Naruto 9

“So guys… I don’t know about you all but I’m going to stuff my face FULLL tonight!” Naruto chippered with a wide, foxfaced grin. All around the other two new genin shared a nod of agreement.

“A test inside of our test.” Sasuke noted as he nodded to himself, secretly inside seething a bit. That Naruto of all people had arrived at that particular conclusion first was annoying. The deadlast of the class hitting on a solution to their impending order without going against it first was a black mark against himself. The sort of thing he needed to fix in order to become a ninja capable of killing his true target.

“Yeah!” Sakura piped in, seeing that Sasuke seemed to take the suggestion seriously. Not wanting to be left out of the revelation she offered more. “Probably we should eat over the course of the night, often and in fair portions. Push back the hunger as much as we can.  I think I read something once on how to do that with maximum efficiency.”

“Haha great! Looks like our team’s off to a good start huh?” The annoying deadlast boy wearing a fucking skirt laughed. The fact that somehow he looked better in it than she figured that she would annoyed the hell out Sakura on the inside, her inner self raging and snarling at the very idea. She hadn’t at all forgotten the fucking kiss either. Shameless bitchboy. She sighed openly as he continued. “Good thing too… test from a jonin sensei...”

Sasuke reluctantly gave a nod as the other boy’s voice trailed off.

“Yeah… I don’t think he’ll take it easy on us.” Sakura bit her lip as soon as she said that, wishing somehow that one of the two would contradict that.

Everyone else simply nodded.

“So then… who’s place do we stay at tonight then? Mine’s a little cramped.” The smiling foxboy asked, his tone of voice unmistakably serious.

“Stay? I’m going home.” Sakura muttered, thinking of her usual afterschool routine. Her books called to her at home.

“What? No way guys, we’re a team. And tomorrow’s the very first mission of our lives. We shouldn’t just split up and hope for the best. Our best chance to win this is to get together and figure out what kinds of things we can do. Whatever he throws at us, it’s better if we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses… right?” Naruto asked, his head slightly tilted as if looking at some far off thing.

“You… might actually have a point.” Sasuke spoke, his face looking as if he’d bitten something sour. Naruto rolled his eyes, clearly hanging out with him couldn’t be that bad… right? Even with… the thing that he really was. Right? “Deadlast may not have much going for him in classes, but he got the headband somehow. And you and I are have the best grades in the class, best theory, and best practical... figuring out how to make that stuff into an advantage for tomorrow isn’t actually a bad idea.”

“See Sakura, I’m good at this!” Naruto grinned, waggling his hips slightly in an exaggeratedly feminine expression.

Sakura was not particularly amused.

“All right... I suppose Sasuke-kun has a point.” She demurred to her crush before casting a stinkeyed glance over to the pervert. “But I’ve got to at least tell my mom where I’m going. And we need to get food, and make sure there’s places to sleep, and…”

“So take care of the details Sakura. You’re good at details right?” Naruto pitched with a bright eyed smile. One which widened with the pinkette frowning nod.

“My home... It’s got a lot of space. We could stay over at my place.” Sasuke added, looking as if he were swallowing down something in order to say just that. “We can practice there if we need to.”

“Well then! Let’s get going!” Naruto grinned madly. A strange sensation rising in his chest as the sheer joy of being included simply over took him. Absently he combed through his long golden hair with his fingers, twisting and twiddling with the ends in nervous anticipation.

The rest assented, and they were off.



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It took an hour or two for Sakura to get everything in order, her mother’s insistence on making the food to come later and too her specification was nothing less than mortifying, what if she embarrassed her infront of Sasuke-kun? What if the food wasn’t good enough. And that didn’t even stop there, after all there was the fact that she’d be spending the night with Sasuke-kun… in his house, sleeping under his roof.

Well, they’re be the pervert there too, but he hadn’t bothered her in a while, his attempts at wooing her having fallen off since the last year or two. It was kinda weird actually, just how much he’d changed. She distinctly remembered that he used to be louder, boystrous in everything. Then he suddenly just… seemed to fade into the background.

Honestly speaking it had been a bit of a relief for her. No more Naruto dragging at her heels, being annoying, keeping all the other kids from playing with her cause she spent too much time around him.

And then there was this... transformation.

She honestly didn’t know what to make of it. Or to really make of him anymore. Though she did know what she made of the kiss. Or at least... she thought she did in the heat of the moment. But the more she thought of the two boys with their lips pressed together, the stranger it felt, and the less of that felt like anger.

She didn’t like it one bit.

“Alright. So mom’s going to be coming by later with the food... she insists on checking up on us too. And I brought along some of my academy text books so we can see if there’s anything that we can study up while we do this.” She spoke up as they settled in.

Sasuke’s home… was nice.

It was as promised, a big spacious area, cared for and manicured in a way that seemed to suggest a much bigger presence than a single boy. All around it had been other homes, all part of the gated district which she’d glanced many times before, but never entered until now.

It was nice.

Nice but lonely.

Lonely in a way that sent a shiver down her spine. All of it empty, devoid of the usual bustle of Konoha, the movement of people, civilians, ninja, and everyone inbetween. It felt like a dead space which opened up only to swallow the boy who lived here within it.

“Wow your place is big Sasuke.” Naruto marveled, glancing around like some kind of excited puppy.

Sasuke merely grunted in reply.

“Ok so then let’s get down to business.” Sakura started, trying her hardest to seem mature. “So I guess we can tell each other what we know? And what we’re good at then?”

The others looked around at each other, almost as if unsure where to start.

“Ah… I guess I should go first since I suggested this right?” Naruto smiled, a strangely subdued and sheepish thing to witness on his vibrant face. “Ok, so here goes. I’m good at Henge... but I never really showed how good in class. Onii-chan used to tell me not to show it off so I could take people by surprise.”

Naruto’s hands flickered, as Sakura and Sasuke both were left to blink... suddenly seeing his face replaced by another much more drab and boring young lady’s. Brown hair and a look that could only be described as plain seemed to dominate everything about the description. And then his hands moved again, this time transforming him again into a Naked buxom blonde bombshell of a girl, distinctly older and larger than he or his last transformation had been.

And there had been notably little smoke. She’d read that that was a sign of a particularly well practiced Henge, frankly that was much more impressive than she’d have given the boy who’d been dead last in their class credit for. Still Sakura didn’t know at all how to feel as a sultry giggle passed out from what she’d KNOWN just moments ago had been a BOY’s lips.

She took special exception as the now ‘pretend’ girl draped herself across Sasuke’s shoulders moaning his name.

With a rolled up scroll to the forehead.

Several times.

“Ok… I’ll admit that was a little impressive Naruto, put on some clothes... but you kept failing out on Bunshin. So how did you manage to get your headband?” She asked, curiosity peeked by the display of actual skill on his part. Especially since he’d held the Henge right though her minor assault. Sakura noted that that bit of trauma should have dropped the perv out of his disguise, yet there he was still rubbing his head and acting like a cute girl with no clothing on.

Naruto grimaced at the question even as his hands flashed again to produce clothing for his feminine form. “I… did something dumb.”

“That’s pretty much a given.” Sasuke rejoined, seeming to have caught himself now that Naruto’s female self was now appreciably covered. Naruto retaliated with a quick swipe upside the other boy’s head, utilizing his currently longer reach.

“Mizuki sensei… you know how he was missing today?” Naruto began, watching the nods of his companions. “Well… there’s a good reason for that. Yesterday he tried to get me to steal a secret scroll from the hokage’s office. Iruka sensei’s bandages are from