Chapter Ten

There were many things that Luke and I should have learned quickly once we'd settled in here. One of these would be the proper use of chopsticks. I had taught myself once around the same time we were learning how to write in cursive. Neither of these skills stuck with me.

Ironically, it was because of this that dinner was going very well. Luke and I hadn't laughed so much within the course of an hour in a long time. Teuchi and Ayame had joined in once most of their other customers had left. (Understandably, it took us much longer to finish our meals when we could barely get the food to our mouths.)

We'd learned that they did have silverware here. It was just rare to see anyone who had it. Most of the families in Konoha had grown up learning traditional Japanese mannerisms. We'd managed to add to our backstory a little. We'd grown up in a modernized household because our dad was always either busy or tired. We found this was quite believable what with the dead spouse, dying child, twin children, and illness we'd created for him. (Most of it was even true! Only for our other parent.)

All was going well when Luke spotted something out of the corner of his eye. Or, to be more specific, someone. But despite our respective earlier confrontations, he only seemed surprised, not truly dismayed when he nudged my shoulder to get my attention. "Hey, isn't that…"

I turned around and nearly choked on my ramen when I saw the back of Neji's head. I managed to swallow and hissed to Luke, "What is he doing here?!"

Luke could only shrug. "You know him better than I do." Which wasn't saying much.

But what did I know about Neji? Not much, yet still enough to know that he wasn't the stalking type. I couldn't picture him caring enough to follow around after anyone, especially not some random girl who wasn't even a ninja. In fact…

Something was slowly dawning on me. Why hadn't I seen it before? I was so inconsequential to him that Neji shouldn't have even bothered to provoke me and start an argument. From what I'd seen he rarely gave Lee that much attention. So why had he become so fixated with me?

If I'd taken another bite, I probably would have choked on it. I was having one of those moments when everything sort of just comes together. Whenever you get really angry, your chakra levels are supposed to spike. But, like Luke had overheard, I didn't have any chakra to spike. So Neji had been watching me!

Maybe he hadn't told Lee, but somehow I doubted that Tenten wasn't in on it. They'd probably made me some sort of joint research project. When did she ever contradict Neji? I'd bet the only reason she'd come between us today was because it looked like Neji was one step away from driving me away, never to return. And they couldn't monitor me if I wasn't around.

Maybe this should've creeped me out, but I was oddly satisfied. Luke was staring at me in a way that told me I had a strange grin on my face. I resumed eating, and after another minute, Luke followed my lead.

…

The novelty of night time being a constant sleepover had worn off pretty quickly, but for the first time, Luke and I stayed up nearly all night talking. I told him my suspicions about what was going on with Neji. Then I explained what was going on in the storyline right about now.

I told him all about the Zabuza Arc. Two things really piqued his interest. One was the chakra training. The other was the whole thing with the Sharingan. (I'd explained the Nine-Tailed Fox thing a while back.)

I'd just finished detailing out the first part of the Chunin Exams when I realized that it was nearly two in the morning, and Luke wasn't much of a morning person to start with.

As I was drifting off, I had another revelation. Any time I'd explained anything about this world, Luke had given me his undivided attention. The only part that he wasn't really fond of was the fact that we were here. It was almost too bad. If we'd been back in our own world, he probably would have really enjoyed my anime-marathon nights…

…

It had officially been a week since Naruto left. I was pretty sure there was still about a week before he returned, but I couldn't help but hope he would come back sooner.

I could understand how Team 7 (well, minus Kakashi) didn't know that the Chunin Exams were coming, but if they'd been here, there's absolutely no way they could've missed it. It seemed that the entire village was prone to stopping its daily routine to get ready for the Chunin Exams. Some days Ichiraku's was so dead Teuchi would tell me not to bother even coming into work. Other days it's so crazy I'd stay hours later than my schedule dictated. The weapons shop where Luke worked was pretty much in the same situation.

Surprisingly, even to me, the only days that this really bothered me were the days that Luke and I both got to stay home from work.

While we didn't always understand each other, Luke and I never really had any problems getting along, excluding the meltdown forcibly moving an entire dimension away had caused. Now we seemed to get into little spats over everything. I swear, Luke was getting more OCD by the day. Yesterday, we'd gotten into this huge argument over whether or not the big spoons and the little spoons could be placed in the same drawer compartment. Some part of me in the back of my mind was aware of how ridiculous we were being, yelling about cutlery, but for god's sake, a spoon is a spoon!

This was only the second day in a row this week that we'd both been home, but I could already tell that if we were left to just each other's company much longer, we'd end up ripping each other's throats out like a pair of wild dogs. So when I awoke before he did, I took a seat at the table and tried to brainstorm something to keep us distracted. I hadn't seen Lee much lately. But it wasn't because of what Neji had said. (Honest!) He was just deep in training for the Chunin Exams. I didn't want to distract him at such an important time.

Ignoring the little voice in the back of my head telling me this was a BS excuse, I reasoned that this wasn't the best option anyway. I was weird enough that I hung out and just watched them train, even Lee might start to get a little uncomfortable if I started bringing other people to join me. But something would have to be done. I did have one idea lurking in the back of my mind. It didn't contain as much common sense as it could have, but it was something interesting to do... I let Luke sleep in and then waited as he slowly ate his breakfast. I had to propose my idea at exactly the right time. Which was really any time before his grogginess wore off and he found himself capable of making intelligent decisions again.

"Hey, Luke."

I got a grunt in response. He looked ready to put his head down on the table and fall back asleep. Perfect.

"We should do something today. Like… explore the forest. It's such a big part of the Leaf Village. And neither of us has really seen it since our first day, right?"

"Yeah…"

I got a near-silent hum in response. That was close enough to a yes, right?

I made sure we were out the door and on our way before he realized what he'd agreed to. Luke only really woke up when we were surrounded by the hustle and bustle of one of the market streets. It was a little like going to the mall around Christmastime.

As we continued walking, the crowds got thinner. As we went even further, the people got more and more scarce. We were heading out of town. Soon we were following a path that wound through trees. It was only then that Luke asked where we were going. As I tried to figure out the best answer to that, the Forest of Death came into view. Eureka! I'd found it after all. With a big grin, I gestured to it. Luke was appropriately impressed.

"It's huge!" he whispered. He seemed to break out of his amazement when I began to walk closer. Suspiciously, he asked, "What are you doing?"

I didn't answer him. He took a few steps forward. He was cautious, like he expected someone to pop out of nowhere and arrest us for trespassing any second. It was strange. Luke had never been quite this hesitant about breaking the rules back home. He wasn't against my being adventurous. He just made sure I wasn't stupid about it.

"If it's blocked off," he continued slowly, as if I was an idiot, "that probably means no one's allowed inside."

I ignored this, acting almost as if I hadn't even heard him. The trees loomed high above my head. I reached a hand out and touched the gate. I could feel my face light up. No wonder Luke was starting to look more and more worried.

"Come on!" I said. I knew Luke would follow me when I started to run around the gate. He couldn't very well leave me alone.

We ran until we could hardly breath. I have to say we made quite some progress considering how huge a space the forest took up. Panting, we continued walking. I could tell Luke was beginning to ease up about my grand, thoughtless adventure. The thrill of running has the magic ability to erase all doubt. At the very least, adrenaline can make common sense appear a little more flexible.

The sun was high overhead when we reached the other side. This was the interesting part because, while all the teams had been spread out, they'd all been on one side, from what I could tell.

"Whoa, I didn't know there was a lake here…" Technically, it was more of a pond, but still. I guess there was no need for the teams to go this far away from the center where the tower was. (Well, unless they got spectacularly lost…) It had seemed easy enough for them to find water without reaching the pond.

I looked at Luke. I pointed to a tree not too far from the edge of the pond inside the gate. "First one to that tree wins?"

He looked a little skeptical, but I could tell he really wanted to take me up on that challenge. "What if it's an electric fence?"

"It isn't. I touched it before." No need to tell him that there really wasn't any need to worry about intruders in the Forest of Death. Not until now anyway…

Without another word, we ran up and began scaling the fence. The top was really high up, but we leaped off without any second thoughts. Have you ever jumped off a bridge? There was one by our old house. Every summer we would ride our bikes to the bridge and then jump off. It was terrifying the first time, thrilling all the others. This was a bit like that. And just like that, we landed with a nice resounding splash.

It was deeper than I'd realized. We probably could've swam under the gate from our side of the pond. Not that I had any time to contemplate this. We broke surface a second later and then the mad dash was on. In all honesty, Luke got there just a second before I did, but I wasn't about to let him know that. I don't think he noticed when we started walking deeper into the forest. His mind was wrapped too far around our heated debate about who had won my little challenge.

Our conversation ended when we couldn't see the sun any longer. Wow, the trees were thick here. Almost like its own little world inside the fence. Staying in this place for five days could be enough to make a person completely lose their sense of time. I was pretty sure it had only been a little later than noon when we'd begun climbing the fence, but suddenly I couldn't be certain anymore.

Our surroundings actually looked a lot like the place where Sakura decides not to suck at being a ninja anymore and Sasuke goes all psycho from the curse mark and all that jazz… But I knew they hadn't been here. There were probably tons of places all throughout this forest that looked just like that one.

"Carly… where are we?" Luke was not a happy camper. His head had cleared a little once I'd started looking around, realizing what I'd lured him into.

"Uh… the Forest of Death…" I answered meekly, avoiding his eyes with faux innocence.

I watched the name sink in. "The Forest of Death? Why the hell are we here?"

"I should be asking that question."

We both jumped and whirled around. Behind us stood a ninja. He had his arms crossed and… hey, I knew him!

"Koda?"

He sighed. "I knew you two would cause trouble," he muttered. Then he turned on us. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he spat. "Anbu members have been watching you from the beginning. What if they hadn't known you were just kids? What if the exams had started? There would've been ninja in here who would've been willing to kill you if they thought you were the enemy!"

Let me tell you, it was weird being lectured by someone who wasn't that much older than myself. He'd begun leading us to one of the exits. "What are your names?" Crap. Now he was probably going to report us.

"Luke," Luke mumbled.

"Carly," I answered in a similar fashion. We sounded painfully guilty. We sounded like children.

Koda faltered. Whatever he was going to say next seemed to stick in his throat. As we continued walking, I could tell he was trying to compose himself, but it wasn't working. What was wrong? All we'd said were our names.

Koda was silent the rest of the trip. Once I caught him staring intently at me, but I averted my eyes. I was in no position to ask what he was doing.

To my surprise (and intensified shame) the Third Hokage was waiting for us when we exited the gate. But he didn't seem upset. In fact he was smiling in an amused sort of way. "Ah… I see you've found our wandering explorers."

Koda didn't say anything, so my brother and I took that time to apologize profusely. The old man just chuckled.

"We're getting ready for the Chunin Exams, as I'm sure you've noticed. We're monitoring the forest to make sure it will be ready. I'll have to ask you to take your exploring elsewhere. But for now, it looks like there's been no harm done, right? Koda?"

Still not looking up Koda mumbled, "Yeah. No harm done."

Review please!

Koda will become important later on. I just need to get the plot going…

I don't own Naruto! Just my Ocs…

Revised June 2, 2016.