Naruto : Fate

5 Minutes Earlier, with Team 7

"So. We need to catch a cat?" I really hope this is not as bad as the anime, Tora was crazy.

"Correction: you three need to catch the cat. I'll be here when you are done." Kakashi you suck.

We're idly standing outside of the Hokage tower. Where could this cat be? Hopefully not all the way across town.

CRASH

All three of us gennin flinch at the loud noise. A cat knocked over a trash can.

"Meow." It happily trots over to me.

"Shoo kitty. I can't play with you right now. I need to go find Tora with my team."

Actually, Tora is a cat. Could this be Tora?

"Hey. Kakashi-sensei? What does Tora look like?" No way. This is not happening. There is a 0% chance this cat is Tora. Tora hates people. So why is this cat rubbing against my leg and purring?

"Mostly black with a bell on her collar. The caller has 'Tora' etched into it."

I pick up the cat. Yep, it says Tora on the collar. The cat - Tora – decides she wants to snuggle my face. How embarrassing. Turns out cats love me.

"I have Tora." I say to the rest of my team.

"Excuse me?" Kakashi asks.

"See? It says Tora right here on the collar." I peel Tora off of my face and hold her out so the others can see her collar.

They lean in for a good look. Tora instantly starts hissing and clawing at them and they all reflexively jump backwards.

"Well then. Good job team!"

Smooth Kakashi. When weird things happen, just act like everything is normal.

"Let's turn in the mission!"

...

Back to The Present.

"Oh? Give up already Kakashi-kun? That won't look good on your student's records." The Hokage disapprovingly says.

"We've finished." Kakashi blandly responds.

"Excuse me?"

"We have Tora. Mission complete." Kakashi pushes me forward with Tora happily lounging in my arms.

"But... that was 5 minutes!"

"Would you look at that! I get to go home early Hokage-sama!"

I hand Tora over to the Hokage. Immediately Tora starts hissing and scratching the strongest shinobi in the village.

"This..." the Hokage says while holding Tora at arms length and a great deal of disdain on his face, "is most certainly Tora. Good job Team 7. The new record for Tora retrieval missions is... 5 minutes and 47 seconds?"

An awkward silence settles over the room.

"Easiest. Mission. Ever." With those parting words, I leave the room with my team.

Outside of the Hokage Tower

"Good work today. I'll see you tomorrow at 5 am sharp." In other words, we will see you at 8am. Thanks Kakashi.

"Hey, Kakashi-sensei. Since we got done early could you-" POOF! "-and he's gone." So much for getting a head start on fire whips. I swear that man hates work.

"Sasuke-kun! Want to get some lunch together?" Sakura hopefully asks while being her eye lashes at the object of her affection.

Sakura you naive girl, he is never going to say yes to that. Acting cute isn't the way to win him over.

"No. I am going to train."

"That's fine too! We can train together."

"Alone." Ouch. That has to sting.

"Oh. Okay. See you around, Sasuke-kun."

Ah, great now Sakura is sad. "It'll be okay Sakura. He'll come around eventually. Once we get some more experience and complete some real missions together he will warm up to us."

I am so bad at making people feel better. Sakura looks like a kicked puppy! A bright pink kicked puppy.

"You really think so?" She asks with big hopeful eyes.

Did I just give hope to her? That might be a bad idea, Sasuke could still defect after all. I need to stop that. Step one will be getting Sasuke friends in Konoha, then he might want to stay. Where better to make your first friends than your gennin teammates? Maybe I should take my own advice. I rarely talk to anyone but family outside of training.

"I do. We just need to wear him down. We need to be friends with him, not just teammates. I know! We should start having team dinners!"

Now that is a good idea. I can expose my family to more shinobi and get to know Sasuke and Sakura better at the same time.

"We could invite Kakashi-sensei, but I think he will just show up late and miss everything." I can see him doing exactly that.

"That's a great idea! We can have the first one at my house! I'll go ask my parents right now!"

Sakura goes running off, leaving me all alone.

What to do, what to do? The sun is still up so going home is frowned upon. I guess I'll go back to training ground 7 and work on my strings some more. 

Hmm... one of the major problems with chakra strings is that my chakra control is sub par. If I want to be able to make an insane amount of strings I need better control over my chakra. That settles it! Chakra control exercises it is.

With a plan in my mind I head back to the training ground. Picking up a leaf off the ground, I stick it to my forehead.

'Okay, focus some chakra to make the leaf stick. Can't be that hard.'

Over the next few hours I stick leaves to various parts of my body. Head, hands, elbows, knees, stomach, anywhere I could think of. Turns out one leaf is pretty easy. So I grabbed another. Then another. Pretty soon I was covered in leaves.

"Take that leaves! I am the leaf master!" My voice echoes throughout the empty clearing.

Thankfully no one was around to hear my stupid declaration. That would have been very embarrassing.

"Okay leaf master, let's mess around with chakra strings now."

Letting all the leaves fall to the ground, I decide to try something new. I want to make a trap using chakra strings. I figure if it doesn't matter where the string comes from on the body, does it really matter if it stays connected to the body? I want to make a kunai slingshot.

So I pull out a kunai, attach a chakra sting to it, and try to attach the other end of the string to a nearby tree.

It didn't work. The second the string left my body it dissipated. Dang it. I will make this work!

"Okay. You can do this. One failure does not mean it is impossible. Think back, when you first tried making a chakra string you needed physical contact with an object. Maybe that is what I need to do?"

Giving it a try, I go over to the tree, connect a string from my fingertip to a kunai. Then I poked the tree and pushed the string onto it. Withdrawing my hand the string stays.

"Yes! I knew I could do it!"

With a lapse in my concentration the string fades. I'll have to always focus on it if I want to make this work.

"Sweet! Now all I have to do is make my strings elastic."

Setting everything back up (string to kunai, then string from hand to tree) I gave the string an experimental tug.

THWACK

"Ohgodthatsrightbymyface!"

The kunai is impaled in the tree a measly 15 centimeters from my face.

"Live kunai is a bad idea. Never experiment with live weapons again."

The good news is that I can make my strings elastic. The bad news is that was not the result I wanted, and I almost killed myself.

Upon further examination, the kunai hit right where the string was connected to the tree.

"Wow. That is actually very convenient. If I can get a string on an opponent I have a guaranteed hit. The string would just pull the kunai in to the target. That could be a cool taijutsu move! They punch me, I attach a string to them then BAM! Kunai to the chest."

As cool as that is, it isn't what I want. I want a slingshot, not a guided hit. I want to be able to aim my traps and not require physical contact with my enemies. Physical contact with enemies is a bad idea.

My elegant solution? Use two strings instead of one. I really did make a chakra slingshot.

Yes, I do have to touch the anchor points for the strings, but that is a minor issue. This technique is for setting traps, not use in the middle of a battle.

...

Over the next month Team 7 did a ridiculous amount of D-ranks. Which is okay, it is a rite of passage. Everyone had to do D-ranks at one point in time. What was not okay is Kakashi not teaching me how to make fire whips and Sasuke not agreeing to go to team dinners. Those bastards. Surprisingly Sakura and I bonded over coming up with plans to get Sasuke to Sakura's house.

Oh Kami that has to be the worst thought I have ever had.

Repressing! Repressing!

So, team dinners never happened. With Kakashi being stubborn and not showing me how to make an elemental change (which in hindsight could be too much for a gennin to learn without hand signs built into the jutsu to help) I greatly improved on all things chakra strings.

I can make my strings invisible now, except to maybe an activated byakugan or Sharingan. I have gotten really good at my slingshot traps, to the point where I can make 5 at any time. It's not that I can't make more traps, I just tend to forget where they are after I make 5. 

When I forget about a trap, it sets itself off which is very bad. We've had a few close calls over the past month and I have an awesome scar on my left shoulder now.

Sasuke and Sakura have improved too. Well at least Sasuke has. That kid trains 24/7. His aim is flawless with any thrown projectile and his Grand Fireball is getting bigger and hotter. He also is getting better at taijutsu, learning the Uchiha standard style from his scrolls at home.

Sakura... well she can run farther. She has a little more muscle mass. She hasn't really improved that much at all. She is a sweet girl, but she needs to take being a kunoichi more seriously. I think a good scare will get the job done.

Little did I know I would be the one getting a scare on our next mission.

...

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