Chapter 8: Getting Experience

It had been roughly three days since Naruto's performance at the stadium against all of the genin. Tsunade let him be for the time being because he deserved the rest. That was one reason, the other reason was that she wouldn't have him doing anymore D-rank missions with Team 7, and they couldn't go on them anyway seeing as how Naruto had put Sasuke Uchiha on the shelf with the butchering job he had done on Sasuke's arm.

This was part of the arrangement made between Tsunade and Kakashi. Naruto was no longer considered a member of Team 7. It was a good idea, with Naruto having just destroyed Sasuke and Sakura in combat almost effortlessly, the team dynamics, what little there were in the first place, would have been screwed. She proposed to have him go solo and float between teams, either more experienced teams of chunin and jounin to get field experience, or the younger genin teams to give him some experience in leading teams.

This actually kind of worked out in Naruto's favor. For all of his want to get promoted the fact was that while he was in Ne he was used primarily for solo missions, things that only had him worrying about his own back and what he had to do to survive. This would allow him to learn how to fight in conjunction with others. He needed to learn how to work in a team and how to keep his comrades alive when they were with him. He couldn't argue that he wasn't ready to lead a squad of ninja as a jounin yet, he knew that.

So on the morning that our story picks up from Naruto ambled his way through the streets of Konoha on his way to the Hokage Tower to get himself a mission. The looks he ended up getting from the civilians on his usual path were the usual looks of apathy and sneers that he usually got, but when Naruto turned his own eyes onto them they turned away from him. Naruto sighed as he drew closer to the tower.

Upon entering he made his way to the office of Tsunade, which was filled with the other Konoha genin he had fought, minus Sasuke, all of their jounin sensei, and the genin team from Sunagakure. Naruto raised an eyebrow at all of the people in the room. He looked at Tsunade, "So what do you got for me today baa-chan?"

Tsunade threw the paperweight on her desk at Naruto who just ducked it with a smirk. She narrowed her eyes at him, "…Disrespectful brat… I called you here so that you could begin getting to work helping out with the surplus of missions that we have."

She looked at all of the genin in the room, "Things are still kind of shaky after the invasion but we can't turn away any of the work that comes into us. Not only is the money necessary, but we need to keep up with the view that we are strong, so genin like all of you will be getting higher ranked missions more often."

Tsunade motioned for Naruto to come forward, "You will start off with your chunin duties today. You will be leading one of these teams on a C-ranked mission today. Seeing as you will be the highest ranked member on whatever squad you end up taking you will be the leader."

Naruto pointed at the Suna genin, "So why are they here? And can I pick them?"

Tsunade nodded, "You can pick them if that's what you want. Though they aren't really a team for a mission, more like they are the mission."

Naruto thought to himself for a moment, "Okay, I'll go with the Suna kids. I don't really feel like fighting bandits or something right now anyway so whatever I'm doing with them I'll take that one."

He turned to face them and motioned for them to follow him closer to the desk before he stopped in front of Tsunade, "So what's the mission?"

Tsunade handed them a scroll from the C-ranked pile, "The main reason that the Kazekage's children have been in Konoha for so long has been mostly as some sort of collateral while we begin talks for the treaty between our villages. Negotiations are firmly under way so we are returning them to their village. You will escort them there and wait for Suna to finalize the treaty on their own side before you return with a scroll from them."

He looked at her in confusion, "This is C-ranked? Are you serious? It should at least be B. Oh well whatever…" Naruto scratched his head, "So do I get a team for this or what?"

Tsunade shook her head, "Naruto they are a team. You plus them should be a match for pretty much anything that could attack you between here and there." Tsunade tossed Naruto a scroll that he caught wordlessly.

"Flying solo… Okay I guess." Naruto pocketed the scroll and turned to his selected team, "All right, do you guys have everything you need for the mission or do we need to square away some time to get you restocked before we leave?"

The siblings traded looks as Temari spoke up, "We're ready to go whenever you are. When do we go Naruto-san?"

Naruto cringed when she said his name, "Uh, just Naruto is fine Temari, I'm not much for the honorifics." He scratched his head nervously, "All right if you guys are all ready to go then lets head on out, no sense in wasting time. I'm sure you're all sick of staying here."

As the other teams lined up to get their own assignments Naruto lead the Suna contingent out of the office and out towards the street.

XxX

On their way out of the village Naruto found that while the civilians didn't particularly like him due to his thorough dissection of the entire slew of genin the other day, the ninja higher in rank gave him some respect for it. As he walked towards the target gate he got nods of acknowledgement from the chunin he found out on patrol, the jounin out with their genin teams or just some of the ninja out in general.

As he made his way to the western gate the perennial gatekeepers, Izumo and Kotetsu, got grins on their faces upon seeing Naruto and company make their way to the gate. Naruto walked up and revealed the mission scroll given to him by Tsunade, "Chunin Naruto Uzumaki with a mission to Sunagakure alongside the Kazekage's children."

Kotetsu nodded and marked it down on the traffic ledger. The bandage-nosed shinobi chidingly elbowed Naruto, "Hey kid, good stuff the other day at the stadium. You pretty much sleepwalked through all of those kids."

Naruto shrugged as he wrote down his own signature on the page, "Well we couldn't use killing force on each other, I guess they were all holding back too, but they shouldn't have. Kami knows Sasuke didn't… for all of the good it did him."

Naruto handed the papers back to the two chunin and called for the Suna genin to leave with him. As the two chunin watched him walk away from the village Izumo chuckled, "That kid's going to get promoted before us at this rate."

Kotetsu yawned as he went back inside their booth, "I don't really mind too much. Let a kid with some ambition move up in rank, I'll be fine right here."

Izumo sweat-dropped in response to his partner's comment, "So does that mean that you want to watch a gate for the rest of your career? You are one lazy bastard."

Kotetsu gave a small smirk, "Hey, it beats actually working for a living doesn't it?"

XxX

Due to the fact that everyone here was an active ninja, they took to jumping through the trees as their method of travel. Naruto, being bored as all get out, decided to make some small talk as they made their way out of the country, "So how'd Konoha treat you guys? You all look fine if you ask me."

Kankuro grumbled somewhat, "We wouldn't have had to stay at all if someone didn't jump us after the fight with Gaara."

Naruto let a smirk play on his lips, "Well I told you all exactly what I was going to do. You weren't going to just leave so I had to knock you all out. It's not my fault that you didn't watch your backs."

Kankuro still kept his eyes narrowed at him, "I still can't believe we lost so easily. You just clubbed us over the back of the head without us even noticing."

Grinning back at the paint-wearing ninja, Naruto responded, "I am very sneaky sir." He dropped the grin from his face, "How far is it to Suna? I've never been before." This was a lie. He had been to Suna before, but he really wanted to cover up the stuff he did in Ne around the people that didn't need to know about it unless the knowledge was necessary.

Temari moved closer in their formation to speak to him, "From Konoha, Suna is about three days away if we keep at this speed."

Naruto nodded and turned to face them, "Alright, we'll go for as long as you can all stand to travel. Don't worry about me, just yourselves, I might be capable of getting all the way to Suna without sleep myself."

Kankuro and Temari blinked blankly at that. Gaara didn't have energy to burn like that. Though this kid did beat Gaara in his full-transformation after all… it couldn't really be that farfetched. Kankuro glanced back at Gaara and whispered to Naruto, "Hey. Gaara says that you're like him. What exactly does that mean?"

Naruto looked back at him in a nonchalant manner, "Oh that? I have a biju sealed inside of me like him." Naruto took not of the looks of shock on their faces, minus Gaara, "What? Did he not elaborate on what he meant when he said that?"

The two stunned siblings shook their heads. Temari looked back at Gaara who nodded in affirmation. She looked up at Naruto in confusion, "Wait? Why don't you have any powers or transformations like Gaara? We probably wouldn't have even known if you two hadn't said anything."

The blonde boy shrugged, "I don't know. I can do some stuff with its chakra, but I don't really have any transformations or anything really scary like Gaara does to my knowledge." He then added under his breath, "Unless you count the trigger…"

Kankuro put his nerves behind him, 'This kid isn't like Gaara. He won't flat out kill us for no reason. Stop being so scared of him, he's just like me or Temari.' "So, which one do you have if I could ask? You know that Gaara has the Ichibi no Shukaku."

"Oh I have the Kyuubi no Yoko in me." Naruto grinned at them all cheekily, "But you shouldn't go around spreading that. It's an S-class secret in my village, no one my age knows about it. If you do I might just have to pop up and kill you, no big deal." The mirth in his voice couldn't indicate if he was joking about that or not.

The silence brought on by Naruto's proclamation was broken by Gaara of all people, "How did you not end up like me?"

Naruto looked at Gaara dead in his eyes and saw that he was genuinely curious about it, "Well, first of all I ended up making contact with the Kyuubi personally and hammering out a contract of sorts between us. It can't possess me, I can use its chakra when I need to, I let it see, hear, and feel what I do, there's other stuff too but that is some of the big stuff."

Gaara blinked, "I've never tried that before. Shukaku kind of just runs rampant in my mind. Even now it wants me to kill you to get even."

Naruto grinned at him, "I'm so glad you've thought better of trying that. Yeah, the contract wasn't my idea though, it was someone else's. And you say you can't even get into your head safely to make contact without Shukaku fighting for control? Your seal must suck."

The siblings all looked at each other before Temari spoke up, "You know about seals?"

"No." Naruto shook his head in the negative, "But I was sealed by the Yondaime Hokage, who was the best. If I haven't heard of who did yours then they must not be nearly as good." He then scratched his chin, "That might be something to learn though…"

He got a serious look on his face, "But in all seriousness, don't go around telling people that I contain the Kyuubi. I have enough crap to deal with at home with just the adults knowing. If the kids my age are going to know, I'm going to tell them my damn self so that no one can warp their opinions. I was supposed to be a weapon like Gaara, but I ended up getting out of it somehow."

Gaara's curiosity was piqued further by Naruto's words, "You got out of it? What do you mean?"

Naruto rubbed his head sheepishly, "Well I was used for serious stuff, a lot of cloak and dagger operations, until four years ago when I ended up getting caught. The ones that discovered me ended up doing something to make me into that daft, loud, orange-wearing kid that you met at first. Fighting Gaara pulled my old killer instinct out, I thank you for that, and here we are now."

Kankuro raised an eyebrow, "You don't seem too much like a weapon to me."

His sister nodded in response, "You just seem like a really strong ninja, a kid."

Naruto wagged his eyebrows at her, "I'm a sentient weapon you could say. I don't like being all dreary when I don't have to be. When we're like this, no real fighting going on, I can be normal, well as normal as a ninja like me can be anyway. When the fighting starts I can just turn on the side of me that's a killer, it's kind of weird to explain."

Gaara looked at Naruto, "Your teammate, the way you fought him in the stadium, I thought he was precious to you. You said you got strength from defending others and yet you had no problems hurting him."

Chuckles came from Naruto as he contemplated Gaara's comment, "Well, maybe, but I don't really like him so it doesn't really count that much. What I told you was true, but it was more like for the whole village than just my team, I don't even like my team."

"You don't like your team?" Temari looked at him as if he was crazy, "Then why are you on it? Why not get switched out?"

Naruto smiled, "Well seeing as how I'm currently doing this it works out for me. Honestly, working with you guys so far has been more pleasant than my entire time on Team 7. No brooding spoiled pretty-boy breathing down my neck, no sensei that would rather read than pay attention to what's going on, and no pink-haired fan-girl with bipolar syndrome and a hair-trigger right hand. Yep, Temari-chan here is way more pleasant to be around as far as female company goes."

Temari blushed while Kankuro snorted, "Yeah sure kid. Just trade the hair color and the fist for a giant metal fan and you've got Temari."

The girl in question looked back at her younger brother while clutching the fan on her back tightly, "What was that Kankuro? Could you repeat that for me?"

Kankuro rapidly shook his head while Naruto barked out a laugh, "See, at least she gave you a warning. I usually didn't get those before Sakura tried to wail on me." Naruto noticed that Gaara had been staring at him for quite a while, "What's wrong Gaara? Do you need something?"

Gaara kept his eyes on Naruto, "You are a very strange person Naruto Uzumaki."

Naruto grinned foxily at him, "Well I don't think you can talk, calling me strange. You look like you want to say something though."

Gaara's eyes turned back ahead as he broke eye contact with Naruto, "It is nothing Uzumaki."

Naruto didn't believe him but let it slide as he kept his group jumping through the trees, "If nothing else we should reach near the border before it gets too dark to proceed any further." A group of nods and his focus was on their direction.

XxX

As the day winded to a close in Konohagakure, Tsunade was still at her desk, going through the most unnecessary necessity the every kage was stuck doing, of course I'm talking about paperwork.

A knock at her door soon revealed Shizune, "Tsunade-sama, Kakashi is here to see you."

Tsunade sighed, "Send him in." She flexed her wrist and hissed, "Damn brat dragging me back here... I bet he just wanted to punish me with all of this writing on so many of these useless forms to cramp my wrist so I can't hit him anymore. Honestly, shouldn't I have an entire team of secretaries to handle all of the mundane crap? I am the Hokage after all."

Shizune blinked, 'Note to self, find out if I actually should be looking for secretaries for things like that.' A yell of her name from Tsunade brought the black-haired girl back to earth, "Oh, um, I'm sending Kakashi in now okay?"

Tsunade motioned with her hand and Shizune disappeared from the door, Kakashi appearing in her stead, with Sakura in tow. As they entered the room Kakashi stood in front of Tsunade's desk, "Hokage-sama, you wanted to speak to me personally about Team 7?"

Tsunade nodded, "Yes, due to Naruto's promotion and as a part of the arrangement made in case he won the entire series of bouts against the genin I'm taking him off of Team 7 effective immediately."

Kakashi's visible eye went wide, "Hokage-sama, I'm aware that Naruto needs to work with others because of his new rank and everything, but why take him off of Team 7 completely?"

Tsunade shook her head, "It's nothing that you've done Kakashi. It's more along the lines of the team itself." She placed her chin on her hands, "Do you really think that after the little show that Naruto and the Uchiha put on in the stadium things will ever be civil again?"

The look on Kakashi's face showed his faith in the matter, "Naruto has shown growth in maturity in leaps and bounds ever since the chunin exam, I honestly believe that he can co-exist with Sasuke and Sakura."

A smirk appeared on the face of the buxom Hokage, "Kakashi you worded that like it was Naruto who got smacked around the stadium." Just as quickly as it appeared her smirk vanished, "Sasuke was soundly beaten by Naruto, driven to the point that he felt the activation of Orochimaru's cursed seal was tolerable. You did warn him not to do so did you not?"

Kakashi nodded, "Yes, I have, along with using the Chidori against comrades, but it seems he disregarded both."

Sakura felt very small all of a sudden as she saw Tsunade speaking with her sensei, as if she was out of place, and indeed she was. She wasn't even leaping to Sasuke's defense or anything until the Chidori was brought up, "But sensei, I saw Sasuke-kun's arm. Sasuke may have tried to use Chidori, but what about Naruto? He did something to mangle Sasuke-kun's arm."

Kakashi spoke up quickly before Tsunade could, "Sakura, the Chidori is an assassination technique used for only one thing, to kill. Sasuke, by using that, was saying that he had no qualms against killing Naruto. Naruto simply channeled elemental wind chakra to his blade and cut through the Chidori. With that kind of attack, if he really wanted to, Naruto could have cleaved Sasuke in two whenever he wanted if Sasuke was using Chidori. He fought to simply subdue, Sasuke was going for Naruto's life."

Chiming in at that point was Tsunade, "Sasuke will heal within the next few weeks. Naruto didn't do anything permanent, but with him activating the cursed seal I have to ask that you remain on simply D-ranked missions for the time being until I can get Jiraiya to look at it himself again, he left right after Naruto's matches and it will take some time to contact him again."

Kakashi nodded, "Yes Tsunade-sama. What about Team 7?"

Tsunade sighed and turned towards the window, "Well with what has happened I can't in good mind allow Naruto back onto your squad, at least not so soon. I'll find you a replacement in the meantime and by the time Jiraiya gets here you should have someone for your team."

Kakashi nodded, "Of course. That was all I wished to speak about Tsunade-sama. Come on Sakura." The masked jounin led his female student out of the office.

As they walked out of the tower Sakura spoke up, "What about Naruto Kakashi-sensei? He isn't on the team anymore?"

Kakashi looked at the setting sun, "No I'm afraid he isn't. If he was then he would be the superior officer to you and Sasuke and Sasuke would never accept that. His superiority complex would force him to fight any decision that Naruto would make in the field and hamper team effectiveness, and that's not even adding onto the fact that he would probably try to fight Naruto himself if he got the opportunity. No, this is for the best in this instance."

XxX

Back on the trail to Suna it was nightfall and Naruto halted progress for the evening to allow the others to rest. While sending out a clone to gather fish Naruto had started a fire and had boiled some water for a few instant ramen cups. Hey, why not?

While everyone ate they all sat around the fire until finishing the meal. He looked at the siblings and tried talking to them again, "So what happened to your sensei, the guy with the veil on his face. We didn't kill him did we?"

Temari shook her head, "Baki-sensei returned to Suna after the invasion failed. He was the one that found that our fath-… The Kazekage was killed before the invasion ever even happened."

Naruto looked at the others and found that neither Kankuro nor Gaara had much emotion about the matter, "So what happened if you don't mind me asking?"

Kankuro answered him, "Orochimaru had infiltrated our village and had been masquerading as the Kazekage for quite a while before the invasion."

Naruto threw his ramen cup to the side, "I knew about the invasion. I knew about the plan for Gaara and everything. Orochimaru had his shit planned for years."

Kankuro scoffed at that, "Well if you knew then why didn't you stop it or something."

The grinning chunin unnerved him, "That's another secret that's even deeper than the whole Kyuubi thing. I will say that it's half of the reason that I ended up a loudmouth when the chunin exams started, again I can't say thank you enough to Gaara for snapping me out of it."

This confused Gaara as to why he was being thanked, "Why thank me Uzumaki? I tried to kill you and destroy your village. I don't understand."

Naruto shook his chopsticks at Gaara chidingly before throwing them into the fire, "But you didn't kill me or destroy anything did you? All you ended up doing was giving me my fighter IQ back. That's why I'm grateful, because if you didn't do that who knows how I might have ended up, I mean did you see me beforehand?" Naruto shivered, "It gives me the creeps just thinking about it sometimes."

That brought a round of laughs from the siblings minus Gaara. Temari was still curious about some things though, "Naruto. You say you're a host like Gaara? Well how were you treated? Gaara had assassins after him since he was six years old."

Naruto thought to himself for a moment before speaking, "Well it was kind of like him, minus the assassinations for the most part. It was mostly people treating me like crap until I up and disappeared for a while, I just stopped caring for a while and stayed out of public. When I got older nothing really changed, even now I'm just now starting to get some respect in Konoha."

Gaara looked at him, "How did you take it?"

His blonde fellow container shrugged, "I had a few ways. First of all, like I said I just stayed out of public. Another reason is because I was always busy. When I was a kid I always had something to do to occupy my time. The last reason is because eventually some people actually started treating me like a real person, that was probably a big reason why."

Naruto looked up at the moon, "Being acknowledged positively for being you is a powerful thing. When the people around you are just glad that you're alive… There's just something about that that just doesn't compare to most other things… Guys like me and Gaara can relate to that."

He lowered his head and noticed that all three siblings were giving him their undivided attention. Sweat-dropping because he really had nothing else to say Naruto stood up, "Well, you can all get some sleep. I'll stay up and keep watch first."

Gaara blocked Naruto's way with his sand, "Uzumaki I will keep watch for the night. I cannot sleep anyway so it isn't inconvenient to me."

Naruto looked at Gaara and smiled at him, "Sure thing Gaara, thanks a lot then. Alright, I'm going to go drain the lizard before I go to sleep. I'll be back in a flash."

As Naruto walked away and Gaara left to find an area suitable for watching over the camp site for the night Kankuro and Temari were stunned. Kankuro looked at Gaara walking away, "Did Gaara just volunteer for night watch? He never did that before!"

Temari watched the direction Naruto went off in, "I think it has to do with that Naruto guy. Gaara's been like this ever since he fought him remember? He hasn't tried to or talked about killing anyone since then." As she watched him return to camp and pull out his sleeping things she was more curious about the blonde Konoha ninja that had somehow calmed Gaara.

XxX

The next couple of days found the group traveling from the woods to the desert with almost alarming transfer of landscape. The trip was pretty uneventful, with the exception of some dumb bandits that thought it would be a good idea to attack a group of ninjas. They took this opportunity to let Gaara let off some steam in the form of eradicating the lot of them in a wave of sand. Poor bastards never had a chance…

As they traveled they kept up the same routine as usual with Naruto trying to engage them in conversations to get to know them better. With Kankuro he pretty much let slide their introduction back before the chunin exams and started off fresh. It didn't really take long for them to start hitting it off. Kankuro had a strange sense of humor and when coupled with Naruto's dry wit and penchant for picking with people like Gaara, usually ending up with him getting thrown by an arm of sand by Gaara, much to Kankuro and strangely Gaara's amusement.

Naruto took the time traveling with them to also flirt shamelessly with Temari. At first he simply took to answering her questions about how he lived and what he was used to doing as a ninja and asking her the same in turn, but that soon turned to him sidling up to her during breaks and randomly commenting on her good looks and how he'd like to take her to some place called Ichiraku whenever she came back to Konoha during their travels. She didn't use her fan to brain him for two reasons; because he did beat Gaara and then still had enough energy to capture them and jump into the fray of the invasion so she didn't really feel like trying to incur his wrath, the other reason was because on the occasions she did try to swing at him he dodged and then made comments on how he liked strong girls.

Kankuro got a few laughs off of that… right until Temari realized that hitting Kankuro with her fan was no trouble at all.

Naruto even got Gaara to talk sometimes, not very often, but he still got him to speak and that was something. He usually compared biju with Gaara, and inwardly bitched to Kyuubi about why the hell he couldn't get a cool defense like Gaara had, he was sick of getting his ass kicked… Anyway the point is, Naruto was quickly getting close to the Suna genin, the fact that he didn't rub the fact that he beat them in their faces helped exponentially.

And now they were traveling through the desert, edging ever closer to Sunagakure. The setting sun was actually doing very little to sooth the heat on one blonde-haired ninja.

Naruto wiped his brow once again under the hot sun, "Kami, this desert… Why the fuck would people live somewhere so hot? This is ridiculous!" Naruto looked back at the Suna kids who were smirking at his discomfort, "I'll bet you're all loving this right now aren't you?"

Kankuro snorted as he stifled his laughter, "Yeah definitely. You can run through three teams of genin like a hot knife through butter but a little heat and humidity and you can't take it."

Naruto gave him a half-hearted glare, "Watch it make-up boy. I'm really irritable out in this stupid heat."

Kankuro growled at him, "It's not make-up damn it! It's war paint that…!"

Naruto rolled his eyes, "…That you steal from your super-hot sister…"

Kankuro finished his sentence, "…That I steal from my super-hot sister!" Kankuro blinked and retracted his statement, "No! Wait! Take all of that back!"

A grinning Naruto looked at the puppeteer, "What? The 'you steal make-up part' or the 'your sister is super-hot part'?"

"Both! My sister isn't hot!" Kankuro felt a glare from behind him from Temari and deadpanned a look at Naruto, "Ugh… damn you kid…"

Naruto chuckled and decided to save Kankuro from his fate, "Yo Temari-chan, how close to Suna are we? I'm kind of on blind auto-pilot up here."

Temari lowered her ill intent towards Kankuro and looked over at the leader of the makeshift squad, "We should be right on top of the village any minute now." Right on cue as they reached the top of a dune a massive dome-esque structure came into view, "And here we are."

Naruto let the others take the lead from this point on as fighting a slew of pissed off foreign ninja due to a misunderstanding didn't really appeal to him at the moment. As they arrived at the opening he noticed the faint glares from the guards and rolled his eyes, 'Woohoo… Trading one village's glares for another, and I can't even kick anyone's ass here or I'll start a war.'

They made their way into the city leading Naruto along. Kankuro turned to get his attention, "Hey, the first thing we should do is let Baki-sensei know we made it back. I'll go find him, you can go with Temari and Gaara to our house until I get sensei."

Naruto shrugged, as the fact that there currently was no Kazekage meant that he couldn't really go straight to his office and give him the information on the treaty, and the council wasn't just going to be called at the drop of a hat for something that wasn't an emergency. He decided that waiting was cool.

The blonde foreigner nodded and followed Gaara and Temari as they made their way through Sunagakure to their home. Naruto eventually ignored the reaction that the citizens of Suna were having towards a Konoha shinobi in their village and took to a pastime that could draw his attention for the remainder of the trip, the 'watch Temari walk and not get caught' game. He had to admit, Jiraiya did teach him something useful besides Rasengan on their search for Tsunade.

The ever useful advice from the super-pervert was, when caught peeking at a girl in the street do not look away as if you weren't looking at her, make eye contact instead. Usually guys like Naruto and himself would end up staring at girls that were kunoichi, a side-effect of living in a ninja village, and they could sense when they were being watched, lying like you weren't looking makes it worse, but letting her know you were looking, just not letting her know what exactly you were looking at is a very good way to get your looks in, and Naruto, being an old hand in espionage under Danzo had a killer poker face. Temari could tell he was looking at her, but the fact that whenever she looked back at him to call him a pervert he was already looking into her eyes ended up silencing her and making her quite flustered at his serious gaze.

Naruto wasn't a pervert. He just had a healthy respect for the female condition. He was a growing young man just like anyone else, so what?

Eventually that had to come to an end as they all arrived at the house of their family, and by house I mean big-ass mansion.

Naruto whistled as he walked through the gates and looked at the massive structure. It was the same color as all of the other desert buildings in Suna, it was just the biggest damn house out of all of them by far, "This is your house? You guys have got a big-ass house."

Temari smirked as they made their way inside, "We are the children of the Yondaime Kazekage. Where did you think we lived? Come on and let's find you a room."

As they traveled to the upper level of the mansion Naruto was confused, "Wait, I thought I would end up getting a hotel or something when I got here. I don't want to impose on you guys like this, it isn't really fair."

Temari rolled her eyes while Gaara just stared at him, "Uzumaki I insist that you stay here. I won't accept anything else." Gaara then left Naruto and Temari in the hall alone.

Naruto turned to his fellow blonde and pointed off in the direction that Gaara went, "Did he just try to be nice and tell me he was cool with me staying here?"

Temari nodded as she kept leading him down the hall, even when Naruto asked why, "It's because of what you did. I think he likes talking with you, it didn't really happen much before he met you, I think he's spoken to you more than anyone else in this village. I'm okay with it too I guess."

"Why?" Naruto was looking around and realized this place was too rich for his blood, "I did kind of get you all captured and all of that other stuff you know?"

Temari waved off his excuse, "It was your job. I'm just glad you didn't kill us or anything, it was an invasion after all."

Naruto grinned at her, "I would never. Killing such a beautiful thing like you would have been madness for me to get over after the deed was done." Naruto once again ducked a swing of her fan that surprisingly didn't break anything in the hallway when she missed.

Temari placed the fan on her back again with the faint traces of a blush on her face. She honestly wasn't used to being flirted with at all. The entire time before this everyone had been too afraid of Gaara to even attempt to get close to her. And out of the blue here comes this kid that not only has the gall to try it, but who doesn't fear Gaara because he'd already beaten Gaara cleanly once before. She had to admit, it was kind of nice for a boy to talk about her like that, and it wasn't like he was bad looking. After ditching the orange jumpsuit he was far better looking than before and the mysterious scar on his face didn't detract from said looks at all.

They came to a stop in front of a door that Temari opened for him, "This will be your room for your stay."

Naruto went inside and had to do a complete spin to fully take in the aesthetics of the room, "This is my room? This is probably as big as my entire damn apartment. Does this room have its own bathroom? What the hell do you guys do with all of this space?"

Temari had a humored smile on her lips, "We're rich so, anything we want would be the correct answer to your question." Naruto chuckled and began setting his things by the bed, "The rest of us are down the hall. If you need something our rooms aren't that hard to find."

Naruto nodded, "Okay, I guess I'll just go to sleep tonight and worry about other stuff in the morning, like the scroll and all of that. No one will probably even get into gear about this until then anyway."

"Okay, Kankuro or I will help you with that tomorrow." She watched as he walked into the bathroom and began splashing his face with water from the sink, "Goodnight then Naruto."

He heard her and yelled out from the bathroom, "Goodnight Temari-chan." As the sounds of her shutting the door rang out through the room Naruto sighed and shut off the water before returning to flop on the bed.

As Temari walked through the hall to reach her own room she had to giggle when a familiar voice rang out shortly after she shut his door, "Oh Kami, even their beds crap all over mine! This mission is awesome!"

XxX

The next day Naruto met up with the Suna council that, surprisingly, showed him more respect than he had received anywhere prior to this, however he chalked it up more to the fact that he was something of an ambassador in this case. After that meeting, which mostly consisted of him sitting and listening to the old men bicker over how this should be taken, Baki assured him he wouldn't have to sit through something like that for the rest of his time in Suna which brought a laugh from the boy.

He and Baki eventually met up with Temari, Kankuro, and Gaara at a training ground and found Temari obliterating the desert-scape. It was then that he was blindsided with a request from the fan-wielding girl.

Naruto blinked incredulously, "You want me to what?"

Temari leaned against her fan staring Naruto down, "I want to fight you, so come on."

Naruto kept blinking at her, "You against me? Really? Why would you want to fight me?"

She huffed at him and began to walk up on him to poke him in the chest, "I saw you using wind chakra and fuuton jutsu back in Konoha. I use them too and I want to see who is better, me or you."

Naruto looked to the others for help but only saw Baki and Kankuro looking anywhere but at them, "Temari-chan, I'm not much for the casual sparring. When I spar, people get hurt, and my jutsu aren't really the probing type, I only have two jutsu right now that don't have the potential to kill you."

Temari glared at him, "So you think I can't take it? Alright, now we're definitely fighting! Get ready Naruto."

Naruto sighed and backed up to set down in a stance, "Someone call this…"

Baki walked forward, "The fight will end when I say or when one of you surrenders. Ready?" He got nods from both Naruto and Temari, "Hajime!"

Temari wasted no time and whipped her fan out to send a massive gust at Naruto. Naruto immediately went on the move and tried closing the distance, but was forced to go serpentine in his movements so that he wasn't lifted clear off of the ground. Naruto drew closer and saw Temari swing her fan at him in an effort to end the fight. Naruto brandished his sword and blocked, sliding slightly through the sand until he gained some footing.

As she pushed against his sword she realized that he wasn't budging, "Why are you so strong?"

Naruto grinned at her, "Because it's more useful than being weak." Naruto pulled his sword away and caught her fan in one hand while sheathing his sword in the other. Temari was marveling at the raw strength it took to hold her back. This moment of awe came back to bite her as Naruto swiftly disarmed her by grabbing onto her fan with both hands and swinging away with it to throw her off.

As she slid through the sand and regained a standing position she saw Naruto holding onto her fan, looking at her blankly, "You want to give up? I'm really not in a fighting mood right now."

Temari gritted her teeth in anger, "Stop underestimating me!" She then charged in and tried her hand up close against him.

Naruto sighed and threw the fan aside as the sandy-blonde girl got ever closer. Temari threw a series of punches that Naruto swiftly swatted aside, however he didn't want to counter and injure her so he stayed on the strictly defensive.

Temari was getting progressively angrier at her inability to injure Naruto, apparently the guy that had been hitting on her for three days and the guy that she was currently in conflict with actually did exist in the same body at the same time. Seeing that during their short skirmish she had gotten her back to her fan she broke off and picked it up, unfurling it with a smirk, "Now what are you going to do?"

Naruto pointed at her fan, "You're going to be dead in like five seconds, just so you know."

She looked at her fan to see a slow burning explosive note attached to it and hurriedly threw it away just in time to see a small puff go off on her fan. As she turned back to Naruto she had no time to react before she was on her back looking up at the sky with a kunai at her throat. She blinked and realized Naruto was pinning her down with a kunai at her throat, "But… What?"

Naruto looked at Baki who announced his victory and he helped her up. She dusted herself off and went to retrieve her fan, "It was a dud?"

Naruto nodded, "Well yeah, did you really think I was going to blow you and your fan up just for a spar?" He took her fan and dusted off the soot from his note before handing it back.

Temari snatched it back heatedly and placed it on her back, "You completely destroyed me… I never had a chance." She clinched her fists, "I'm weaker than I thought I was…"

Naruto shook his head as they met back up with the others, "It's not that you're weak, it's that I'm not a genin, hell I shouldn't even be a chunin. You're chunin level from what I saw during the exams, but I'm a hard guy to fight."