Disclaimer: I'm awesome, but I'm not Kishimoto-awesome.

Haku woke Naruto up in the early morning hours before dawn with a gentle set of nudges. All too happy to escape from his nightmares, the ramen-loving demon vessel opened his eyes and got up without so much as a single groan. Zabuza continued snoring, as he generally woke about an hour after his cohorts. As a result of the older man's sleeping habits, Naruto got ready quietly after Haku removed his bonds to keep him from escaping in the night.

Their breakfast consisted of a handful of nuts, but Naruto was used to the meager portions after two weeks. He ate it gratefully before Haku motioned for him to follow.

The two ninja covered about two miles on foot before finding a place Haku was satisfied with. The clearing in question was different from the ones he'd worked in before with the fact that most of the trees were dead and collapsing onto one another. Naruto's eyes flashed with curiosity. What did Haku have in mind?

"You said you wanted me to surprise you, didn't you, Naruto?" Haku asked, rummaging through the bag he had placed in his garb.

"You've got me guessing," the blonde admitted while situating himself on a log to watch his temporary teacher pull out the object his was looking for and approach him. A senbon needle rested in the feminine boy's hand.

"Have you ever used one of these?" he asked his blue-eyed hostage, who shook his head while perking up in interest. Haku couldn't help but admire Naruto's willingness to learn.

"They didn't really go over those at all in Konoha. We have kunai and shuriken, but those needle-things aren't used much."

Haku nodded knowingly and handed the needle to Naruto's outstretched hand. The jinchuuriki placed his fingers in various positions and rolled it. It wasn't that he wasn't familiar with the thing, but he had never been given one willingly. After he finished his inspection, he quirked an eyebrow at Haku.

"There are several reasons these needles are considered an unconventional weapon, Naruto-kun. For one thing, they aren't as easy to throw as kunai; go ahead and try. Your target is the stump over there." Haku instructed, pointing at a particularly sad piece of lumber.

Soon enough, the needle flew from Naruto's hand in the direction of his mark, but it bounced off the stump on impact, wood meeting wood. The Uzumaki scowled at this before turning to his companion.

"It doesn't do that when you toss it," Naruto remarked, though his words were not needed at all. Haku chuckled.

"Of course it doesn't. While an acupuncture needle isn't very sharp, it can be altered by the manner of a toss. Like most attacks, there's a trick to it."

Naruto scooped back up the needle and returned to his respective perch, where he waited for Haku's next words expectantly. While he had been hoping for another jutsu, being able to use his arm as a needle gatling was an appealing idea.

"When you toss a kunai, there is a very distinct center of gravity, right?" Haku asked, Naruto giving him a quick nod. "Needles have a much less notable one, so in order to gain velocity, you need to shoot at an angle where gravity helps you."

Haku jumped up on the log beside Naruto and jumped high into the air before throwing another senbon downwards at the stump, where it stuck in the wood, making a neat little hole. Naruto mimicked him, but all that was accomplished was a dent in the wood before the needle clattered to the ground as before.

"What, am I not throwing it hard enough?" Naruto asked, hurrying over to retrieve his practice weapon.

"Well, in a sense. You're holding it wrong." Haku corrected, demonstrating how a senbon was supposed to be fingered. Accustomed to his kunai, Naruto spent a few minutes just working on his hold. When he had that down, the toss was a cinch.

Haku stepped up his lesson after that point, showing Naruto the finer points of different types of tosses and used a mud-etched diagram to show the effective attack points on the human body. Naruto wasn't entirely surprised when the mist ninja made no less than 25 marks on the neck alone.

By the end of the day, Naruto was able to nail a twig dummy set up at about twelve meters away. Content with Naruto's progress, Haku ended the lesson with a few words of praise. They fell on deaf ears, however, since Naruto had lapsed back into scheming mode. While he wasn't going to attempt to escape today, as Zabuza would we ready and waiting for such an outburst, he would try to find SOME way of making contact with Konoha. How he was going to do that, he wasn't sure, but when he was allowed his usual timeslot of downtime, the boy dwelt on the idea.

At first, he thought of sending an etched leaf on a squirrel after tying on with a tough plant stem, but he deduced that would be a stupid idea. That didn't stop him from doing it, though. He was so desperate to get a hold of them anymore, he probably would have attempted the same thing on an aggressive bear.

The leaf was etched with a little stick, and he hoped the writing was legible.

The message simply read, "I'm still here-Naruto", but he didn't really have much more room than that. After he tethered the leaf to the unfortunate squirrel he had managed to nab, he set it free in a random direction, hoping it would reach someone who would recognize what it meant, and not some predator's belly.

The carrier-rodent was not devoured, thankfully. It scurried off into the distance, where it managed to defy all laws of probability and ended up on a peddler's wagon, where it's tail ended up being pinned by a small lucky cat statue. Now, while that on its own was a bizarre set of circumstances, the ones to follow were even stranger.

The peddler stopped ia small settlement between Konoha nad the land of waves, where he ended up freeing the squirrel and selling the lucky cat that had fallen on top of it to an elderly woman with an irritable attitude. The woman took notice of the squirrel in the cart and mentioned how silly it was for him to have dressed it, but if that was a ware he was looking to unload, she had a granddaughter in Konohagure that was looking for a pet.

While the peddler had been unaware of the creature's presence until his customer had pointed it out, he was unable to turn down an opportunity to make money and caged it under a collector's edition colander for the journey to his next stop, which was the ninja village in question.

The accident-prone squirrel spent the next two days under the kitchen accessory on the bumpy path, with the peddler feeding and giving it water intermittently.

Eventually, the wagon stopped in Konoha's market square, where the peddler quickly made himself a place. He set out his goods according to what they were, and kept the squirrel under the cage the colander served as.

Oddly enough, Sakura Haruno's mother had a strange urge to go shopping that morning. It wasn't unlike her to leave the house from time to time, but she honestly could not explain her compulsion to even herself when she left the house with her purse in hand.

The woman stepped through the market square, purchasing a few sweets and foodstuffs, but stopped dead in front of the peddler's blanket, which was being frequented by children who were trying to peek through a silver piece of kitchenware.

"What's in there?" she asked the man, who had stroked his long chin and informed her of the squirrel he was selling as a pet, promising it to be disease-free. While normally a woman like Mrs. Haruno wouldn't even consider buying an animal, her daughter came to mind.

Sakura had really been in the dumps lately, and a pet may have been just what the doctor ordered. So, Sakura's mother purchased the odd leaf-wearing squirrel and took it home in a cage she bought at another pet vendor who was stationed conveniently nearby and headed for home.

Author's note: BET YOU WEREN'T EXPECTING THAT!