Connection Between Puppets and Plants

Disclaimer : I do not own Naruto nor any of the characters in it. They belong to Masashi Kishimoto.

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~Haruka’s POV~

The unknown Jonin had led me and my teammates outside the Sunagakure and toward the desert located in the middle of nowhere. We had been walking for half an hour; I had no idea where nor when was he planning to stop. When he told my team to introduce ourselves outside, he didn’t mention about going [outside the village!

“Where are you planning on leading us, sensei?” Sasori asked in a bored tone, upon realizing that there was nothing else insight apart from the desert and the blinding ray which was radiating from the sun.

“Just keep on walking.” The jonin replied, not even taking a glance back at the peevish red-head.

Kimi Raikkichi was surprisingly quiet during our promenade. I assumed he was a bit tired of the long walk, then again, maybe he was just too busy staring at the Jonin’s hitai-ate, which had been worn backwardly.

Some distrustful thoughts began to form in my clouded mind. What if the guy wasn’t really a Jonin? What if he was actually a highly trained evil ninja in disguise, who was planning to trap the three of us in the middle of the desert so we wouldn’t be able to meet our real Jonin? Or worst... what if...

“Here we are.” The Jonin stated, snapping me out of my paranoid trance. I looked at my right and left, expecting to see a training ground around me, only to find the same desert insight.

“And where exactly are we...?” the red-head asked, raising one of his eyebrows in confusion.

“Nowhere,” The man replied calmly, smiling down at the three of us. “Now, let’s begin the introduction. Tell me my names, hobbies, etc. Etc., anything that could be considered as a proper identification.” He explained rather lazily.

The happy blonde immediately raised his hand, wanting to start a long amplification of himself, but I cut him off since I couldn’t control the suspicious thoughts about the jonin that were trooping inside of me. “I haven’t even introduced myself to us, sensei! We want to know my name first!” I inquired while raising my hand.

“Whoa, no can do, kiddo. Because that is actually a part of the test which I’m about to give you today,” The Jonin said, earning weird stares from the three of us. He reached for his pocket in his black trousers and took out a brown wallet from it. “There’s my identity card in here. So if you want to complete the test, I’ll have to be able to take this wallet from me.”

My eyes were glued to the wallet of his as he stuffed it back inside his invisible pocket. “Okay, so when do we start this test?” I asked.

The jonin glanced at his watch, then gazed back at the three of us. “Hmm... it’s almost two o’clock. So we’ll start right about... Now.” As he spoke the last word out, thick smog of sand suddenly appeared from the ground beneath him, rising upward and covered his tall figure in a second. I closed my eyes a bit, trying to keep the sand out of my eyes. But as soon as I opened them, the man was gone.

“Where did Jonin-sensei go??” Kimi Raikkicihi asked, scanning the area frantically as soon as the smog had vanished into thin air.

I didn’t give an answer since I was fairly panicked myself. There was no way someone could hide in a plain desert like this, or so I thought.

Meanwhile, the red-head had already taken out a scroll from his bag of weapons. He opened the scroll in his hand and summoned one of his armed puppets. It had a black lion-like hair, 3 eyes, and detachable limbs. I immediately recognized it as soon as it was summoned by the Ing puppet-master.

“SASORI! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE STILL KEEPING THAT.... that... UGLY HAIRY MONSTER!!” I yelled, pointing my index finger at him. Yes, that puppet was the monster which Sasori had used to prank me when I was still little (read chapter 3).

Sasori smirked, seeing my reaction. “It’s not an ugly monster, and its name is ‘Karasu’.” He replied calmly, attaching his chakra strings onto the puppet’s body.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever...” I rolled my eyes at him, not wanting to continue the conversation any further, since I still had a test to be done. I observed to my right, then to my left. No sign of the Jonin anywhere. I wanted to search for him in the sky above me, but I was afraid that my eyes might be blinded by the sun’s blinding light.

I was snapped out of my thoughts when I felt a handful of sand suddenly struck me on the back of my head. “Hey!” I yelled, turning around to see the red-head was making his puppet dig a giant hole on the ground. “What do you think you're doing?!”

“Searching for the damn Jonin,” He replied, not even looking at me. “The only place he could be hiding right now is underground. So start digging.”

Nodding, I knelt down on the ground and started digging the sand with my bare hands, but I felt them burn right after I took my first dig. “Argh!! Too hot! My hands are burning!!!” I cursed, blowing on my hands to make it cooler.

Kimi Raikkichi rushed to my side and looked at me worriedly. “Is Haruka-chan alright?” he asked, taking my hands in his. I nodded and smiled reassuringly at him. The blonde then stood up and turned around so his back was now facing me. “Haruka-chan better step back.” He said. “AKA-NO-BAKA! STOP DIGGING AND GET OVER HERE!!”

I jumped a little, hearing the volume of his voice, and Sasori had also stopped digging and glared at the blonde who was standing next to me. “AND WHAT DO YOU HAVE IN MIND, RAIKKICIHI?! IF YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE A PLAN, THEN DON’T BOTHER DISTURBING MY WORK!” he yelled back outloud due to the distance between him and the blonde.

“KIMI-RAIKKICIHI DOES HAVE A PLAN! TRUST ME, AKA-NO-BAKA!! GET OVER HERE, QUICK!”

The red-head seemed to doubt him a bit, since he still had his chakra strings attached to the hairy puppet. But knowing that the stubborn idiot wouldn’t stop bothering him if he didn’t comply with the idiot’s suggestions, he soon pulled Karasu back onto his back and ran over toward me and the blonde.

“You better be quick, whatever your plan is.” Sasori growled under his breath.

Kimi Raikkichi turned at him and grinned. “Hai! Kimi Raikkichi will make it EXTREEEEMEEEEEELY quick! Quicker than the speed of light!” he exclaimed, running toward the hole which Sasori had been digging.

Then, to my surprise, Kimi Raikkichi started running around the hole in circle, getting faster and faster every second, till my eyes couldn’t follow his quick movement any longer. He was running in an inhuman speed, making both me and Sasori gaped in shock.

“What clan was he from, again?” I asked the red-head, still not getting my gaze off the blonde’s pace.

“I don’t know... what was his last name again...?” he asked back rather than answering, his mind was still as blank as mine.

Soon, thick smog of sand began to form around the track where the blonde was running. It increased abruptly as Kimi Raikkichi sped up more and more each second, making the sands spread in the air in a flash, blocking mine and Sasori’s view from my running teammate.

“KIMI!” I yelled while getting up from the ground. Sasori seemed to be able to read my mind, as he put an arm in front of me, preventing me from running forward to the thick smog.

Minutes had passed, and the amount of smog seemed to be decreasing gradually. I assumed the blonde had stopped moving, since the smog of sands slowly disappeared into the air, giving me a view of what had happened in front of me. My eyes widened when I saw the hole that Sasori made, had turned 3 times bigger than the previous one. Both me and Sasori quickly ran over to it, looking down at the bottom of the hole to find a smiling Kimi Raikkichi staring up at me, with the familiar black-haired man right under him.

“Kimi Raikkichi found Jonin-sensei! YAY!” he yelled happily while waving his hands at me.

The poor man was being sat on by the blonde, sighing deeply as he rested his chin on the back of his hands. “Congrats, Kid. I can’t believe you’ve actually caught me,” He surrendered, raising his hands in front of his face. “Well, my shadow clone, that is.”

“Hee? Nani??” Kimi Raikkichi asked in surprise as the shadow clone below him puffed into smokes, making him fall on the heated sand on his butt. “AUW! THE SAND BURNS KIMI RAIKKICHI’S POOR REAR!!” he cried, getting up from the ground and began running around in circles in attempt to cool his butt down.

I wanted to laugh so badly at him, but quickly refrained myself, since the three of us still had an unfinished business with the mysterious Jonin. I scanned the desert carefully while narrowing my eyes. But still, the man was nowhere to be found. The high temperature didn’t help much either, it only made the situation worse than it already was.

“The sun is killing me! If we keep on like this, then I’m sure we’ll suffer from dehydration soon!” I groaned, wiping the bead of sweats off my forehead.

Unknown to me, the red-head had suddenly gained an idea inside his mind. He remembered one of the theories which he had read in his grandmother’s Geography book when he was little. The Zenith Time. He narrowed his eyes while looking at the sky above him. "If the sun is shining directly above me... then..." He turned his gaze to the ground below him, and smirked. “Then how come there’s a shadow lingering right beneath my body?”

“Huh?” I asked, turning my head to face him. I saw Sasori attaching his chakra strings on Karasu’s body and quickly flicked his fingers to control it, making it lunge at the ground and smashed the shadow and the sands below him, as he jumped away from his previous standing spot to avoid the impact, his strings still attached to his giant puppet.

I squinted my eyes to get a better view inside the large amount of smog that was surrounding me. My head snapped to the right as soon as I spotted a black figure dashing outside the thick air of sand. “THERE HE IS!” I yelled, running behind the tall figure, attempting to catch up with it.

“Quick! Don’t let him get away!” Sasori yelled from behind me.

I didn’t look back at him as I kept my eyes locked to the Jonin whom I were running after. I quickly made the first hand seal that came out in my mind, hoping that I could still catch the Jonin in time. “TSURU KUSA NO JUTSU!”

A long vine whip appeared in my hand and launched itself toward the Jonin’s body, wrapping tightly against his right leg, making him lose his balance and fell flat on his face.

I were about to approach him, but apparently Kimi Raikkichi had beaten me to it. He snatched the brown wallet from the Jonin’s back pocket and waved it at both me and Sasori. “Yay, we did it! We’ve got Jonin’s sensei wallet!” he exclaimed happily.

Both me and Sasori ran over to Kimi Raikkichi’s side, clearly couldn’t wait to find out about my teacher’s true identity. “Quick, open the wallet, Kimi!” I said.

The blonde nodded as he opened the wallet and took out a white card from it. “Aha! Here it is!” he said, giving the card to me. “Eeh... wait, there’s another one...” he added, taking out another card from the wallet and gave it to Sasori. “And another one....! And another... And another one. And another one. And... Hey, how come there are so many identity cards here???” he asked, turning the wallet upside down to let all the cards fall onto the ground.

I heard a light chuckle emanating from the smiling Jonin. “That is actually another part of your test. You have to figure out which card has my real identity on it,” He trailed off, dusting his self as soon as he had stood upward on the ground. “Your time is limited until tomorrow morning. Meet me back at the park on 5 o’clock in the morning.” He instructed, grinning at my gawking face.

“Five o’clock?? You’ve gotta be kidding me!” I whined, not wanting to get up so early on Saturday morning.

“Make sure you are there on time. Ciao, kiddos!” he waved and his body suddenly disappeared in a cloud of smokes. The three of us didn’t realize that he was actually another shadow clone, until now.

“Great,” I muttered under my breath, picking up the cards that were lying on the ground beneath me. “He left us here. What are we going to do now?”

“We should go back to the village.” Sasori stated calmly, putting his puppet back into his scroll.

“But we don’t know the way back to the village.” Kimi Raikkichi added, looking around him just to find a plain view of a deserted... well, desert.

“Good point,” I said. “We need to come up with a plan.”