Sasuke stared at Naruto, dark eyes devoid of all emotion. Sakura hovered in the background, with Hinata and Ino looking over her shoulder, they were ready to duck back into the office if needs be. Kakashi and Iruka looked like they were ready to intervene if things went sour.
"Hi…Sasuke, I…uh…er…" Naruto stammered, sounding like Hinata.
Sasuke shook his head and walked past Naruto.
"Idiot," he muttered as he passed.
Naruto relaxed as Sasuke continued up the corridor. Iruka closed the distance between himself and Naruto.
"Iruka-sensei," Naruto smiled.
Iruka cuffed Naruto over the head but not a hard as Tsunade had done.
"You could have let us know you were alright," Iruka scolded, but his heart wasn't in it.
Naruto leaned past Iruka to look at the masked Jonin behind him.
"Hi Kakashi-sensei. Still have trouble arriving on time I see."
"It's clear that even four years of banishment cant change Konoha's number one knucklehead ninja."
Naruto's smile vanished, being replaced with a scowl. He swept past Kakashi without another word. Iruka and Kakashi looked from Naruto's back to each other.
"What did I say?" Kakashi asked Iruka.
Naruto left the mansion and rocketed up the nearest wall, he looked across the rooftops before leaping forwards. Bounding across the same roofs as he had when he was still a part of Konoha was a strange experience for Naruto, the absence of the people in the village gave made him feel uneasy. Flying past all the places he knew from his Genin days, memories he'd locked away long ago burst free and clouded his mind. He dropped down to street level and started walking, passing Ichiraku and the Hyuuga and Uchiha compounds. Naruto's feet seemed to be taking him along the familiar streets without any control from him. He passed the academy, normally full of noise from the pre-Genin students was eerily quiet. Naruto continued walking through the village, lost in his thoughts. He realised he was in the forest surrounding the training grounds. Naruto emerged from the trees to see the three posts and the hero memorial exactly as he remembered it. He flickered and landed on the top of the middle post and sat. Naruto absentmindedly looked down and found himself laughing at the memory of Kakashi tying him to the post and saying that he, Sakura and Sasuke would never be Shinobi.
"Looks like I proved you wrong Kakashi-sensei," he grinned.
He shook himself.
I will not let sentimentality mess with my head. He thought. They banished me; they disserve everything that's happening.
Naruto closed his eyes and focused, drifting into a semi-asleep state. To the outside world, he could have been meditating, but inside his head, he was putting the final changes to an idea. A bird's call jerked him back to reality. He hopped off the post and put his idea into practice. Forcing his wind based chakra into his hands. He started sprinting. Rushing back into the trees, he shaped the chakra into sharp blades, one in each hand. He slashed at the trees as he passed, leaving sharp cut in the trunks. He kicked upwards and bounced off the trees, heading into the canopy. Naruto burst through the sea of leaves and kept soaring upwards, carried by his momentum. He seemed to hover in the air as he looked at the village spread out around him. After an eternity looking down at his former home, he dropped again. He landed on a branch and used it as a springboard to take off again. He continued to spring through the trees, getting lower with each jump. Coming back down to ground level, he turned and headed back the way he'd come. Naruto skidded back into the training ground; he swung his arm in a great arc, sending a chakra enforced shockwave towards the target tree. There was a brief second where nothing happened, then a hairline cut appeared in the trunk and the whole tree slid to the left. It hit the ground with an ear-splitting crash.
