Naruto : Struggle Of Childhood

Acting

"Ero-sennin is going to die if he's keeping something that important from me," Naruto growled, "I'm not a little kid anymore, and it's kind of important to me since it really does concern me a whole lot more than it does him."

"Well, you can use that one jutsu on him later then," Sasuke said rolling his eyes, "You know, the one that Sakura almost killed you for when she saw it."

Sakura glared at Naruto.

Before the conversation could continue much further there was a popping sound and Gamakichi appeared, looking a little worried and holding a bag of candies that Kimimaro had probably given to him.

"You look upset," Sakura remarked, "Is there anything wrong?"

She looked like she was ready to get up and run over to where ever the toad told her to go. Then again, she was Hakumei's head medic, and while Haku and Hinata were both good, Sakura really was Tsunade's apprentice, and Naruto had once overheard Jiraiya remarking that she probably could surpass Tsunade one day.

"Well, Kimimaro has a message for ya, and...um...it's not good," Gamakichi mumbled, "There's a freaky psycho dude running around who tears people's legs up and eats them or something."

There was silence.

"Run that by me again," Sasuke said, blinking a little.

"There's a guy or something running around who literally tore another team apart. Kimimaro, Neji, and Haku found the remains. Kimimaro says that you're going to need to call a meeting when you all meet up again 'cause the Chuunin Exams are looking a lot more dangerous than they should be. If you ask me, which you're not, I'd say there's something really weird going on in this little Exam, and you're not the only ones with another agenda."

"I see what you mean," Sakura said thoughtfully, "If there's someone who can do that, we don't know what else the people here can do."

"My dad always tells me to be suspicious about things like this," Gamakichi nodded.

"Your dad is the yakuza toad with the sake addiction, right?" Sasuke asked, "Isn't he the boss of the toads?"

"My dad's not a yakuza!" Gamakichi yelled.

"At any rate, we all agree that you've made a good point, thanks a lot for your help, and would you mind taking an answer to the others?" Naruto asked, trying to gloss over the thing, Gamakichi would argue for hours, as Naruto knew from personal experience.

The toad glared over at Sasuke, but seemed to decide that he was going to act like an adult and nodded, not even asking for sweets the way he usually did. He seemed to want to prove something to Sasuke. Gamakichi agreed to take the message that they were all ok, and they would meet the moment they could and discuss what to do with the information that Team Kekkei Genkai had found out.

"Well, I guess now all we have to do is head for the center and wait for the others," Naruto said, looking back into the fire.

Not only was there the Kyuubi to worry about, there was this unknown factor. The others didn't seem to be in much of a mood to talk either as they all sat, watching the flames. Was what Gamakichi had said true? At first everything had seemed so simple...but now...

"It looks like this Exam is going to be a whole lot more interesting than we thought," Sasuke said.

Sakura nodded, "and for once, I think that it's going to be really dangerous."