Ello ello ello ello! and here I am alive and well! No I did not die. So many things were bombarding me at once it was hard to keep up! I had two projects thrust upon me and then a whole bunch of little annoying things in between and I barely had any time to get on the computer...(cries) sigh but unless anyone knows an anti-homework remedy I think the updates will be coming a little slower... die homework die.... stupid classes that give me.... (cough) anyway... On top of that my computer crashed – BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH BE DAMNED!!! Then there was the whole Internet mix up after I got my computer fixed (luckily that wasn't too bad considering I can post this from the school liberary...) err.... anyway... moving on...
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Naruto raced through the trees trying to get back to Sasuke and Kakashi as fast as he could. Jiraiya had a surprisingly calm response to the news he heard, although Naruto guessed it was mainly due to the fact that Tsunade threatened him. She had stayed back with him to try to come up with a plan of action to counter the Sound and Sand invasion. It would also prove for certain whether or not Orochimaru had been successfully killed or if he had found some way to survive. Knowing that snake, he had something up his sleeve. "Tenacious bastard..." he muttered as he jumped down into the clearing where he had left Sasuke in the care of Kakashi.
Naruto looked over to the two and simply raised a brow. He stared as he watched the spectacle set out before him. Sasuke walked into or rather fell on a string that triggered a trap witch of course hit Sasuke square in the back of the head. The item exploded and bathed the dark haired nin in a white cloud for a few seconds. When it cleared, Naruto swallowed a laugh as Sasuke scowled and began walking again. "Flour? You're hitting him with flour? I thought you were going to train him?" Naruto said as he came over to Kakashi while keeping a wary eye on the white powdered Sasuke.
"I am training him! The strings are laced with chakra so he has to try to sense them. Some are harder to sense than others, but if he breaks a wire...well you saw." Kakashi finished happily, only momentarily looking up from his book.
"How long have you been doing this?" Naruto asked watching Sasuke run into another trap. Sasuke ducked as another flower bomb came his way and smirked.
"Oh, not too long. It'll be a full five minutes soon." Kakashi replied with an eye smile. Sasuke tripped another wire, setting loose another sack of powder. Sasuke let out a frustrated yell as he stomped towards a tree.
"You just wanted to read your book instead of fighting him...." Naruto half mumbled. the silver hared Jounin made a innocent face never looking up from the book.
A whooshing noise was heard and Naruto and Kakashi looked up towards its source. Sasuke had gotten fed up with Kakashi's obstacle course and burned everything in the field within a ten meter radius. "Guess he gives up..." Kakashi said with a smile. Naruto sweat-dropped and went over to stomp on the nearest lingering flame to put it out. "He has to learn that there's more to power then just brute strength...." Kakashi sighed as he threw something towards Sasuke. Sasuke caught it and smirked.
"Well, at least he's improving" Naruto said with a half hearted smile.
"Slowly but surely" Kakashi said as he threw a wooden kuni at Sasuke. Sasuke ducked out of the way and gave a satisfied grunt. "But, since you're back, he's all yours!" Kakashi said with an eye smile and a wave.
"OK then so any suggestions?" Naruto asked as Sasuke walked over trying to act like he knew where he was going.
"Yeah... you might want to put your pant leg out... I think you may have caught fire..." Kakashi said as he poofed away.
Naruto blinked and looked down, his pant leg was smoldering. He quickly got rid of the glowing embers then turned to Sasuke who was standing smugly by a slightly singed tree holding a wooden Kunai. "So where'd you run off to, dobe?" he asked as Naruto approached.
"Ah... there was a ramen sale that was only on from noon to five..." Naruto lied.
"Figures..." Sasuke grunted as he launched himself at Naruto. Naruto sidestepped but Sasuke turned and attacked. Naruto smirked as he jumped back and made a dozen shadow clones. Sasuke attacked the nearest one making it disappear into oblivion. Naruto had all his clones suppress their chakra signatures until Sasuke seemed barely able to sense them.
Suddenly, Sasuke turned away from the clones and threw a kunai into the woods at a slightly stronger chakra serge. A clang was heard as a sound nin came out. The nin sneered at Sasuke as two more sound nin came out from the brush. The first nin looked tall but was somewhat malnourished looking at how thin he was. He had greasy slicked hair and his face was covered. The other two looked similar to the first, except they looked a little more filled out. The second was shorter with brown hair while the third had flame red hair. The first one spoke his voice was raspy and low but was full of malice "Well well well, look what we came upon here..." he spoke slowly letting the venom drip from each word.
"Seems we could thin out the competition." The brown haired one said with a sneer.
Sasuke took a few paces back and stood beside Naruto. "Um I think you might want to take the blind fold off for this." Naruto whispered to Sasuke who nodded and removed the cloth. Sasuke blinked a few times letting his eyes adjust to the sun. He glared at the opposing nin through his sun blindness. "I'd just like to see you try!" Naruto yelled and launched his clones into battle. The sound nin countered the shadow clones easily and the three split up. Naruto and Sasuke each went to the closest enemy.
"I thought Kakashi said there was going to be a punishment if I took it off..." Sasuke mumbled as he slashed his kunai across the red haired enemy's shoulder, his eyes finally adjusting. As the red haired nin jumped away Sasuke figured out what said punishment was. He twitched his brow and brought his hands together "Release! Oh God please release!" He yelled. The red haired nin watched confused at what the Uchiha was doing, letting his guard down and giving a Naruto clone an opportunity to knock him out.
Sasuke looked to the clone shuddered, blinked a few times then activated his sharingon. "Oh thank – gaaakkk!!!" He was punched in the stomach by the greasy black haired sound nin. Naruto finished off the brown haired nin and rushed over to help Sasuke. Naruto slashed at the black haired nin giving him a cut across his cheek. The nin glared at the two before growling at his situation catching sight of his fallen comrades "hmm perhaps it would be wise to make a tactical retreat..." the nins voice was sour but still dripping in malace as he picked up his buddies and walked away.
Sasuke took a deep breath and looked to Naruto. "That'll teach them." Sasuke said with a satisfied scoff.
Naruto stared at the spot where the greasy black haired nin had disappeared 'Theres something about that one....' "Yeah, they shouldn't come back to fight any more of us." He said as happily as he could muster. Naruto turned back to Sasuke and raised a brow. "The fights over, you can get rid of the Sharingan...."
"No... no I can't." Sasuke interrupted. "Kakashi put a strong genjutsu on that blindfold I can only see through it with the Sharingan." Sasuke looked around for the accused piece of cloth.
"and?" Naruto said trying not to laugh at the face Sasuke made as he stared at the blindfold.
"Nude...." Sasuke said the single word with a large shudder. He quickly tied the blindfold back on and sighed. "Never thought I'd be happy to be blind..."
Naruto suppressed a laugh. "Who would have guessed that his ultimate weakness would be nakedness?" The fox laughed, causing Naruto to laugh as well. Sasuke tried to suppress a blush.
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The moon was high overhead when Naruto and Sasuke decided to call it quits. Naruto had tried to play a game of hide and seek... unfortunately that only resulted in a small part of the forest being burnt to a crisp, leaving Naruto to lecture about how a person can't just burn all his problems. Generally, Sasuke had made some great improvements. The two had gone their separate ways by now, but Naruto had wanted some time to practice his own jutsus.
He found a deserted spot in one of the training grounds and decided it would be a good time to try the body flicker technique he was taught back in the forest of death. He smiled at the memory and built up his energy. When he felt the optimal amount, he took off. It looked to him like he was running although he only took a few steps. Everything was a blur around him, making it hard to distinguish what was what.
And thus smacked into a tree.
The hidden onlooker watched in amazement as Naruto was there one second, and gone the next in a quick flash of yellow and orange. A thump was heard revealing Naruto's new location and position on his back. Leaves shuddered down from the impact, some landing on Naruto's now red face. The onlooker jumped down from hiding just as Naruto tried to do the jutsu again. "Ahh! Watch it brat!"
"Tsunade? What are you doing here?" Naruto looked down at the woman he had toppled over. She stood up, taking Naruto by the back of his collar.
"How...Where did you learn to do that?!" she half yelled to the dangling teen.
"Well... err.. Kyuubi brought me to the border of life and death and I met my parents and my dad taught me how to do it!" Naruto answered happily.
"You met the fourth Hokage...." Tsunade's eye brow twitched. Naruto nodded. "AND YOU DIDN'T ASK HIM HOW HE GOT OUT OF THE HOKAGE PAPER WORK?!!!" she screamed leaving Naruto to cover his ears.
Naruto's ears were throbbing and the sanin was fuming. "Heh heh, well, he told me so I didn't need to ask..." Naruto said nervously. Tsunade glared at him her eyes portraying a warning that he had better start talking... "he said that he would assign them as missions ones with greater importance were A or S ranked so on and so on..." Naruto was dropped to the ground.
"Can't believe I didn't do that..." she mumbled somewhat angrily. "Well that's not what I've come to get you for. Come on." She ran off, leaving a stunned Naruto to only follow.
Soon they came to their destination. Naruto looked up at the Konoha wall. Jiraiya was on top of it, seemingly inspecting it. Naruto followed Tsunade up and stood with the perverted sanin. "That should do it." He said with a sigh.
Naruto looked down at the symbol painted along the top of the wall. "So what's it do?"
"It should cut down on entry points." Jiraiya answered. "It's to reinforce the wall so it will be harder to break down. Hopefully this will help slow them down or redirect them to weaker points." he said as he set the seal. It glowed bright blue for a few seconds then dimmed away and went out of sight.
"We were thinking if we reinforce the whole wall except for a few slots nearest the arena. If we could redirect the enemy there it wouldn't take as long to respond because the majority of our ninja would already be there." Tsunade said.
"It's not fool proof but it will provide extra protection." Naruto agreed.
Jiraiya handed him the seal layout as well as some ink and a brush. "Go along this wall and paint as many as these things as you can. Connect them with this symbol." He pointed to a separate symbol from the central array. "I'm sure you know how to set them right?" Naruto nodded "Okay, let's go. I have asked the Hokage to set some ANBU around to help so we should have this whole wall done by tonight."
Naruto nodded and took off along the wall until he felt a place that didn't yet have a reinforcement seal placed on it. He quickly got to work, sighing. "It's going to be a long night."
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And there's chapter 25! sorry it took so long but between projects and my computer crashing I couldn't exactly do anything... sigh... anyway, to make up for it I put a small omake below so have fun reading it! I know it's not much but hey I'm trying (cries)
Death glare: by Kimcat
Hyuuga Hinata was walking through her compound looking around. She was on a self appointed mission and she had to do her best to succeed in it. She listened to the sound of clanging metal and realized where her target was. She raced towards the training grounds and saw her father with her cousin Neji. Her eyes locked to the younger male waiting for her opportunity. When her father told Neji that he was done for the day she tensed. Once the man was gone she pounced... or rather ran out and half tackled Neji to the ground.
Neji stood up and scowled at the younger Hyuuga "What?" he snapped.
"I... I...want you to teach me how to do the H-hyuuga d-death glare!" she yelled out quickly with as much confidence as she could muster.
Neji was taken back obviously not expecting the question. "Very well then. it's good to see your actually taking more interest in our clans techniques" Neji walked over to a nearby black board and began to teach. He drew a few quick sketches of proper posture and proper eye form. Within an hour Hinata had gotten it down. She had done what Neji had told her to and glared into a mirror. She gave herself chills she never thought she could master the look. Even Neji had agreed that it could give people chills. Although she was pretty sure he was only saying that so he could be free of her.
As she went to bed that night only one thought crossed her mind. 'Next time I'm out with Naruto-kun, I'll really give all those people something to look at.' She couldn't help but feel a little smug at the thought of the villagers backing down from her new power.
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And there you have it hope you enjoyed it! And again, I'm sorry for the delay! So long! Until we meet again! toodle loo! (throws smoke bomb and sneaks out back door)
THANKS HELKAT FOR EDITING!!!
Helkat:
Meow! I'm not sure, but in Japanese, would the plural of 'jutsu' be 'jutsus' or would it not have an 's'?