21 - Chapter 4

This is the last of the edited chapters (except I didn't really edit it at all). Originally the last part of 'Chapter 3' it is now 'Chapter 4 A'.

A few quick notes about the chapter:
There's just something sweet about the legendary prankster being too legendary for his own good. Tsunade's just started to reap the benefits of not believing Naruto. Also yes, Udon and Moegi were both promoted, so were Naruto's temporary teammates (who probably will not appear again). Akemi was, his teammates were not, no real reason for that but I might touch on it again.
And Sakura is giving Konohamaru and his friends way to much credit here.

I swear I've planning that Neji/Temari thing since the beginning. I mean I obviously plan pairings at the start...okay so I really had just decided after writing after mentioning them together in 'Chapter 1 A' that they wouldn't actually be together but I wanted something funny to replace that. Temari/Neji makes them a bit of an odd couple and I figured it would seem funny enough to Naruto to distract him.

Also I don't remember the manga really addressing Hyuuga Hanabi's age and I tend to switch it around in different fics. In this case she's supposed to be about ten and in her last year at the Academy (Naruto just doesn't know so he misstates).

The scene at the barbeque was the weirdest thing I have ever written. I had originally planned on Naruto being the one to meet with them so it was just supposed to be him poking fun at them and trying to embarras them until they turned it around on him, but apparently I couldn't write that so I switched it - which makes sense because I really don't know why I wanted Sakura going into Iruk'a apartment in the first place. Anyways, they all ended up weird but I didn't feel like re-writing it; just don't worry if Iruka and Kakashi's excuse doesn't make any sense, they aren't being remotely honest at this point.
Also, while Naruto may not care that they're together, he does not like the fact that they hid it from him. This will become a bit more obvious in the next part of the chapter.

Naruto and Sakura's training regiment goes something like this:
Every morning and every evening, they meet for a spar. For the first 2 weeks it was unsupervised but from this point out Sakura will be getting friends to supervise. Next chapter will explain exactly what they're doing but I'm sure som people can guess. It has to do with the whole increased dodging and no clones thing that Sakura was talking about at the Academy. They are not regularly destroying their normal training clothes, just very cheap pants and tank tops.


The next part of this chapter will hopefully be up in a week or so. Before that though I have a few notes about the story.

Okay basically after writing through what is now Chapters 1-3, I decided that my original outline was going to take too long and had too much 'down time' where nothing was really happening.
The first thing I did was bring in Kakashi and Iruka's relationship several chapters before I had intended (hence it feeling like it was just dropped out of nowhere). Originally that wouldn't come out until after another big event happened that Naruto would pick up on it himself. Putting it in early was also meant to save me from readers who are homophobic and might've yelled at me for throwing it at them out of the blue. This way I get rid of them faster.

After that I went through the old outline and started throwing out a few subplots and condensing it a bit. The 'focus' of the 3 original segments have been kind of blurred so the fic as a whole will flow together a bit better but the overall plot hasn't changed at all.
I will say that I decided to bring in Uchiha Madara, but not how much of the canon that comes with him will actually be included, you'll just have to wait for the rest of the fic to figure that out.
If you have any questions just let me know.