It's cosy.
Surrounded by leaves and dirt. Naruto is fast asleep and Sakura is dozing off.
Good to see them enjoying the sleeping bags I brought. After having lunch, it's the middle of the noon. So, I thought I might as well get some afternoon nap.
No team has passed by yet. But I feel occasional movements. Once we get a team with a heaven scroll, we will start moving again.
Sakura was in charge of setting up traps and me in charge of genjutsu.
"Sakura-chan, Sakura-chan!", I call.
"Hmm?".
"What did you set up?", I ask with excitement.
"You will see....don't wanna spoil the fun", she Chided. " What genjutsu did you set up?", she asks.
"Oh..nothing much. Just some areal genjutsu. They will see a tree with large stag beetles hanging around instead of our hanging sleeping bags", I say.
"I feel like a caterpillar ", she says with a chuckle.
"It's comfortable, isn't it? I knew you would like it", I say.
"Yeah....I can stay like this forever", she says.
Her eyes snap at the direction we set up our traps.
Someone got caught in a loop trap.
Dangling upside down.
The others will come to rescue the poor soul.
They will get caught too.
"I wonder how will your traps deal with the others", I muse.
For starters, it looks like a team from Sand Village.
They have 3 teams participating this year.
These shinobis are as cruel as the desert they live in. They won't fall for cheap tricks.
"Hei! Rentaro kun! Are you okay!?, kyaaa!!" A girl just fell right into the pit that was under the previous trap.
"Oh..no... Tina Chan!" the dangling guy screams.
Welp....they are still genin .....and 13-year-old kids.
No wonder the council members call our generation useless.
The smarter guy doesn't touch the ground. Moves around to free his Rentaro while standing on the branch he is dangling from.
I see Sakura cutting a rope with her wrist blade.
A giant swinging log just slapped the guy away.
Naruto wakes up from the commotion.
#######
We got ourselves a scrool.
Now we go into hiding for the night.
We will be going from hideout to hideout while staying out of sight.
Occasionally help our classmates if possible.
But now we rest.
I lead them through multiple layers of genjutsu.
"Where are we going?", Sakura asks.
Like a tour guide, I start explaining.
"Most of this forest is made up of Hashirama trees. But some verity is bound to happen. The tree we chose is not a Hashirama tree with boring tree bark. Its a huge tree with large roots, hanging veins here there, leaves so thick sunlight can't enter, a perfect place to hide even from the infamous anbublackop's ", I muse.
I see Naruto grinning. Which attracts Sakura's attention.
"We have a surprise for ya, Sakura Chan!" he says.
"Oo...I love surprises", she smiles.
Naruto blushes in response.
Well, in this world or the Canon, it's the same. Naruto will like Sakura wholeheartedly, but not get the same in return. The og was too immature to understand Naruto.
This one is too mature to accept his love.
It's....kind of sad.
"We wield chakra to our will, shape it to a form sharper than a blade, more beautiful than a lustful dream and more terrifying than death itself. But as part of nature, left to its device, it can cause some stunning phenomenon", I continue rumbling.
We reach our destination as I monologue.
"Whaaaa!", Sakura gasps at the sight.
It's a tree bark 10 feet thick. Shorter than the normal trees of the forest. Some kind of glowing fog with green fireflies is humming about. Small puddles from recent rain reflect the light all around us.
There are holes inside the tree with lights pouring out of it. The branches are decorated with small lights. A touch of a modern dormitory with nature.
It's like a young witch hut, who reads novels in a iped.
"The hideout is inside the tree", I lead the way. But Sakura just stands there, taking in the view for a moment.
"How....did you find such a place!", she mutters.
"We didn't find it, more like it found us!", Naruto replies.
"Wanna tell her the story?", I ask with a wry smile.
"Let's get in first", Naruto urges.
#####
We back inside our sleeping bags.
For a chunin exam, we are having a pretty smooth sailing so far.
"It's like we are on a picnic", Sakura says giddily.
I turn to look at her.
"Glad you liked it".
"I love it. Its...I will never forget this day!", she says.
"Hei hei...don't say that. We are gonna be together for a loooooong time. This world has so many things to explore together", I say.
Sakura chuckles.
"You talk like Hakage sama ", she says. Then looks at Naruto.
"You had a story to tell", she remembers.
Naruto turns around.
"It's not a pretty story to tell ", he says. Voice unusually sad.
"Sakura-chan, this is our biggest secret so far. You can't tell anyone", I add.
"I promise", she says in a whisper.
Naruto starts his tale.
"You know, that Theme used to live with me when we were like 6 or 7. Scared of his parent's ghost, he says. That apartment on the 2nd floor had other tenants living there. Most of them were some random widow or a bachelor ninja dude. There was a guy named Yushi. He had.....".
"Anger issues", I chime in.
"Yeah, that's the word. Used to bash my door now and then, telling me to .... you know ...the usual", he breathes.
"So, it happened while I was living with him. Set up traps as self-defence in case that guy wanted to cross any lines", I add.
"That mofo one day just broke down my door with a goddamn lightning jutsu. A certain ideat Uchiha set up traps with sharp kunai", he glares at.
"They were supposed to trigger one after another. The impact triggered all 50 of them together "I look away.
"The guy turned into a nailcusion", Naruto says.
"He he he he!", I see Sakura laughing.
"We were scared out of our pants. Rushed him to the hospital. We tried to jump through the rooftops", I am still looking away.
"The great Sasuke fucking Uchiha let go of the body. He fell on his neck ", Naruto is still glaring at me.
"He was dead when he turned into a human porcupine", I retort.
"That still makes it your fault", he says.
"I was trying to defend your house, you ungrateful fuck!".
"Okey...Boys....what happened then!" Sakura urges. Naruto scoffs.
"It was almost midnight.
The body fell in the middle of the street. It. One of the petrol guards saw us. Gave us chase. We somehow threw the body on the drain and ran away", Naruto said while hiding his face.
" I imagined Killing a chunin inside the village isn't legal ", I added.
"Yeah, like she wouldn't know if you never said that!', The bastard is still barking.
"So, we decided to run away from the village," I say while ignoring him.
"Oh my, must've been so hard on you, Naruto" Sakura looks at Naruto with eyes full of pity.
Naruto breaks his glare at Sakura's gaze.
"Emm... it wasn't that hard....!" he tries to act tough.
"It was hard on me too, you know..." I chime in.
Sakura, for some odd reason, decided to ignore my plea....as she ruffled Naruto's hair.
"Ehm....anyway, we decided to run away from the village....become some rouge ninja ", I continue.
"But we got through the wrong gate. Ended up in this forest", Naruto adds.
"We were able to keep the chasing guards off our back while hiding inside the forest. If we were actually outside the village, we would've been dead".
"But...even if they caught you, Konoha shinobi wouldn't kill you outright" Sakura becomes curious.
"As if...Sakura Chan...let me tell you...Naruto isn't the only villaige piraiyah. They say my clan was involved in Kyubi attack, so a fair number of Ninja's has it personally against me. At that time, we couldn't trust a single soul. Sometimes, I thought maybe they poisoned our food too", I say with a scoff.
"That's your fault for eating rotten food, ideat", Naruto grunts.
"Anyway, not all of them, but some of the guards were talking about killing us....so we couldn't take any chances and hid as our life depended on it" I ignored Naruto again.
"After a full day of running around, they brought in the Inozuka clan to track us. We ran from dogs that wanted to shred us to pieces", I shudder at the memory."But suddenly entered a zone where they couldn't find us nomatter what. It was like vail, even the dogs were having hard time finding us".
"Did you enter someone's genjutsu?", she asks.
"Not someone's ...", I say with a smirk.
"It's.....", Sakura got so excited that she got up.
"You didn't cast any of the genjutsu that we passed through?", she asks.
"No", Naruto replies.
"These are naturally generated genjutsu fogs, due to dense natural chakra in the area. Nobody can make it or break it", I say with a smug face.
"But....how is that possible....", she mutters.
"They call it [ the forest of death] for a reason ", I muse.
"And we hid in it", Naruto adds.
"For how long!", Sakura asks.
"Like....a week or so".
"You hid away from the Inozuka clan for over a week!", she is now standing.
"Hah...even then they didn't find us", my smugness intensifies.
"They had to bring in a Hyuga to rat us out!", Naruto is also becoming smug right now.
She sits down while holding her head.
"Then what happened?" she asks.
"They caught us... The Inozuka, the village petrol team , the anbu, all of them were ready to kill us then and there. Specially the Inozuka....you should've seen thier faces when Hiyoshi Hyuga called them "pet shop"!, Naruto loughs at the memory.
"Thank god , Hokage sama was there. They took us to the court. To our surprise, a kind neighbour lady testified in our favour. So , we got off as "selfdefense", I end the story.
Sakura flops down.
"Wow....that's....one hell of a thing....", she says with a huff. "And here I thought I was the sneaky one", she says while closing her eyes.
"We just got lucky", I say with a shrug.
"What happand to the body?", she asks.
"Don't know that part. It fell inside the drainage system. Mightve floated up on a river or something!', I say.
"Wow....how am I supposed to sleep after hearing a story like that!", Sakura huffs.
"Just keep you eyes closed and Imagine what you would do...if you were there with us....", I suggest.
"Hmm....", Sakura hums.
"Allright. Good night guys!", Naruto turns to sleep.
I turn away to sleep.
It feels good to get somethings off the chest.