Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

Always keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark ~ Robert Heinlein

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I sprinted for Kakashi-sensei, boosting my legs with chakra to achieve more than twice my usual speed.

Having your Jounin sensei pass out on you was not a good thing.

I rolled him onto his back, checking the ABC's of first aid.

Airways. Breathing. Circulation.

For half a second, I panicked over his mask, but it was surprisingly thin material. I could feel his breath puffing out, could measure the slow beat of his carotid pulse. His heart rate was incredibly low, but I didn't worry about that. Ninja were extreme athletes, our hearts were conditioned to have a large stroke volume in order to supply large amounts of oxygen while we were exercising. That meant then, that our resting heart rates were very low due to the much lower oxygen demand. So a slow pulse wasn't automatically something to worry about.

I sat back on my heels, that first flutter of panic fading. My hands walked slowly through the seals, as I formed the Yin chakra. "Yin Release: Diagnostic Jutsu!"

My hands glowed green and I lowered them to his chest. A good medic can assimilate all the information that the jutsu gives them in under a second. I definitely couldn't. I had to focus specifically on different areas in order to clarify and understand the readings my chakra was giving me.

"No water in the lungs," I murmured, frowning with concentration. That was the first thought that had come to mind; that whatever jutsu he was using to breath underwater wasn't as efficient as it appeared. Thankfully, that didn't seem to be the case. "Blood pressure… normal. No internal bleeding. No external bleeding. No broken bones." Obviously broken bones anyway. I wasn't sure I'd pick up finer details like hairline fractures. "Nervous system… clear. Chakra system… hmmm."

Yup. That was the most likely problem. His chakra system was practically empty. Not only that, but his Sharingan eye, even covered, was eating chakra at an alarming rate. His chakra production rate only exceeded it by a tiny amount, meaning it would take him a loooong time to recover his full reserves. Chakra exhaustion often caused collapse, but more of the 'my arms and legs aren't working' variety than full out unconsciousness. It was like Kakashi-sensei's system had pre-empted him and just shut down.

But, well, I was hardly a medic-nin. I couldn't tell if there was anything else wrong with him.

"Chakra exhaustion," I told the boys. "He's not going to be getting up any time soon."

They sighed in relief.

"My place isn't far from here," Tazuna offered. He looked remarkably calm, except for the death grip he had on his sake bottle.

I nodded and assessed my chakra levels. They were nearly gutted out. There was no way I'd be able to walk him there with my Shadow Jutsu. "Naruto? Do you think you have enough chakra for a few clones?"

Naruto grinned. "Sure thing!" Several Naruto's shimmered into existence around us, one turning into a stretcher shortly afterwards. I started, then shrugged. They were chakra constructs after all, why couldn't they change their shape? The Shadow Clone Jutsu was the parent jutsu of the Shadow Shuriken Jutsu tree and you could use it to create duplicates of just about anything.

We were greeted with a large measure of relief by Tazuna's daughter - Tsunami - as we arrived, though she looked very worried when she caught sight of Kakashi-sensei limp form.

"Is there somewhere we can put Sensei?" Sasuke asked, once introductions were done.

"There's a guest room upstairs," Tazuna said, looking more relaxed now that he was home than he had been the whole journey. "Do you need anything?"

I cast a worried glance at Sensei. "I don't think so. We'll let you know."

Navigating a stretcher up a narrow flight of stairs is slightly trickier than it sounds, but we managed easily enough.

"So… can you fix him?" Naruto asked, looking at me once we had Sensei situated on a futon.

"Sensei is chakra exhausted. I could do a chakra transfusion but…" I bit my lip nervously. "I… I don't have enough chakra to heal him."

The two exchanged looks that seemed to say 'well, fuck'. I forged on. "I mean, I know a technique… but I've never really used it before…"

"Well, what does it do?" Naruto asked impatiently.

"Umm… It uses other peoples chakra." That was the most simplified version of it. There was more to it than that. You had to purify it and convert it and channel it. If you did it wrong, you could end up with chakra poisoning which was similar to blood poisoning. "I… Naruto has the most chakra out of all of us," I confessed. Sasuke might have been a better match element wise since he'd been lightening element too, but I didn't think Sasuke had enough to heal sensei without sending him into an exhaustion state. No, Sasuke's chakra was more useful in himself.

Naruto didn't even pause. "Yes! You totally can use my chakra. Come on, we have to fix sensei!" He bounced on his feet, previous worry forgotten.

"I don't know if it will work," I said, a ball of nervousness writing in my stomach. Especially since Naruto had… other chakra. Which was supposedly poisonous to people. That was the last thing we needed. "I need to practice. Can you channel chakra to your hands?"

They lit up in a blue glow. Cautiously, I touched it, chakra snaking over it in ribbons. He giggled at the feeling. I have only ever been able to describe how chakra feels like by comparing it to something else. Sensei's chakra is like static electricity, building and buzzing for a moment of attack. Sasuke's is like an ember, smouldering before bursting into flame once more. Shikamaru's is like a lazy black cat winding around your ankles.

Naruto's… Naruto's is like the sun. Bright and cheerful and playful with the potential for scorching, pitiless force. Any Sand nin will tell you that high summer in the desert is the most dangerous time of all.

But there wasn't an ounce of Kyuubi in it.

I puffed out a breath. "I think I can do it." I nodded, as if to convince myself. "Naruto, can you do that and create Shadow Clones?"

He looked puzzled. "Yeah, of course."

"Maybe we should set up a perimeter?" I asked, glancing at Sasuke.

He caught on quickly and nodded. "Hn. Give me four clones and we'll scout out the surroundings and set up a patrol."

Narutos puffed into existence, though they looked less than enthusiastic about following Sasuke.

"Right," I said, trying not to tremble. "Let's do this."

Chakra transfusions weren't used a lot. Long term, they weren't exactly healthy, since the body started actually producing less chakra. Most of the time, Medic-nin just proscribed rest and food in order to rebuild your own reserves. But at the rate that Sensei's chakra reserves were filling even in a weeks time he'd still be at less than half his maximum.

I knelt beside Sensei, Naruto directly across from me. "Yin Release: Chakra Transfusion Jutsu." My hands glowed green. Naruto placed his, glowing blue, overtop of them.

I started drawing it in and purifying it, smoothing out the waves and flows, removing as much of the elemental nature of the chakra as I could, then carefully and delicately introducing it to Sensei's coils. It was slow going and took a lot of concentration.

After ten minutes, my hands started to go numb from the amount of chakra pushing through them. I gritted my teeth and kept going. It was working. Slowly but surely, Kakashi-sensei's chakra system was filling up. It was a little like trying to fill a bucket with a teaspoon, but we'd get there eventually.

Sensei snapped awake so fast I didn't even register. Once second he was out of it, the next, my wrists were pinned in an unforgiving grip and his grey eye bored mercilessly into me.

"Sensei?" I said timidly. My wrists ached at the grip, it felt like my bones were grinding together. I wanted to reinforce them with chakra, but I didn't dare. It might have been taken as a threat, and rule one of dealing with injured jounin is to never make a move that might be considered an attack.

Of course, Naruto clearly hadn't read the same book. "Hey! Hey, Kakashi-sensei, what are you doing?" he exclaimed. Loudly.

Sensei's eye flickered to him, then his grip relaxed. I let out the breath I wasn't aware I had been holding.

"Well, good morning, my cute little students," he said, eye curving as he smiled. "What are you two up to?"

"We're healing you," I answered politely. "Please allow me to finish, sensei."

Like hell was I going to try without asking for permission, not after that.

"Maa, that's not really necessary, Shikako," he replied, waving it off. I huffed in frustration. His chakra levels were only about a quarter filled. While chakra transfusions weren't as good as letting them refill naturally, in this situation I was pretty sure an exception should be made.

"Sensei," I tried. "You really need healing." He looked absolutely unconvinced. I hated arguing. However, I wanted to die even less. "You're the only one with the skill to fight Zabuza if he comes back."

Naruto interrupted me. "Zabuza is dead, remember? That freaky Hunter-nin guy got him."

I bit my lip again. I really had to stop doing that. "I could be wrong but… his chakra was still there. It was compressed but… I think he's still alive." The fight had gone differently to canon, but Haku had still come. And I was pretty sure he had still pulled the same trick. That was the only reason I had sensed deep enough to find Zabuza's chakra. If I hadn't been looking, I wouldn't have found it. But I didn't like trying to use future knowledge without present evidence to back it up. Too many things could change and what I did know was vague.

Sensei looked troubled. "Yes. Hunter nin generally dispose of the body on the spot to prevent people from gaining village secrets. And senbon are not usually killing weapons."

Things always seemed obvious when someone else pointed them out.

I could see him torn between his dislike of healing and the new information he was assimilating.

"Please, Kakashi-sensei?" I added.

He sighed. "It would be for the best."

I nodded at Naruto and we resumed. With Kakashi-sensei awake and able to willingly receive chakra it went much faster than before, but Sasuke had returned by the time we were finished.

"Done," I said, sitting back, exhausted. I pushed by bangs out of my eyes and flexed my fingers. Both my hands were full of pins and needles as they overcompensated for releasing the technique.

"The house is secure," Sasuke reported. "And there are four Shadow Clone patrolling in a reverse rotation pattern. That doesn't cover the water, though."

"Very efficient," Kakashi-sensei said approvingly. "I guess that makes up for ignoring my order before." There was a wry tone to his voice.

Sasuke shrugged and looked away from him. I yawned, then quickly covered it with my hand.

Naruto snorted and crossed his arms looking completely unimpressed. "Shouldn't give stupid orders, then."

Kakashi-sensei sighed. "Well, I suppose that's as good as I'm going to get. Let's go talk to Tazuna then."

Tazuna was surprised to see Kakashi up and about already but grateful to him. We were all exhausted, so dinner was a quiet affair. We set a night watch before conking out. I had dawn watch again, a fact that I was grateful for. I wasn't sure I could have stayed awake for the dusk watch.

Naruto woke me after what felt like not nearly enough sleep. If I'd been at home, you wouldn't have been able to drag me out of bed for love or money, but… Mission.

Grudgingly, I stumbled outside, letting the cold air wake me. Naruto had passed on the location of all the perimeter traps and obstacles, information which had felt like it went in one ear and out the other, but apparently did stick in my memory. I checked them all on automatic, my mind slowly revving itself up back to normal capacity.

Zabuza's encounter had been quite odd. I'd even noted that at the time, but had been too distracted by needing to do things. And by terror. I was able to admit that. Fear had been incredibly distracting.

Fear is the mind killer, went the saying. Far too true. Doubly bad since my mind should have been my most important tactical asset.

But now, free from that fear, things started grabbing my attention. Haku. Why stay hidden? Zabuza can't have expected he'd need saving, could he? Why attack at all, then? Why the pre-battle conversation? He had to have recognised Kakashi-sensei even before the Sharingan was unveiled. He was pretty distinctive. His chances of success would have been much higher if Kakashi-sensei hadn't known who was attacking. Particularly since Sensei admitted that even his Sharingan couldn't negate Zabuza's skill with the Silent Killing Technique.

It was counter intuitive.

We held a team meeting after breakfast, all four of us and Tazuna crowding around the low table. Tsunami was in the kitchens washing the dishes, and there was a smaller chakra presence upstairs. The grandson we hadn't yet met.

"Alright team," Kakashi-sensei started. "Good news first. You did a good job getting Tazuna to safety and securing the house. Bad news, Zabuza isn't dead. Heavily injured, maybe, but we can count on him coming back for another round. I'd give it a week, at least, which means we have time to get you lot up to scratch."

Sasuke was the only one of us who hadn't heard this information last night and he expressed no surprise at all. I suspected that Naruto had filled him in while I was asleep. Which was good, passing important information on to your team members was part of team work too. No one should be operating in the dark.

Tazuna, on the other hand, was very surprised. "Not dead? But you … how could he have survived?"

Kakashi motioned at me with his hand.

"Err," I stuttered. He wanted me to explain? Why? "The person that collected him wasn't actually a Hunter-nin. He was likely Zabuza's partner. They arrived together and his chakra remained hidden in the trees during the whole fight. He interfered during the end of the fight to save Zabuza's life by putting him in a near death state with his senbon. By protocol, Hunter-nin are supposed to destroy the body in the location that it is killed, in order to prevent it becoming lost, stolen or activating fail safes. The fact that he took it away is highly suspicious. Added to that, although Kakashi-sensei confirmed that Zabuza wasn't breathing and was without a pulse, his chakra was still present."

Kakashi-sensei was staring at me very seriously. "What?" I asked nervously, running over the facts I'd just given. Had I got it wrong?

His eye curved into a smile. "Nothing," he said. Fake, I diagnosed, but let it go.

"So what does that mean for us?" Sasuke asked, to the point.

"It means that we're going to run into Zabuza again. He isn't the kind of person to give up. It also means there is another ninja out there with an unknown skill level. He might be more than a match for you."

"How can he be?" Naruto protested. "He wasn't that much older than us!"

"You'll eventually learn, that in the ninja world, there can be people that are younger than you… but stronger than me." I didn't, didn't, glance towards Sasuke, even though that reference fit Itachi to a T. At our age, he had been ANBU captain. It was hard to say he had been stronger than Kakashi then… but he definitely was now.

"Sensei?" I asked tentatively. "That fight… it's bothering me. It was…strange." I didn't know how to word it better than that. "Zabuza's actions…they don't make sense."

Tazuna snorted. "He wanted to kill me. What doesn't make sense?"

I glanced at him. "You're alive," I said bluntly. "He could have struck before any of us knew he was there. But he didn't. He gave up an advantage and gained nothing tangible for it. Why…" I trailed off, looking back at Sensei. His expression was unreadable.

"Why do you think he did it?" Kakashi-sensei asked instead.

I sighed. If I knew I wouldn't ask, I wanted to retort. I didn't. Instead, I arched my fingers together and stared at them. The 'thinking seal' didn't actually do anything for me, it was just somewhere to direct my attention. It was also a cue to those around me: shut up, I'm thinking about something.

"It was a warning," I decided. "Zabuza was very forthright about his intentions, even though it would have served him better to sneak up on us, maybe a night time assassination. He had several options where he could have succeed against us, not to mention his partner, the Hunter-nin, who only interfered to remove him from the situation and not to attack us. It's possible he is ideologically opposed to Gatou's plans, given his main argument against the Mizukage involved the extreme oppression in Mist. Therefore, Gatou either has something to use against him, unlikely, something he desperately requires, or he's using Gatou as a cover to accomplish something else."

I sorted through the information I knew, things I assumed, and made several leaps. "If Zabuza is working with the Mist Rebels as rumoured, it's possible that he's trying to gain the support of the Shipping Company for their cause. Given the island nature of the Land of Water, the rebels either have to stay hidden on a small island, or be capable of transporting themselves back and forth quickly and stealthily, which smuggling with the Shipping Company would provide. If he isn't working with the rebels, the most likely consideration for taking this mission would be money, as it has been noted that Gatou is one of the wealthiest men in the world. I can't really think of any other tasks Zabuza could be trying to accomplish in the area. There really isn't much around Land of Waves. Unless he's trying to lie low but then he probably would have avoided us instead."

Tazuna's sake bottle missed his mouth and dribbled down his chin as he stared at me.

Kakashi-sensei hummed. "It's possible," he allowed. "But then Zabuza will feel motivated to complete this mission not just for success of the mission itself, but because it's important to his cause. So he wouldn't deliberately cause complications."

I frowned, staring back down at my hands, to find a counter argument to his devil's advocate. "Unless Gatou has give him reason to believe that he isn't trustworthy, or if the conditions of the arrangement aren't to his satisfaction. Then he would likely draw the mission out to force Gatou's hand in one direction or another." Gatou certainly didn't sound like a man that would honour his word. At least ninja stuck to a mission once it had been accepted. And a rebellion might not have that much to offer him in return for his assistance. Except for hired ninja, of course, which might explain why someone like Zabuza was here in the first place.

It was a good theory, but only a theory. And it relied on a crucial piece of information that I was only assuming. Whether Zabuza really was working with the Rebellion.

"Is it really important?" Sasuke asked. Naruto was wearing a stunned mullet expression.

"People's motives are important," I said quietly. "Because knowing why someone is doing something will help you discover what they're going to do next. For example, if Zabuza was only trying to discover our capabilities, he would probably come up with a way to draw Kakashi-sensei off to attack Tazuna, or use his assassination skills to get around us."

Tazuna went pale and started drinking again.

"But," I continued. "If he's trying to bargain with Gatou, he might stage a huge confrontation or actively sabotage him and blame it on us so that Gatou thinks an alliance with him is in his best interests."

"Wow," Naruto breathed. "That's… incredible! You're really smart."

I flushed. "But I don't know which one is right," I admitted. Dad would have been able to pinpoint the day, time, location and method of attack down to the minute, as well as explain every conceivable reason behind it. Heck, even Shika could have probably done better.

"Well, we'll just have to account for all eventualities, then," Kakashi-sensei said brightly, clapping his hands together, and not offering any opinion on which option he thought was most likely. "So, suggestions?"

Naruto looked at me. I looked helplessly back at him and Sasuke.

"One of us should remain with Tazuna at all times," Sasuke stated. "We should maintain a safe perimeter around the house to prevent intruders or hostage takers. We should scout the bridge before he arrives every morning for traps."

"A textbook answer," Kakashi-sensei said. "Well, you were top of the class, so I guess it's too be expected."

Was that praise or disappointment? I frowned. Judging by Sasuke's blank face, he picked up on the ambiguity too.

It was what we were taught was common procedure. Although, granted, it probably wouldn't do much against Zabuza. The only thing to do there would be to let Kakashi-sensei handle it. Still, Gatou apparently had a small army of thugs and mercenaries working for him and they were covered by our mission orders.

"It doesn't matter what you do," a sour voice interjected. The small chakra presence that had been upstairs was now in the hallway staring at us, giving us our first look at Tazuna's grandson. He was about eight or nine, wearing an oversized bucket hat.

"Oh, Inari!" Tazuna called. "There you are. Come and say hello to these people. They are the ones who protected Grandpa."

"Gatou is too strong. You're only going die!" Inari said, ignoring Tazuna's introduction.

"Sa, kid," I said. "That's the thing about life. No one gets out alive." It was a pithy quote, one I'd remembered for how utterly true it was. Speaking as someone who'd already died once…

I didn't want to die again. There was too much here, too much still to do. And Shika, Chouji, Ino, Sakura, Naruto… I didn't want to leave them behind. There was a place in my heart that still ached terribly whenever I thought about the life I had left behind. I didn't think I could manage that again.

"Well on that cheerful note, lets talk about your assignments for the day."

"Didn't you hear me?" the boy shouted. "Gatou's too strong!"

"Then we'll just get stronger!" Naruto shouted back. "Giving up like a wuss is no way to do things!"

And hearing Naruto say it made it so simple. Why was the issue any more complicated than that? I could give thousands of reasons why it was, but Naruto cut straight to the heart of the matter.

"I'm going to be Hokage one day!" Naruto continued. "Whoever this Gatou guy is, he doesn't stand a chance against me!"

"Pff, what do you think you are? A hero? There's no such things as heroes." That was a lot of scorn from such a little kid. "If you don't want to die, you should leave." He turned to go back upstairs.

"If we leave," I said calmly, reasonably, "then it will be your Grandfather that dies."

He froze and cast a stricken look back at us, then bolted for the stairs, slamming the sliding door shut behind him.

"Sorry," Tazuna said, lowing his face in shame. "Gatou's oppression of Wave Country has resulted in many terrible things. It's been hard on a lot of people, Inari included."

"People react in many different ways to traumatic events," I said shrugging. "Trying to pull others down into misery with them is fairly common. Misery loves company and all that."

"We'll show him," Naruto said fiercely, staring at the now shut door. "There are so such things as heroes."

In Naruto's personal, private world, everything existed as so much larger than life. There were heroes and there were monsters, there were dragons to be fought and princesses to be rescued, and there was fame and appreciation and crowds roaring with applause for the one who managed it. He was determined to be one of those heroes.

Sasuke might not have believed in heroes, but Sasuke believed in getting stronger. Inari's 'give up or you'll die' attitude was the antithesis of everything he believed. Sasuke believed 'if you give up, you die'.

"Right," Kakashi-sensei said, shifting a bit. "Now, how are you boys at Tree Walking?"

"Awesome!" Naruto said. "I don't fall off anymore at all!"

Sasuke nodded.

That was kind of impressive. It'd been less than a week since I showed them, and we'd been doing missions and other training too. Then again, Sasuke was mule-headed stubborn once he got something in his head to do and Naruto had had Shadow Clones training with him.

"Good, good. That'll help your control." Sensei scratched his chin through his mask. "Given the location, I think it'd help you learn water walking."

Which made sense. Pretty much any place we fought was going to have large quantities of water in it.

"Since Shikako can already do that, she can go with Tazuna to the bridge today."

Naruto spotted a flaw in this arrangement. "And what are you going to be doing? Huh Sensei?"

Kakashi-sensei smiled at him cheerily. "Oh, this and that. More of that than this, I think."

There was a second of disbelief, which was starting to become the norm when Kakashi-sensei sprouted off nonsensical lines. Sasuke shook his head in disgust.

Naruto crossed his arms and glowered. "Probably going to laze around reading your stupid book," he huffed.

Sensei looked affronted. "Icha Icha isn't stupid."

Okay, that was enough of the comedy act. "Tazuna," I said, turning to the bridge builder. "What time do you normally begin work at the bridge?"

"As early as I can," Tazuna replied. "A lot of the men get there before me since these old bones don't like the mornings like they used to. They know what to do, in any case. I'm more like the overseer, the manager of the project."

"Alright." An idea came to me. "Hey, Naruto, how long do your clones last?"

He blinked away from his glaring at Sensei. "Eh, I don't know. Why?"

"Can I take one with me? In case I need to call for reinforcements or pass a message, or something?"

"Oh! Because of the memory thing! Sure."

Okay, so I was abusing the Shadow Clone Jutsu and I didn't even know it. But it wasn't like it was hurting Naruto or anything. The last thing I wanted was to be stranded alone and facing Zabuza or Haku without any way to call for backup. Even if I suspected that Sensei would be around and keeping an eye on things.

"And maybe keep one at the house with Tsunami and Inari? In case people try and come after them?"

Naruto nodded eagerly. I was a little worried he would complain about the extra work, but I think he liked being important. His clones seemed to be indispensable. Well, they were. Coordinating things between team members was one of the big stumbling blocks of ninja teams, particularly when spread over a large area.

There were ways to do it, summons, messenger birds, radios, certain jutsu and seals, but none of them were readily available to us at the moment.

This was, so I was going to make the most of it.

I followed Tazuna to the bridge, leaving him with the clone for a short period of time to dash ahead and check for ambushes or traps. There was nothing, thankfully. The workers seemed highly relieved to see Tazuna; they must have worried ever since he left to hire ninja. They seemed like good people; hard workers and brave enough to go against Gatou by building the bridge. Given the state of the economy, I can't imagine that Tazuna was able to pay them much, if at all for their help.

The bridge was huge. I had noted that before, when we had sailed past it, but from up here it was even more obvious. The distance between the Land of Waves and the Land of Fire was maybe a kilometre, maybe a bit more. The width of the bridge would have been six lanes, easily. Even in my old world, a bridge that size would have been unique.

As far as I could understand, the bridge was a simple structure beam bridge, with nearly one hundred pairs of piers dug deep into the ocean floor. Beam bridges tended to be short spans, because they grew weaker with length due to the compression forces on the deck, but using so many piers meant there were many short spans instead of one long one. The piers themselves connected into a support frame called a trestle.

It all seemed much more complicated than I had thought it would be. I'd never really thought about how bridges were built before.

Most of this information I gleaned listening to Tazuna talk to the workers and the conversations between the workers themselves. There was also a fair bit of complaining about Gatou. Apparently the situation had become much worse in the time that Tazuna had been gone. Food prices were up because supplies were down again. Someone's warehouse had burnt down under suspicious circumstances. Someone's food stall had been charged extra 'taxes'; that sounded like a standard protection racket charge. A dozen of Gatou's men had gotten drunk at the pub and started a bar brawl that ended with a few locals seriously injured. The local doctor had been called to a port town on the coast and hadn't been able to return.

Tazuna listened grimly and offered what hope he could. It was grouchy, terse encouragement, but it was hope all the same. These people looked up to him. They trusted that his bridge would make things better. Tazuna wasn't the village mayor or elder or anything of the kind, but he might as well have been.

I shadowed Tazuna for most of the morning, scouting the bridge for hazards and ambush sites and potential avenues of attack if we were ambushed. I listened to the conversations around me but eventually I retreated to the top of a stack of crates that nobody was using. From there I could see most of the bridge and keep an eye on Tazuna easily.

It also meant I had a chance to sit down. I felt exhausted. After yesterday, both fights, then healing Kakashi-sensei my chakra was severely depleted. Sleep helped, but it took more than a day to fully replenish your reserves. I'd taken in a bit of Naruto's chakra during the transfusion - not by choice, but simply because it slipped away from me, which was probably the only reason I wasn't actually chakra exhausted. That was probably also the reason that Sensei hadn't given me any training to do while I watched Tazuna.

"This is boring," the Naruto clone groaned, stretching out on the crates beside me.

"A little," I agreed. "Did you want to play Shogi?"

I had a tiny travel set sealed into my scroll. The pieces were all magnetised to stick to the board so you didn't lose them. I could play and keep an eye on Tazuna easily enough.

"I don't know how," Naruto admitted. Naruto's clone. It was hard to remember that it wasn't the real one.

"That's okay. I'll teach you," I said, unsealing it and placing it on the crates between us. "It'll make the time go faster."

Naruto was a pretty awful player. He couldn't remember what pieces did what, or work out how to use them together to create game tactics. That was alright. I didn't really expect him to pick it up immediately.

When the sun started to creep towards the horizon, I packed the game back up and jumped down to land lightly beside Tazuna.

He flinched. "Oh, it's just you. Where've you been?"

"Keeping watch." I shrugged. "No sign of any suspicious activity."

"Good, good. Let's hope it stays that way." He peered at the groups still working. "We'll be heading off now. Got to stop by the shops to pick up some groceries for Tsunami, though."

I nodded. "Alright." I turned to Naruto. "Why don't you dispel and let the others know we'll be home soon?"

"Sure thing!" He dispelled in a puff of smoke.

Tazuna shook his head. "Still don't know how you can do things like that."

"Ninja tricks," I said wryly. He wouldn't care for a technical explanation anyway. Civilians barely believed in chakra let alone understood how it worked.

The town was bustling, but not in a good way. There were beggars holding signs and raggedy children running about with no shoes on. People were just … standing about. And the shops were nearly empty. Only a few, pitiful examples of vegetables at outrageous prices. Tazuna brought the barest of minimum food that would feed seven people… and even then the price was beyond what it would cost to feed that many people in a respectable restaurant in Konoha.

I thought guiltily of the food packs stashed into my bag. Maybe I should share them? It was to feed us, after all.

We heard Naruto before we saw him. In order to master water walking, he had created a whole army of clones, running suicidally from dock at the back of the house onto the water. A large number by Naruto's was, by definition, loud. Still they were actually managing to get a fair way out before stumbling and falling in.

Sasuke looked equally wet and bedraggled, but there was only one of him. Like Naruto, he was also mostly capable of water walking. Once you had mastered the ability to channel out your feet, it was only a matter of adjusting how you were channelling. After learning tree walking, water walking was much easier.

"Hey," I greeted, standing on the dock to watch them. "How are you guys doing?"

"I've nearly got it, see?" A Naruto exclaimed, before wobbling and falling in. Three more cried out as his fall disturbed the water underneath them and they failed to compensate for it.

"It's… difficult," Sasuke said, diplomatically, frowning at the water.

"It feels very unstable, doesn't it?" I commiserated.

"Hn. How was the bridge?"

"No sign of either Zabuza or the Hunter-nin. I caught a bit of the local gossip about Gatou - seems he's really pushing the people lately; taxes, shipping tariffs, out and out extortion basically. He has a whole private army, too, made up of wannabe samurai and such."

"What a jerk," Naruto commented with a scowl.

"Yup," I replied. "The town is a mess too. This must have been going on for a while before Tazuna decided to start the bridge. It's horrible."

"Heh. Well, that's why we're here, right?" Naruto asked. "We're going to make sure it gets better." There was no hesitation in his voice, just sheer confidence. This is how it's going to be.

I smiled brightly at him.