Chapter Eight
For a princess she does not look very cute, hidden under villager clothes and instead of a typical elaborate getup.
Princess Sumire was watching Naruto from the back window of the caravan.
'Why doesn't she go stare at Sakura she has the pink hair' huffed Naruto begrudgingly staring at the toddler.
Why was the Princess so interested in her? Was it the color of her hair? 'Maybe she hadn't seen blonde hair before⦠that didn't make any sense.' Sakura has pink hair and the Princess had purple, blond should not be that shocking.
Now bored she began to pull faces at the Princess, but that only served to make the Princess more entertained, giggling, laughing, catching the attention of the nanny. Who then promptly told the Princess to go back inside.
" Naruto pay attention." Kakashi Sensei said from the front. It was almost noon and they have been on the road for about 3 hours now, this is not what she thought a C rank mission would be.
It was basically babysitting, and why wasn't the child traveling with her parents? Did she have parents? Naruto doesn't know much about the land of Flowers, but if there is a princess shouldn't there be a Queen and King?
On that thought she began to pay attention to her surroundings like sensei had said surely a princess is a valuable target. After another boring hour, the caravan stopped for the nanny to stretch and walk about.
After being helped down Sumire made a beeline straight for Naruto. Tugging Naruto's cloak "play." She demanded.
"Go play with Sakura," pointing Sakura out to the toddler Naruto proceeded to gently nudge her in the direction of her teammate. "No! Play now!" yelled the princess. Picking the princess up and darting over to drop her to Sakura, she dipped.
They were finally able to take a break from walking and she wanted to explore the area they were in and relax a bit, this being her first time outside of the village walls and all. Staying within eyesight of the group she began to weave between the large trees that provided shade on the side of the road they stopped at.
Sitting at the base of tree she closed her and started to relax, flinching suddenly at a touch on her face, Naruto's eyes snapped open to find the princess trying sitting on her lap poking her whiskers. Of course, this is why she was staring at her all this time, whiskers are unique after all.
"I thought I told you to go bother Sakura," Naruto said with a raised eyebrow,
"She is boring." Sumire said still pulling at Naruto's face. Turning her head to look back at the group she saw Sakura looking around frantically obviously haven lost the little princess that was currently with Naruto.
Deciding to keep Sumire entertained Naruto produced two chakra chains manipulating them to create shapes that hovered above her head. Letting out squeals of joy Sumire started requesting different shapes to be made.
"Heart! Gimme heart!"
"Horse now horse!"
Hearing laughter Sakura started searching in their direction, finding Naruto playing with the princess she quickly snatched her up.
"You could have hurt her with those things!" Sakura shrieked,
"Ohh shut up! My chains don't hurt people, well they could but I'd never harm a client."
"Well, I'm taking her back to the group," Sakura turned with the struggling toddler in her arms. Sighing Naruto just got up to follow them back they probably would be moving out soon regardless. A couple paces behind Sakura when she heard movement int the trees around them, looking up seeing three unknown nin above them "Move!" she yelled while pushing Sakura to run faster.
They luckily dodge the barrage of shuriken, urging Sakura to run ahead Naruto knew how close to the road they were, they would soon have help. Still, she turned to throw kunai at their pursuing assailants narrowly missing.
'Shit we are no match for all of them.'
Attaching explosive notes to a few more kunai she aimed for the tree branches slightly ahead of them causing the branches to explode forcing their attackers to slow down.
Seeing the road in sight, she was extremely relieved to see Kakashi-sensei already making his way towards them probably having heard the explosive notes go off. Sakura still carrying princess Sumire skidded to a halt into the road placing the princess into the caravan while pulling out a kunai to guard it.
Kakashi engaged the man who appeared to be the leader, tall man carrying a short bamboo stick. Sasuke came with him breaking off to the left to back Naruto up, together they worked in tandem to attack the other two nins. It was quick to see that Sasuke only rushed over to attempt to take them out by himself. "Move!" he yelled running past Naruto.
She quickly spun around to throw more kunai at the enemy, narrowly dodging incoming shuriken. One grazed her arm slashing through her sleeve. Sasuke manage to hit one with a fire ball jutsu. Tying wire around some shuriken Naruto threw it at nin hit with the fireball. The wire wrapped around the ninja effectively tying him up, leaving only one ninja to go.
The last ninja seeing the odds stacked against made a dash for the caravan, where Sakura stood in frozen with the kunai in her hand. Seeing Sakura frozen Naruto started running towards them.
'I'm not gonna make it in time' She was desperately trying to make, throwing a kunai to lay fire she missed the ninja. The kunai hitting the caravan instead.
'I cant afford to miss any hits, but I cant hit the caravan. He is too fast' desperately trying to think of a way to strike the ninja fast without risking the princess she threw another kunai. Just as it was dodged, it changed direction hitting the nin in the thigh taking him by surprise.
Attached to the kunai handle was a gold chain, rushing to Sakura as Sasuke rushed to the ninja delivering a blow knocking him out.
"are you ok Sakura?" Naruto asked shaking her. Nodding softly Sakura slumped to the ground, her body relaxing from the ridged position.
"Good job you two." Kakashi said coming up behind them, "You did better than I thought and no one needed my help." Eye smiling at them.
"Where is the other one?" Sasuke asked looking into the trees.
"Oh don't worry about him, what I really want is to talk to these two." He said menacingly walking towards the knocked out and tied up ninjas.
Walking over to the caravan and opening the doors, Naruto looked inside seeing the nanny and Princess Sumire huddled together looking very scared. Realizing it was only Naruto the Princess freed herself and rushed into her arms.
Taken aback she started patted the back of the crying toddler, a warm feeling enveloping her chest as she tried to calm her down.
