Sakura stood over by a tree, waiting for the fight to begin. Sasuke and Naruto had moved away from each other and were patiently waiting for the other to start. Sasuke knew he would run at him any second now, being the irrational person he is. Naruto knew it too.
He had to start it or else that would arouse even bigger questions. So, he made a substitution bunshin and sent it charging. It landed a few hits and so did Sasuke. After the fifth hit Sasuke made on the clone, it disappeared. Sasuke began looking around, confident that he had at least made a few hits.
However, Naruto had found over the years how to make his clones last longer in battle. He stood up on the branch he was on and tackled Sasuke, causing the two to roll. Naruto got in a few punches as they rolled down the hill. Sakura was running after them, she looked a bit worried.
Naruto and Sasuke continued to struggle to gain control of the other, getting in a few hits. They soon ran out of ground, though, and rolled off a cliff. Acting on instinct, Naruto grabbed Sasuke by the wrist, who gasped when he fell, and then stuck to the edge of the cliff with chakra. He also grabbed onto a tree root with his free hand.
Sasuke stared wide-eyed at Naruto and was about to speak when he pulled him up and...hugged him? Sasuke inwardly shuddered at the close contact. Naruto was now holding on to Sasuke's waist, while clinging to the side of a cliff.
Sakura, seeing them go over the edge, ran over, worry written clearly on her face. However, when she looked down at them, she laughed out loud. Naruto pulled himself up, still holding onto Sasuke.
"Ugh... thanks..." Sasuke muttered. "Yeah, no problem," Naruto said, rubbing the back of his head.
They looked over at Sakura who was still laughing. She pointed down over the cliff. Naruto and Sasuke peered over the edge and instantly paled. The cliff was only about 7 feet up.
"We shall never speak of this again," Sasuke said, eyeing a small puddle below.
"Agreed; at least we didn't get our feet wet?" Naruto offered. Sasuke shrugged. They both turned to glare at Sakura, who had stopped laughing. The two gave an 'if you breathe a word to anyone you're dead' glare. Sakura "eeped!" before holding up her hands in defense.
Sasuke and Naruto smirked at each other. "Well, that was certainly interesting..." 'Yeah, we already have minimal understanding! I'm going to get my best friend back!...' "Yeah, sure, a few more hugs oughtta do it!" That shut the fox up.
"Perhaps we should spar farther away from cliffs?" Naruto asked, smirking.
"Yeah," Sasuke said through a bit of a chuckle. Naruto smiled. Over the years he'd known Sasuke (before Orochimaru's surprise attack that killed him, that is), he'd found exactly how to piss him off and get him to laugh.
They went to a different location and began the sparring match anew. Naruto went easy on Sasuke, barely using any jutsus, and let it end in a tie.
After saying goodbye to his teammates, he began to head home. He figured that the only way he could get any decent practice was if he found a far away spot. He continued to walk until he bumped into a familiar face.
"Oh, hi Hinata!" Naruto said happily.
"U-um h-hi n-Naruto..." she said softly. Naruto smiled as Hinata blushed. 'I hope she gets her confidence up soon. The stuttering makes her hard to understand.'
"W-well I… umm, I-iruka... r-ramen... s-says you l-like?" Hinata stuttered out nervously. Naruto blinked, trying to get the information straight.
"Oh! Yeah! I like ramen!" Hinata shakily pointed at the ramen bar, then began to push her fingers together.
"Sure!" Naruto said happily.
When they got there, they took their seats and placed their order. They had a bit of conversation. Hinata soon had less of a stutter and wasn't blushing as much. After about an hour they decided to depart. Naruto paid the bill, much to Hinata's dismay. She was hoping to treat him as a thank you for the home-cooked food.
She knew she'd have to do something extra special to thank him and was thinking of ways to thank him as she ran home. Naruto trotted happily home, thinking of a place that he could train and not cause too much destruction.
The next morning Naruto awoke just before sunrise. He yawned, stretched, stood up, took a few steps, and smacked right into a wall. Naruto stood there for a few minuets before realizing what he had done. He let out a bit of a laugh before grabbing his clothes and taking a nice relaxing cold shower to wake him up.
After drying himself off, he got dressed, then began his breakfast. He made some toast and drank some water. After he was done with that he grabbed an apple to eat later, replaced the genjutsu, and then left to go train until the sun was almost directly overhead.
He went to a spot that wasn't too far from the bridge, but far enough away to not be detected. 'Kakashi said meet around 7, so that means that I have until 8:30 to train, considering my threat.'
Needless to say, the small area in which he cleared for himself to train was soon a large crater. He threw a kunai with an exploding tag on it at the last target and it blew up just as Naruto became too tired to stand. He fell backwards into the crater.
Unfortunately, Sasuke and Sakura arrived at the bridge just when they heard the final explosion. They turned to look in the direction it came from and saw a tree fall, as well as smoke. They both thought the worst and took off in the direction it came from.
They arrived just in time to see Naruto pull himself out of the crater. Sakura gasped at the destruction, while Sasuke gaped at it. Naruto saw them, sat up, and rubbed the back of his head. "Heh heh, oops..." he said solemnly before coughing up some dust.
"What the hell were you doing?" Sasuke asked in monotone.
"Training..." Naruto said sheepishly.
"Only you could cause that much destruction during training," Sakura stated.
"I think I used too much chakra when I punched that rock..." Naruto grinned.
"You definitely used too much chakra for punching a rock," she replied.
'I wonder if I'll ever be able to train without people hanging over me,' Naruto thought as he tried to stand but fell down again, his legs refusing to support him. Sasuke went to help Naruto hobble to the bridge.
"Why do you work yourself to exhaustion?" Sakura asked when the two came close to her. Naruto shrugged, too tired to answer.
"IDIOT!" she yelled, hitting him on the head, causing Sasuke to lose his grip, making Naruto fall to the ground. "I could lend you a tiny bit of my chakra so you could at least walk," the fox said. 'As long as that's all you give me...' Naruto thought to him. "Yeah, yeah... this is why I'm in control of 25 percent of all the chakra you have."
He heard Kyuubi snicker a bit as he felt a warm feeling wash over him. It reminded him of Tsunade's healing.
"You sick?" Sasuke asked when he felt the heat coming off of Naruto's body.
"No, why?" Naruto replied. Sasuke was about to say something when Sakura beat him to it.
"Naruto, the back of your shirt is really shredded." Naruto reached and rubbed his back.
"It's ripped from the collar to about half way down..." Sasuke said, letting go of Naruto's arm.
"Oh well, I'll see if I have anything to fix it when I get home." Naruto rubbed the back of his head nervously.
Naruto grabbed his orange jacket that was lying by a very lucky tree that was still standing nearby. He put it on over his tattered navy t-shirt. They walked in silence until they got to the bridge. Naruto sat on the railing, eating the apple he had brought.
An hour later Kakashi showed up. 'Wow, only an hour and a half late! That's actually a big improvement!' Naruto thought as he joined Sakura in yelling "YOU'RE LATE!"
"Yeah, sorry about that but... you see, there was this tree and it was stuck up in a cat and...wait. No. That's not right..." Kakashi said, rubbing his chin.
"Uh huh, right. If you're going to make an excuse, at least make it believable," Naruto said as he rolled his eyes.
"Yes... Well anyway, we have a full schedule of exciting D ranked missions" Kakashi said happily.
"Yay," Naruto said sarcastically.
Sasuke shot him a questioning glance before turning his attention back to Kakashi, who started to explain exactly what these "missions" entailed. Once he was done, he led the ever-so-excited genin to their first job, finding a cat.
They were given out earpieces so they could coordinate the plan better. They were shown a map of the forest, then given their positions and told to begin their sweep of the area. Naruto almost instantly caught the scent of the cat and followed it. About five minutes after beginning, Naruto had the cat. He happily announced to his team "Ha-ha! Told ya I'd find it first! He-OW!"
The three walked out to where Kakashi was waiting for them, Naruto holding the cat that was growling and scratching him to pieces. Naruto was angrily growling back.
Sakura finally took the cat after it got a few deep gouges on Naruto's face and bite marks on his hand. Sasuke raised an eyebrow at the way the cat seemed willing to do anything to kill Naruto.
"He doesn't like his owner that much," Naruto said when he felt the air of confusion.
When they returned the cat to its owner, she hugged the poor thing nearly to death. The next mission they had was to simply help pick the fruit trees. There were about 50 in all. Sakura started on an apple tree while Sasuke started picking peaches.
Naruto, however, lined up the remaining fruit baskets before making 47 clones. They were done in 30 minutes due to Naruto's "multitasking." They whizzed through all the missions and were done around two o'clock. They definitely surprised the Hokage at their fast work.
"We want to have a harder mission," Naruto stated. The Hokage sighed as Iruka started scolding Naruto. He was there handing the Hokage some paperwork when team 7 came in.
"You are genin, and rookies at that! You are still too under-experienced to handle anything more difficult," was the Hokage's reply.
"Hear me out, please, Hokage-sama!" Naruto said, causing Iruka to raise an eyebrow. The Hokage complied, knowing that not to would lead to a lot of arguing.
"I've seen enough D's and that's even before I was considered a ninja! Just take a look at my academy report card." Naruto mumbled before continuing.
"We are completing the D ranked missions quite quickly, and since we need to have missions all day, there might not be enough for all the others. We need a mission that will keep us occupied and challenge us so we can gain experience for even harder missions." The Hokage smiled while Iruka had to pick his jaw up off the floor. Sakura was wide eyed, as was Sasuke, having never heard Naruto speak and sound intelligent. Kakashi was giggling as he read his book.
"That actually sounded... not dumb!" Sasuke said, surprised.
"I'll take that as a complement," Naruto replied with a smirk.
"Well, alright then, you do bring up a good point. I'll give you a low level C mission, simple guard duty. You will guard the master bridge builder Tazuna on his way to Wave Country tomorrow." The Hokage called him in.
"Eh? These pint-sized brats are going to be the ones protecting me? There's an arrogant brat, a puffy princess, and a midget." Sakura began to fume and Sasuke's eye began to twitch at the comment; however, Naruto stayed surprisingly calm. Kakashi stepped forward.
"Yes, but I'm a jounin and I also will be accompanying you." The old man grunted as he took out a flask.
"And you're a drunk," Sasuke stated simply, causing Tazuna to blink.
"Ok, is everyone done being negative?" Naruto asked, grinning, causing every one to look at him, confused.
"Anyway, you will start tomorrow morning at 8 in the morning. Meet at the north gate," the Hokage said. Team 7 nodded.
"Pack only the essentials," he advised.
"Hey, Iruka?" Naruto asked before leaving.
"What is it, Naruto?"
"Could you look after my place while I'm gone?" Iruka nodded.
Naruto then did his Oiroke no jutsu. "Thanks again," he/she said, causing the two older men to fall backwards from massive nose bleeds. Naruto ran after his team laughing at his prank, knowing that his little "follower" was in the room.