Starting over

#16 Return

Naruto POV

After an uneventful stay at the spa Temari and I were on our way back to the village. We sat silently on the border between the forest of the Land of Fire and the beginnings of the desert belonging to the Land of Wind. We were resting before we would make the arduous trip into the desert.

“What will we tell Rasa?”, asked Temari suddenly. “About what?”, I asked back slightly confused. “About where we were?”, she reformulated her question. “We’ll say that we were the whole week in the spa, if he asks how we payed for that just let me handle it. We must not say anything about the Anbu.”, I said while getting up. “Come on, we should get going or we will still be in the desert by noon.”, I stated, helping the blonde girl up before heading east into the rising sun.

After a few hours of travelling we made rest again leaning against a relatively big dune. I drank a bit and then laid my head back to relax a bit since we had said that we would stay here for around twenty minutes, so that we would be home around noon. I looked in the direction where Sunagakure was and smiled. “Only a third of the way to go.”, I mumbled. “What?”, Temari said, obviously not understanding what I said. “Nothing.”, I said a bit louder, before closing my eyes again. Suddenly I felt a few chakra signatures coming closer and encircling us. I jumped up, kunai drawn, startling Temari who, at first, didn't know what was going on. When she noticed the chakra signatures, which were slowly closing in on us, she jumped behind me and readied a small fan which she always carried with her. There we stood, back to back awaiting the surrounding shinobi to attack. Then the shuriken came. Suddenly the air was filled with these small rotating pieces of metal. We silently thanked Baki that he had us train how to fight together and to deflect such barrages without getting in the way of one another as we either blocked or evaded the storm of shuriken that came our way. To any outsider it must have seemed as if our bodies moved in perfect harmony as we spun around each other, protecting the blind spots of each other while our hands where whirling around so fast that you could barely follow them. Suddenly I heard someone shout for our attackers to stop, immediately the shuriken stopped coming. Then one after another a bunch of Anbu with white cloths in front of their mouths and noses identifying them as Shinobi of Sunagakure rose up out of the sand. Suddenly I felt a chakra signature behind us running towards us. I spun around and in a matter of seconds I had my kunai at the throat of this unknown man. “Naruto, I think you can let me go. After all I pose no threat to you.”, I heard a well known voice say. I smiled as I looked up at Baki, my sensei since I had moved in with the Kazekage and his kids. “What are you two doing out here anyway?”, the man asked when I put my kunai away. “We were in a spa and were just on our way back to the village.”, I explained. "And why are you here, sensei ?”, came Temari’s voice from behind me. Baki smiled, as he looked at his Anbu team. “We were sent out on a very important mission.”, he said while he signaled his squad that they should get ready to go. “Well, we have to go now, I don't know when we will be back, so just train the stuff you already know until I come back.”, he said waving his goodbye, before sprinting off into the desert, the other Anbu closely behind. “Well, that was … awkward.”, I stated slightly confused since Baki never told us why they had attacked us, neither did his comrades. Temari just looked thoughtfully into the desert. “Let's get going, we can still make it before noon.”, I said pulling the kunoichi to her feet.

“Welcome back.”, Rasa said when we stepped into his office. “Thanks, father.”, Temari greeted back while we sat in our respective chairs. “So, tell me, what have you two been doing this past week?”, the Kazekage asked looking back and forth between the two of us. “Well we went to a spa and tried to get used to the idea of Kankuro not being there anymore.”, I lied, even though it wasn't a complete lie since we really went to a spa and mourned for Kankuro, but I didn't say anything about what we had done before that. Rasa looked at me slightly confused before taking out a paper. “Hmm, I have no records of paying for this spa.”, he said looking at me. “Well, we didn't have to pay anything”, I retorted smiling. His eyes grew wide. “How did you manage that?”, Temari's father asked. “You see, my parents were really wealthy people when they lived and they had owned a spa on the border to the land of fire which technically makes me the owner of that spa now, since my parents are dead.”, I explained. Rasa nodded in understanding. “So you know about your parents already.”, he murmured while going to a small cabinet. He took a small scroll from the pile of scrolls which lay in it and took a look to see if it was the right one and then handed it to me. “The Hokage sent me this after you were banished and he had gotten word that you have found your way here. He wanted me to give it to you when you turned eighteen or when you discovered who your parents are. How did you figure it out anyways.”, he finished with a questioning look on his face. “Ah come on, I'm basically a copy of the fourth. I mean you would have to be blind not to see it. After I had read about how the fourth had defended Konoha from the Kyuubi and supposedly killed it I counted one and one together.”, I explained looking at the scroll in interest. “Hm, okay you two are dismissed. But I expect you to go to the academy in the morning, after all it's only a week until the Genin-Exams are held.”, he said turning to his paperwork.

We got out and headed for the compound. When we got there we split up and I went into my room to unseal my stuff. I placed the scroll, which was obviously only a storage scroll for way more things, on my table and for now let it rest there.