Lu turned around to face Sasuke and shrugged off his appearance, however he didn't expect for the pink-haired kunoichi to appear before the trio of boys thirty minutes into their training session and ask for assitance.
"So you're asking us… to train with you?" Lu said, staring at the girl quizically.
"Yeah. I'm sure you guys don't have a problem with that, right?" Sakura responded slyly, implying that she thought they did have a problem with it, but even if that was the case, she had something to fall on as back up.
"Not exactly…"Lu started.
"It's just that…" Sasuke added
"It's not normal for you of all kunoichi to want to get along with us this well," Naruto finished.
The girl noted that the boys have weird vocal pattern of speaking each other's sentences in conversation. Her eye did twitch at the comment nontheless, however.
"Is that really so hard to beleive?" Sakura huffed.
"It kinda is. You were like, a bi-" Naruto began. His closest friends jumped at the blone and covered his mouth before he could speak further, likely to preserve his safety.
"I was a what?" Sakura sarcastically asked.
"You were…uh… a bit annoying?" Sasuke stammered.
At this, Lu snickered. He couldn't contain himself any longer, seeing someone as reserved as Sasuke tip-toe around words with someone he previously deemed insignificant brought a tear of joy to the boy's eye. The irony was truly remarkable to Lu, it made him happy to see Sasuke try to dig himself out of a situation. He was much like Kakashi in that way, team seven noted, he often laughed at the misfortune of his teammates when they did something out of character. After some time explaining what Sakura needed help with, the four teens settled on training in pairs. The decided pairs were Lu paired with Sakura and Sasuke paired with Naruto. After that, they each began bouncing ideas off of eachother and assisting in areas they excelled in. This process helped Sakura and Lu especially.
"The water bullet technique requires a condensed, yet small amount of chakra to be dispelled," Sakura explained,"...in this way it is very similar to your bubble-style jutsu, using small amounts of chakra in order to make a huger quanity of the jutsu itself," she finished.
"And with that pairing, you're saying I could use the water bullet jutsu to create my bubbles and convert those into chakra-draining projectiles?" Lu assessed,"...You're scary," he complimented.
"Damn right I am. Speaking of which, you three seem to be biting your tounges about something… is there something you guys know that I don't?" she inquired.
"There are a few things, but I think you're refering to the Zabuza thing, aren't you?" Lu replied.
"I don't know what that would be about, but I know that Zabuza is an S-rank missing-nin from the mist, but what would that have to do with anything?" the kunoichi prodded.
"I did some recon during a C-rank bandit clearing mission, and it seems like he's operating in wave country as a mercenary for an asshole building a monopoly there," Lu answered.
"What would that…" the kunoichi wondered aloud to noone in particular, "Oh.. I get it now," Sakura realized,"...You three are planning to take him down somehow? By way of a mission that might be underranked due to the poor funding for the people in wave country, I presume," she added.
"Again, you're terrifyingly smart- rather intuitive, scarily intuitive," Lu remarked.
"Woman's intuition," Sakura winked, rising a vein in the other teen's head out of pure annoyance.
"I saw that both Naruto and Sasuke have three scrolls, I assume yo do as well…?" Lu inquired.
"Yep," Sakura quickly confirmed, awaiting his impending follow-up question.
"Could you share those jutsu with me? I also would like to spar with you and against Naruto and Sasuke with what we learn here," Lu extended his question, to which, Sakura shrugged and gave him a thumbs-up and began to take out her three scrolls.
The first jutsu they went over together was the water style: water prison technique, which Lu had great difficulty forming and couldn't help but be a little envious of the fact that his kunioichi partner had very little difficulty with executing the jutsu; her nearly perfect chakra control was scary sometimes.
"You're kidding me," Lu sighed as his fifth attempt at the jutsu failed, releasing a fish from the river back into the water.
"It's more about molding the image of a spherical prison that's getting to you, isn't it?" Sakura pointed out right before she casted four water bullets and broke a branch of a nearby tree into pieces.
"Maintaing it is even harder… how do you do it?" Lu groaned.
"Here, let me show you," Sakura insisted as she walked up to Lu and started the jutsu.
Lu noticed that when she finished her handsigns, Sakura had already created a small sphere in her palm, which expanded to a diameter large enough to fit the average adult, formed by a stream of water being extracted from the river in a cyclonic motion, circling the sphere and adding to it in a way that made Sakura's jutsu seem like it was creating itself.
"There you go again," Sakura pointed out, giggling at the boy in front of her, "...You're staring," she added dryly.
"I'm sorry, it's just the way that you form the water prison technique seems a little…" he paused.
"-Elegant?" she cut in, releasing the jutsu.
"Yeah, actually, how did you gu-" Lu caught himself, noticing the smirk on Sakura's face,
"Nevermind, scratch that. The way you said that made it seem like you're intentionally making the jutsu look that way? Why?" Lu inquired. By this point the majority of Sakura's and Lu's time spent training together involved a breakdown of minute details that helped Sakura's chakra control or explained why she used her chakra in a specific way. This time, it was explained to Lu that Sakura expelled her chakra into the initial jutsu, pulling in the surrounding water by spreading her chakra evenly, and when forming the final jutsu, bringing all of the chakra back to the initial point before it spreads out a final time, coating the bubble, creating a water "prison". With this information, Lu followed her description and created a water prison, except it looked a bit different from his training partner's version.
"Hmmm…" the pink-haired genius observed, "It seems like your natural affinity and a little bit of instinct made you create something different from the typical water prison jutsu," she described.
Lu caught wind of what she said and realized he could move the water prison by waving his arms in the direction it was intended to move in. He thought briefly and realized that he might've accidentally created a bubble style technique, one that fuses the general properties of his bubbles to the water prison technique, making a chakra effective, electric, chakra-draining, water bubble. A dark look casted over his face before his peer noticed and swat him over the head to reset his thoughts.
"I can sort of understand what happened, and by the look that just went over your face, you do too," Sakura sighed, "I can't believe I gave such a weapon to you," she frowned before continuing to refine her accuracy and the piercing effect of her water bullets. Sasuke and Naruto were sparring while his seven clones were painstakingly studying kenjtutsu katas, fuinjutsu formulas meant for a genin, and analyzing the spar between the two.
"You're improving, which I'm not surprised by, it's just a little peculiar to see you making progress at the rate you have been for the past month," Sasuke complimented, before sweeping his blonde opponent, who pulled him closer by his shirt, flipping Sakuke over and allowing Naruto to recover.
"Yeah, and you're improving, and it's annoying," Naruto glared, before forming the handsigns required for the water style : wild water wave jutsu, releasing it at the ground in front of Sasuke, to which his opponent responded by creating the handsigns for the lightning style: rat tremor jutsu and releasing a barrage of lightning bullets at his sparring partner.
'I neutralize his ability to use fire style and the jerk just responds by using lightning style, which is amplified by the water in this environment,' Naruto, a bit peeved, analyzed.
"I've got an answer for that you duckbutt-headed emo," Naruto teased, before releasing a wind style: gale palm jutsu, repelling the lightning bullets coming his way. To the blonde's dismay, Sasuke responded by throwing shuriken lined with conductive wire and throwing them into contact with the dispelling lightning bullets, littering the training area in an electric net of shuriken, enhanced by the conductive capability damp grass.
"You really shouldn't have used that water style jutsu, dobe," Sasuke teased before launching himself at Naruto with a shunshin with a kunai in hand, intending to corner his opponent into a technical surrender.
Naruto responded by calling out: "TANTO," to one of his clones, who threw the tanto to his hand fast enough for him to draw it and intercept his opponent's kunai, deflecting his opponent's strike momentarily. His relatively short-handed exposure to battle with a tanto was something that Sasuke capitalized on, making their usual taijutsu a one-sided kenjutsu combat match. Naruto recognized Sasuke's aim and jumped into the air before throwing two demon wind shuriken at Sasuke as he pursued Naruto in order to distract his opponent for a small window of time. This diversion succeeded, allowing for Naruto to release a risky water wave, condensed into a line that sent Sasuke flying into the ground with his weakened electric net, shocking him lightly and stunning him long enough to allow Naruto to summon two shadow clones and engage in a three-versus-one taitustu match, weakening Sasuke just enough for Naruto to finally pin Sasuke to a log with a kunai to his neck, ending their sparring session.
"You got lucky," Sasuke spat.
"As lucky as someone shunned by roughly 80% of his home village can get," Naruto jived.
Sasuke winced at the painful reminder that Naruto was the jailer of the nine-tailed fox. After the Mizuki incident and a short conversation between Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto about it, they really never spoke of it. The boy pondered if Naruto's joke was a sign that he's more comfortable in team seven with the information he'd kept a secret for at least six years.
"You look troubled, Sasuke," a voice called out behind him. He realized the voice wasn't the voice of his peers, but the voice of his sensei.
"Kakashi sensei? Why are you here? It's like…." he trailed off.
"5:31 in the morning," Kakshi eye smiled.
"Why are you here? I thought we'd come back to you in a week," Sasuke asked his instructor. By this point all four genin were paying attention to the man and had grouped together, waiting for the conversation to continue.
"I was going to ask you three exactly that, but considering you all have shown at least enough proficiency for one of the three jutsu, I've come to inform you we'll be getting a mission at the end of this week. I do recommoned rest, but if you lot would like to continue training you should only rest the last three days," the man paused, "Oh- and another thing, Lu, was it?" Kakashi called out.
"Yeah, that's my name., what's the deal?" Lu raised an eyebrow.
"Hokage-sama would like to see you in his office," Kakashi finished before shunshinning away.
"You know that cyclops didn't say how he knew how far along we were," Naruto sighed.
"Yeah because he was obviously monitoring us," Sasuke input.
"Spying is a more appropriate term for what he was just doing," Sakura corrected jokingly.
As that interaction came to a close, Lu shunshinned to the hokage tower and waited outside of the hokage's office for instruction.
"You may enter," the battle-hardened leader announced.
Lu slowly entered the hokage's office and sat down.
"I've called you here to issue a mission to you to assist team seven on a C-rank mission to the waves. I got a report from Kakashi that there seems to be something else amiss and that the mission may very well be an A-rank or a B-rank at the bare minimum. Other jonin instructors such as Kurenai Yuhi and Asuma Sarutobi, my own son, have also reported that in training with other genin, you seem to stand out,"Hiruzen summarized, "Are you up for the mission?" he quired, making Lu notice he'd been holding his breath. The thin veil of imposing killing intent, which Lu could tell was a byproduct of his leader being serious, had somehow distracted Lu despite his constant exposure to killing intent throughout the past two weeks.
"Yes, Hokage-sama, I'm up for the mission. I'd personally intended to ask for your permission to go anyhow. The information I have isn't particularly exclusive, but I assume you also know of Gato's monopoly over wave country?" Lu reflected. It would be better if everyone was equally informed in order to cover all grounds for the mission. Fortunately for Lu, Hiruzen merely nodded. With that, Lu went home to sleep, he'd probably have to train alone for the first half of the next day because team seven was going to officially get the mission tomorrow and would leave on the next Friday.