The Way Through Stone Village (Naruto)

4: Stone Village

[OP: "Eurus"--The Oh Hellos.]

Day 31:

The following morning they got up with the sun so that they could get to the village before noon.

Sai sent a message ahead so that they would know.

"Let's hope that there's no unpleasant welcoming party like in Mist," Temari said.

"That couldn't happen twice," Wally joked.

"Knock on wood, Babe." Shine tapped his shoulder ruefully.

The others got ready with more energy since they were looking forward to being out of the wild finally.

"One thing, though," Ino said. "Why go here and then double back to Cloud? It's so inefficient."

"If we end up not going to Cloud then it makes sense to do this," Shikamaru pointed out. "From here it's the shortest route back to the Land of Wind and the Land of Fire for both of us. If we'd gone to Stone first and then Mist, it would have been a longer trip back. But if Cloud allows us, then, yes, it's going to be doubling back. But that can't be helped."

"It would be like Cloud Village to make things more different on purpose," Kankuro said.

"Well, it's weeks away if it does happen. Let's not think about it now," Camie suggested. "Go Team Zoe!"

She tried to high-five Sai, who only looked confused at first about what the gesture meant.

"Sasuke keeps giving me sullen looks," Shoto commented to Momo after they had strapped their packs on and were starting to walk after the Hyugas, who were leading the way today.

"Did you say something to him yesterday?" Momo asked.

"No...though I guess he could have heard us talking about him," Shoto said, with the kind of absent mindedness that was characteristic of him.

"I hope it wasn't anything too bad."

"He wouldn't care. And why shouldn't we be honest about things?"

"But he's been well behaved, so far," Momo said. "If you can call doing nothing even a behavior. Why tempt fate?"

"Well, I didn't say it to him. That's better than before, isn't it?"

" A little..." Momo tried to smile. "I know, you've tried to be more patient with him."

This was a nice way of saying he'd tried to ignore him rather than talk to him in a derogatory way.

But Shoto honestly believed that was him being patient.

"I think he's trying to challenge me," Shoto said. "I guess he can't let that go."

"You know that he doesn't like people challenging him," Momo said. "Maybe you made him feel small before. You could apologize for that."

"No," Shoto said. "I'm not sorry for defending my friends."

Momo knew it was useless to try to put a different spin on it for him. Even though she was not sure Sasuke had seen it that way.

Somehow she thought that Sasuke would have minded if Shoto defended his friends if that was all he was doing. When had he ever particularly been averse to other people doing that? Even if he himself wouldn't do it.

But if he thought Shoto was looking down on him, then that was another matter. She feared that he would attack him.

Momo had conflicted feelings about their grudge war. She cared about Shoto more personally but didn't always think he was quite right. But she wanted to side with him because he was more right than Sasuke was.