Practice

Naruto arrived at the practice area where Sasuke used to continually best him. He remembered back to when they were all just kids, standing around being instructed on how to throw deadly weapons by Iruka-sensei. He aligned himself the way Iruka had instructed him and then reached into his pack. How easily it all came back to him. In the blink of an eye he flung six shuriken away from his body, all thunking heavily into the centers of scattered targets. "Sasuke's an asshole," he said. "Worried about **** his whole life. Over trained every single day and ignored the people who really cared about him." He remembered how jealous he was that Sakura loved Sasuke so much back then. He himself had always been so fond of her. And to see her now, all grown up and an incredibly powerful kunoichi, he was secretly glad that Sasuke never returned her affections. If he had, she may have left with him. But she hadn't, and he was glad.

Naruto then decided to shake things up a little and try another approach to developing his skills. Instead of arming himself with kunai before he began his exercise, he left them in his pack, deciding to practice the speed with which he withdrew them and sunk them into targets, while on the move. "This is an essential skill when battling enemies, so I should sharpen this too. Heh, sharpen, that's a good one," he said to himself as he recalled how sharp his weapons actually were. He readied himself, then yelled, "GO!" as he launched himself at a nearby tree. He reached in his pack as he kicked off the first tree, sending a kunai sailing into a target mounted on a tree behind him. "Dead on," he thought to himself as he continued toward another tree. Another kicking leap and he was sailing in another direction, away from two kunai he'd thrown behind him, listening for the "thunk, thunk" that would tell him he was on target. A back flip to the ground. A leap forward, another kunai sent successfully on to its destination. Naruto kept this up until his pack was empty of weapons.

He stood panting, looking at the targets that were full of his own weapons. He smiled to himself as he saw how much he'd grown, how far his skills had advanced. "Sasuke wouldn't have believed I had this in me back then," he thought, and then felt the weight of his memories around him again. He sighed and began walking around picking his weapons out of the targets he had embedded them in. "It didn't work," he mumbled to himself, "I need a distraction. Maybe a short mission would help. Or maybe I just need to go home and be alone for a while."

After he pulled the last shuriken from its target and secured it properly in his pack,