Naruto didn't answer Sakura's question. Those thoughts wouldn't leave him alone but he didn't dare ask me that question.
I glared at the fire.
Naruto's stomach grumbled.
A chicken fell out of the sky. Since Itachi was nowhere to be seen it went after Sasuke-the closes thing to Weasel on the menu-and tried to eat Sasuk's hair. Unlike Itachi Sasuke couldn't just do the ultimate hair flip and kill the chickens. He killed them with Chidori.
Oh what I would do for some barbaque sauce! As if on cue this giant barrel of barbaque sauce came falling out the sky. It landed on Sasuke. He unleased his Chidori on it. I dipped the chicken in the Sasuke Style Barbaque. Yum.
Naruto started drooling.
Sakura just stood there like an idot.
Sakura started asking question again. Why were the Akatsuki after me? What was i hiding? Who was I? All that stuff.
Naruto was on the verge of a mental breakdown because he wanted to know if I was like him, and if this was the way Sakura would react if she found out about the Nine Tails.
Everyone started moving around. We didn't move that far but we did kind of space out. Naruto asked me the dreaded question. I answered yes but I didn't tell him what it was. He nodded and didn't ask anything after that. Sakura was convinced i'd told him the secret and tried to get it out of him.
My loyalties weren't wavering. I was just helping Sasuke train. Itachi wanted to die by Sasuke's hand. I was just helping out with that. I hadn't betrayed the Akatsuki. Thier secrets were still safe with me. Sasuke was the only one that knew my secret and he wasn't going to tell. I was safe.
Time blurred. When I got back to the Village everything seemed the same.
Sakura was torn beetween hating me and thanking me. One the one hand she thought of me as one of the few friends Sasuke had, and for that she was thankful, but on the other hand she thought I like him and vice versa. Yeah right.
Naruo asked me if I wanted to go out for ramen after he got back from classes that day. I didn't have to go since no one knew that I had Chakra aside from Sasuke, and the two of us were more than happy to keep it that way.
That night I wandered around at night. I went into the woods. That night things changed. I knew that I could read and to some extent control the human mind, but no one had said anything about the minds of animals. I couldn't make any sense of thier thoughts, but I knew they were there, and that night I learned that I cound control them. I was ambushed by wovles. I made the one closest to me start attacking the others. I hadn't meant to do it.
I did it agian, this time on purpose. It worked. I could control animals as well as humans. I tried it out on plants. Nothing happened. I don't know why but that discovery scared me. It made me cold. I'd attempted more than once to just forget about my parents, Itachi, my powers, but the thoughts were always in the back of my mind no matter how far back, they were always there.
I started taking walks at night and used my control over animals under the cover of darkness. I only used it when I was in the clear. I could sense the minds of animals and people near me so I knew when I was alone. One night Sakura decided to follow me. I didn't care. I went to the little meadow I always went to. I was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and some black shorts. I sat down in the grass and leaned against a tree. The night was dark, the pale white moon was the only light. The stars were hiding. The tree dug into my back. It was cold. The grass was wet under me. The wind was blowing softly, its cold caress embracing me.
Sakura stood partially hidden behind a tree. I couldn't see her in the dark, but she could see me. She'd brought night vision goggles. I couldn't see her, but I could read her thoughts as she thought them. I let my mind expand outward as far as it would go. I was too deep in the woods for it to come in contact with another human, aside from Sakura and animals nearby there was nothing.
At some point I climbed the tree and sat in a branch. The view was calming. The pale white moon above a dark blue and black colored forest. The cold wind picked up out of nowhere and I was nearly blasted out of the tree.
Sakura screamed.
"Who's there?" I called out after the wind died down. Only then did it occur to me that I couldn't sense Zetsu's mind.
As if on cue a bird screamed and circled us. Sakura and I both looked up. The bird was too high for us to do anything, but the way it kept circling us had Sakura on edge. Her hands went to where she kept her shuriken and she took one out. The bird was out of her range and I didn't have any with me. We glared at it for a long moment. I tried to peak into its mind. Big mistake.. White-hot pain seared through my head and red flashed behind my eyes. That wasn't a bird, and it wasn't Zetsu. Was it one of the Akatsuki? An AMBU? after a moment whoever was controlling the bird blasted through my mental defenses.
CALM DOWN STUPID!!!!!!!!!! a guys voice, no, a boy. my age.
who are you? i demanded mentally.
an image showed up in my head. Orochimaru. Kabuto. My name's Zaku. I work for Orochimaru. I'm your age. I'm in the Village for the exams. Pein wants me to make sure you don't get into trouble.
How does attacking me fit into this? I asked cauitously.
I have secrets that I have the right to hide, just like you was his response.
I didn't know what to do in this situation. I'd never been really smart. I just spent the day having fun and playing around, acting silly. I'd never really had to think. That was comming back to bite me in the rear. At least I knew that Zaku was on my side at least.
Images popped up into my head again. Images of two othe people.The others that were with him. i vaugly recognized them. Orochimaru and Pein had brough us together more than once to see what would happen. It usually ended in the three of them ganging up on me when we started throwing punches. They gave up on it when I nearly cost Zaku his vision and his friend nearly destroyed my eardrums. It was odd that we were meeting up again, and in this way.
I didn't know how they were controlling the bird and at this moment I didn't care. Sakura was suspicous of the bird but there was nothing that she could do abotu it. After a while she gave up on it and decided that she was just being paranoid.
Zaku told me to prentend that I didn't recognize him or the others. They'd have to make it look like we became friends over time, not like we were already friends. Easy since I honestly didn't know them that well and almost every time we'd met something had gone wrong. It was going to be weird. Then again, what wasn't weird now?
Sakura made a joke about the bird spying on us.
"The Stalker Bird." I said.
Sakura barked out a laugh.
