Tale of the Setting Sun
Chapter 6: "The Ones To Be Protected"
Yugakure was a peaceful and prosperous village in the Land of Hot Water. The village was tucked away high up in the shrub-covered mountains, connected to the ground by carved pathways that spiraled down the side of the cliff rock. The country received its name from their famous hot springs, which were sourced by the many small rivers that furrowed through the land. These rivers all eventually cascaded down the side of the valley as thin waterfalls before joining a vast river.
The village was apparently very popular as a tourist spot, and as Naruto and his team wearily walked past the entrance gates, they could see quite a number of families coming in with them. Within the village itself, there were a large variety of souvenir stalls selling festival masks, local specialties, and fans among other things. The center of attraction however seemed to be the big wooden archway with the words 'Hot Springs' at the center of the village, which the majority of the people were headed towards.
The sky was bleached with orange and purple as the sun set, and Kakashi decided that they would stay the night before leaving for Konoha at dawn. Hearing of their decision and overcome with gratitude for a job well done, the silk merchant gifted them with tickets for an overnight stay at a famous local inn with its very own hot spring.
And so that evening, Mayu headed off by herself to the women's bath while Naruto and Rai hunkered down in the heated pool in the men's bath. Resting a soaked towel on his head, Naruto closed his eyes, letting his tired muscles soak in the hot water. With his eyes closed, he idly began to pick up the jumbled chatter of multiple surrounding conversations; the way they washed over him had a very relaxing effect.
"Oi, Naruto!"
Naruto opened a single eye to see Rai looking at him from the opposite end of the pool. Mirroring Naruto with a folded towel on his head, he had a mischievous look on his face.
Much more than Mayu, and even more so since the incident with the bandits, Naruto had noticed that the other boy was talking to him with increasing frequency. It was a little bewildering and altogether new for Naruto; a small part of him skeptically wondered whether Rai was setting him up for something. However, since preserving the team harmony would be most beneficial to successfully completing their missions, he didn't rebuff the other genin.
"What is it?" he said.
Rai waggled his eyebrows. "Think Kakashi-sensei'll take off his mask in the bath?"
Naruto pondered this for a moment. It was true that he had also never seen their sensei's face in its entirety, though he had never before thought too deeply on it. "I don't see why he wouldn't," he said. "I don't think he has a medical condition that requires him to always have a facemask on."
"I bet he's hiding a weird mole." Rai smirked. "Or something else," he added with a more sober look, touching with his hand the knotted scar that ran across his cheek.
"Who's hiding a mole?" said a voice.
It belonged to Kakashi, who appeared to be stepping into the bath area. He was standing where the white steam from the baths was thickest, and they could only make out the outlines of his body. As the man stepped closer to where the two genin were resting, Rai stood up impatiently with a splash, straining to see his exposed face.
Naruto remained seated, but strangely enough, he also began to find curiosity bubbling within him.
Just as Kakashi was about to come into view, there was a soft hissing sound in the bath indicating new hot water was being pumped in. A sigh of appreciation rising up among the men, a cloud of white steam drifted up, concealing everything around them. Soon, Naruto couldn't even see Rai, who was right in front of him, though he could hear the other genin gnash his teeth in frustration.
"This is nice, isn't it?" he heard Kakashi comment congenially. "Hm, this steam's making it hard to see anything." There was a splashing sound. "Oh, there goes my towel. Guess I'll have to get a new one..."
There was another splashing sound, and then the sound of a wet foot slapping on rock as Kakashi climbed out of the bath.
This is it!, thought Naruto. Quickly making the appropriate hand seals, he then slashed his hand in Kakashi's direction. A gust of wind swept through the bath, rapidly clearing the steam clouds. There was a whistling sound, and then something that sounded like barrels crashing on rocks and breaking. This was soon followed by the sounds of high-pitched screaming from the women's side of the hot spring.
"Nice one, Naruto!" cheered Rai.
The steam had all but cleared from the bath now, and Naruto now saw that there were at least twenty other people standing around in towels. They were all looking around, blinking in confusion.
"Where's Kakashi-sensei?" asked Naruto.
"Ah, thanks for that Naruto," he heard Kakashi say from behind him. "I found my towel." Naruto and Rai whipped around, to see Kakashi back in the hot spring pool. He was still wearing his hitai-ate on his forehead, and had wrapped his newly rediscovered towel around the bottom half of his face.
Covering his face with a hand, Rai let out a groan.
After the three had finished soaking in the hot spring, they changed into cotton yukata provided by the inn (Kakashi somehow managing to put his facemask back on as well) before rejoining Mayu at the outdoor garden. Several families were by the pond, admiring the colorful fish that swam in its depths. It was dark, so the garden was lit with several paper lanterns that hung from lines strung all around the walls.
Attracted to different aspects of the garden, the team soon split up. Kakashi settled down on the bamboo veranda with a book, while Rai joined several other boys who were admiring some ornamental weaponry on display within glass cases. Mayu, seemingly entranced by the bobbing lights, excused herself to walk through the garden.
In the end, finding himself alone, Naruto hovered by the veranda for a few minutes before slowly making his way over to the pond. The families had moved on, and there was now only one other man who was by himself at the pond's edge. Together, they stood in silence for several minutes, watching the fish dart through the shadowy water.
"Nice chakra control earlier, kid," the man said suddenly. "Though you packed a lil' too much punch in it."
Startled, Naruto gave him a cursory glance; the stranger had short, slicked-back silver hair, but he was even younger than Kakashi. He was fit and his arms were muscled, indicating extensive training. The man – or was he a teenager? – was not wearing a yukata like everyone else, but rather simple nondescript black shirt and pants. Around his neck was a hitai-ate that Naruto didn't recognize: It had three diagonal lines. Naruto wondered whether the Land of Hot Water also had a ninja village hidden away somewhere.
"What village are you from?" he asked.
"Yugakure," replied the man with a careless shrug of his shoulders.
Naruto's brow furrowed in thought. "You mean this place used to be a hidden village?" He couldn't imagine a sleepy tourist village such as this one being the headquarters of a group of highly skilled assassins. Yet the man standing before him was undoubtedly a shinobi, and from what he could sense, a very skilled one at that.
"It used to be a proper ninja village, before these fat merchants came in and turned this place into the laughingstock it is now," said the man, folding his arms across his chest. "Now, the village's become just like this pond...and the people, simple ornamental fish."
Naruto didn't respond. The man had yet to make any threatening moves, but there was something off about the man. It wasn't just the bitterness that laced the man's words; the combination of the cold, steely glint in his violet eyes and the just barely self-contained tremor in the man's muscles sent off every alarm in Naruto's mind.
There was a splash as a pair of children in yukata ran to the pond's edge. They examined the koi fish, pointing out and laughing at specific ones that caught their eye.
"Look at that fat one!" said the little girl, her fishtail braid dipping below the water's surface. She looked a year or two younger than Naruto, who observed them silently. "Do you think mom'll let me take it home, Taki?"
Her brother, standing beside her in a bright blue yukata, swiped at the fish in question several times before huffily giving up. "It's just a stupid fish. It'll die in a day anyways, like all your other ones." Jumping out of the pond, he waddled away. Calling out for him to wait, the girl shot a second glance backwards at the fish before struggling up and following.
Naruto felt the sudden explosion of killing intent a moment before the foreign ninja disappeared.
Dashing forward, he grabbed the sibling pair underneath each arm and jumped. Flying through the air with the two children struggling in his arms, the ground where they had been standing on just a moment earlier blasted apart into chunks of broken earth.
When the dust had cleared, it revealed a giant steel katana in the hands of the silver-haired man. Looking up with a smile as he met Naruto's eyes, the man yanked the katana out of the ground. Jumping back with a vindictive giggle, he slashed at a passing woman and then disappeared again. The woman stared down in disbelief as bright red blood suddenly came spurting out of her thigh, and her leg collapsed in on itself.
The explosion had stunned everyone into silence, but it was only after her single pained scream pierced through the garden, that pandemonium set in.
"What's going on?!" shouted Rai, racing over.
Naruto could barely hear him over the screaming; if they weren't careful, they could be trampled.
"There's a man on the loose," he said, just as Mayu – looking terrified – reached them, with Kakashi on her heels. "He's strong, sensei."
"Alright, team Kakashi," said the jōnin, looking around grimly. "I'll take care of him. You three focus on evacuating the citizens."
They jumped into motion. Rai ran over to the locked entrance gateway, which a crowd of panicked people were now pummeling their fists against. Looking around frantically, he spotted the weapons on display that he had been looking at earlier. Immediately shattering the glass with his fist, he pulled out a scythe. Dragging it over to the gate, he smashed the doors open, and the terrified crowd began to pour out.
Meanwhile, Mayu and Naruto had begun to help the various injured persons that were lying scattered across the ground. As Naruto helped up a middle-aged man bleeding from a deep slash across his stomach, the man let out a groan.
"Hidan...Please, stop him..." The man slumped against Naruto as he fell unconscious.
Mayu rushed over, and together, they propped the man upright against the wall of one of the buildings. Straightening up, Naruto quickly looked for Kakashi with shrewd eyes. He had never seen the jōnin look so serious before, and even the horror of their situation couldn't distract him from the opportunity this presented. Now, Naruto would be able to see him truly in action.
He quickly spotted Kakashi standing in a clearing...and shivered.
Even dressed in a yukata as he was, Kakashi's coldly furious face would have set the most battle-hardened veterans running in the opposite direction. As it was, however, the silver-haired man – Hidan? – only laughed maniacally as he begun to swing the heavy katana around.
Despite himself, Naruto couldn't help but feel impressed by the sheer raw strength and power the man was displaying.
"Don't just stare at me," said Hidan, tightening his grip on the handle of his blade. "Show me what you've got!"
Without responding, Kakashi disappeared in a flicker of white, and faster than Naruto had ever seen him move, kicked Hidan directly in the chest. Caught off guard, Hidan flew backwards toward where the two genin were watching. Leaping out of the way, they watched the man collide into a tree instead, which collapsed from behind him upon impact. A deafening crackling sound reminiscent of a thousand birds filled the area, and a bright blue ball of spinning chakra quickly formed between Kakashi's hands. As Hidan angrily brushed aside fragments of wood from his chest, the jōnin shot towards them, leaving behind a small path of destruction. Just before Kakashi struck however, Hidan let out a mocking laugh as he reached out for something with his free hand.
"The boy!" cried out Mayu, but Naruto had already begun to move.
Pushing himself to run faster than he had ever done before, he leaped into the air. The struggling boy in the blue yukata stared with terrified eyes at the incoming jōnin as he hung from Hidan's hands like a meat shield. Grabbing the neck of the boy's yukata with his hands and tearing him away, Naruto spun through the air. The crackling ball of lightning chakra passed by mere inches from his face. Hidan snarled in frustration and leaped backwards; Kakashi followed.
Landing on the ground, Naruto set the struggling boy on the ground. Mayu rushed to the boy's side to check for injuries, but he immediately pushed her away. He looked up at the two genin with only fear in his eyes.
"Get away from me! You monsters!" he screamed, his small body shaking like a leaf in the wind.
"We're here to help you," said Mayu gently, holding her hands up to show she wasn't holding anything.
"No! You killed Nami!" bellowed the boy, staggering backwards in his desire to get away. Naruto remembered the girl with the fishtail braid the boy had been playing with earlier. "Don't kill me too!"
Naruto stopped in his tracks as he remembered the bandits he had killed the day before. His clothes back in the inn were being washed, but it would take several more washes before the bloodstains completely faded. He suddenly wondered if the man's son was waiting for his father to come back, shivering alone in the dark underneath a forgotten bush.
Would he be as frightened as this shivering boy in a torn yukata before him?
"I won't allow you to die." Naruto held his hand out to the boy. "Trust me."
The boy stared back at Naruto with wide eyes, his mouth falling open a little. "I..." He stopped. And he must have found sincerity in Naruto's expression, because he stopped trembling.
Behind them, Hidan screamed in pain and in fury, and the terrible shrieking sound of shattering metal followed. Naruto saw, as if in slow motion, a jagged shard of steel whistle through the air as it headed straight for the boy who now reached for his hand.
1/21/17: Made minor edits.
Chapter 7: "Companions"
Kakashi had just been nodding off to sleep when his mental warning bells suddenly went off. Immediately alert again, he hadn't had to look long to find the man behind the disturbance. He didn't know who this man was, but the jōnin knew that people like him, with such little regard for others' lives, were one of the most dangerous opponents to have around. And the least forgivable.
"Don't just stare at me," said the strange shinobi, swinging his katana carelessly. "Show me what you've got!"
Kakashi obliged. Sending chakra into his feet, he propelled himself like a bullet towards the man. His opponent's violet eyes widened in surprise as his foot connected squarely with his chest. Letting out a grunt of pain, the man flew backwards and careened through a row of gangly trees.
The jōnin raised his hitai-ate, revealing the three tomoe of the sharingan in his left eye, and lowered his hand: "Raikiri (Lightning Cutter)!"
As he channeled his lightning chakra towards his hand, the deafening sound of crackling chakra filled the garden, and a focused ball of swirling blue materialized. The silver-haired shinobi was still dazed from impact, and Kakashi saw with his sharingan that he would not have enough time to move out of the way. The instant his Raikiri was ready, the jōnin lowered his head and shot towards the stirring man, tearing up the earth behind him with the sheer aftershock.
However, just before he reached the man, there was a flicker of movement he hadn't anticipated. Kakashi, to his shock, sensed a much smaller and weaker chakra suddenly being thrust between him and his opponent. His hand was already moving towards the man's heart however, and he knew that he wouldn't be able to stop even if he had to go through the child.
A surge of roiling yellow chakra – Naruto – was already moving towards them, and Kakashi, with all the strength of his will, managed to inch his crackling chakra slightly upwards. Naruto tore the boy out of the man's grasp, and to his relief, evaded his hand. However, the brief instant it had cost him gave the other man enough time to recover and leap backwards. Kakashi's hand instead slammed into the ground; the earth exploded, throwing up a huge wave of dirt. Nevertheless, taking advantage of the wave, the jōnin followed under its cover and aimed a quick kick at the man.
"Whew, that was close!" said the man, blocking with his katana, and then swinging it at Kakashi. Slipping under the blade, Kakashi attempted to sweep the man off balance, but he nimbly leaped over the jōnin and slashed downwards. Though evading the sharp edge, the side of the katana crashed into the white-haired ninja. He skidded backwards, the heels of his feet creating furrows in the earth. The man raised his katana once more and flipped into the air, prepared to finish off the jōnin. However, having read his movements ahead of time with the sharingan, Kakashi rapidly channeled his chakra into his hand once more. As the man dropped down on him, unable to dodge, the jōnin plunged the shrieking lightning towards the silver-haired man.
It could only be a testimony to the man's skill that he managed to get his katana up in midair, but it was no use. Kakashi's Raikiri pierced the blade, shattering it into dozens of deadly steel splinters that were sent flying through the air, and then kept going through the man's chest.
The man let out a pained, guttural scream. Thick globs of red blood came gushing out of his chest. Throwing himself back, he landed heavily on his feet, panting. As he stood there, hunched over, he dropped the handle of the broken katana on the ground with a clatter. Looking around wildly for a moment, the man disappeared, and flecks of blood flew through the air in his wake.
Kakashi blinked in surprise; he had missed his heart, but he had still severely injured him. The man shouldn't have been able to move, let alone move at such high speeds. Looking around for the man's violet chakra with his sharingan, he spotted it near the exit gate. With a sinking heart, he saw nearby another chakra that he knew well.
"Hell, this hurts..." The man spat out thick blood, and grinned weakly. He squeezed the throat of an unconscious black-haired boy – Rai – and then nudged something on the ground with his foot. "Nice weapon you got here. Real nice. Mind if I borrow it?" Without waiting for a response, he kicked a red-bladed scythe into the air and grabbed it with his free hand. With a hateful look towards the jōnin, the man threw the genin into the air, and then swung down with his new weapon. The curved blades made a sick whistling sound as they pierced the air.
Kakashi leaped into the air, and grabbed the limp body, spinning to avoid the blades. As he did so, he saw the man race out through the gate, leaving behind a ghostly, malicious laugh. Then he was gone.
It was over.
Kakashi lowered his hitai-ate back over his sharingan. Setting Rai down on the ground, he checked the genin's vitals and let out a sigh of relief. Looking around, he saw that most of the bodies lying on the ground had only superficial injuries; the biggest damage had been done to the garden itself. His eyes widened as he found his two other genin.
"Naruto!" said Kakashi, running over. "Mayu! What happened?"
Looking terrified, Mayu was trying to staunch a profusely bleeding wound on Naruto's bare chest. The boy was unconscious on the ground, the tips of his fingers still twitching. His yukata, which had been partially opened to reveal his chest, was torn and ragged. A long jagged shard of metal, covered in sticky blood, was on the ground besides them.
Quickly putting the pieces together, Kakashi gently pushed the shocked girl aside. She obliged willingly, standing up. She put a comforting arm around a young, trembling boy that he didn't recognize. Gathering his chakra together, he prepared to use what little medical ninjutsu he knew to try and at least stabilize the boy – and then stopped.
Impossible, thought Kakashi. Disbelievingly, he wiped away some of the blood that had pooled on the boy's chest, but saw that it was true. The deep wound was already healing; even as he was watching, the skin was beginning to knit back together. Amazed, the jōnin blinked, as if doing so would somehow halt the healing. It didn't. He realized then that the sealed Kyūbi must have somehow accelerated Naruto's healing rate – perhaps by pumping out its chakra to save the boy.
"Sensei?" said Mayu, her voice taut with fear.
"He'll be fine, it was just a shallow cut," he lied.
"Shallow?" repeated the girl, her eyes widening. Kakashi wordlessly bent over, and picked Naruto's surprisingly light body up. There were shouts at the gate, and several medics came racing in. Catching one of the medics' attention, he directed them towards Rai, who was just beginning to feebly stir.
When he turned back to wave for Mayu to follow him, he saw the look on her face and stopped. "Mayu...?"
"Sensei, I already know," she said quietly. "I know what he is."
When Naruto came to, everything was hazy and out-of-focus, and there was a sharp, throbbing pain in the right side of his chest. He was alone in a dark room. Looking down, he saw bandages covering his chest. For a second, Naruto couldn't figure out what he was doing there – before the memory of what happened came rushing back.
When the piece of the metal blade came spinning at the boy in the blue yukata, Naruto hadn't thought – he'd simply just moved. The only thought in his mind right then was how much he wanted – needed – to save the boy. He'd pushed the child aside, and that was the last thing he could remember before waking up in the room.
Naruto wondered briefly if he had died and this was some awful version of the afterlife, but quickly dismissed the thought. He didn't think his body would hurt this badly if he were dead.
Just then, he heard footsteps outside the room, and then soft voices. Naruto tensed – wincing as he did so – before relaxing as he recognized their voices. It was Kakashi and Mayu. They were talking too quietly for him to hear, but it seemed like they were discussing something. A minute later, they must have come to a decision for he heard Kakashi's heavier footsteps begin to walk away. There was a pause, and then the door slid open: It was Mayu.
Naruto quickly closed his eyes and feigned sleep.
He didn't know what to make of his female teammate; though they'd been together for months now, she'd been avoiding him the whole time. In fact, ever since the mission with the bandits, she'd made an even more apparent effort to avoid talking to him. He didn't know what she was doing in his room, and he certainly didn't want to talk to her.
He heard Mayu's footsteps pad over to where he was lying down. There was a soft thunk as she set down what sounded like a small table – his dinner, perhaps.
Ah, Naruto thought. So that's why she was here.
But while he'd expected her to get up and leave right away, for some reason, she sat there in silence.
Too wary to fall asleep, Naruto waited, forcing his breathing to stay steady. It was only after some time had passed that at long last, he heard the sound of rustling fabric.
Suddenly, he felt a warm pair of hands wrap around his own. He tensed – and she squeezed.
"I'm sorry. I forgive you," Mayu whispered into the darkness. Then she got up and left the room, sliding the door closed behind her.
As soon as her footsteps had faded away, Naruto opened his eyes. He stared at his hand for a long time.
The next day, Naruto was feeling much better, and when the medic removed his bandages, saw that he was almost completely healed. When he saw how there was barely a scratch left on his chest, he inadvertently let out a sound of disbelief. Judging from how painful it had felt, he had thought the cut had been much deeper. He supposed that the shock and chaos of the moment had skewed his judgment, and Naruto felt a little silly for having delayed their return trip for so long over nothing. But just before they left the village the following day to begin going back to Konoha, the young boy he had saved came up to him.
"Thank you," said the boy – Taki, he had said was his name, looking up at Naruto. He had changed out of his blue yukata into black mourning robes. His face was downcast and his eyes were red – he was probably still reeling from the shock of losing his sister – but he was much calmer now. "Thank you," he repeated, and a single tear came leaking out of his eye. It slid down his round cheek.
Naruto nodded, but he didn't respond. There was a strange feeling welling up in his chest that he held back, because he knew this was just another part of being a ninja. If he wanted to grow stronger, he would have to get used to it.
But after a moment, he allowed himself to pat Taki on the head. It was something he had seen others do before, and he thought it might comfort the boy. For some reason however, Taki only began to cry harder.
By the time they finally left through the gates of the village however, the tears had dried, and Taki waved goodbye to Naruto, sniffling.
As they began to walk back to Konoha, Rai demanded to see Naruto's wound. When he lifted up his shirt to reveal his mostly-healed chest, Rai let out a snort, before slapping him hard on the back.
And so, without major incident and only a few days behind schedule, Team 7 finally returned home.
Despite everything that had happened to them, not much had changed in Konoha. The village people continued to go to the market in the mornings, and children still fought over who got to ride the swing in the playground.
Naruto was still the village pariah. As he grew older, he'd finally realized that the reason people avoided him could not simply be because of his appearance as he'd once feared. But the fact of the matter was, if he entered a store without using a henge, he still got charged double the ordinary price. If he strolled normally through the streets of the marketplace, people began to group together in clumps as they noticed his red hair and whisker marks. And if children got too close to him, their parents would drag them away, scolding them.
At one point, in a spark of inspiration, Naruto had wondered if perhaps his features really were a signature mark of an unpopular clan. But despite his best efforts, he'd found nothing about an Uzumaki clan in the Archives, and so, could only conjecture as to why he'd been singled out from such a young age. Having gotten used to the isolation long ago, it did not bother him as much as it might once have. To him, it had simply become an unquestionable law of his world.
And yet, despite everything that had stayed the same, he found that some things were not exactly the same.
Kakashi had begun to regularly drop by his apartment, even on days when they didn't have a mission. Sometimes, they would pick up where they had left off in previous discussions of chakra application. Other times, the jōnin would take him to the training field and teach him some new kenjutsu or ninjutsu moves. After Naruto kept asking him about the lightning-release technique he had used on Hidan, he even promised to start Naruto on learning a second nature affinity.
It wasn't just his team leader. Occasionally, Rai would bang loudly on his door, demanding to spar with him. It seemed that Rai couldn't get over the fact that Hidan had knocked him unconscious so quickly, and was determined to get better. And in return for some taijutsu tips from Naruto, Rai would help Naruto with target practice, teaching him how to fasten letter bombs to kunai in discrete ways that the opponent wouldn't notice.
Even Mayu sometimes joined in, though she never looked for Naruto by herself. She was always with either Rai or Kakashi – but she had begun to talk to him more and more with increasing bravado. Naruto wondered if it had something to do with the night back when he was healing, and she had whispered those words to him. Thinking back on what she had said, he had tried to figure out if he had ever wronged the girl, but couldn't think of anything. It was puzzling; he had a feeling that Mayu knew he had heard her words, and yet he couldn't bring himself to ask her.
Still, nowadays as he trained with his team, Naruto felt light in a way that he'd never felt outside of the Archives. Out in the training field, none of the other villagers were there; it was just them, the four members of Team Kakashi.
After a long hard day, they sometimes all went to Ramen Ichiraku for bowls of Konoha's finest ramen. The first time they went, Naruto had only stared in awe as Rai and Mayu squabbled over a piece of pork in one of their bowls.
"You said I could have it!" said Mayu with an uncharacteristically ferocious glint in her eyes.
"That was before I realized it was the last one!" said Rai, holding it out of the shorter girl's reach with his chopsticks held high over his head. Then, making sure she could see, he popped the strip of meat into his mouth.
With a cry of fury, Mayu threw her chopsticks, like shuriken, at him. Skillfully, Rai batted aside the chopsticks with his own – but then froze, as the ricocheting sticks of wood knocked over Kakashi's bowl. They looked on in horror as it crashed into the ground, its noodle contents pouring out over the ground.
Taking one look at the frozen smile on Kakashi's face, Rai jumped out of his seat and began to beg for forgiveness.
"Why does this always happen when you're around?" the owner asked Naruto, the edges of his mouth twitching. And for the second time, Naruto found himself apologizing to him.
And so, the months and seasons passed. Naruto's 11th birthday came and went with little fanfare, though to the entire team's shock, Mayu baked him a birthday cake. It was his first time eating cake, and while it was actually too sweet for his tastes, he found himself finishing his portion to the very last bite.
Best of all, however, was Kakashi's gift of a new tantō. Unlike the older one he'd been using, it was made of a special metal that would allow Naruto to channel his chakra into it. He made sure to polish it after every use.
Team Kakashi continued to go on missions, though nothing quite as eventful as the one in Yugakure occurred. With Mayu's new willingness to work with Naruto, their teamwork grew leaps and bounds and their missions became even easier to complete. That wasn't to say that their team was perfect: Though both Rai and Mayu were willing to go along with Naruto's direction, Rai sometimes lose focus, inadvertently deviating from the plan, and Mayu had a tendency to freeze up when anything unexpected happened.
But while Naruto may have once considered them to be in his way, now, he found himself thinking during his free time of how to help them improve.
It was some time into the new year, at the end of a particularly fruitful training session, when Kakashi told them that the Chūnin exams would soon be taking place in Sunagakure, the hidden village in the Land of Wind.
Hearing this, Naruto looked at his teammates, and they nodded back at him. He looked back at their sensei: Team Kakashi was going to be there, and if he had his way, they would all be passing.
A/N: This marks the end of arc 1.