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."
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