The Hidden Countries;

Chapter Eight

Mornings were never Rose's thing. She hated the very principle of daylight. Maybe it was because the Dursleys had always made sure that she awoke early in the morning, and everywhere else she needn't bother with it.

Who knew? All that Rose knew was that she hated mornings. They were the bane of all evil. Rose sighed and closed her eyes.

"Rose-Sama? It's your turn."

Rose re-opened her eyes to the chess game that she was playing with Haku. Rose hated chess to, mainly because she sucked at it – or maybe because Haku was beating her really badly. It made Rose feel better to think that Haku had Ron's help.

Rose moved her pawn forward only to have it taken down instantly with Haku's castle. It was an annoying game. Suddenly there was a knock on the door.

Rose stood up to go and answer said knock but Ron waved her off. "I'll get it, keep playing."

Ron usually hated to do things... Unless it served to annoy her. Rose watched with little interest randomly moving her pieces around. Ron went to the door, opened the door and got a dumb look on his face and blurted out, "I like your hair."

Rose looked at Haku and Haku looked at Rose at exactly the same time. Rose moved her Queen and then Haku moved into check mate. Rose had lost... again.

"Hellooo! My name is Masahri Anko! I'm here to take Haku and train him in the ways, which I see fit!" A taller woman with purple hair burst into the room smiling wildly, she was only dressed in a trench coat. "Now, which one of you is Haku?"

Haku blinked and raised his hand slowly. "Great! You can call me Anko-Sensei! Now let's get to the training part!"

"Excuse me," Hermione interrupted the loud woman. "We were wondering if we could come and watch?"

Anko blinked and looked at the three teenagers, she grinned widely at Ron. "No problem, don't care. It's not my fault if you die though!"

"Lovely," Rose muttered under her breath.

~&*%~

Rose watched as Haku narrowly dodged an incoming barrage of Kunai. This was intense; Rose now knew what Anko had said about it not being her fault if they died.

As it was, Rose wasn't coming back to Haku's training sessions. To start with – Rose didn't have a death wish.

It was right then that Anko called a ten minute break, and Haku collapsed on the ground gasping for breath. Ron and Hermione were instantly by his side. Rose walked over to where Anko was standing.

"I was wondering... How does this help him summon snakes?" Rose asked when she came to a stop next to the purple-haired woman.

Anko laughed. "Summoning is only for the strongest ninja! It isn't as easy as you seem to think."

Rose did her best to not be offended by the statement. "What level do you have to be at exactly?" Rose pressed, wanting to know all the details.

Anko gave her a sharp look, and Rose realised that she might have to be a bit more careful. "It depends."

Rose thought about that for a minute. "How long is it going to take Haku to get to the summoning part?"

Anko started to walk away from Rose but she called over her shoulder. "I'm not sure, a while. Come on Haku! Fight me!"

With that Anko threw a punch at Haku's face and Haku berley dodged out of the way again. Rose wondered how long this was going to take.

Rose was alright with waiting a little while, but this no set time thing was going to get on her nerves. Rose sighed; hopefully everything would work out.

~%&~&^~&^~

Rose paused to think about what she wanted to eat. Ramen sounded like something that would be nice. She'd have to thank Naruto later for introducing her to the stuff.

"Salt Ramen?" Rose asked from the waitress.

"We'll have Pork," Hermione said gesturing to herself and Ron.

Ron sighed.

"Coming right up!" The young waitress said walking away happily.

"It's going to take awhile," Rose concluded. "Longer than what we had planned anyway."

Hermione nodded her head. "We can't exactly rush anything; we have to wait it out."

"We can't just wait it out Hermione!" Ron said.

"Well," Hermione began haughtily. "Do you see any other option here?"

Ron's shoulders slumped and the waitress walked towards their table balancing three bowls of noddles on her arm, setting them down in front of all of them.

"Thanks," Rose said to the girl, as Ron and Hermione glared at each other.

"Dean's gone, who knows who's going to be next?" Rose added in agreement with what Ron was saying. "But, Hermione's right too... There's nothing we can do, except wait for Haku."

Ron sighed. "Who's going to be next because we were waiting for some kid to summon a snake? Why can't we just get Anko to do it?"

Hermione sighed and Rose dug into the haven that washer food. "Because Ron, don't you think it wouldn't be at all suspicious?"

Ron shrugged his shoulders. "It would be faster."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at Ron. Rose could feel another one of their legendary fight's coming on. "Oh, and what would we tell her, hmm? Summon this snake because I want to kill it!"

Ron opened his mouth to argue but Rose cut him off. "No, we wait for Haku to finish. It makes everything easier."

The two other teens fell silent. Rose took this to mean that they were both going with what Rose said.

Rose didn't want to have to wait, no, she wanted Voldemort gone right now but that couldn't happen. Anyway she had promised Haku that they would stay until he was comfortable, what was another week or two when they most likely already wasted months?

~#~$~%^~&~~(~

Rose never liked shopping, thinking back – there really wasn't many things that she did like that the Dursleys made her do. But, Haku's house needed food, and they needed food.

So that meant that Rose and Hermione would go food shopping whilst Haku and Ron stayed behind playing the evil game known as chess. It would slightly troublesome.

It took Rose and Hermione just over an hour and stopping to ask for directions twice before they found something that resembled a supermarket. Walking though the door, Hermione grabbed one of the trolleys, and they were on their way.

To start off with they brought all the basic things they needed like milk, bread and cereal, but after that they were both at a loss. The reason why? Neither of them knew what half of the food the shop held was.

"Ah, Hermione? You didn't by any chance find an unusual interest in finding out about other culture's foods did you?" Rose asked with a small smile.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "You're lucky I even found an interest in other languages."

Rose huffed in annoyance. "Well, we could just wing it to see what tastes nice?"

Before Hermione could respond, Rose felt something bowl into her side. Rose looked down to see a ball of yellow and orange. "Rose-Chan!"

Rose grinned. "Hey Naruto! What are you doing here?"

Naruto let go of Rose with a huge sunny grin. "We got a mission buying food for this old man. I'm getting eggs because Sakura-Chan told me too. But then I-!"

Rose patted Naruto on the head as he jabbered on about who knows what. Rose and Hermione shared an amused look.

"Naruto?! Where are you, Naruto!?" A very loud female voice yelled.

Naruto gulped and cut his chatter – something about the benefits of Ramen over normal noodles. "Ah oh... Sakura-Chan's being scary again."

Rose and Hermione both laughed at the description of his female teammate. "She's not that scary," Rose whispered to Naruto. Hermione snorted with laughter.

Sakura turned around the corner, with the rest of her team behind her. Sasuke looked bored and Kakashi? Well he was reading a small orange book.

"Rose-San! Hermione-san!" Sakura greeted cheerfully, causing Kakashi to look up and put the book away. Rose did wonder what was in that book, he would never tell her...

"Hey Sakura! How are you?" Rose said cheerfully, her day just getting that little bit better.

"Good, Rose-San! What are you doing here?" Sakura asked.

"Shopping," Hermione answered with a hint of humour. The three ninja had now fully made their way over to Rose and Hermione and their bundle of food.

Sakura smiled at them cheerfully. "Did you get the eggs... Dobe," Sasuke asked in a dry voice.

Naruto went slightly red, but before he could yell, Rose put her hand over his mouth to muffle the sound. She got many looks of gratitude.

"Because we're here together, Rose-San, do you want to shop together?" Sakura asked again.

Rose ginned but Hermione was the one who answered. "Of course we would," Then in a quieter voice she added, "Then maybe we would know what we're buying."

Rose snickered. This began the shopping trip with team 7 and Rose and Hermione.

It was slightly exhausting for Rose to watch Naruto dart around the shopping centre trying to find everything, mainly because that's exactly what she did too. Sue her, it looked like fun.

Every once in a while Rose would stop to stare at some name of a food in confusion, it was really confusing for the young Potter. And almost every time, Kakashi explained just what everything was, and if it was any good – in his opinion.

To say the least Rose was trusting Kakashi's opinion on food at the moment. In the end, Rose and Hermione had gotten their food, and Team 7 had completed their mission.

!~ ~~

Rose walked down another lane way to find herself right back where she started. Completely lost. Rose didn't really know what had possessed her to get out of the apartment, she was really bored.

Now she was lost with no idea where she was... Rose would have asked for directions but she always got these really odd looks, plus, she was terrible with directions. Boredom at it finest...

Rose sighed, as she decided to walk north was the best option. And after about five minutes of walking Rose realised why it was a good option. On the roof of some house, Kakashi sat, not reading his small book for once but she staring out at the darkening sky.

Rose only wondered whose roof he was sitting on.

"Hey Kakashi!" Rose called to him. Kakashi's head snapped to Rose, before he stood off and gracefully jumped of the house.

Rose blinked. "How do you do that?"

Kakashi smiled behind his mask. "I'm a ninja."

Rose's lips twitched. "Oh, really? I hadn't noticed..."

Kakashi scratched his check slowly. "Well, you're unusually unobservant then."

Rose snorted. "Yeah, I've been told that before..."

Kakashi shook his head, amusement clearly show in his only visible eye. "What are you doing here, Rose? Aren't you staying down off main?"

Rose's face fell slightly. "Well, you see, I'm kind of... lost?"

Kakashi chuckled at Rose, causing her to glare at him. "It's not funny, people get lost all the time, you know."

Kakashi just waved her off. "I'll show you the way back."

Rose nodded her head. "Thank you."

Kakashi and Rose began to walk, to where Rose assumed – was Haku's apartment.

"So," Rose began. "What were you doing, just staring at the sky?"

Kakashi nodded his head. "Something like that."

Rose paused for a minute. Kakashi was so open about being carefree and happy, but yet he was the most guarded person that she knew. Maybe it was because he was a ninja, maybe it was because he viewed himself as something to be gotten rid of the second that he had passed his usefulness.

Maybe, it was just how he was. But, Rose had never been more determined to get to know someone. The first step of course would be learning about him, getting him to open up – spending more time with him.

Of course to Rose, this didn't sound too bad. Kakashi was an interesting person, and she wouldn't mind becoming friends with him.

"Are you hungry?" Rose blurted out, the first thing she could think of to 'spend more time with him'.

Kakashi merely shrugged his shoulders. Rose grinned. "I think we should get an early dinner... I've wanted to try BBQ for awhile, but Hermione always says no."

"Alright," Kakashi said in an uncaring tone.

"Do you know anywhere to get BBQ?" Rose asked.

Kakashi nodded his head. "This way," he said as they made a sharp turn right.

Rose bit her lip again but didn't say anything until they got to the food place. It looked different from anywhere she had been before. After they were seated and Kakashi had ordered, (Rose still had no idea what anything was), Rose was determined to start a conversation again.

"What's your favourite colour?" Rose asked the first thing that popped into her mind.

"Hmm?"

"Your favourite colour, mine's red," Rose explained.

Kakashi blinked and stared blankly at Rose for a few minutes before quickly saying, "Green... What's the point in this?"

Rose shrugged her shoulders, feeling slightly embarrassed. "Best way to get to know someone," she said as her way of explaining.

Kakashi nodded his head sagely before turning to look out a window.

"Ah... How about... Your favourite food?"

Kakashi seemed to think this over, and seeing no harm in answering he replied. "Miso soup with eggplant. How about you, Rose?"

Rose blinked and thought on it for a minute, it was treacle tart, but he wouldn't know what that was... Well, she didn't know what miso soup was... "Treacle Tart."

Kakashi blinked. "Never heard of it."

Rose grinned happily. "I didn't think you would have... It's a-mazing!..."

Rose trailed off when she realised that the food in front of them had finished cooking. Rose began to eat straight away, looking down at her food. When she was finished she glanced over at Kakashi to realise that he had eaten faster than her... and he was still wearing that cursed mask.

"How'd you do that?"

"Do what?" Kakashi asked, uninterested.

"Eat like that, how fast!?" Rose said slightly in awe.

Kakashi smiled. "I'm a ninja."

"So you've said," Rose muttered under her breath. "Anyway, if you weren't a ninja... but a magical being... what would you be?"

Kakashi paused. "Like a.. werewolf or something, you mean?"

Rose nodded her head. "I think I'd be a vampire. They sound cool."

Kakashi nodded. "I'd be a witch."

Rose snorted on her laughter, and practically broke down. Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "Witches are girls, wizards are boys."

Kakashi shrugged. "Well, considering they have green skin and black cats..."

Rose's eye twitched. She did not have green skin and she did not own a cat. "How rude..."

"Hmm?"

"Nothing," Rose said quickly, before asking him another menial question this time about super powers. The next few hours stayed the same as this, Rose and Kakashi playing a random game of twenty questions.

By the time that they left the food place, Kakashi was asking questions as well. Rose had found out that Kakashi, was an alright person.

Kakashi had figured Rose completely out, and he wasn't sure if he should keep her at arm's length. Of course she amused him to a degree, but everyone he got close to died. Did he want to sentence Rose to death?