Shadow (Naruto)

Chapter Twenty Three

Mira's POV

Age 20

It had been a little over a year since Naruto had left with Master Jiraiya. Construction on the house was finally complete, after several delays. I had a lot of work to do to make it feel like home. Deciding I wanted to tackle the outside first, I struggled with the garden. Over the past year I'd been training endlessly, Naruto wasn't the only one trying to improve, all of his friends were training too and most of them asked me for help. I didn't have free time anymore. I was busy helping Tenten, Neji, Sakura, Ino, Hinata, Lee and even Kiba with their training. Everyone seemed to come to me with help for speed and chakra control. They were all getting stronger and I couldn't be prouder.

"Mira-sensei!" Sakura and Ino called from behind me and I turned to find them waving from the sidewalk.

"Oh, hey you two!" I beamed, "How goes medical training?"

I received mixed responses as Sakura got to spend most of their training bossing Ino around since she was the senior pupil and had been studying under Lady Tsunade for longer. Ino wasn't exactly happy about this, but even though she and Sakura seemed to fight a lot, it was obvious to everyone they were very close.

"Mira-sensei, what are you doing?" Ino asked me curiously as I was currently fighting a losing battle with a bunch of weeds in the flowerbed.

"Well, I was trying to fix up the garden... but plants hate me." I admitted with a sigh of defeat causing the pair to laugh.

"Want some help?" Ino hopped over the white picket fence. Her family ran a flower shop so it made sense she'd be way better at gardening than me.

"Please."

Sakura and Ino focused on the flowerbeds and I went to tackle the jungle that was the lawn only to pause as I spotted Shino and Kiba. They were Hinata's teammates. Kiba was from the Inuzuka Clan, he had unruly brown hair and two red fang-like markings under his dark eyes and was always accompanied by his faithful pup, Akamaru. Shino was from the Aburame clan, insect handlers, he was a mysterious boy who tended to have the lower half of his face covered by high collard shirts and always wore circular lensed sunglasses over his eyes.

"What are you two doing?" I asked curiously, "We weren't supposed to train today, were we?" Did I forget?

Kiba laughed at this, "Mira-sensei, we trained yesterday. Remember you said you were going to be here all day today and I said I could help. I brought Shino too."

"Oh! That's great! We'll have this jungle under control in no time!" I cheered.

"What can we do to help, Mira-sensei?" Lee's voice sounded from behind me causing me to jump and spin around only to gape as I realized he wasn't alone. He'd brought Neji, Shikamaru and Choji too.

"What are you guys doing here?" I asked warily.

"Lee said you needed assistance." Neji sighed.

I couldn't help but smile at them, "With everyone's help I think this is going to be the fastest move in history. Well would you four mind going over to Naruto's place and bringing everything here?"

"Sure thing, Mira-sensei! We shall work two times as hard to get done in an hour!" Lee declared, "Oh wait, no three times as hard and we'll be done in no time at all." He was pumped, and the other three groaned in response.