21 - Chapter 4 C

Part 3 is finally up. Sorry for the delay.
This chapter originally had a slightly different ending, but I though the subdued ending worked well. I will say that even with this ending, Sakura's last line was originally something along the lines of "You're so not hot!" but I thought that came out a bit too valley girlish.

Sorry if all the 'relationship' stuff threw people, I didn't think there was a lot of it but I guess compared to the first few posts it was. This isn't a romance story or anything, but the rookies are growing up so you can expect some pairings, they just won't be central to the story (or based on anyone's whims but my own)...'cept one, but it's not important yet. The Kiba/TenTen thing came about when I looked back at earlier stuff and realized that I was writing a bit of interaction between them and really liking it. I threw TenTen into a few other scenes that she wouldn't normally have appeared in and liked it, so I decided to just go with it.

Also, I know some people have been really annoyed with Sakura lately. I hope this chapter have begun to redeem her a bit. She's felt as out of the loop as Naruto so she's been just as touchy about things as he has. It didn't really lead to great communication between them. I'm actually really happ with her train of thought in this chapter. It probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense (this is Sakura we're talking about) but at this point, she has the pieces she just hasn't really bothered to put them together.
I was also trying to bring out the fact that Naruto's well, a bit of a hypocrite. He doesn't really mean to do it, but he's not very good at socializing outside of the present...that made no sense did it?
I mean, he's fine in the moment at one on one interaction, but he rarely gets to a deeper level. I read a lot of fics where Naruto seems to know everything about everyone, that isn't the Naruto in this fic. He knows about as much about his friends as they know about him, which is one of the reasons that Jiraiya's bet was so unfair.

Going back and rereading the stuff at the tournament, I realized that this chapter might add some confusion about Naruto and elemental training. During the tournament, some shinobi jumped to conclusions about his training based on the jutsu he was displaying. They understood that Kyuubi seemed to be involved with Naruto's ability to create the jutsu but most were still assuming that the jutsu were still based in elemental chakra. However, up to this point, Naruto had not been tested like he was in the manga.
I did consider writing out more of their training with Kakashi...but I decided it wasn't really necessary. If you want me to expand more on it in the future just let me know and I guess I can have them talk about it. It's more likely that you'll get the chance to really see what they learned during another training session.
Also...I was a bit lazy this time and didn't feel like searching for the exact chapter where Kakashi and Yamato/Tenzo test Naruto. Therefore, I couldn't quite remember exactly what reactions the paper had for different elements. I know this was really lazy, but oh well. If I remembered any of them really incorrectly and it like totally ruins the story for you, just let me know preferably with the correction so that I still don't have to look it up.