Naruto : Struggle Of Childhood

Child of Sand

A hard jolt from the cart woke Naruto from a scattered dream that he couldn't remember a second later. He was surprised that he had been able to fall asleep with everything that had happened. Just the thought of the murder of the Hokage made bile rise in Naruto's mouth. He looked around at the forms of the others.

Sasuke had curled himself into a little ball on his side, but it looked somewhat painful since he had curled into Neji's feet. Neji had curled around with his back to Sasuke, but had a tendency to kick. Sakura was between Naruto and Sai. She had managed to fell asleep sitting up, and didn't notice that Sai's head was on her lap. Hinata was on Neji's other side, and she was sleeping on top of him. Naruto had managed to lean back in the cart without making a lot of noise. He was glad that none of them snored.

Naruto still did not quite believe they had managed to pull it off. Every time the two men, who were named Daisuke and Shin, stopped for some reason, usually to complain, Naruto would start to get a feeling of terror in his stomach that someone had come after them. Nothing ever happened, and it seemed like they had escaped without anyone being the wiser.

Daisuke and Shin had been traveling all night, and their stowaways had no time to speak. There were plenty of things that Naruto really wanted to ask, and from the looks that they were all given one another, especially to Sai, they all had questions that they wanted answered.

Right now there was nothing that could be done. Naruto tried to ease himself into a comfortable position but it was hard when Sakura moved and her elbow was crushing Naruto's side.

It was then that he noticed that they weren't moving.

"Time to turn in for the night," Daisuke, the younger of the two, said with a loud yawn.

"More like turn in for the day," Shin pointed out.

Naruto could tell that Daisuke had shrugged.

"Same difference,"

There was the sound of people moving around and setting something up. For about ten minutes everything was silent. Naruto looked at the others again. Sasuke had opened his eyes and Sai was sitting up. The others looked like they were still asleep. The three stared at one another for ten more minutes until they heard the grinding sound of someone snoring.

Hinata's white eyes were opened and she looked around at the others. Neji disturbed at the motion twitched slightly and sat up.

"Mommy…" Sakura mumbled sleepily, "I had a bad dream…"

"No, you didn't," Sasuke contradicted.

Sakura opened her eyes and stared at the faces around her. She looked like she was going to cry, but controlled herself.

"Well," Neji said, "I guess it's time to answer some questions."

"Yeah," Naruto agreed, "like who the heck is Danzo."

"A-and the ANBU who helped us," Hinata added.

"And what we're going to do," Sasuke muttered.

"First thing's first," Naruto said, turning to Sai, "Who is Danzo?"

"He is the leader of ROOT, a select branch of ANBU. He was the Sandaime Hokage's rival since before he was elected, and remained against his teachings," Sai repeated all the information in the well practiced, yet impartial voice of someone reciting a lesson that they had learned by heart, "He carefully selected people who were orphans or who had the correct mindset to teach them to be superior ninja. Also, he has a strict policy of secrecy, no one in ROOT knows everyone else in ROOT, making it impossible for potential spies to completely destroy the organization. He wishes to reform Konoha into a powerful nation that the world with respect and fear."