Naruto: A New Perspective

Chapter 39

"That was a great training session, Naruto!" Lee shouted, waving as Aiko and Naruto left their exuberant friend behind, "I hope we shall be able to spar again!"

Naruto winced while waving back, the hit that Lee had landed there was definitely going to bruise for the next hour. Aiko wasn't in much better shape, her sparring with the two had been much shorter, but both he and Lee had thrashed her pretty well, just in shorter periods of time.

'It's my own fault,' Aiko thought miserably, 'That's what I get for telling them not to take it easy on me... well, good training I guess.' That had become her mantra, everything that she and Naruto did was good training. That was why she was doing this, for training, so... Itachi could never hurt her again.

Aiko shivered, the nightmares were slowly lessening, she didn't even have one the night before. But her conscious mind still strayed to her older brother and Tsukuyomi constantly. The only thing that really seemed to push those thoughts away was training. It left her too tired to think about anything else.

"We have a few hours before we have to get missions, how about we do some more training?" Naruto suggested, and Aiko nodded her assent, but wasn't entirely happy about it.

"We can't do anything too stressful before missions," Aiko reminded, "I don't have unlimited energy... especially when someone wakes me up at five in the morning to train with Lee." She shot her blond compatriot a mild look of accusation here.

Naruto was properly sheepish, "Heh, sorry, I forget sometimes." He really did, Aiko's work ethic seemed to even surpass his own sometimes, this last week had been nothing but constant training, resting, and missions. If he did anything physical that wasn't with Jiraiya, it was with Aiko. His bunshin were usually up and about doing other things, ranging from meditation to studying various things that peaked his interest from the library. Whatever he could get out of Jiraiya in the form of scrolls and books he passed to them as well, it made his life a lot easier.

"How about ninja tag?" Naruto asked, it was a favorite game of Kakashi, it was basically a game that combined hide and seek and tag. It was a bit childish in its concept, but it was a great stealth exercise, plus it didn't use too much chakra so neither of them would be tired before getting their missions for the day.

"Alright." Aiko agreed, "But no Shadow Clones, it's impossible to hide from twenty of you."

"I'm not sure if that was a complement," Naruto laughed, "But I'll take it as one, Aiko."

They had been training with Lee at his team's training area; it had only been the three of them, because apparently only Lee and Naruto were crazy enough to train at five in the morning when everyone with a brain was sleeping.

'I don't get much sleep now anyways.' Aiko thought glumly, even without nightmares she spent much of the night tossing and turning in her bed, there was enough in real life to worry about without bad dreams. Sasuke for one, her brother seemed to live at the borders of Fire Country, and it perturbed her that he loved every second of it. He had come home twice in between traveling to the opposite sides of Fire Country. Missing-ninja, bandits, Sound ninja, were all things that one encountered and subsequently had to deal with on border patrol.

Aiko hadn't seen much of her sensei either. Kakashi was one of the village's top Jounin, like Gai, he was constantly sent out on mission after mission at Tsunade's request. The few times she had seen him, he seemed dead tired. The new Hokage was obviously running her sensei ragged.

Their other friends didn't get as dangerous missions like her brother or Kakashi, but they were definitely higher than genin of their experience level should be taking alone. If Kakashi was helping to stabilize Leaf outside Fire Country, and Sasuke was doing the same at the border, the rookie genin were constantly being sent out to stabilize the towns and villages within Fire Country.