Naruto; Emperor

A Walk Would Be Nice

Naruto yawns, stretching his limbs as he walks towards Taki. He has been meaning to visit the Hidden Village for a while now. The journey there is a little slow but he likes taking his time venturing through the continent. He find that walking through the areas will paint him a clearer picture of the land than if he just breezes past and read reports. Reports can't tell him the true feeling of the people. It cannot express their real need to him. It also keep him in touch with reality.

Naruto find that a lot of leaders can't really see what the people need because they had been too isolated from the people for too long. They only see the world through the lens of the people that wrote them reports, forgetting that reports can be biased to certain parties with agendas of their own. Basically, the leader is not one of the people and that often leads to a lot of disconnect between the people and the leader that leads them or should be leading them.

The groups stops around noon and Team 7 immediately start camp for lunch. There is still a dissonance between Team 7 and Sai but Sakura surprisingly steps up and become the main person that helps ease the tension between Sasuke and Sai. Kakashi had reported that Sasuke had told her everything one day when he had snapped at Sai about loyalty and Sakura had to step in before the Uchiha could maul the former ROOT agent into the ground. Obviously, the emotionally unstable boy saw this a sort of betrayal from her and had ran off. Fortunately, Sakura is determined to stay in his good graces and actually did her best to understand him. This leads to him opening up to her, even a little.

She truly loves the boy.

She just goes about it the wrong way growing up during the Academy. Fortunately, her experiences as Genin has started to shape her into a strong Kunoichi with a mind of her own. Kakashi reported that although she still has her moment of fawning over Sasuke, she is no longer blind to his anger and hatred to her home. A little confused at first, something that disappears the moment he informed her the root of his hatred, she tries her best to be accommodating and understanding. Of course, at first she is angry at Sai too, but Kakashi had taken the two aside before their bond could further erode and explained what exactly being a ROOT recruit was like. Needless to say, Sakura was horrified and Sasuke was less explosives with the boy. However, his suspicion remained.

These days, he only speaks to Sai when absolutely necessary but otherwise keep away from the boy and even then, it's mostly in one words. Sai has also stopped being so 'annoying' to Sasuke. He no longer tease the boy to get a raise out of him. Almost getting burned alive would do that to anyone. He has no delusion that Sasuke had forgiven him or trust him. That day might never come and at the moment, it benefits Naruto more if they get along professionally.

Naruto sighs, his energy snapping at the mosquitoes trying to have a taste of his blood, "The atmosphere is certainly growing wetter and wetter,"

Kakashi nods, "Taki is famous for their waterfalls so the area reaching it gets wetter and wetter. In fact, Ame should be just around the corner and that place never stops raining. Although...it stopped raining every weekend for the past decade or so. Maybe a new weather controlling technology?"

Sasuke puts tomatoes into the stew Sai is making, keeping an eye on him at all time so he won't 'accidentally' slip in things that are not food, while Sakura preps other ingredients. The last time they let her cook, she gave them stomachache because the meat wasn't cooked right. Fortunately, that was a time before their recruitment into Oniwaban so everyone had learned to just let her help from the side.

Naruto hums, "Sasuke has really good skin because of his tomatoes, huh?"

Sasuke blinks at him, cheeks peppered red, "W-what?"

Naruto shrugs, "I'm just saying. For a teenager, you have better skin that Sakura,"

Sakura whines, "I know, right?! It is so not fair! He don't even do skin care!"