And I finally stop dragging my feet and write another installment of Tales from Training! I'm pretty happy with how this is going so far, and can't wait to see where it takes me next!

Please feel free to check out my other stories, like Aches of Atrophy, where Sakura confronts Sasuke for the first time since he left the village, and Twin Freaks, a fluffy-type piece about Naruto and my personal favorite character from the filler arcs, Isaribi.

Tales from Training

Treeborn Dreamer

Chapter 3

There was a light rain in the air, and two figures hurried through it, side-by-side, as they came up on a large, almost-intimidating looking building, standing three stories tall. They came to a halt at the gate in the fence that surrounded the place, stamping their feet impatiently.

Without their saying anything, the gate swung open slowly, and they strode forward, jackets pulled above their heads, towards the tall, dark-stained wooden door. The shorter figure raised his hand to knock, but before his knuckles made contact, the door swung open of its own accord. They looked at each other and walked into the bright, warm indoors.

The foyer was huge and impressive; warm, bright, and shining, it featured a tall, spiraling staircase in the center of the room that lead to both of the upper floors, with tapestries hanging on the walls. The two took their jackets off and slid out of their shoes as a shock of blond hair appeared on the stairs, looking down at them from the third floor.

"Shikamaru! Ino! Great to see you make it!" They grinned and hung their jackets on the coat rack beside them as Naruto bounded down the stairs two or three at a time, grinning widely.

"The others are already by the fireplace getting dry, I just had to check out something upstairs really quick." He explained, growing impatient of the stairs and jumping down to the ground floor.

"Yeah, thanks for inviting us over the one day it rains all summer, Naruto." Shikamaru snarked, shaking his hand quickly. "Ino didn't stop complaining about her hair being wet the entire way." Ino stuck her tongue out at Shikamaru.

"Naruto, you have to show us around the place! It looks absolutely gorgeous!" She raved, gazing about the huge entry room. Naruto laughed.

"How about the rest join us? It's tiring enough going around once, it's not really fun to lead a tour of the place seven or eight times a day." Shikamaru and Ino nodded, and Naruto gestured them through the door to the left, where a small group of people, and one large dog, was relaxing on couches and in front of a huge fireplace.

"Hey Shikamaru!" Chouji smiled cheerfully from his seat on a large, fluffy couch. Kiba, Neji, Tenten, Lee and Sakura all nodded and voiced their greetings as well, and Shikamaru and Ino took a seat beside Akamaru in front of the fire. Naruto strode over to and sat in a slightly-overstuffed armchair.

"So we're still waiting on who, Naruto?"

"Just Hinata, Shino and Sai." Naruto remarked lazily, leaning back and closing his eyes. "Although they said that they wouldn't be able to make it until at least afternoon, so we may be waiting a while."

"Then tell us a story from training with Jiraiya!" Kiba piped up immediately, and the rest of the room added in their agreement. Naruto opened one eye and looked around the room, where most of his visitors were looking intently at him. He sighed and sat up.

"Alright, you all should like this one a lot...

It was December, Ero-sennin and I were stuck in a tiny town in Tsuchi no Kuni, and both of us were broke. To make a long story short, the old bastard had decided to take a 'sure bet' and put our entire wallets on it, and it didn't work out well at all. So we were hundreds of kilometers from our contact, out of money, and both of us were in disguise as to pass through Tsuchi no Kuni safely, as ero-sennin had made a lot of enemies here during the third shinobi world war.

Ero-sennin was disguised as a hunched-over old man, even older than he actually is, and I had transformed into, well, my usual transformation, pretending to be his grand-daughter. Again. We were both halfway frozen to death walking along this road when we came across a town, the first one we'd seen in nearly two days.

In case you guys don't know, Tsuchi no Kuni is nearly all stone and rock; you can go for days without seeing a single tree or bush, and whatever lakes there are, are always surrounded by towns. However, the roads are usually far away from what few rivers the country has, so that tourists will need to buy more water and supplies at the towns they come across. Pretty clever set-up, if you ask me.

Back on track, we'd exhausted our last scraps of food that morning, and both of us were overjoyed to see the smoke rising from the town; even if we had to sleep outside, we would still have some opportunity to make some money and buy more food somewhere.

Ero-sennin and I stroll in just as night falls, and the town is closed up; all the lights are out, shops and bars are closed.

"Naruko," he wheezes to me, as that's the name I go by when I've transformed into a girl, "around this time of year, there's a festival in most towns around here to celebrate the Shodai Tsuchikage's coronation. The night before, all people of the country shutter their windows out of respect, and a raucous party begins following a traditional ceremony in the morning. But we must obey the local customs at all costs, or we'll be put to death."

That night, we found an alley and slept in it, ero-sennin making a tiny fire with his ninjutsu so we could stay warm on the cold, stony ground. The next morning, I woke up around dawn and found ero-sennin and I surrounded by old women.

"Young lady, why aren't you at the temple getting ready?" They all scolded me in some way like that, and they dragged me out of the alley as a cavalcade of old men surrounded ero-sennin. They shuffled me off to the temple and threw me into a back room, where girls as young as twelve and as old as twenty were changing into ceremonial robes. Since I couldn't use any ninjutsu or it would blow my cover, I kept my eyes on my feet and changed into these long white robes and did up my hair in a bun, with the help of a very nosy kid who was about twelve.

She kept going on and on about how I wasn't from around here, and how I should feel honored to be a part of the ceremony, and I think if I hadn't been rescued by a girl about my age, I would have jumped off the nearest cliff and hoped for the sweet release of death.

I did, however, learn a bit about the ceremony before I had to do it. Turns out, the Shodai Tsuchikage had about nine daughters before he had his only son, and on his coronation day he chose his favorite daughter to coronate him. So, on the actual day, the men of the village dress in traditional kimono from Iwagakure, and one girl is chosen of all the girls of the town, and she draws the Iwa symbol on each forehead with dust. So going into this, I didn't think it would be too hard, just have to smear some dirt on some foreheads and then ero-sennin and I could make some money in the festival.

However, as we all filed into the temple, I learned something else. The eight other daughters of the Shodai, jealous of the chosen daughter's bragging, cut off all her hair at the end of the ceremony. The Shodai was so ashamed of his daughters' actions that he punished them harshly; eight of the daughters were made to stay in the temple for a month of silent meditation, while his chosen daughter, who was arrogant and boastful, was stripped naked and made to lead the parade through town, and the girls would be punished in the same way, in a tradition they called Kanashimi no Shodai.

"Naruto! You perv, you're making this up!" Sakura took a wild swing at Naruto, and he barely dodged the blow.

"I promise, Sakura, I'm not. Every single word of this is true!"

"His pulse has remained steady throughout the story. He is indeed being truthful." Neji intervened, coolly de-activating his Byakugan. "Besides, it's well known that Tsuchi no Kuni is old-fashioned with regard to the roles of men and women, respectively." Naruto nodded at Neji gratefully as Sakura settled down.

"Now, where was I..."

Well, ero-sennin had told me to obey the customs or die, and since I couldn't out myself as a Leaf ninja, I decided that I would take my chances on being one of the temple maids and sneak out during the night. However, as I look at the other girls and the rest of the town files in, I get the sinking feeling that I'm not going to be so lucky.

Finally, at the end of the line, ero-sennin walks in, in a badly-fitting kimono and with a bit of a sway in his step. He stands at the back, and the priest of the temple walks out, starting the ceremony with a long speech about the stony will of the Tsuchikage, all the boring crap that the old man used to lecture us with when we were in the Academy.

Finally, after what seems like forever, the priest cedes the ceremony to the town's leader, a man named Hiruzen who looked about twenty-five or so. He then talks about how his father carried out the tradition of the ceremony, the history of the country, and all this crap, until finally, he says he is going to choose the lucky girl to lead the ceremony.

He stalked up and down the line of girls, and, who would have guessed, stops for a long time in front of me. I see the pervert's eyes going up and down me, and I mentally swear to myself that I'm never using the sexy jutsu as a disguise again; after what happened in the bar, and now here, it wasn't worth it.

Of course, he announces that I will lead the ceremony, and I can see ero-sennin curse from the back of the temple; he knew as well as I did what that meant. If my hair is cut off like the daughter from history, my transformation will go with it, and we'll be outed, accused of being spies, and the entire country will start looking to kill us.

And so, I start drawing the stupid symbol on foreheads, over and over, for what seemed like hours, trying to come up with a plan to get out of there before I got exposed, in more ways than one.

Finally, the line is almost done, and ero-sennin leans in as I start drawing on his forehead. He whispers his plan as I draw, and I nod quietly as he leans back; it's almost show-time.

I finish the last dust drawing, take a step back, and bow to the temple. The other girls all start advancing on me, when there's a loud ruckus from the back of the room; ero-sennin has managed to knock over a statue of the Shodai Tsuchikage that was in the back of the temple, and everyone begins yelling at the "clumsy outsider" or something, and I spring into action by sprinting out the side door while mostly everyone was distracted.

I slammed the door behind me, quickly gathered my clothes from the side room, and ran out of the temple as the first people noticed I was gone. Thinking as fast as I could, I did another transformation into the first person that came to mind...

Knock! Knock! Knock! The three raps on the door brought everyone back to the present, and Naruto stood up.

"I'll go see who's at the door." he walked out of the room, and Kiba laughed, leaning back onto Akamaru.

"This has been kind of fun, hasn't it Neji?" Tenten asked, laying her head on Neji's shoulder. He smirked and put his arm around her.

"Yes, although I'm very interested to see who he transformed into to help get away." Sakura nodded, a smug smile sitting on her face.

"It's obvious, really. He's been hung up on me since we were in the Academy."

"No way, billboard brow!" Ino interjected, "He was running away, and that giant forehead of yours would cause too much wind resistance for him to make it." Shikamaru and Chouji snickered, and Sakura twitched from anger.

"Shut up, Ino-pig!"

"Make me!"

The two girls began arguing, and Shikamaru covered his ears and laid back into Akamaru, mumbling, "What a drag. I'm going to hear about this one for a while."

"Neji-kun, who do you think he transformed into?" Tenten whispered, her breath tickling his ear. "You're always such a good guesser..." She trailed off, batting her eyes.

"I have my suspicions, Tenten...chan." He whispered back, hesitant: he hated using pet-names in public.

At that point, Naruto re-entered the room followed closely by a soaked Hinata and Shino.

"Doesn't look like Sai is going to make it, he got called off on some mission with Yamato-sensei." Naruto remarked as Shikamaru and a newly-calmed Ino made room for Shino and Hinata by the roaring fire, and Akamaru yapped pleasantly as they settled in around him.

"Naruto, you never finished your story." Ino remarked plainly, and Naruto chuckled as he sat down.

"Oh yeah, I didn't. Well, to make a long story short, I transformed into a different girl and ran as fast as I could out of town, with ero-sennin and the entire town on my tail." Tenten narrowed her eyes.

"All that build-up and that's it? You're the worst storyteller ever, Naruto!" Naruto stuck his tongue out at her, then rescinded it as Neji stared him down.

"Fine, the long version. Well...

"Transform!" The transformation went flawlessly, as usual, and I was suddenly a completely different person than I had been; I had dark hair, was dressed in a hoodie, and had big, pale eyes.

I was running as fast as I could in the ridiculous shoes they made me wear, and I was about halfway through the town when I noticed a large plate of various foods that had been set out on a windowsill to cool while everyone was in the temple, and I helped myself as quickly as I could, stuffing as much food into my bag as I could before I had to bolt for fear of being caught in the act.

After a bit of ducking and weaving through various alleys in the town, I found ero-sennin just off the main road, and we made our way out of the town with a bit of food we'd managed to confiscate while running from the angry mob.

"And that's the end of that particular episode. We made our way deeper into Tsuchi no Kuni and met up with our contact, everything going smoothly." Naruto leaned back and smirked.

"Okay, that wasn't too shabby of a story, Naruto." Tenten smiled, then stood up and stretched. "You promised us a tour of the house though, didn't you?" The rest of the guests all nodded and stood up.

"I guess I did!" Naruto laughed and stood up too, stretching and grinning. "You all file out into the foyer, I'll put out this fire real quick and follow you out." One by one and two by two, the guests trotted out of the room, and as Naruto put out the fire and turned around, he found himself face-to-face with Hinata.

"Oh, hey Hinata."

"You t-transformed into me, N-naruto-kun. In your story." They were much closer than Naruto could ever remember being, and her eyes shined in the lingering light of the embers.

"Yeah, I did. You were the first thing I thought of to change into." Naruto smiled, and edged his way around Hinata, who had gone red in the face. "Now come on, I've got a lot of house to show and only an hour before it's time to eat." And he lead her out into the front room, smiling.