Two Halves Ch. 7

“No, no, no! First ox, then ram and then dragon!” Sora yelled.

“You said hare last time!” Naruto yelled.

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“Look you little brat, I know what I am talking about as opposed to you so- “

“Ha! I know enough to know when you say one thing and then change it!”

Hinata sighed and took another sip of her tea. Over the past few weeks one of the things she had learned was to stay out of Sora and Naruto’s arguments. After the episode with Naruto and the fire wall no jutsu, she had started to try and defuse the arguments between them. Gradually, however, she had come to realize that they rather enjoyed yelling at each other. One of them would pick a fight, they would call each other names for a few minutes and then they would move on. As long as it wasn’t too serious, she had learned not to get involved.

In fact they hadn’t had a really serious fight for a few weeks now. There had been the one about how Sora was not going to go down the mountain just to get Naruto more ramen resulting in a lecture on preservatives and sodium content from Sora. Then there had been one about Sora’s early morning serenades along to the stereo which had resulted in Naruto hiding her CD’s which, in turn, made Sora put the Silence no Jutsu on him for a week. And, of course, the worst one when Sora explained that she couldn’t teach Naruto Shina-To-Be. . . “It wouldn’t work for you!”

“Yes it would!”

“No it wouldn’t. Shina- To-Be is based on a lot of aerial work and tight movements. While it may work for you know that you’re small as soon as you grow up you’re going to be too large. You’re better off going with an iron fist, hit-em-hard form.”

“So then are you going to teach me one of those?”

Sora shook her head. “I don’t really know any well enough to teach it. ”

“Then who the hell is going to teach me?!”

“Geez, calm down. You really need to get yourself under control.”

“Under control! Why you little...”

“Don’t even think about it!”

At which point, Hinata had to step in and, tugging on their sleeves, try to get them to sit at opposite ends of the kitchen table long enough to calm down. There had been a great deal of muttering, name calling and a couple of milder jutsus thrown at each other before they were once again able to talk to each other rationally. Hinata sighed. Wasn’t Onee-chan supposed to be the adult?

“Look, there are two different styles of the main Shina form: Shina-To-Be and Shina-Tsu-Hiko. The one I am going to teach Hinata is a soft style. The one that you should learn is Shina-Tsu-Hiko. It’s a hard, more forceful style. The basics exercises are the same, so I can start teaching you now.”

“Then who’s going to teach me the more advanced stuff?”

“Nori.”

“Huh?”

“Nori, Yasu’s husband. He’s one of the best Tsu-Hiko fighters I’ve ever seen and a much better teacher than me. Once you’re ready to move on to the style specific stuff, I’ll take you down the mountain and have him teach you some. Trust me, once you’ve grown up big and tall you’ll be glad you learned Tsu-Hiko.”

“How do you know I will?”

“Damn it Naruto, I just explained to you why you should learn-“

“No, no not that. How do you know I’m going to big and tall? I’m short.”

Sora got a very peculiar look in her eye. Then she smiled ruefully and shook her head. “Just trust me kid, you’re going to hit six feet.”



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Hinata sat at the low table and breathed out slowly. She looked through the railings of the porch at the mountains beyond and forced herself to calm. If she was too nervous when she tried to do this she would end up with a crooked painting. Calmly she dipped her brush in the ink and then blotted off the excess water. Taking another breath, she set the tip of the brush lightly against the paper and began to move.

The door slammed open. “Hey, Hinata, whatcha doing?”

She started and drew a crooked black line across her paper. She stared down at it in disappointment before throwing it away.

“How are you, Naruto-kun?” she asked in a soft voice. Talking to him was getting easier and easier. She was still shy and unsure about what to talk about, but getting the actual words past her lips was not so impossible anymore.

“Good, good,” he said sitting down across from her at the table, a bowl of noodle stir fry (temporary ramen substitute) in his hand. “Nee-chan just finished teaching me the Grassfire no jutsu.”

Hinata smiled. They had been working on that one for a few days now and Naruto had been having a particularly hard time with it. Sora had been starting to worry that they weren’t going to have any grass left in the front.

“Whatcha working on?” he asked again.

“Brush painting. Onee-chan mentioned that she was going to have us start learning how to make scrolls, so I thought I would see how much I remember.”

“Eh, you paint?”

She nodded and dipped her brush back in the ink.

“When’d you learn?”

“When I was growing up. Hanabi and I both took lessons.”

He watched her paint a few cherry blossoms onto the paper. “Really? And that’s going to help you make scrolls?”

“Well it’s the type of same brush and ink so-“

“Cool, can I try?” Naruto interrupted.

Hinata smiled and passed the brush to Naruto, who tried to write his name on the rice paper. He was disappointed when the bristles started splitting, giving him two uneven lines instead of one smooth stroke. “Ehhhh?” he groaned. He tried once again, but only made a worse one.

“I think you’re pressing too hard. That’s why you’re getting two lines.”

“I’ll get it,” he grumbled. Hinata smiled at him, as he scrunched up his nose and kept trying to copy Hinata’s cherry blossoms. Somehow, in all the thinking and daydreaming she’d done about Naruto over the years, she had never imagined him trying to learn how to paint.

Quietly she took out another bush and dipped it in water. She worked started on another branch of cherry blossoms, carefully creating each petal.

Naruto looked up at her over the table. She was cool, far cooler than he had thought when they were back in Hidden Leaf. Of course she hadn’t seemed to talk much back then, so how was he supposed to know she was cool?

About two months ago he had realized something: he didn’t need to yell to get her to listen. He was so used to having to be loud to get people to pay attention to him that it had come as a shock when she realized she heard what he was saying even when he was muttering under his breath.

He had been working on a new jutsu, an entrapment technique based off of the chakra weaving from the scroll. He had not been having an easy time of it: his chakra strings kept getting tangled up into big knots.

“Dammnit!” he had muttered, looking at the large mess of chakra and paper in front of him. “Stupid things keep getting messed up.”

“Ano, Naruto-kun?” He had been surprised to hear her voice. He hadn’t been yelling or trying to get her attention. It hadn’t occurred to him, that she might notice what was going on with him without trying to make her.

She had stepped shyly forward, head tilted slightly downward. “Ano...Onee- chan said that there was a rhythm to it.”

“Huh?”

“A rhythm. If you keep a steady rhythm up of over under, they don’t get tangled up as much.” She had blushed. “I was having the same problem.”

Naruto had brightened. “Really? Show me?”

Hinata had blushed again and nodded. She started tapping her foot at a slow tempo, then brought up the strings of chakra and started weaving them in and out until she had a large square of woven chakra in front of her.

“Cool!” he had breathed, thrilled that he had found the trick.

Hinata blushed and looked at her feet. “Onee-chan says to start slow and speed up the tempo.”

Naruto had grinned at her, which only made her blush harder. “Sumimasen, Hinata-chan!”

The funny thing was it wasn’t just a one time coincidence. She almost always listened to what he was saying. Which prompted him to talk. And talk. And then the next thing he knew, he was talking to her all the time.

Hinata was more than happy to listen. He seemed to be able to talk for hours without her having to say anything, which was fine with her. She would sit quietly, listening to him talk about ramen, jutsus, complains about Sora, and others.

The more he talked, the more she liked him. She had liked him for years and admired him for as long as she could remember. And the more he talked about becoming Hokage and getting everyone to acknowledge him, the more she like him. He seemed to be everything she wasn’t.

“Neh, Hinata-chan.”

She looked up at him, her thoughts interrupted. “Hai?”

“These are sakura blossoms, right?”

“Hai.”

“All right! I’m going to paint the best sakura branch ever, and send it to Sakura-chan!”

Hinata smiled slightly as she felt a tiny crack form in her heart. The more he talked, the more she liked him. And the more she knew that she could never tell him.

Sora pulled open the door to the porch. “I’m going down into the town tomorrow. Yasu has some scrolls that she wants from the library. Do ya’ll want anything, other,” she added with a smile. “A couple of cases of ramen?”

Naruto jumped to his feet. “RAMEN!!!! I wanna come!”

Sora shook her head. “Sorry, kid. Not this time.”

“Eh?! But it’s been six months and we still haven’t been down!”

“Well, you’ll just have to wait a few more. I told you I’d take you down when you’re ready to learn the more advanced stuff.”

“But why not now! I’m sick of this stupid mountain!”

“Look, I can’t take you down right now and you’re just going to have to accept it.”

“You said you would explain things!”

Sora sighed. “OK, look. I am going to need at least one visit to convince Nori to train you. He has some...issues with the clan who taught him Shina- Tsu-Hiko. Unfortunately, that means that he has been...hesitant to teach it to anyone else.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it brings up unpleasant memories. In any case, I am going to need to convince Yasu-chan and then the two of us are going to have to convince Nori. I can’t do that with you two there.”

Naruto sat back down on the ground and sulked. “You’ll bring back ramen?”

She smiled. “A whole case, I promise.”

He snorted. “.... Fine, I guess....”

“Thank you. Now, I’ll be gone anywhere from three to five days, depending on how long it takes me to convince Nori. Let me give you a few things to work on while I’m gone.” .



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A ‘few things’ turned out to be a whole slew of very dense treatises to read on theories of espionage, which they were supposed to do in addition to working on techniques from the scroll, practicing taijutsu, and keeping the house clean. It seemed that Sora was operating under the assumption that the more they had to do, the less trouble they would get into.

As dense as the papers were, Naruto had to admit they were pretty interesting. At least this stuff he could figure out how he was going to use. They were all about the comparative advantages of using one jutsu over the other in different spying situations. When trying to infiltrate a large organization. When trying to infiltrate a small organization. When you didn’t exactly know how big the organization was. How to sneak up on people indoors, outdoors, through doors and when there were no doors.

It was a prankster’s dream.

He was eager to try all of this out and she was easily persuaded, so Naruto and Hinata spent the better part of a day playing spy games in the house, trying to steal kunai out of each other’s pouches without being detected.

Despite some issues at the beginning with being loud and alerting Hinata to his presences, Naruto was determined to get it and started hauling out all sorts of different jutsus he had been taught by Sora over the last few months. It didn’t take him long to find all sorts of sneaky things he could do to get the kunai. Standing in semi-darkness, she darted her eyes back and forth down the hallway. It was her turn to be the target and even if she was not going to be able to keep him from taking her weapon, she hoped to at least make it harder on him than before.

Quietly she ran through the seals for a shielding technique and placed light shield around her kunai pouch on her leg. She knew that Sora had taught him how to break this particular one, but it would at least slow him down.

She walked to the intersection of two of the hallways and stood in the middle. She had one more technique left that he hadn’t seen yet: Vertigo no jutsu. She ran through the dozen hand seals and created a bubble of genjutsu around herself, filling the intersection. The moment he came within six feet of her he would be hit with massive waves of vertigo and would have trouble standing up. It wasn’t wide enough or strong enough to really stop him, but it would buy her some time.

“Byakugan!!” she whispered. Then began to look around for him. There, down the hall to her left she could seen his chakra, with its distinctive swirl in the center. She had never been able to figure out why it did that when no one else’s did, but she never managed to work up the courage to ask him. Suddenly, she realized that there were two standing just out of her sight down the hall in front of her and another one behind. Shadow Clones.

She braced herself for an attack, adding chakra to her genjutsu and moving into fighting stance. He would know that she was aware of his presence now. Knowing Naruto, he would figure if he couldn’t get it secretly, he could still get it through battle. She waited for his attack.

However, direct attack was not his plan. Years spent as a prankster had kicked in and he was having fun remembering all of the tricks he used to use. He wasn’t, in fact, with his shadow clones on the ground. He was standing above and behind her, crouching on the exposed beams. He was in the exact angle of the blind spot, effectively hiding his presence. Now all he had to do was keep her concentrated on the shadow clones and he should be able to get a chakra string around one of the kunai and pull it out.

It was a good plan and it probably would have worked, except for the vertigo no jutsu. As Hinata good more and more nervous, she pumped more and more chakra into her genjutsu. As that happened, the sphere of influence expanded until finally it reached Naruto, who had no idea that she had used the technique in the first place.

It hit him like a ton of bricks.

Everything thing started to swirl around him. Suddenly he seemed very, very high off the ground. He stumbled forward a few feet around the main beam until her started to fall off. Startled by his sudden appearance in her vision, she turned up to look at him. At this point, the clones started to rush forward to catch him, but ended up getting hit by the genjutsu as well, sweeping Hinata up along with them, not making it to Naruto in time and, all stumbling over their own feet, landing on Naruto and Hinata in one giant pile. The clones disappeared, leaving Naruto lying on the floor with Hinata half on top of him, her cheek pressed to his chest. Suddenly her eyes went wide as she realized where she was. She was scrambling backwards off of him when a pain shot through her ankle. She let out a small gasp of pain.

“Hinata-chan, you okay?”

“Ano, umm...hai. It’s just, my ankle it...” She tried to stand up, only to find that she couldn’t. Her ankle had gotten twisted when she had gotten pushed by the clones.

“Let me see.” Naruto took off Hinata’s shoe while she sat there and blushed. It was starting to swell up. “Man it looks like you sprained it.” He snorted in frustration. Man, if Sora was here she would be able to heal it right up. After three years of training with Tsuande, she was a reasonably good healer. But, while Hinata’s healing powers were slowly growing, they were not good enough to heal her own ankle. This meant no training until Sora got back.

Hinata knew exactly what was going through Naruto’s mind. She hung her head. She was going to be useless to him until Sora came back.

Suddenly she felt herself being half swung, half tossed up into his back. Her arms automatically went around his neck as he started to run down the hall.

“Naruto-kun?” she questioned.

“We can’t train with your ankle sprained. But we can still work on the history junk, right?”

“Ha- hai.”

“So, we’ll just get so far ahead of that Sora will let us do actual real training for a few days when she gets back.” He dumped her in a chair in the library, then ran out again. “I’ll grab you some ice,” he yelled over his shoulder.

Hinata stared after him. When had he gotten so thoughtful? .



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Late that night, Naruto and Hinata sat together at the library, across from each other at one of the long tables. The piles of papers, books and scrolls Sora had left them to read surrounded them, illuminated by the two small lamps. Hinata had one leg propped up on the chair next to her with an ice pack resting against the side of her ankle.

Naruto sat cross legged in his chair. He had found an article buried in one of the books on interrogation techniques used in espionage. “There are two key ways to interrogate a subject,” the article read. “One method is to use intimidation. People in fear of their lives will often become a fountain of knowledge. However, as this often attracts attention, it is a poor method for the under cover ninja. The second is to befriend the subject. This is frequently far more productive. Never underestimate the power of the ideal information passed between friends. Pay attention to everything any contact say’s to you. Often it is these little pieces of information that help you put together the final pieces of the puzzle.”

“The best way to establish a friendship for the purpose of spying is to use the same procedure you would with any other person you want to make your friend. Begin by asking your subject simple open ended questions about their lives the same way you would a friend.”

Naruto frowned. He had never made friends easily. Most people turned their back on him as soon as their figured out what he was. He had a few precious people and even fewer friends. This was going to be hard.

Naruto looked up at Hinata. She shifted slightly in her chair and rested her head on her hand.

Well she hadn’t realized what he was yet. She was a friend, right? At least, she was as close to one as he had. They could train this while her foot was hurt!

“Neh, Hinata?”

She looked up from where she had been reading The History of the Use and Abuse of Soldier’s Pills: A comparative approach. “Hai?”

Now he had to think about what he wanted to question her about. “Ano, so...” His voice trailed off. It suddenly occurred to him how little he actually knew about her. He’d picked up on certain things over the last six months. She liked green tea, got nervous when people watched her and was always ready to help him out. She liked to get up early in the mornings and sit out on the front porch. She practiced hard, trying to learn everything Nee- chan could teach her and she always remembered to ask the questions he forgot to. But it occurred to him that in terms of actual facts, he knew very little. It made it difficult to find a starting point.

“Ano, so...how old were you when you started training?” Good opening question, he decided.

“I started as soon as I could walk,” she said quietly. Her tone was that of someone reciting bare fact, not that of someone describing her past.

“Really? You’ve had someone train you all your life? That’s so COOL!”

Hinata blushed, but there was sadness in her eyes. She didn’t consider it cool.

Naruto looked down at the book. “Ask your subject question about how they think and feel on particular subjects. It brings them closer to you and will make them open up.” Cool, he could do that. “Did you like it?”

Hinata looked up, startled. He hadn’t really asked her to talk about her personal life before. They had talked about mutual friends, life in Konoha and how hard the Chunnin exam had been, but never about anything really personal before. And her childhood training sessions with here father were personal. Very personal.

Naruto waited for Hinata to say something, but and answer didn’t seem to be forthcoming. “Hinata?” he asked.

She shook her thought from her head. “Gomen, Naruto-kun.” She looked up at him. “No, I- I didn’t like it.”

Naruto was shocked. Not like training? How could anyone not like training? “What? Why not?”

“I- I wasn’t...” Her voice trailed off. He was staring at her, clearly waiting for her answer. She took a deep breath. “I wasn’t very good at it.”

“What do you mean?” Naruto asked, puzzled.

“I was- am a... disappointment.”

Now Naruto was really confused. What did she mean a disappointment? “Disappointment to who?”

“To my clan. To my family. To my father.” She shook her head. “I’m, I’m just...not very good.”

“I don’t get it. Not good?”

“I am...not the heir my clan needs me to be. I am not smart. I am not strong.”

Now Naruto was really, REALLY confused. “Yes you are.”

Hinata looked up, eyes wide and glazed with tears. “What?”

“You’re smart and you’re strong. You remember all of this history junk and you’re good at all the taijutsu that Nee-chan has been teaching us.” He grinned. “Besides, you’re my training partner right?”

Hinata blushed slightly. “Hai.”

“And we train really hard, right?”

“Hai.”

“So when we get back to the village, we’re going to be super strong, right?”

“Ha-hai.”

“All right! I’ll prove to everyone that I’m the best Hokage and you’ll prove that you’re the best head of the Hyuuga house ever, right?” Hinata was working hard to keep the tears in her eyes and not spilling over her cheeks. “Hai,” she said her voice a little firmer than normal.

Naruto grinned. He liked interrogating Hinata. It hadn’t been as hard as the book indicated: he hadn’t even read the whole page! Once you got the hang of it, it was really a lot of fun. Maybe this was what it was like to really have a close friend. He liked finding things out about her. He would have to ask her more questions.

“Neh, Hinata?”

“Hai, Naruto kun?” She braced herself for another personal question.

“What’s your favorite color?”

That was not the type she had been expecting. “Color?”

Before Naruto could reply, they heard the sound of the door being pulled open. The light from their reading lamps did not reach all the way to the doorway, preventing the figure from being seen, save the silhouette provided by the hall light. It was a man. He was tall and his broad shoulders were hung with a long dark cape.

Whoever it was, it defiantly wasn’t Sora.


Itachi had been searching for five months and he still hadn’t been able to come up with so much as a hint as to where they were. It was baffling, a phenomenon he was not used to. Apparently this woman was excellent at keeping herself hidden. If they really were with Sora, it would seem as if they would be easy to find: a woman of her looks and reputation would attract attention.

He would probably not believed his colleague who had made the connection between the woman who had taken the two Leaf Nin and the legend from the east had it not been for the three farm workers. They had described her perfectly and she had been traveling with two children who looked like the two children. ‘

No it had to be her. There was key information he was missing. He just had to find it.



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Naruto stood up ready to challenge the figure in the doorway. The man crossed his arms and leaned up against the doorjamb.

“So,” he said. “You are Naruto and Hinata, I presume.”

Before either of them could reply, a small voice and the soft rapid pattering of feet was heard coming down the hall. “Daddy?” it called out. “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

The man smiled and reached down to scoop up a small girl in his arms. She had long dark hair shot with white, as if she was starting to go gray. She looked at Naruto and Hinata with wide pale blue eyes.

“Miki-chan, this is Naruto and Hinata. They are your Aunt Sora’s students.”

“Aun’ Sowa?”

“That’s right.” He looked back up the two genin who were staring at him. “Naruto, Hinata this is my daughter Miki. And I am Nori.”

Naruto’s eyes went wide. “You’re the Shina expert who is going to teach me all the advanced stuff?”

Some of the sparkle went out of Nori’s eyes. “I might. I haven’t decided yet.”

“Neh, neh! What are you going to teach me?”

“You mean they’re actually in the library?” Sora appeared in the doorway, peaking around Nori’s shoulders. “I can’t believe you two are studying. Actually,” she turned to Naruto. “What I can’t believe is that you are studying.”

“Ha! I’ll show you.” He waved a hand at the pile in front of him. “This stuff is easy. I’ll know it all by the end of the week!”

“Great! I have tons more stuff to give you to read then!” Sora smiled sweetly as Naruto’s stomach dropped.

“Ano...Onee-chan?”

“Hai, Hinata-chan?”

“You’re...you’re wearing pants!”

Naruto looked around the edge of the table. Sure enough, Sora’s miniskirt and fishnets were gone, although she probably still had the boots on. From hip to heel, her legs were covered in matte black leather. They weren’t even really tight: if it wasn’t for the material they would have looked like normal pants. They were, without a doubt, the most conservative article of clothing either of them had ever seen her in, save the large fluffy bathrobe.

“Yeah, so?” Sora shifted from foot to foot. “They’re nice and soft. Very comfortable.” Comfortable was not what Sora looked like. Nori was trying to stifle a laugh behind one hand.

Hinata smiled. “They look nice, Onee-chan.”

“Thank you, Hinata-chan.” Suddenly her eyes narrowed. “Hinata-chan, why are you icing your ankle?”

Hinata and Naruto looked guilty at each other. “Ano, well, we um think I sprained it.”

With one clean swipe, Sora snatched the ice off of Hinata’s foot. “You THINK you sprained it? It’s the size of a grapefruit!”

“Eh, ha ha, guess she, um, did then, didn’t she?” Naruto said awkwardly, hand rubbing the back of his head.

Steam was starting to come out of Sora’s ears. “Naruto, why do I get the feeling that you are the one responsible for this? Damn it, can’t I leave you two alone for 48 hours without something happening?”

“It was an accident!”

Sora rolled her eyes. “I really can’t trust the two of you alone.” Walking over to Hinata, she activated a healing technique and then gently laid her hands on the ankle. Hinata breathed in sharply as Sora’s hands began to glow blue. Her ankle went cold and then warm and the swelling began to go down.

Standing up, Sora brushed her hands together. “I sped up the healing, so it should be fine by tomorrow. But you are going to have to stay completely off of it until then.” She looked over at Naruto. “That means you’re going to have to carry her. Fitting, seeing as you did it.”

Naruto jumped up from his seat. “What makes you think I did it? Why do I always get blamed for these things? It wasn’t my fault!”

Sora dismissed his comments with a wave of her hand. “Whatever. Just come down to the kitchen.”

Naruto moved around the table to offer his back to Hinata. Her cheeks went red, but she gingerly wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself up against his back. His arms slid under her legs as he adjusted her weight.

Hinata and Naruto followed the two adult and the little girl out of the library and back down the hall. Naruto turned his head to whisper into Hinata’s ear. “Even with the pants, she still looks like one of those women Jiraiya....”

And Naruto suddenly found himself stuck with the Silence no Jutsu.



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Yasu was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman Naruto and Hinata had ever seen. She looked more like a fine porcelain doll than a living human. Her thick white hair was pulled up into a knot at the crown of her head and held in place by a few simple hairpins. Her skin was pale and perfectly smooth, without a smile line or wrinkle. She would have almost looked like an albino if it wasn’t for her large pale green eyes. The sleeves of her kimono were tied back and she was in the process of slicing vegetables.

“Okaa-san!” Miki yelled, streetching her arms out to the woman. She smiled and plucked the child out of her husband’s arms.

“So, you two must be the new apprentices.” Naruto and Hinata nodded. “And you survived living with Sora for six months?” They nodded again. Yasu shook her head. “I’m amazed. Still, neither of your clothes really fit.” She looked up at Sora. “They’re teenagers. They’re not going to fit into the same clothes for six months.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” Sora said, rooting through the various bags on the counter until she found her chocolates. Tearing the plastic off the box, she eagerly removed the lid and started eating.

“You are supposed to take them down the mountain and get them new clothes. Honestly, you can be so irresponsible.”

“That’s why I’m friends with you. You’re responsible enough for both of us.” Yasu shot her a glare. “All right, all right. I think there’s some old clothes in one of the storage rooms upstairs. I’ll go looking for them.” She spun and left the kitchen.

Yasu sighed. “Still the same Sora,” she muttered. She shook her head and looked at the pair. Naruto had set Hinata down on a free span of countertop and was still standing next to her. He seemed oblivious to the blush on the girl’s cheeks. Yasu smiled. Sora was right: the girl was in love with him and he was clueless.

“So has she made you do that scroll yet?”

“You know about that?” Hinata sounded surprised.

“Of course. She never went anywhere without it, which I always thought was rather strange considering how dead set she was against training anyone. You two must be pretty special to change her mind.”

“Of course we are! Hinata’s the heir to the Hyuuga Clan and I’m going to be Hokage!”

Yasu’s eyes widened. A clan heir and a kid who wants to be Hokage? Something had to be going on here: Sora would never train these two willingly. Further questioning of Sora was definitely called for.

“So, how far have you gotten on the scroll?”

“We’ve almost finished. We just have about five more to go.”

Yasu chuckled. “And you’ve only been up here six months. Sora took over a year to learn all those skills.”

Naruto’s eyes widened in delight. “Really?”

“From what she tells me. But Sora would never tell you. She’s entirely too petty.”

“Too petty?”

“She is the queen of small irritating vices. The thing with Sora is that she has never grown up. She is the exact same stubborn, impulsive, and immature teenage brat I started traveling with eight years ago. She does nothing in particular, wanders around from place to place being moody and has the most appalling fashion sense I have ever seen.”

“Then why did you travel with her?” Hinata asked.

“Despite all of that, she is one hell of a good fighter. One of the best in the eastern lands. Plus, she’s as good a partner as they come: in the five years we traveled together she never let me down when it counted.”

“What about when it didn’t count?”

Yasu narrowed her eyes. “She was apt at playing practical jokes.”

“Practical jokes?”

“She liked to get people with genjutsu when they weren’t paying attention. Guy insults her and he was liable to end up with his voice raised an octave for a few hours. When she was really irritated she would use Henge no Jutsu and Voice Change no Jutsu on the guy to make the offender look and talk like a dog.”

It was one of the best idea’s Naruto had ever heard. He had to get Nee- chan to teach that to him. He could turn Sasuke into rabbit or something. Better yet, he could turn Nee-chan into a toad.

Hinata seemed vaguely distressed by the whole thing. “She would really do that?”

“Sometimes to entire groups of men. It was one of her favorite pastimes while we were on the road.”

“And no one realized it was her?” Naruto asked eagerly.

“Only rarely. Of course with her bloodline it was easy to-“

“Don’t tell them please; I’m making them guess.” Sora stood in the doorway, leaning up against the doorjamb with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Aww, come on!” Naruto grumbled.

“I used it front of you already, you should be able to figure it out.” She looked back at Yasu. “Are you in here going through that whole never-grew- up thing again?”

“When you dress like that, you can hardly blame me. Getting you into those pants is the biggest fashion victory I’ve had since I got you out of that goddamn dress.”

Sora rolled her eyes. “Do you always have to bring up the dress?”

“You were the one who wore the dress.”

Naruto thought this was great. Not only was he learning new things to bug Nee-chan to teach him, but he was also learning about things she was embarrassed about. Yasu would have to come over more often. “Neh, neh! What dress?”

Sora and Yasu looked at each other. “Yasu-chan...” Sora warned.

“Sweetheart,” Yasu called out with a smile. Suddenly Nori was behind Sora, holding her arms behind her back.

“What the hell-“

“I can do better than tell you about it, Naruto-kun. I can show it to you.” She reached for her bag and pulled out a small photo album.

“NO!” Sora yelled, struggling against Nori, trying to get her feet in the right position to throw him. “Why they hell did you bring those?”

“You suddenly have students after all your swearing that you would never take any on and you expect me not to try and embarrass you? Honestly, I thought you knew me better than that.” She smiled and handed the little book over to Naruto. “Here you go. Sora age 17.”

She was wearing boots very similar to the ones she wore now, but instead of a skirt she seemed to only be wearing a pair of underwear. The ‘dress’ was nothing more than three panels of black leather laced together with red ribbon which left wide stripes of skin exposed up her front and down either side. Her hair was half red half black and done in huge sausage curls. She was sitting on a barstool, toasting the camera with some sort of pink drink.

Naruto took one look at the picture and burst out laughing. Oh this was good, this was really, really good. He would be able to hound her about this to no end. Howling, he passed the photo to Hinata. She contented herself with more restrained giggles.

“Ha ha ha, go ahead and laugh.” Sora glared at them. “I’m so going to get you for this Yasu.”

“See what I mean? She’s just like a child. Now if you want to see something really funny, I have some in here of her ex-“

“Hey Yasu, remember that time we were at staying at that inn just after I introduced you to Nori?”

Yasu went deadly silent and scowled at Sora. Her scowl deepened as Sora started to smile at her. She closed the photo album with a snap. “Who would like a cup of tea?”

Nori released Sora’s arms. She smiled at Yasu. “That sounds lovely. But we should all probably be getting to bed soon. It’s awfully late,” she said in a falsely sweet voice, taking the tray from Yasu. The two of them went into the living room.

Hinata looked at Naruto and then at Nori. “What just happened?”

Nori shook his head. “They’ve been friends for so long that they know almost all of each other’s secrets. Sora just wanted to ‘share’ a story about Yasu if she didn’t put away the pictures.”

“Oh.” Hinata thought about that for a second. “Sora said she introduced you to Yasu.”

“Hai. Just after Nanashi died, Sora came to stay with my clan. My mother, who was at that time the head of the clan, had been good friends with Nanashi and took Sora under her wing. When there was a revolution in the clan and the branch family took over, I left and took Sora with me.”

“The branch family revolted? But it is duty of the branch family to protect the head family!”

“My mother was a good woman and an excellent leader, but her cousin still resented the fact that she had the power and control. In the end she killed everyone in the head family that she could, claiming that we had been changing the clan to fast and that a return to the old ways was necessary.”

“But that’s awful!”

“That’s clan life a lot of the time: strong against outside forces, but constantly battling itself. In any case, I needed to make a living and the only thing I was trained for was to be a mercenary. No matter how good she was, I didn’t want to haul a thirteen year old around with me, so I left her with Tsunade. We kept in contact, but we didn’t really see each other for six years. Then I met Yasu, we eventually settled down and Sora started wandering alone. Until she picked up you guys, that is,” he added with a quick smile.

“Why didn’t she get a new partner?”

“She’s always been wary of bringing people into her life. Nanashi died, and Sora was a wreck. She showed up at our door a disheveled mess one day and was like a ghost for weeks. Then one day she just snapped out of it, as if she had been a haunted and the ghost had left.” He shrugged. “She became the Sora we know now. I can count the people she considers friends on one hand.”

Naruto pondered this for a second. “Neh, Nori-san?”

“Hai?”

“How did Nanashi-sensei die?”

“I don’t know. There are two things that Sora has never told anyone about, not even us. One is how she came to be in Nanashi’s care. The other is how Nanashi died.”

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Early the next morning, Sora, Yasu and Nori sat out on the front steps watching the sun rise. They all knew what they had to talk about, and they were all waiting for one of the other’s to break the silence.

Finally Sora spoke. “So, are you going to help me train them?”

Yasu looked over at her. “I still want an explanation as to why they’re with you in the first place.”

“I told you, Obaa-chan asked me to.”

“That’s not enough reason for you. Who are those two, Sora-chan?”

“They’re just Leaf nin that Tsunade asked me to look after and train.”

“They are not just Leaf nin. You have the single loudest ninja I have ever met in my life and the most timid one.”

“You should have seen them when they got here,” Sora mumbled.

Yasu continued as if Sora hadn’t interrupted. “Not only that, but from what I’ve seen and what you’ve told me, he has no family, very little natural ability and his impulsivity is off the charts while she is under her families thumb, is blessed with an extremely powerful bloodline but she is to hesitant to use.”

“They’re prefect opposites,” Nori said quietly staring into the sunrise. He turned to Sora. “You said they work well together?”

“They seem to.”

“And Naruto is good at ninjutsu where Hinata is good at genjutsu.”

“Hai, but they’re both decent at taijutsu and getting better. If you just help me train Naruto in the advanced stuff, I can do the rest.”

Nori looked at Sora and then back out at the dawn.

Yasu narrowed her eyes. “Sweetheart I don’t like that look...“

“You need to partner train them.”

“Nani?”

“Partner train them. Like what my family does. You’re teaching them complimentary styles you ought to at least train them to work together.”

“But we left before I could learn any of the partner stuff.”

“I’ll teach them the taijutsu stuff and you and Yasu worked well enough together for you to teach the other things. The partner trials were legendary in the house: even if you didn’t participate in them, you know basically what they were. It would be silly for you not to partner train them.”

“But Hinata has a crush, if not in love, on Naruto. He’s the densest person I’ve ever met, but if I put them together in partner training it’s bound to come out. That could wreck the partnership.”

“Or he could realize that he is in love with her too.”

Sora groaned. “Riiight.... Just what I need. A pair of hormonal teenagers in love.”

Yasu and Nori chuckled. “You brought it on yourself,” Yasu said.

Sora lay her face in her hands. “Fine, fine, fine. If you will teach them the taijutsu part, I will do the rest of the partner training.”

Nori smiled. “Good. You’re always a reasonable person when forced to be.”

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Naruto stumbled into the kitchen. It was later than he normally got up, but Sora’s unusual morning serenade had been curiously absent. “What happened to the music?”

Yasu look up from where she was chopping vegetables. “I don’t let her play it when I’m here.” She went back to chopping. “We have something to discuss with you and Hinata. You should probably go wake her up.”

“Ano, you mean like....umm.... go in her room?” Naruto had never been in a girl’s room before.

“Generally waking someone up would imply going into their room. Unless, of course you want to yell at her through the door.”

Relief washed over Naruto. He could just yell at her to get up from the hall: no one was louder than him.

Racing up the stairs he slid to a stop at Hinata’s door. He knocked the door with the side of his fist. “Hey Hinata-chan! It’s time to get up!”

No reply.

So he knocked harder. “Hinata-chan! Hinata-chan!”

Still not a sound.

He took a deep breath and started to yell “HINATA-CHAN!”

“Naruto what on earth are you doing?” Sora stood just outside the doorway to her room, hands on her hips glaring at him.

“Yasu said to get Hinata up.”

“Then go in there and wake her up. She obviously can’t hear you.”

Naruto looked between Sora and the door in confusion. But Hinata had always heard him, why not now??.

Tentatively he pulled the door open. He could see her curled up in her futon, sleeping peacefully. He quietly walked over to kneel down beside her, leaning down so he could look at her face. Her cheeks were faintly flushed and a few strands of hair stuck to the sides of her face. The front was the same as ever: blunt bangs and two pieces framing her face. However Sora had declared that she was unable to cut Hinata’s hair into what Sora referred to as ‘the duck butt’ and as Hinata couldn’t cut it herself, that had been left to grow. Now it stopped about an inch above her shoulder and was currently fanned out over the pillow.

Naruto smiled and had a curious urge to let her sleep. She looked so peaceful, so calm, tucked up in her blankets without a worry in the world.

Then Naruto had an even more curious urge to crawl in with her and go back to sleep himself. When he realized what he had just considered, he shot upright and scooted a few inches away from the bed. Where the hell had that thought come from!?.

Carefully, he reached out his hand to place it on her shoulder. The soft cotton of her sleeping kimono felt warm under his palm. He started to gently shake her. “Hinata-chan?”

Hinata’s face twitch slightly and she scrunched up her nose. Slowly her eyes began to open, still glazed over from sleep. There was something orange next to her bed.

“Ano, Hinata-chan?”

Hinata eyes shot open as she sat straight up in bed. Surprised, Naruto fell backwards onto his rear end and stared at her. Hinata stared back, eyes wide and bed sheet clutched to her chest.

“Naruto-kun?” she asked in a confused and slightly panicky voice.

“Hinata-chan! I, well ummm...You see you weren’t up and ummm.... Yasu thought that I wake you... and I yelled but you didn’t hear and then Sora came and I was supposed to go in and then I...I...“ He turned beet red and quickly stammered the last piece of the message. “SoraandYasuwanttotalktousI’llseeyouinthekitchen.” And he bolted out of the room.

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Yasu looked at Sora. “What did you do?”

“I put a sound barrier around Hinata’s room so he would have to go in and wake her up.”

“The point being?”

“To embarrass the hell out of both of them.”

Yasu sighed and shook her head. “As I said before, you’ve never grown up.” .

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Yasu and Sora sat across the table from Naruto and Hinata, staring at them. The two teens shifted uncomfortably in their chairs.

“Ano...where is Nori-san?”

“My husband is the mayor of the town. He had to go back.”

“Then he’s not going to teach me?” Naruto was crushed.

Sora shook her head. “He is going to teach you. However, he wanted us to propose something to the two of you.”

“What?”

“As you may know, the west and the east work on two completely different political systems. The hidden villages work on almost a feudal system. Each clan owes allegiance to the Kage who provides leadership and protection to them. In the west, things are far more confused. Some people side with a clan, others a religious group, still others with the people they live with. The west is also far more urbanized than the east.”

“Yeah, yeah, we know all that. What’s the point?”

“The point, Naruto, is that many of the clans can be more powerful than the Kages. Some have bloodlines and others are simply political powerhouses. Nori and I were both trained by the Kaze Clan from where the Shina forms were born. We share a mutual hatred for the clan, but that doesn’t mean that the methods they used were any less effective.”

“The fact is,” Yasu said. “That the Kaze Clan gains a great deal of it’s power from the fact that it’s fighters work so well together. While they excel in medium to large groups, their real power comes from the partner training.”

“Partner training?” Naruto asked.

“Once basic training is done, all trainees are paired up. They form partnership that will last for years, sometimes over someone’s entire fighting career.”

“Sort of like your genin trainee groups, but more permanent,” Sora added.

“And usually more powerful. A well trained pairing can be twice or three times more powerful than the individual powers of the fighters combined.”

“What’s this got to do with us?” Naruto asked again.

Yasu and Sora exchanged glances. “My husband thinks that the two of you should be partner trained. While it doesn’t mean that the two of you won’t be able to work alone or with other people, but it does mean a commitment to each other.”

“Commitment?” Weren’t guys supposed to run at the word commitment?

“Basically, it mean’s that you’re going to be friends, close friends, for the rest of your lives. There are no secrets in between partners: they have to know you so well they can predict what you are going to do in any given situation. You have to be able to see their flaws and still basically like the person.” Yasu smiled. “It’s sort of like being married.”

Naruto and Hinata paled.

“Without the sex, of course,” Sora added. Well, actually it was only generally without the sex. Many partners became in fact husband and wife as well.

“But the choice has to be yours. Either you commit to partner training and we start or we keeping going the way we have. You’re choice.”

Hinata shifted in her chair. “You mean we have to commit to being partner for the rest of our lives.”

“Not necessarily. Yasu-chan got married and now we’re not really partners any more. But if you’re partner trained, when you go back to Hidden Leaf it would be silly for Obaa-chan to have you on separate teams. It would last beyond your three years here.”

Naruto and Hinata looked at each other. Not be on their teams anymore? The breaking up of their teams had seemed so far in the future....

Yasu smiled. “I know it’s overwhelming. Children from the Kaze Clan have their whole lives to come to terms with the idea, and even for them when the time comes to pick a partner, they’re unsure. Fortunately, we have an exercise to help you decide.”

Hinata and Naruto looked up, still in a daze. What kind of exercise could help them for such a delicate decision?

Sora smiled and stood up. “This way.”

They walked up the third story of the house. There, Sora opened the door to a large room and gestured the pair inside. “OK, so there are futons in the closet over there and a bathroom through that door. We’ll come back and bring you food later. You have 24 hours to talk it out. Have fun!”

“Nani!?” Naruto yelled and she slammed the door shut. Running over he pulled on the door but it didn’t budge. They were locked in.