Natsumi followed the silver-haired man as they journeyed up to the roof. She could not help but glare at the man. She felt Sasuke's eyes on her as she hardened her gaze at Kakashi's back.
'I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him,' Natsumi thought to herself, repeating this mantra over and over until they reached the roof.
Once the three reached the roof, Sakura was already sitting down, waiting patiently. Turns out the pinkette did have some patience after all.
"Hi Sasuke-kun!" Sakura greeted happily. She didn't say anything to Natsumi, but at least she didn't act negatively towards her, just pure indifference. Sasuke said nothing in return and Kakashi beckoned the two to sit down. Sakura must have told him about their spar... Natsumi sat several feet away from Sakura and Sasuke sat several feet away from Natsumi. Kakashi places a hand on his chin and strokes it thoughtfully.
"How can I put this...? My first impression of you all is... you're all a bunch of idiots." He admitted casually. Sakura adjusted the gloves he wore and glared at him.
"What did you just call us?!" she growled out, clearly not enjoying his presence at the moment. Natsumi glanced at her and then at the gloves she wore.
'I wonder why she wears those types of gloves,' she wondered before focusing her attention back on Kakashi.
"Idiots," he repeated. Sasuke and Natsumi rolled their eyes and Sakura continued growling. He sat on a ledge and crossed his arms. "Alright, why don't you all introduce yourselves one at a time?"
"Introduce ourselves? Well, what are we supposed to say?" Sakura asked now that she was calm again. Kakashi stretched his arms out beside him as he spoke.
"Things you like. Things you hate. Dreams for the future. Hobbies. Things like that." He crossed his arms again.
"How about you tell us these things first," Natsumi suggested, continuing to glare at him, her tone hostile. Her arms were also crossed. Kakashi points at himself again.
"Me? I'm Kakashi Hatake. Things I like and things I hate—mm, I don't really feel like telling you that." The three genin stare at him in slight confusion. "My dreams for the future—never really thought about it. As for hobbies," he began, looking up thoughtfully. "I have lots of hobbies." Sakura brings her knees to her chest and looks over at Natsumi and Sasuke.
"That was pretty useless. All we found out was his name," she mutters at her teammates. Natsumi nodded in response while Sasuke said and did nothing.
"Okay, your turn," begins Kakashi. "Girl with the pink hair, you're first." Sakura nodded with a smile
"I'm Sakura Haruno. What I like—uh—I mean, the person I like is—" she looked at Sasuke and smiled sheepishly as she squealed a little to herself. Sasuke didn't react and simply stared ahead. "My hobby is—uh—" she stared at Sasuke again, giggling as she blushed. "My dream for the future is—" she squeals loudly, eyeing Sasuke.
"And? What do you hate?" Kakashi asked. His tone seemed slightly disturbed by Sakura's obsession.
"Ino-pig!" Shouted Sakura and then crossed her arms. Kakashi nods and then looks at Sasuke.
"You're next," he says and beckons at the dark-haired boy. Sasuke nods slightly and does that intimidating body language of lacing his fingers together and resting his chin on them as his elbows were against his knees.
"My name is Sasuke Uchiha. I hate a lot of things and I don't particularly like anything," Sasuke began coldly and Sakura's usual smile faded into a heartbroken look. Sasuke's expression darkened. "What I have is not a dream because I will make it a reality. I'm going to restore my clan and destroy a certain someone," finished Sasuke. The three others listened to him talk in utter silence.
'Itachi...' Natsumi thought with a slight hint of sadness. Kakashi coughed in his fist.
"Last one. You with the blond hair. Your turn." He beckoned at Natsumi. Natsumi put her hands casually behind her head, however her facial expression contrasted this, for it looked dark like Sasuke's.
"My name is Natsumi Saito. Things I like—training. Ramen is pretty okay too." She shrugged indifferently as the others stared at her. "Things I hate—that's a pretty long list but some of those people include Kakashi, at least half of Konoha, and a certain snake," she explains. "Oh, and snakes in general." The two other genin stare at her and then Kakashi, confusion evident on their faces. Kakashi stayed silent. He seemed a bit confused as well since they have only just met. "Hobbies—training, I suppose." She shrugged. She never really considered herself to have hobbies. "Dreams for the future—just like Duck Butt over there, I have an ambition for revenge against a certain snake."
"Good. You each have your own ideas." Kakashi looked at Natsumi and Sasuke. "More or less." They certainly had quite similar ideas... "Let me rephrase it this way: you're each unique," he said. "We'll have our first mission tomorrow. It's something the four of us will do together," Kakashi began before anyone could ask what it was. He stood up. "It will be a survival exercise."
"A survival exercise?" asked Sakura.
"I thought we were supposed to have an actual mission," said Natsumi.
"We already did all of this at the Academy. That's how we got here," Sasuke says, for once siding with the blonde.
"This is not like your Academy training," Kakashi said. Sakura raised her hand to ask something, but before she could, he started to laugh. "If I tell you what's so special about this training, you're not going to like it," he says, smiling a bit creepily behind his cloth mask. He paused and coughed into his fist to make himself stop laughing. He lazily held his head in one hand. "Out of the thirty graduates that have just came here, only nine will actually be accepted as genin. The other twenty-one will be weeded at and sent back to the academy. In other words, this a make it or break it pass-fail test and the chance that you will fail is around... Seventy percent." The three genin swallowed harshly and stared at Kakashi and he chuckled. "See? Didn't I tell you that you wouldn't like it?"
"That's insane!" shouted Sakura, who leaned forward, bringing her knees closer to herself. "We worked our butts off to get here!"
"What was the graduation test for to begin with then?" asked Sasuke in his bitter tone. Kakashi shrugged.
"Oh, that? That was just to select candidates who might become genin—or not." Sakura clenched her fist in frustration while Sasuke's eyebrow furrowed a bit. Natsumi just exhaled. "Be at Training Ground Seven at 5:00AM on the dot, and bring your ninja gear," Kakashi said. Sakura adjusted the gloves she wore, annoyed.
'Well, I'm not going to be weeded out by someone like him. I'm going to pass this test so I can get stronger,' thought Natsumi. Kakashi turned his back on the genin.
"You are dismissed, but one last thing. You should skip breakfast. You don't want to puke, do you?" With that, Kakashi disappeared with the leaves. Natsumi sighed. She needed to talk with the Hokage about him. She stood up and began walking before a voice said something—it was Duck Butt's voice.
"What are you doing?" He asked.
"Leaving, what does it look like?" She asked in a similar bitter tone as him, rolling her eyes. She stood at the ledge and hopped down. She landed in a crouch position and made her way to the Hokage's residence, leaving her teammates behind.
Natsumi eventually reached the Hokage's residence and walked in. She walked up the stairs and reached the enormous doors. She knocked and one she heard the 'come in,' she opened the door and did just that.
Hiruzen was at his desk, filling out some paperwork as usual. Natsumi shut the door behind her and walked up to his desk.
"Ah, Natsumi, hello. How is the shinobi life treating you?" He asked, looking at her. Natsumi shrugged.
"It's my Sensei, Kakashi," she explained. Hiruzen nods understandingly.
"Oh, I see." He put his quill down off to the side and let out a small sigh. Hiruzen took a smoke out of his pipe, holding it as he talked to Natsumi. "I know how you hate me for saying it.. but… Don't you think it's time to let go of the past, Natsumi?" He asked gently. Natsumi sighed back.
"Let go? How can I let go of what he did to me as a child?" She asked, staring directly ahead at a wall. "He was one of the first factors of why my life was so miserable! Why should he be forgiven?" She asked with traces of venom in her tone.
"So both of you can finally be at peace. That man has been punished very, very accordingly, after your kidnapping, trust me," Hiruzen said and Natsumi scoffed.
"He's a monster. Sure, he doesn't recognize me, but that doesn't change anything," she replied. Her name, Natsumi Saito, wasn't her actual name. She couldn't go by her real name. Not anymore.
"Natsumi, I understand that you are hurting, but time can only do so much, my dear... So many others have regretted and repented for their actions." His tone remained calm and low.
"Do you think I care!? I don't care about how these random people are feeling! I care about my struggles!" she shouted. She then blinked in surprise at her tone. She quickly bowed, regaining her composure. "Apologies, Lord Hokage. I spoke out of turn," she said blandly. 'I sound like a brat,' she thinks to herself. She then rose from her bow. "I must excuse myself, Lord Hokage." Hiruzen nodded and took another smile out of his pipe. That damn sweet and elderly smile got her every time…
As Natsumi walked out the door and shut it behind her, she sighed. Now to go home.
It did not take very long to get home. Her property was just a little behind the Hokage Rock. Natsumi owned about nine acres of land, and mountains on each side surrounded the perimeter. The only way to get in was by using a handprint on the mountain so a boulder would move. Inside of the perimeter were rivers, trees, smaller hills, rocks, and her house. The house was quite beautiful as well, despite it having only three bedrooms.
Once Natsumi walked inside her house, she immediately headed for the training grounds that were in her backyard. It was still only morning, so she had a lot of time to spare.
For her training regiment, she starts off jogging around her entire property twenty times as fast as she could. After that she did other things, like squats, pushups, sit-ups and lunges. Once she finished her workout, she warmed up her chakra control—or in other words, her greatest weakness. To try to improve her chakra control, she tried walking up trees, but she was still failing more than half the time. She then practiced taijutsu with her shadow clones for about two hours before moving on to ninjutsu and then, finally, kenjutsu.
After finishing her training, the tired blonde walked inside her house again to rest at last.
It was 8:00PM and Natsumi was in a t-shirt and shorts sitting at her desk writing in an orange journal. She did this every day, documenting her life. She didn't really know why she chose to do this, but ever since she has been able to read and write, she had written in it. She had the Hokage to thank for teaching her. Once she finished writing the current day's events, she flipped through the journal, reading her past entries. Some were more boring than others. She sighed, recalling the memories.
A young girl stood in front of the Third Hokage, trembling in fear. Her matted hair was a pale yellow color and her heterochromic eyes were filled with fear as she looked around. Her skin was an unhealthy alabaster color and her clothes—more like rags were covered in dirt and blood.
Natsumi shuddered slightly and then closed the journal, placing it on the shelf in her room. She flipped on the queens size bed before rolling over on her side, getting quite comfy. Her mind wandered to Duck Butt. She did not know why, but she started thinking about him. She thought about his dark flowy hair and piercing eyes that contrasted his pale skin. She then thought about his stomach. He definitely had abs. She pictured his lips and—
'Stop. You're being delusional,' she thought to herself, feeling a shiver go down her spine. 'It's just because he looks like Itachi,' Natsumi thought, trying to convince herself of that. With a sigh, she rolled over to the other side of the bed and reached over to the lamp. She pulled at it and the room went dark.AN:What did you think? Please leave a review!