain on his injury. Before anyone had a chance to react, the Uzumaki boy put a hand to his ear.

"What's that, teme? Lodge it up higher? Whatever you say, Sasuke-hime."

Sasuke had taken more than he could handle of Naruto's antics at that point. Between the fact that the blonde, though injured, could still do a task a Uchiha was struggling with like it was nothing was bad enough. With the 'princess' remark added to the current friction between the two, Sasuke did the only thing he could think of. With wild eyes, the young avenger charged the tree. The dobe would pay for injuring his pride.

To Naruto's unending amusement, Sasuke failed to get even ten feet the first two times. On the third go, however, Sasuke doubled the summit of his climb before being propelled off in his anger. Kakashi, in a rare display of wisdom, attempted to stop his black-haired student from attempting the stunt again only to be violently batted away.

Sasuke charged up the tree's trunk a fourth time, eyes trained on Naruto like a hawk on a mouse. Below him, he could hear Sakura's cheers for his progress. Kakashi, on the other hand, eyed the entire ordeal with distaste. His visible eye frowned, and the hand that had tried to put a stop to Sasuke's rage slipped into a pocket in a thoughtful manner.

"You…!" Sasuke snarled, finding himself closer to Naruto with every elapsed second.

Naruto was running out of tree to climb. He had anticipated Sasuke's outburst, but he hadn't expected the sour-faced Uchiha to actually succeed in pursuing him. Perhaps the three had been training longer than he thought.

With Sasuke less than a meter below him, Naruto had to act quickly. In a calculated and very taxing move, the jinchuuriki leapt from his verdant perch to a neighboring tree, where he grappled the branches like his life depended on it. Unfortunately, Sasuke had no trouble following his quarry. A quick glance behind him told Naruto that if he didn't do something fast, his livid rival was going to teach him the meaning of 'friendly fire'.

Having next to no stamina left, and needing to preserve his chakra reserves for recovery, Naruto's course of action wasn't hard to decide on. With a parting insult to Sasuke's masculinity, Naruto stopped pushing off his exhaustion. It overtook him like a vertigo, dimming his perception almost instantly. Without any fear of the ground below him, Naruto sauntered off of the tree's branches and nearly dropped a considerable distance. Thankfully, Sasuke's anger had subsided when Naruto was in immediate peril, and instead of causing the loud-mouthed son of the yondaime grievous bodily harm, the young Uchiha prevented it by catching Naruto's arm.

Within the span of three minutes, Naruto was laid gently across the forest floor, where he occasionally snorted in his deep slumber. Sasuke was in a less comfortable position, Kakashi sternly looking into his face.

"What was that?" the teacher asked, his voice unnervingly serious. Sasuke looked away from his sensei with his lips in a tight line.

"What?" he asked, uninterested in explaining himself.

"You tried to assault a teammate for a simple comment, Sasuke." Kakashi reminded, noting that Sakura was looking more uncomfortable by the second.

"So? I didn't hurt him." Sasuke muttered darkly, earning an even more intense stare from the former ANBU operative.

"You stopped me from restraining you. You disobeyed me in a way that could have been potentially fatal in the field of duty. That is not the way a true shinobi acts."

"So, you're comparing me to Naruto now? Are you saying a 'true' shinobi baits everyone else and generally make an ass of themselves?" Sasuke's face twisted again, but Kakashi was unshaken.

"I never compared you to Naruto, Sasuke," the jonin replied, still standing with as much authority as he could muster.

Sasuke's face remained spiteful, but nothing more was said.

"Um… Should we take Naruto back with us?" Sakura broke into the tense atmosphere, causing Kakashi to shrug, exposing a Sasuke who was suddenly enamored by the dirt.

"Nah. I think this is the only way to get him to rest, anyway."

"You're a bad person, Sensei."

Author's note: Do you love me? Eh? If you don't, that's fine. I have a wii over here.