A.N.: I do not own Naruto. Leave a review if you like the story, Dattebane! :D
It's been a month since they started training with Seitaro as their jonin sensei, and the training was everything but easy. They did a lot of D-ranked missions like helping cleaning the streets, retrieving pets, hanging clothes, shopping, and many more. Team 9 was improving with their teamwork every day more. Just after they passed and officially became genin, both Hibachi and Nobuo treated Nana a bit nicer, even though she still felt they thought she was weak because she was small and like they liked to repeat, a girl.
"Nana! Don't be distracted!" Seitaro shouted as he saw her chakra flicker, in fact it's been doing that a lot lately.
"I'm sorry Seitaro-sensei." She mumbled while swimming back to the shore. She concentrated on her chakra flow again, pushing chakra in to her feet, trying to stand on water again.
For the past two weeks Nana had troubles concentrating whenever her mind drifted over to Naruto. She couldn't explain it but she had a really bad feeling about his C-ranked mission his team went on. Luckily for her it was hard to think about Naruto during their sparring sessions with sensei and their training, since her mind was occupied. After trainings she worked on her seal for the Thunder god technique, lately more than usual.
As for their chakra control training, Nobuo was the only one on the team that succeed climbing up the tree on his second day, while Nana and Hibachi succeed on their fourth day. Today it was their first day walking on water and Nana finally succeed after both Nobuo and Hibachi already had a sparring session on it. She was behind them on chakra control and she hated it.
"Well done guys." Seitaro-sensei said as he motioned for them to come to him.
"Are we done for today?" Nobuo asked in a hurry, she remember he said that he had more training at home today in medical ninjutsu.
"Yes. Dismissed." Seitaro said yawning and he stretched his arms behind his neck dismissing them.
Nana made her way home, walking down the streets of Konoha observing people and their behaviour. She stopped at the dango store, buying herself some dango to go. As she happily ate some of the dango, she saw 3 smoke bombs go off at the street across from her. Grabbing her bag of dangos she made her way to look what was going on. As the smoke cleared from the street she saw Naruto and Sakura with three academy students.
'Must be Konohamaru and his friends' Nana thought to herself as she closed in on them.
"You're better than I thought. She's your…" The kid that resembled the description of Konohamaru said as he showed Naruto his pinkie with a sly grin on his face. "Right?" He added.
"You kids are pretty sharp." Naruto replied embarrassed with his cheeks covered in red.
Nana sweat dropped as she knew what was coming, and boy Sakura didn't disappoint. She hit Naruto hard enough for him to go rolling on the ground and crashing in to a wooden fence. Nana stepped next to Sakura and before she could greet and welcome them back the kid, Konohamaru just had to call Sakura ugly. Nana saw Sakura crack her knuckles as she slowly closed in on poor Konohamaru, hitting him just as hard as Naruto.
"Don't you think that was a bit too much for a kid?" Nana asked as Sakura stomped away from them not even seeing Nana, because she walked with her eyes closed in anger.
Sakura's face turned from angry to a smile when she looked at Nana greeting her. They started talking about their mission and were deep in conversation when suddenly Sakura's shoulders drew back in a stiff pose. Nana looked over Sakura's shoulder waving at Naruto and recieving a wave back, before Sakura dashed to them to hit them again for calling her ugly.
"Maaa~ Maaaa~. Sakura…" Nana tried reasoning with her, calming her down as she ran behind Sakura.
Running behind Sakura, Nana didn't see much of what was happening before them, but she heard a loud thump and Konohamaru shouting at someone. Walking around Sakura she finally got a look at the two strangers standing in the middle on the street.
"That hurt." Said the first one.
He wore a black, baggy, full body suit with a circle on the front that was split in two halves a red and a yellow one. He was also wearing a black hood which covered his head completely, the hood reminded Nana of a cat since it had cat-like ears. His face was covered in triangular face-paint design. The next thing she noticed was his forehead protector that sat on the forehead of his hood. The forhead had another symbol engraved in it. It was the symbol of Sunagakure and not Konoha.
Nana quickly observed the other person. She had teal coloured eyes and sandy blonde hair, which was gathered into four consecutive ponytails. Looking over her outfit, it consisted of a single light purple-coloured, off-the-shoulders garment that extended halfway down to her thighs. Around her waist was a tied scarlet sash. In addition to that Nana noticed that she wore fishnets over her shoulders and legs, specifically on her right calf and her left thigh. And last but not least the forehead protector that was tied loosely around her neck. It had the same design as the other guy's, Sunagakure. Just what were they doing here?
Before she could ask them Naruto's voice snapped her out of her thoughts. Looking at the cat-eared guy she saw him holding Konohamaru by his scarf.
"That hurt, brat." He said as shis eyes bored in to Konohamaru.
"Stop it. We're going to get scolded later." The girl said as she looked away from him.
"I'm sorry, I was joking around, so…" Sakura defended the boy.
"Hey! Let go of that hand!" Naruto started to get angry.
"It was an accident. There is no need for aggressive behaviour. They apologised." Nana said as she put the dango bag on to the floor gently.
"But I want to play around before some noisy people come." The guy said with a smirk on his face and Konohamaru started to struggle.
She saw him mutter something to Konohamaru as he pulled him more roughly by his scarf. She saw Naruto's expression and she reached her arm out to grab and stop him by his shoulders before he could do something stupid. Sadly her arms were not long enough and Naruto dashed at the guy.
"Why you…" Naruto yelled and Nana saw the guy move his fingers and the next second a shocked Naruto on the floor.
"Konoha's Genins are weak." He said with a mocking smile plastered to his face.
"Can't you let the kid go and pick on someone your own size? I mean you're a Genin picking on an academy student. Pretty pathetic if you ask me." Nana said as her eyes became colder.
"You piss me off, Shrimp. You want to take his place?" He said with a malicious smile loosening his grip on the kid.
Nana didn't say anything as she walked towards him to take Konohamarus place, she could defend herself, she did have a few years more of training than Konohamaru. The guy dropped the boy and grabbed Nana by her shirt lifting her off the ground a bit.
"I really hate short people. And you're so impertinent for someone younger than me. It makes me want to break you." He said as he made eye contact with her blue eyes.
"I'm not going to be responsible for what you do." The girl exclaimed with a sigh.
Nana looked at him not moving, she was ready to block him at the last second as she saw his fist coming closer and closer to her face. Just when her arms moved up to block him, his fist was knocked away by a stone and he dropped her.
"What do you think you're doing in another's village?" She heard a familiar voice from up the tree and before she looked up she knew who it was thanks to Sakura fangirling.
Nana let out a sigh and stepped back from the two Suna Genin to pick up her bag of dango. Picking it up she stepped back to the shinobi. The guy still held his wrist as he was probably cussing at Sasuke.
"Get lost." Sasuke exclaimed as he crushed the stone, letting the dust roll of his palm.
"Why is everyone so mean." Nana sighed and turned to Sasuke. "It was a misunderstanding…probably." She told him and pulled a Bocchan dango out of her bag, studying the three colours and thinking which one she should eat first.
"Didn't look like a misunderstanding to me." He shot back at her with a slight glare.
"Hey, come down kid." The cat guy said to Sasuke, he added something else, but Nana stopped paying attention to them. This was stupid, the tension they created could be cut with a blunt shuriken.
"Hey! You're going to use Karasu?" The girl asked him shocked, making Nana interested in the conversation again.
"Kankuro, stop." A calm but demanding voice came from nowhere.
Nana almost burst out crying because the calm and demanding voice that just appeared out of nowhere distracted her of eating her dango. She watched with teary eyes as her favourite pink dango fell on to the floor, making a splatting sound.
'And I wanted to eat that last' Nana's head dropped in depression.
Looking back up to se the culprit she saw a boy in probably the same age group as her and Naruto. He had fair skin, short spiky, auburn hair and pale blue-green eyes. He had no distinctive pupils or eyebrows. But she did notice his racoon-like black eye rings and a carved love kanji on the left side of his forehead.
He was dressed up in a black full body suit with t-shirt-like sleeves, ¾-length legs, and an open neck. Over that he wore a white cloth over his right shoulder and the left side of his hips, and with that a wide leather band system that went over the other hip and shoulder. As she looked at the leather band she saw his forehead protector wrapped around it. On his back he carried a gourd that was secured there with the leather band.
"You're a disgrace to our village. Why do you think we came all the way here to Konoha?" He said his eyes narrowing dangerously at the cat boy whose face was covered in shock.
"G-Gaara…" He stuttered nervously and started making excuses that he was provoked, but the guy called Garra shut him up, ignoring all of his excuses.
"I'll kill you." Gaara said at Kankuro with a voice that didn't leave any openings for an argument. Kankuro and the girl nervously started to apologise.
"Excuse them, you guys." He said looking at the Konoha shinobi, before turning himself in to sand and transferred himself next to the other two shinobi.
Nana already ate the rest of the dango from the stick, now crouching before the small pink dumpling poking it with still teary eyes.
"I'm sorry dango-chan" She muttered to the dango on the floor as she saw the boy appear not to far from her.
"Let's go. We didn't come here to fool around." He said as he shot Nana a glare and turned to the other two.
Nana stood up her eyes leaving the pink dumpling on the floor. Her eyes shifted to look at the backs of the three sand shinobi. Sakura stopped them asking them about their intentions in their village, making them turn around and tell them about the chunin exams that were supposed to take place here.
Truthful Nana didn't listen to the conversation as she looked at Gaara's blue-green eyes. She extended her arm pointing a finger at him.
"You…You owe me a brand new dango, dattebane!" She told him as he stopped taking his interest in Sasuke.
Gaara looked at her with a piercing glare but she didn't falter, he owns her a brand new dango and there was no way, no way in hell he's getting out of this one.
A.n: So a small glimpse at the sand shinobi and Gaara ofc :) They finally met :D Thanks to everyone who reviwed, favoured, read or followed the story. Love u all ^.^ OVER AND OUT.