This site is published by Samizdat Express, Orange, CT info@seltzerbooks.com
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Hinata smiled. And that had been that, at least in Sora’s mind.
She was soon to learn that Sora was almost a force of nature in
and of herself. Hinata’s bags had been packed, Naruto had been
called for and the two of them had been sat down in Tsuande’s
office in order to discuss their new mission. It all happened
very fast: barely four hours between the time she had been
sitting in her hospital bed avoiding looking at her father and
the time she was standing outside the gates of the village to
leave. Sora had wanted to get of the village fast, leaving
everything else to be rather hastily done...
“This is a class A mission with two key components,” Tsuande said, looking at the pair across her desk. The girl was so short her feet barely touched the floor and she stared at her hands neatly folded in her lap, occasionally darting shy glances at the other two occupants of the room. The boy was almost beside himself.
“Class A! Haha so you have finally realize by strength right?” he said, jumping up onto his chair and pumping his fist into the air.
Tsuande furrowed her brow in exasperation and shot him an annoyed look. “It’s mainly a training mission, not dangerous at all.” Naruto froze and looked down at her, confused for a moment. He was distracted for just long enough that he failed to notice that the dance he had been doing had caused the chair to start to tip over. He started wind milling his arms, but it was too late. He landed on the ground with a large crash.
Hinata gasped. “Naruto-kun!” she said in a voice so soft Tsuande was barely able to hear it. The girl jumped off her chair and rushed to his side. “Are you okay?”
Naruto stuck one hand behind his head and began to try and laugh the whole thing off. “Yeah, yeah, I just tripped, you know.”
Tsuande could almost see reality descend onto the girl. Now that the shock was over, she had started to realize what she had done, blushed and quickly took her seat again. Tsuande watched the girl give Naruto another sideways glance as he sat back down on his chair and was suddenly struck on the realization that Hinata had a crush on the overly loud blond boy. She should probably tell Sora. Then again, the woman would find out soon enough that she was going to be dealing with adolescent hormones. Serves her right for suddenly deciding she wanted to take Hinata along. This whole thing was not going to be easy to explain to the girl’s father.
“As I was saying this mission has two parts. The first is training. Sora is taking the two of you on as a personal favor to me. She is not Leaf Nin. In fact, I am fairly sure that she has never belonged to any village. You will be able to learn things from her that you would never be able to learn else wise.”
“From a girl?” Naruto questioned.
Tsuande rolled her eyes. Someday she would find out who had put these ideas into his head and jutsu away every bone in his body.
“Yes Naruto. Sora is a very skilled ninja. She could probably rival Kakashi,”
“NEH? Rival Kakashi-sensei? No way!”
“I know what she is capable of Naruto. I was one of the people who trained her. She is an extremely skilled and disciplined ninja, one you especially could learn a lot from.”
Naruto was about to risk his neck by standing up on the chair again to protest, when they heard a very soft voice.
“Hokage-sama?” They both turned to the girl next to Naruto, who had almost been forgotten.
“Yes, Hinata?”
She tilted her head up just far enough to be able look at the woman, shoulders forward and hands still clenched in her lap. “What was the second part of the mission?” she asked quickly.
Tsuande smiled. “The other part of you mission is to try and bring her back.”
“Huh?” Naruto said.
Tsuande shook her head. “As I said, Sora is a very good ninja. She would be a very valuable asset to Leaf should she decide to join our Shinobi. However, Sora has never served a village. She has a rather...poor view of them in general.”
“Poor?” Naruto questioned.
“Let’s just say that she vowed never to serve a village. Your job is to change her mind. That is what makes this a class A.”
This time Naruto did manage to stand back up in his chair. “NANI? It’s a class A mission for trying to convince this woman to join us. I wanna do something more dangerous! Send someone else!”
She sighed. “Naruto, you are the only one I think might have a chance of doing this.”
“Huh. Why?”
“You managed to renew my faith in the villages. I had given up on the whole damn thing and now I am sitting back here as the Hokage. Sora will be a far tougher nut to crack than I, but I’m hopeful you can do it.” She looked over at Hinata. “I’m not sure why, but she seems to have taking a liking to you. Hopefully, you will be able to help bring her back as well.”
Hinata looked at her, her eyes suddenly wide. Naruto had been gone for weeks where he went to get the new hokage. If this Sora was supposed to be a even harder to convince... “How long do we have?”
Tsuande sighed. “I’m not sure. I’ll send for you if I need to but considering how mush you two could learn from here I would like for you to stay there as long as possible.”
Hinata swallowed. There was a large heavy lump forming in the pit of her stomach. “How long would that be?” Tsuande looked at her. The girl was smart. She was starting to realize that this probably wasn’t as clean cut as Tsuande was making it out to be.
Naruto just kept looking back and forth between the two, trying to figure out what was going on. Finally Tsuande spoke.
“She said she would take you for three years.”
Hinata’s mind had gone into overload. Three years. Three years away from her father, her sister and the pressures of the clan. Three years away from chuunin exams, public displays of how poor a ninja she was and being brought face to face with her shortcomings.
Three years with him.
It was two much. It was as if someone had gone into her brain, taken her dreams and nightmares, kneaded them together and baked up into something that gave her feelings she couldn’t even identify.
Just him and her with an instructor neither of them knew. That meant he would look at her. That meant he would talk to her! And that would mean she would have to talk to him! She couldn’t do that! It had been easier for her the last time she had tried, at the practice ground right before the chuunin exam, but that wasn’t an indication of what was normal. She could still barely form complete sentences around her teammates. Something had taken over her mind when she had been talking to him that day. She felt like there was something she simply needed to tell him and suddenly the words had coming slipping out with only the occasional small hitch. But that had been a miracle. And miracles rarely happened. She knew other girls would view this as a golden opportunity, the ideal situation away from all the pain and with someone who meant so much to her. But all she could think about was that she was going spend the next three years making an idiot out of herself in front of him.
She tried to focus her mind on the task in front of her. Just around the corner from where she stood, Kiba and Shino were waiting for her. Kurenai and her father had been informed by Tsuande that she was leaving, but the task of telling her teammates had fallen to her. She was dreading it. They had always been so nice to her, no patient with her shortcomings. They had kept her safe on the few missions they had and seen her trough the second part of the exam. Now she had to tell them she was leaving, pretend that she was strong enough to go out on her own.
She paused at the corner again, peeping just around it to see them. They stood there a good four or five feet apart, Shino leaning against the wall while Kiba roughhoused a bit with Akamaru. Hinata smiled; she was really going to miss the dog.
Suddenly, Akamaru stopped and sniffed the air, before giving a small quick happy bark. He turned around and started running to where Hinata was hiding. Realizing that she had been found and that she didn’t have any chance to hide anymore, she stepped out from around the corner. Bending over she picked the little dog up with a small smile and let him start licking her cheek.
“Hey, Hinata. Ya’ know, you’re the only other person her does that to,” Kiba said with a lopsided grin.
She suppressed her guilt as she walked over to the pair, scratching Akamaru behind his ears. She felt decidedly safer with the puppy in her arms and she wasn’t about to let go.
“So, you’re feeling better?” Kiba asked. Hinata was only able to nod. “Great, now we’ll be able to go out on missions again. With all the chuunins and jounin’s out, I’ll bet we’ll get some good one’s now.”
“A-actually, I just got a mission,” Hinata said in a very small voice.
“All right! They’re already sending us out!” Kiba yelled. He stopped suddenly when Hinata shook her head.
“It’s just me.”
Shino raised one eyebrow over the rim of his glasses. “They’re sending you out on your own?” His voice had a distinctively incredulous tone to it.
Again Hinata shook her head. “I’m going with Naruto.”
Kiba scrunched up his nose. “Naruto?” he said, “That idiot?”
Hinata almost had her face completely buried in Akamaru’s fur. “It’s a training mission.” She looked up with a desperation written on her face. “I can’t say anything else, please don’t ask.” She looked as though she was at the point of tears.
“Okay, okay, we won’t ask anymore. Just how long to you think you’ll be gone.”
Hinata’s voice was so quiet that they were barely able to hear her. “Three years.”
“WHAT?” Kiba yelled. Shino looked as surprised as he ever did; both eyebrows arched high on his forehead. “Three years? But they can’t...” He stopped when he say Hinata’s face. Her eyes were huge and her face so pale that it almost matched her face. She had messed it all up again. They were angry with her, but she couldn’t figure out what she had done. She shouldn’t have told them whom she was traveling with; she knew Kiba felt bad about loosing to him. She should have broached the subject more gently, told them she was sad she was leaving them. But she was all frozen up and on the brink of tears.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, shoving a startled Akamaru back into Kiba’s arms. Turning, she ran away, her eyes filled with water, but the tears not falling.
Kiba started to go after her, but Shino’s hand on his arm stopped her. “What?” he yelled over his shoulder.
“She needs to calm down. We should go see her in a few hours.”
“Didn’t you see her crying?”
“She left because she was embarrassed. Give her a few hours and then we’ll go talk to her.”
Kiba hesitated, then sharply nodded, yanking his arm out of Shino’s hand. A few hours. He could wait that long. Then he would drag the information out of her and go yell at whoever had assigned her to this mission with the blond baka. Oh, yeah. That was a good plan.
What both Kiba and Shino failed to realize was that no one
wanted out of Leaf Village more than Sora. Hinata barely had
time to grab her bag before she was expected be outside the
gates, ready to leave.
Naruto burst into Sasuke’s hospital room, banding the door loudly against the wall. “Neh, neh, Sakura-chan. Guess what.”
The girl sitting by the bed turned to glare at him, never letting go of Sasuke’s hand. “Naruto, be quiet! Can’t you see Sasuke is trying to sleep?” she whispered loudly.
He scooted around the end of the bed to stand next to Sakura. “Gomen, gomen, but you will never guess what happened!” He started to launch into an account of his day starting off with having ramen for breakfast and moving through everything he’d done. This was his chance to impress her. It wasn’t so much about making her is girlfriend anymore. Almost a year spent on this gennin team had made him realize that friendship was what he had really been looking for. Not that he wouldn’t go out with Sakura in a second if she said yes, but until the day he got her to acknowledge that he was excellent boyfriend material, he would be content to be her friend. If only she would realize how much stronger he was, how much better he was than from when the teams first formed. So he babbled on, trying to impress her with his new class A mission. He was oblivious to the fact that Sakura wasn’t listening.
Sakura sighed and looked at the boy in the bed. She didn’t really care what Naruto was talking about. All of her attention was focused on the boy in the bed beside her. She has been sitting next to his bed for nearly a week, watching him surface occasionally, only to dive back into sleep again. His hand in hers was too cold and clammy, but she kept holding on. He would never let her do this when he was awake. She was desperately worried about him. She still hadn’t told anyone about the curse seal.
Suddenly the words “Class A mission” penetrated through her thoughts.
“Wait, what?” she said, turning her head to Naruto sharply.
“I told you,” he said. “Obaachan is sending me on a Class A mission.” Explaining it had gotten him more and more excited. It was as if he hoping to sweep Sakura up in his enthusiasm.
“You?” she said incredulously.
Naruto fought to keep his face from falling as his heart crashed through the floor. It wasn’t fair. He worked so hard, yet the people who mattered most never seemed to see. He was always going to be the same bumbling idiot in their eyes. He smiled through his disappointment.
“Yeah, me and Hinata. But I gotta go.” He ran to the door, then turned around to grin at her. “Tell Sasuke bye for me when he finally wakes up. See you in three year, Sakura-chan.” And he went through the door and bolted down the hall.
“Wait, WHAT?” Sakura yelled, jumping out of her chair and scrambling down the hall. “Naruto you BAKA, get back here!” But he was gone.
A woman at the nurse's station looked at her reproachfully. “Miss please, this is a hospital. People are trying to sleep.”
Sakura yelled at the woman in her head as she stared down the
hall. What did he mean three years?
Jiriaya leaned in close to Sora and smiled at her. “You know, I trained Naruto for a while.”
“Oh really,” Sora said, inching away. She didn’t want to do anything to this guy; he was pitiful enough as it was. But if he tried anything...
“Oh, yeah. I did something very similar to what you’re doing. Took him on the road, showed him the world.” He draped one arm over her shoulder. She quickly ducked under it and pulled away. Dear god, was he always like this? How did Obaachan put up with it? “You know, I could give you a few...pointers on how to manage the boy.”
Why the hell did that sound like a preposition? “I think I can handle him, thanks.” Was he actually wiggling his fingers at her?
“Hehehehe are you sure?” There was a definite lecherous tone in his voice and his hands were most defiantly heading towards her breasts. OK, that was it. End of conversation. She brought her hands up around his neck and watched him go bug eyed for a moment. Then she simply brought his head down as she brought her knee up.
He doubled over in pain, wheezing harshly. She smiled and walked off towards where Tsuande was having a conversation with a black haired woman. Sometimes the simplest moves were the best.
“My god, is he always like that,” Sora asked, walking over to Tsuande, who was talking with a dark haired woman. The woman smiled at Sora a little hesitantly. Sora suddenly remembered that this was Hinata’s teacher and she was probably a little hesitant to give her up. Good. Hinata’s father had been far too easily convinced.
“Huh? Oh, Jiriaya. Yes, unfortunately.” Tsuande gave her a wicked smile. “You should be gal you still look like that. If you looked like your usual self he would have assumed-“
Sora rolled her eyes. “Enough about the outfit already, Obaachan!”
The woman looked confused. “What about her outfit?”
Tsuande sighed. “You wouldn’t have to ask if you saw what she is actually wearing.”
Kurenai raised her eyebrows. “You have an illusion spell on at the moment? That impressive; I really can’t tell.”
Sora shrugged. “I have a lot of practice. Plus I learned from the best. Obaachan has been covering her age since the first wrinkle.” She looked thoughtful for a second. “Then again, if I looked like she did, I would probably do the same thing.”
Tsuande rounded on her, eyes burning. “Why you-“
“Neh, neh. Are you our new sensei?”
Sora looked over at the short blond boy. “Naruto?”
The boy nodded vigorously. She looked behind him and saw the shy girl with the wide pale eyes. “Oh good, you’re both here. Great, lets go!” She started to walk off.
“WAIT!” yelled Tsuande.
Sora looked back over her shoulder. “What?” she said in apparent confusion, which Tsuande was fairly certain she was faking.
“I want a word with you before you go. Besides you should give the kids the chance to say goodbye to their teachers.”
Sora rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine just make it fast. I really want to get out of here.” Tsuande walked over to Sora and started talking to her in a low voice. It took 30 seconds for them to start arguing. Naruto walked over to where Jiriaya was still curled in a ball on the ground, breathing heavily. “Watch out for that one, kid. She’s dangerous.”
“Probably just got what you deserved,” he said with a snort.
Suddenly Jiriaya’s face went serious. “Look kid. I know Tsuande and if she says that this Sora is good, then she’s good. Get as much out of her as you can.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“And kid.”
“Yeah?”
“Take good care of the girl. Tsuande say’s she has healed, but she’s probably still scared.”
Naruto grinned. “Yeah, well, she’s a girl. I’ll protect her.”
Jiriaya grinned back. “Good, good! Then, once she trusts you, you can move on in and- ack!” Suddenly all of the air came out of his lung as once thanks to the force provided by Naruto’s kicks to his side.
“Hey Ero-Sennin. I’m not a pervert like you.” Leaving Jiriaya is yet another trembling mass on the ground, he turned and walked over to Hinata.
Kurenai was crouching down so that her head was even with Hinata’s. “Just have more confidence in yourself and don’t panic. That’s when you start making mistakes.” Hinata just looked at her feet and nodded her head. Kurenai sighed. “Tsuande says that Sora is a former student of hers, and that she will keep you safe-“
“Neh, Neh, you don’t have to worry about that. I’ll keep Hinata safe.” Hinata looked up at Naruto, pale eyes wide and full of awe. Naruto, however, was unable to see them; he was grinning so wide that his eyes were closed. Suddenly Kurenai had a very bad feeling about this. What if the he broke her heart? The poor girl had been through enough; the last few months especially had been an emotional roller coaster. What would happen if the boy accidentally hurt her?
“Neh, Hinata, lets go,” he said, grabbing her arm and starting to pull her off towards Sora and Tsuande. Hinata just let herself be dragged along, as if she wasn’t really sure what was going on. Kurenai sighed. Tsuande said that Hinata’s inclusion had been instrumental in gaining Sora’s participation. Without her, Sora wasn’t going to take Naruto. No matter how much it worried her, she had to let Hinata go. She would just have to trust to fate.
Naruto stopped short a few feet away from the two women. “Every three months,” Sora said firmly.
“Every week,” Tsuande said just as firmly.
“That’s over 150 reports. Every other month.”
“Every other week.”
“Fine, once a month. I am absolutely not writing anymore.”
Tsuande sighed. “Fine, once a month, but you had better write every single one.”
“Don’t worry.” Sora turned to Naruto and Hinata. “All ready then? Good, that means we can finally get this show on the road.” She smiled at Tsuande and gave her a quick hug. “See you in three years Sensei.”
Flashing another quick smile, she started to lead the threesome down the road, away from Hidden Leaf. Naruto and Hinata started taking quick glances back at the village over their shoulders. The reality of three years was finally starting to sink in and weigh heavy on their shoulders and hearts.
Sora turned around and started to walk backwards, waving at the three teachers who stood watching them go. “Goodbye Obaachan!”
“Don’t forget the reports!”
“Every six months, I remember.”
“EVERY MONTH!”
“Right, right, I won’t forget!” And with that they were over the crest of the hill and out of sight.
Kurenai looked at Tsuande. “I’m sorry Hokage-sama, but are you sure this is a good idea.”
Tsuande started at the place where had just disappeared. “It’s
either going to be exactly what all three of them need or an
unmitigated disaster.”
This site is published by Samizdat Express, Orange, CT info@seltzerbooks.com
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| Webseltzerbooks.com |