The Way Into Mist Village (Naruto)

46: Sasuke and Sakura Have a Conversation

[OP: "Eat You Alive"--The Oh Hellos]

[I'm going to aim for stopping this book on chapter 50, and then it will go to the next book, which will have Stone in the title. All of the books of this series will be on my profile if you want to get caught up at any point. The Stone book will be at least twice as long if not longer than this one, I think.]

Ino still felt terrible, though Camie tried to tell her it was okay and she wasn't mad, but Ino was hardly listening to her.

Sakura, however, did listen to Camie's words, and, for the first time, perhaps she started to see why Ino was gravitating towards her. Because Sakura would have scolded Ino for certain if it had been her instead and, in fact, would have anyway if Wally hadn't scared her too much for her to scold anyone.

But handling it with such a forgiving attitude would have been beyond her abilities.

"It's fine," Camie said repeatedly. "Stop looking so sad, sis. I've done plenty of stupid things on the job too. That's what backup is for. It wasn't that bad, really. The sand slipping was just bad luck."

"I guess that was my fault," Hanabi said. "I panicked too."

"It's all right. Perhaps we shouldn't have expected you to be able to do that," Hinata said. "We should have just lifted you over it. It's hard to do that as a novice."

"I should be able to do it--I'm gifted," Hanabi said miserably.

"Not that gifted all the time," Dabi said flatly. "Take it from me, kid, being first is not worth it. Especially if you end up hurting yourself over it. And you're a little too young to worry about not keeping up with adults yet. Just let it go."

"He's right, you know." Shoto never said that about Dabi. "Being pushed too hard at a young age can cause more problems than it solves, even if you get stronger than average. No need for you to keep up with us."

"Maybe I shouldn't have joined at all," Hanabi said.

"Oh please, we're not selected just for power," Momo said. "We should be more considerate of you. It wouldn't have hurt us to delay a little."

Temari looked back.

Then she sighed. "All right...fine, my pushing us to go fast backfired. You can just say it."

She said that to Gaara, who gave her a confused look. "I wasn't thinking that," he said.

"But it's true," Temari said. "Should have just lifted everyone over that gap one by one, then this wouldn't have happened."

"It wouldn't have made it that much safer," Gaara said. "Either way it would have been a lot of people to lift."

"I should not be so worried about getting there early," Temari said. "We get there when we get there. If I hadn't been such a shrew about it, we'd never have tried to do that so quickly."

"I don't think you were the only one who wanted to get over the gap quickly," Gaara said. "But if you want to slow down, I agree, we had better be more considerate of our slower team from now on. We've grumbled about them, but it's not their fault. And going slower is better than one of us dying along the way."

So that was decided.

Shine talked Bakugo down a bit more after she'd given it some time.

"I understand how you feel," she said evenly. "But Ino didn't mean to do it. It's like when people drown and grab onto someone else. It's not right to do it, but when you're drowning you panic and don't think about what's right."