Chapter 5
“Hey, Sora-sempai? Wanna head to the tower with me?”
She sighed, “You know we’re not supposed to team up, Naruto” scolding lightly.
He drew himself up, eyes closed in a smile eerily similar to Hatake-sensei. “Those who break the rules are scum, but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum.”
“I don’t think I would be abandoned if you left me to make my own way to the tower.”
The two didn’t notice they were walking companionably in the intended direction, too involved in their protestations that they would not partner up on the way to the tower.
At the same time, a sand eye floated a few paces behind the two baby leaf shinobi.
When she arrived at the target with Naruto she was appalled to find Sasuke with a large hickey on his neck, and it was spreading black marks like poison. She quickly kneeled beside Sakura and a green glow of healing chakra surrounded her. He jerked away sharply at the contact, his eyes a bit crazed. She sighed, getting up and going to her room and falling asleep. The preliminary fights would come all too soon.
Gaara watched all this and then turned to his siblings. He had a question for them. Temari was making yet another attempt at cooking dinner, while Kankuro was discreetly ordering a pizza on his phone. Both looked up when he came in and just stood there. He thought he’d try the elder first, surely she’d know. Temari had always been more inclined to answer him seriously rather than jokingly, after all.
“Temari” he called, getting her attention away from the stove as flames erupted from it. She didn’t notice.
“What does it mean when my stomach tightens and my-” he motioned towards his lower organ, knowing enough that THAT really shouldn’t be blatantly mentioned to a female - “gets big?”
He watched dispassionately as Temari’s face went beet red. Kankuro looked up from his phone, laughing uproariously.
“Little bro” he wheezed out, “You dog.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re horny as hell.”
He merely quirked his brow, he still didn’t know what they meant, but he had liked the feeling.
She hadn’t seen him throughout the preliminary fights. Her fight, number four precisely, was against some Oto nin whose name really wasn’t worth mentioning he was that obscure. But perversely good at countering her ninjutsu.
He had caught her leg in the midst of a wind jutsu that involved a no holds barred torso kick and slammed her into a nearby wall, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem what with her reflexes, but her leg had been twisted wrong. It was a clean break and she had managed to win her match anyways, but it had meant she had been sent to the medics.
That was why she was there when they brought Lee in.
Her brain blanked. He was one of her precious people, as Naruto had termed it. And now his dream of being a ninja was threatened. His right arm and leg were shattered with the high likelihood that he’d never be able to practice taijutsu again, and what with his damaged chakra coils that was all that was left in terms of being a ninja. No. She wouldn’t allow it. Being a ninja was what he had lived for.