Sasuke got up at dawn to tackle the tree again, determined to get it right. Somehow, he had fallen behind even Sakura in this, despite the fact that it seemed to be a most basic ninja skill considering the number of odd places he'd seen ninja get scolded for standing in and walking across over the years. Oddly enough, like most people, he'd barely noticed it, took it for granted, and never gave exactly how his relatives and the other ninja of the village had been able to run up the sides of buildings and such a second thought. Until now, when it was his turn to do the same, that was.
The pink haired Haruno girl had swiftly discovered the secret to the technique, which was much harder than it looked, and had gotten all the way to the top of this very tree that he was attempting to climb on her first try. He however could only barely make it half-way up the tree before his Chakra either spiked or dipped, and he either slipped or was blown off as Shimura had warned him would happen. Both Sakura and the Uzumaki had tried to give him pointers but he'd shrugged them off, determined to make it on his own.
He would prove that he could do this without their help, especially without the Uzumaki's. He needed to grow stronger, and he couldn't do that if people were constantly helping him, and not letting him learn how to do things on his own. He knew this because that had been the topic of one of the major arguments about him between his father and That Man which he'd overheard back before...before IT had happened. His father had been right back then when he'd said that he needed to learn how to do things on his own, and was still right now. If people were constantly helping him, he would never learn. If he couldn't learn, he couldn't grow powerful. If he couldn't grow powerful, he wouldn't become strong enough to defeat Him. If he couldn't defeat Him, he will have failed to avenge his clan.
Since he didn't want to fail and let his clan down, he couldn't accept the help that the Uzumaki and the Haruno girl had offered out of whatever sense of pity they felt for him. That pity that led to a desire to "help" was one of the reasons he generally despised the Instructors back at the Academy as well. After IT had happened, the lot of them had started coddling him and offering extra help with his lessons. Heck, even random shinobi off the street had offered to help him afterward but, they generally quit after a while, unlike the Academy Instructors. Usually, he did everything to ignore the Instructors outside of lessons because of this but, if what the Instructors had offered to teach him seemed useful however, he would take what he learned from the initial lesson he generally couldn't escape from, and do his best to learn the rest of it on his own.
Before he could get past the high mark he'd made the evening before, his new sensei called him down from the tree in order to pack up their makeshift camp and get going towards their next mission. He honestly didn't know how he felt about the man whom he couldn't lump in with his Academy Instructors and despise on those grounds, since the man hadn't tried to cater to him out of some misguided sense of pity or, the greedy hope that he would share whatever power he attained when he grew up with his "beloved sensei". On the one hand, the man had shown him how to do something and gave him the chance to learn how to do it properly on his own rather than coddling him and giving him a bunch of extra tips and pointers, and trying to hold his hand all the way up the tree. On the other however, the man had a tendency to ignore him in favor of the other two, and he hated being ignored. In truth, he didn't despise the man, but he didn't like him all that much either.
Sighing, he dropped back to the ground the way he'd been trained to do when jumping or falling from a great height when he was younger and made his way over to where everyone was getting ready to leave. Kakashi, the Uzumaki, and his new sensei were packing their belongings into storage scrolls, and Sakura was eating a few bites of cold left-over rabbit while sitting next to the blanket in which her spare outfit had been folded. So far, the girl had resisted wearing the outfit that the Uzumaki had loaned her, but she wouldn't be able to do so for much longer, because the outfit she was wearing was starting to get rather ripe, and the people whose fence they'd just repaired wouldn't let her inside to use the washer, or anything else for that matter.
Thanks to the last couple of days, he had learned that girls didn't naturally smell like flowers or cooked food like just about every girl or woman he'd encountered in the village, including his mother, generally did. In fact, when they didn't get a shower for a while, they smelled pretty much like boys did when they were in the same situation, and that was unpleasant. Apparently, the flower smell came from one of those beauty products that he'd overheard a number of girls and women talking about on occasion when he encountered the odd conversation that wasn't about him.
That was a lesson that he could have done without.
As soon as everyone was packed, they started on their way towards the Valley of the End, which was in the completely opposite direction from Konoha than the farm they had been at. Fortunately, they had a couple days in which to get there, rather than less than one as they had had on the journey to the farm. During the trip, both Kakashi and his new sensei started giving him and Sakura lessons on moving Chakra to limbs in order to move faster. This had been touched on at the Academy but, had not been part of the general curriculum, and therefore, he'd pretty much ignored it.
Since he hadn't gotten the Tree-walking exercise down, the team did not take to the trees like Shinobi often did in Fire country when they were traveling long distances, as leaping from tree to tree through Fire Country's vast forests was much quicker than walking, as one covered far more distance in a jump than they would striding across the same distance on the ground, and passed over obstacles that they would have generally been forced to walk around. Since they had to walk on the ground because he couldn't take to the trees, they had to keep to established roads and trails rather than going in a straight line across the country through the "Treetop Highway", which naturally added a great deal of time to their trip. This meant that instead of Sakura holding them back, as she previously had when they had to slow down for her on the hike to the farm, it was him that was holding the team back back. Though he didn't show it, this stung.
Because he was spending a great deal of time and energy on the lessons in channeling Chakra to his limbs to improve speed, he couldn't spend as much time on the Tree-Walking lesson because, that would risk slowing the team down even further due to the possibility of his developing a case of severe Chakra Exhaustion from doing so, if it didn't force them to return to Konoha entirely. While he seemed to get reasonably good results in the evening, and was more prone to slipping off the tree he selected than blowing off of it, he didn't get the same results in the morning when he was somewhat refreshed after a night of sleep. This of course frustrated him to no end.
Eventually, after a couple days of walking, during which he had started hunting for his dinner like Sakura because, he'd gotten sick of the rations he had packed, which were nutritious and little else, they finally reached the Valley of the End. He did his best to keep the awe he felt when he got his first view of the Valley off of his face. Impressive didn't even begin to cover it. There was a massive scar in the land which had been created in the titanic struggle between the Shodai Hokage, and his noble ancestor Uchiha Madara when his ancestor had tried and failed to wrest the title of Hokage from the Senju. A scar in the land which marked the boundary between the Land of Fire and the Land of Sound which, up until recently, had been the Land of the Rice Paddies. At the far end of the Valley which had been created by the Kyuubi was a waterfall that was flanked by a pair of statues that stood facing each other, each with a hand held up in the Sign of Confrontation, Senju Hashirama's statue standing in the Land of Fire, and Uchiha Madara's statue standing in the Land of Sound.
"Dibs on the Madara statue!" the Uzumaki exclaimed as he broke from the group and raced towards the statues, breaking the awed silence that had fallen upon the team when they had reached the Valley and got their first look at it.
Odd, he would've thought that the Uzumaki would have wanted to tend to the statue of the Shodai Hokage, considering his stated goal of becoming Hokage...
"Why?" Kakashi asked, sounding shocked.
Apparently, he wasn't the only one who expected the Uzumaki to leave someone else to clean Uchiha Madara's statue while he lovingly tended to that of the Shodai Hokage, most likely him because, he was a Uchiha, and therefore related to the man who had tried and failed to usurp the First Hokage after helping found the village with him.
"Madara's...Well, he isn't exactly a hero of mine, but I admire him." the Uzumaki replied.
"Why?!" Kakashi yelled, sounding even more shocked.
He himself was a bit surprised to find that someone in Konoha outside his now dead clan viewed Madara in a positive light as well, but he wasn't nearly as startled as Kakashi seemed to be. Something about Kakashi's shock seemed to go beyond the sort of reaction he thought was normal when someone mentioned liking someone whom history viewed as a villain though. Sakura looked a bit surprised herself by the Uzumaki's statement, but nowhere near as shocked as Kakashi. Their sensei however acted as if this was all old news to him, something he'd heard a hundred times before.
"That man was beyond devious. If it weren't for that whole thing with the Shodai Hokage, he would have set the standard for Traps. His traps within traps were works of art, and he could do things with shock tags that were beyond amazing." the Uzumaki replied sounding genuinely admiring.
This answer seemed to placate Kakashi who gave the Uzumaki a fond pat on the head, which was odd because, he didn't seem the sort to give such gestures of affection. At least, he hadn't shown a propensity for doing so before, not to him or Sakura whom people were more likely to attempt to give such gestures of affection to.
The Uzumaki then ran over to the statues and started the day's work, racing up and down the Madara statue, using a variant of the Tree-Walking exercise he had not yet mastered to his and his sensei's satisfaction, critically examining it for any damage that may need to be repaired. Despite its remote location, the Valley of the End was considered to be one of Konoha's historical heritage sites, therefore the statues were generally kept in good repair and, from what he'd been told, cleaned and examined every few months. They were this quarter's cleaning and examining team, and they were being given C-ranked pay for this despite the fact that it was a D-ranked mission since the job was outside the village walls.
Determined not to be outdone, he started climbing the statue on the opposing side of the river from the one that Naruto was scurrying about on, and got much higher on it than he'd ever done before on any of the trees. During the brief surge of elation over his success however, there was a spike in his Chakra, and he found himself being blown from the statue, like he'd often been blown from a tree when he got higher than his previous high point. Before he could prepare himself for a landing that wouldn't kill him, the Uzumaki grabbed him out of the air and, in several hops, brought him back down to the ground.
"Let me go!" he yelled, angry and embarrassed that he'd had to be rescued like a small child, rescued by the Uzumaki like he'd been rescued by That Man every time he'd bitten off just a little more than he could chew during training. He didn't need anymore reminders of his failure.
"I don't want or need your help!" he yelled as he pushed the Uzumaki away. If it weren't for the fact that he hadn't gotten his chance to avenge the clan, he would have rather died than been helped by the Uzumaki. He knew that he was weak, he just didn't need his face rubbed in it every time he tried to prove what little strength he had.
Rather than fussing over him like That Man would've done in a similar situation, and he half expected the Uzumaki to do, the Uzumaki just gave him a look that he couldn't quite decipher and walked off. It was at that point that his sensei grabbed him, checked him for injuries, and set him to cleaning the base of the statues, ordering him not to try climbing them until he had the Tree-Walking exercise mastered to his satisfaction.
He hated them. He hated them all. That pink haired harpy that wouldn't leave him alone, Kakashi who pretty much hung back and ignored him, his "Sensei" who pretty much ignored him unless he wanted to point out something that he was doing wrong, and most of all the Uzumaki who should have been beneath him but wasn't, the Uzumaki who was standing above him as an example of what he should be instead of what he was, like That Man had.
Edited 10-5-12