Naruto : Struggle Of Childhood

Preliminaries

The infamous list:

Shippuu no Naruto-Taiki

Arashi no Sasuke-Masaru

Sabaku no Gaara-Shinta

Rasen no Neji-Haru

Nisshoku no Sakura-Emi

Gesshoku no Hinata-Rei

Hara no Haku-Ryou

Shin'en no Sai-Hideaki

Haka no Kimimaro-Yuuma

The meeting of Hakumei took place at a late hour in Team Dattebayo's room, after making sure that there wasn't a hidden camera in there. There wasn't. Apparently, no one really wanted to see the Genin dress and undress. The meeting was quick, it had to be. For one thing, teams kept coming in at all hours of the night, and they didn't want to bring too much attention to themselves. Thankfully, most people would think they were cooking up a strategy to use with one another the next day. Naruto allowed them to keep that delusion.

The meeting itself was quick. Kimimaro described what they had found, and Naruto, with Sasuke and Sakura's interjections, described what happened in the forest. They also produced the paper with the message that Naruto had found. That produced a lot of discussion.

"So, it's either written by someone with terrible handwriting, or it was written by someone who's using their other hand," Neji said thoughtfully, "So instead of saying who it was let's work out who it wasn't."

"Sounds good," Haku agreed, "I don't think that it was Kabuto-san."

"Me neither," Kimimaro and Neji both said at the same time.

"It wasn't Yumi," Sasuke supplied.

"Nope," Naruto agreed.

"So, that leaves us with...nearly everyone else," Hinata sighed, "Other than Kinen of course, since we know that they're on our side."

"So, basically, we have to wait until they reveal themselves to us," Sakura said.

"Sounds like it," Haku said thoughtfully.

"I hate waiting..." Sai sighed.

In the end it was decided to wait to see what happened and to keep their guards up. After all, they didn't even know if the note was genuine or a hoax created because someone was suspicious and wanted them to reveal themselves.

"By the way," Hinata said as they began to get ready to return to their own rooms, "Taiki, we're going to talk to Frog Face about Fuzzy Wuzzy when we get home. And don't you dare not tell us if you're worried about something. We're family. Family doesn't keep dark secrets."

Naruto grinned a little bit at her.

"I'm fine," he said, "Really, there's nothing to worry about."

"When you get like that, you make me worry more," Hinata sighed, "I swear..."

"Really," Naruto repeated, "It was just a bit of a shock. I haven't really had the time to think about Fuzzy since I was seven. When it came out it startled me. That's all."