A/N: So, last chapter milpld commented that having Inoichi interrupt Natsu's thoughts was likely out of character for him, because as a therapist he should know to give people a chance to think things through. I know I replied directly, but thanks again for pointing that out as I hadn't even realized I was doing it! I will definitely do better in the future to take his occupation into consideration during stuff like that.

I do apologize if this chapter is a little lackluster – I wanted to set it up so I could timeskip for next chapter, to get us further into the plot and I'm not sure how well I did with that. I want the pace to pick up a little, or we'll spend the next year with a slice-of-life fic or something! So hopefully this doesn't feel too wrong because of that.

I gotta say though… considering how people have reacted towards what happened in the mindscape, I'm getting kinda nervous about how well I can live up to your expectations! My original idea for the left-hand path and the person on that path… I'm sorta wondering if it's good enough, but they won't (shouldn't) come back to relevance until the Chunin exams really so I've got some time to fully flesh out what I want to do, thankfully!

Thanks again to everyone who takes the time to review, I know I don't respond directly too often, but I always appreciate them! And thanks as well to everyone who takes the time to read this story!

"Natsu, you made it!" Naruto waves energetically from his sprawled position. Natsu walks up, until he's standing right over the reclining blond.

"Weren't you guys… supposed to be training?"

Naruto grins, pushing himself to his feet quickly. "Yeah, we were doing that for a while. 'Kashi-sensei separated us a little bit ago and said we should 'think over our actions' or something and that we'd try again. I dunno what we're s'posed to think about though, since I didn't do anything! How'd your lesson with that Inoichi guy go anyway?"

"Weird." Natsu shrugs, looking around the clearing. "He seriously put you guys on time-out?"

"Indeed I did, Natsu-chan~!" Natsu jumps as a pair of hands clamp down on his shoulders, Kakashi's cheery voice sounding from behind him. "They're still on time out for another five minutes, so if you wouldn't mind going this way~"

Kakashi pushes lightly at his back, and Natsu scowls before letting himself be lead to the center of the clearing.

"So, how did the lesson with Inoichi-san go?"

Natsu straightens a little at the seriousness in Kakashi's voice. "I… don't really know. Some weird stuff happened, but I took so long Inoichi-san pulled me out and… ugh. I really don't know. I guess I'm not leaving anytime soon though, if the way that door locked itself means anything…"

Natsu scowls, crossing his arms. "I was so close. I just…"

Kakashi sighs dramatically, reaching out to ruffle Natsu's hair. The pinkette jerks himself backwards, eyeing the sensei's hand suspiciously.

"Maa, Natsu-kun. Don't let it bother you. After all, you're going to need all your wits about you today~!" He claps his hands together, lone eye curled into a smile, and two clones of himself come over, Naruto and Sasuke tucked under their arms.

"Now! I hope you boys learned your lesson," Kakashi starts brightly. Sasuke scowls and looks away, and Naruto sticks his tongue out, "because we're going to spar."

Everyone perks up as he continues. "Three on one, like the bell test was supposed to be. I'll give you a minute to decide how you'd like to coordinate your attacks." He puts his hands into his pockets and ambles off, leaving Natsu to look between…

I suppose I really should start thinking of them as my teammates, shouldn't I? You can't… work together, if you aren't even acknowledging that you're a team…

Sighing, Natsu looks at Sasuke. "You should take long-range."

"No." Sasuke crosses his arms, glaring. "I'm close-mid. I'm not handicapping myself."

"You're the only one who can right now, I've never thrown knives in my life and Naruto's aim sucks-"

"Hey!"

"Besides, with his ability to spam clones, close-range is gonna be pretty crowded as it is."

"Let him go long. We're good enough to dodge any bad throws. Unless you're not so confident?"

Sasuke raises an eyebrow, challenging, and Natsu scowls. "It's not about-!"

"Time's up~!"

Kakashi's voice interrupts cheerily, fully in-time with a suckerpunch to Naruto's gut. The blond yelps, tossed a few feet away by the force, and Sasuke leaps into an attack immediately.

Natsu sighs. "Even Gray makes a better teammate…" he mutters as he follows.

The fight goes about as well as could be expected, honestly.

Natsu tries not to glare at Sasuke as he prods the rapidly-spreading bruise that covers half his torso. Kakashi shakes his head, looking down at the three of them as they nurse their wounds.

"That was… spectacularly awful. Truly, you continue to amaze me. I think I'm honestly impressed at just how bad that was."

Kakashi's voice is thick with blatant sarcasm. Natsu sighs as he shrugs his qipao back on, relieved that nothing ended up breaking.

"Now. Perhaps you three could tell me just why you were so awful? Naruto-kun, perhaps you'd like to start?"

"Uh… we didn't win?"

"Wrong. Sasuke-kun?"

"Tch."

Kakashi clicks his tongue. "Pride gets you nowhere, Sasuke-kun. But if you truly don't want to answer… Natsu-kun?"

Natsu sighs. "We didn't do a good job of being aware of where our teammates were, and kept running into each other or attacking each other by mistake."

"Very kind of you to say 'we', Natsu-kun, but we both know that not a single one of your attacks even came close to hitting either of your teammates. But let me break the fight down for all of you properly, ne?

"Naruto-kun, you consistently spammed the field with your clones, which made it impossible for Sasuke-kun and Natsu-kun to move effectively. If your teammates were capable of telling which were clones and which was actually you, it could have been a good strategy - block my line of sight, and they could destroy your clones and come at me in a single move. More than that however, on many occasions your clones blocked their own line of sight, and ended up actually catching both Natsu-kun and Sasuke-kun in their attacks multiple times.

"Sasuke-kun…" Kakashi sighs. "You were definitely better at staying out of your teammates' way than Naruto-kun, and even seemed to be taking their positions into account when launching your own attacks. I honestly thought that you might actually succeed in passing this arguable 'test'. Then Naruto-kun actually managed to immobilize me for a moment. There's nothing wrong with going all-out against a pinned opponent, but I did say this would be like the bell test. Which I used academy-level jutsu in. While I might forgive you being surprised when I substituted myself away, continuing your attack like that… did you even look to see what you'd hit, or did you just assume that since you hit something it had to be me?"

Sasuke scowls, arms crossed. Natsu sits on his hands, trying not to rub the throbbing bruises across his chest. The Uchiha'd gotten in two hits, after Natsu froze in surprise, and it rankles. He fights not to scowl himself, as Kakashi turns to him.

"In a spar like this, it became quite obvious that Natsu-kun really is used to working with a team. With just how many clones Naruto was spamming all over the field, it was actually somewhat impressive how little you got in their way. As far as the actual teamwork side of things is concerned, I don't actually have too many complaints. You did your best to seamlessly take advantage of openings they left, and while you could have perhaps tried to set some up for them in return, well - that might be too much to ask for, with everyone's current state. Ah! I did also have some critiques regarding your taijutsu itself, but that wasn't the point of this spar~

"Now." Kakashi claps his hands together, smiling. "We'll be holding fights like this every few days. I do hope I'll see improvement in your teamwork as this goes on, and hopefully you'll see improvement as well. On days we don't spar, we'll still be having more esoteric teamwork exercises until, as I said before, you show enough improvement for me to consider actually training you. For now, go enjoy your lunch children. I'll come back with your missions in thirty~"

He disappears in a flurry of leaves. Natsu groans, falling back to sprawl in the grass.

"You okay?" Naruto's head enters his field of vision, and Natsu shrugs awkwardly.

"M'fine. Jus' sore, Sakura-chan's body gets tired so fast…"

Naruto opens his mouth, then closes it. He looks uncertain for a moment, before taking a deep breath and speaking again. "You wanna eat lunch together?"

"Sure…" Natsu pushes himself up with a groan. "You can tell me how your teamwork exercises went before I got here while we do, yeah?"

Naruto chuckles nervously, glancing at Sasuke and then quickly away. "Yeah, sure, uh, let's go eat over there!"

Natsu follows, and they settle down easily, chatting around mouthfuls of food. His attempts to wheedle what happened out of Naruto end in rather blatant failure, and Kakashi swoops back into the clearing exactly thirty minutes later, interrupting his latest strategy to get Naruto to tell him about his and Sasuke's exercise.

Natsu quickly shoves the rest of his food into his mouth as he looks over Kakashi, trying to see how many missions they'll be doing today.

The food turns to flavorless ash in his mouth, as he spots only a single scroll held between the sensei's fingers. He forces himself to swallow, tries not to choke as the food goes down tight and painful.

"K-Kakashi-sensei?"

"Hmm? Oh, no need to look so worried, Natsu-kun! I thought I'd give you all a chance to redeem yourselves is all!" He unfurls the scroll dramatically, Madam Shijimi's seal in bold relief at the bottom.

Even Sasuke's stoic mask cracks for a moment. The three of them trade wary looks as Kakashi practically sparkles, rolling the scroll back up with exaggerated care.

"Hurry up and polish off that food~ The faster we get started the faster I get to have fun!"

H-how can anyone be expected to have an appetite when that hellcat is involved!?

"I'm in position." Natsu breathes into the headset, as quiet as he can physically be. A distant corner of his mind manages to feel grateful for Sakura's soft voice, even as the rest of him uses everything he knows about cats to remain as unnoticeable as possible.

Tora'd already slipped through their trap once, because they weren't quiet enough, and Natsu refuses to let it happen again.

Naruto and Sasuke's acknowledgement comes in just as quiet, and then half a minute later, Naruto confirms his own position.

That's everyone!

"Alright," Natsu whispers, "spring in 3, 2, 1…"

He leaps out in time with his call, startling Tora. The cat hisses fiercely and bolts - kunai whistle through the air, forcing the demon to turn aside from its chosen path.

Between Natsu's physical presence and Sasuke's precisely-aimed projectiles, the hellcat scrambles for an open route to freedom.

And straight into Naruto's trap.

The blond's clones dogpile the hastily-constructed cage, short pieces of ninja wire used to tie down every hinge as Tora screeches in ear-bleeding fury. Three of the clones pop from Tora's claws stretching through the bars, but more take their place, offering their lives in valiant sacrifice, until at last the cage is fully secured.

Natsu comes to a stop a couple feet away, panting, as Sasuke drops down from the trees and approaches with caution.

"D-dit we get it?" The Uchiha uncharacteristically stutters, face a mire of bloody scratches. One of the scrapes cuts dangerously close to his right eye, and after that happened he didn't even protest being assigned the long-range support post. Natsu gets the feeling it was only Sasuke's pride that stopped him from requesting that position, with how downright pleased he looked to be assigned there.

"I think so…" Naruto breathes, and the only reason Natsu hears it is the highly-sensitive headset Kakashi gave them all before they started.

Natsu can't really blame him, considering where Tora's claws ended up the last time they attempted a trap and the blond asked their ETA a little too loudly. Even Sasuke winced in sympathy.

"Will the cage hold if we pick it up?"

Naruto shrugs in response to Natsu's query. "Hopefully… never made a trap like this before, after all."

Sasuke gives the cage and squalling cat a narrow-eyed look and takes a large step back. Naruto shifts his weight uncomfortably, legs close together.

Natsu wants to cry.

I guess… it's my turn to get scratched…

Natsu takes a deep breath, then strides forward. Gripping the cage at its most obvious weak-points, the pinkette scoops it off the ground and prays the gloves he borrowed protect his hands.

The cage doesn't fall apart, mercifully, though Tora's fangs pierce through the glove on his left hand as though it isn't even there. Grimacing, Natsu turns and starts to run. We just gotta get back to the admin center beforethis damn hellspawn eats my fingers! No problem, right?

They make it out of the forest, heading straight for the road and the quick route to the tower, when Naruto suddenly cries out.

"Natsu!"

The pinkette digs his heels immediately, trying to stop, and the incoming blur of purple and blond clips his shoulder instead of bowling him over.

Natsu's grip on the cage fumbles, left hand falling off as he attempts to balance, and the pinkette feels a moment of resigned terror as Tora leaps for the weak point as best she can-

Suddenly Sasuke is there, hands grasping the other side of the cage with desperate vigor, offering a truly fierce snarl towards the blond-haired girl that ran into Natsu.

The Dragon Slayer thinks he's never been so happy for Sasuke's bad attitude in the entire time they've known each other.

"What do you think you're doing, bakayarou!" He waits for Natsu to get a firm grip back on the cage before letting go and striding towards the girl with predatory grace. "We spent four and a half hours catching that-that incarnation of evil and you nearly set it free again!"

"Sasuke-kun~!" the blond clasps her hands to her chest, smiling widely, and Natsu has never met someone with such poor survival instincts in his life. "Are you guys going to the mission desk too? We can walk together!"

Sasuke offers an impressively scornful glare as he turns and walks away without hesitation. Mostly, Natsu is impressed he didn't pull a kunai, but decides not to say anything as he quickly jogs to catch up. Tora squawks in offended outrage at his bouncing, and makes a couple swipes at his fingers in punishment.

Natsu almost shakes the cage in retaliation, but it really isn't secure enough to treat like that…

"Oi, Sakura, don't go cozying up to my Sasuke-ku-!" Natsu skitters sideways as the blond attempts to tackle him, and Naruto grabs her before she can get any closer.

"Ehehe, sorry Ino! But we gotta get this little escape artist to the admin chunin before she gives us the go'round again. See ya!" Naruto quickly steps up to his other side, and walking quickly down the road with Sasuke on his left and Naruto on his right, Natsu thinks - perhaps quite hopefully - that this whole team thing will actually work out.