Konoha Spider

Reports and Meetings

It was a few days later that the group finally headed up to the gates of Konoha. Haku admired the gates for a moment before noticing that Team 7 had closed ranks around him in a protective square. Kakashi walked up to the pair of Chunnin guards with all of their passports. "Hi guys, we're finally back." He said with a cheerful tone.

"Kakashi," one of the guards said in return greeting. "I thought you and your team left about a month ago."

"A little longer actually." The Jonnin admitted to the man, as he handed his team's travel papers in for inspection.

"The mission was an escort mission though." The other guard said in confusion as he looked the mission orders over. "Unless it was real far off, you should have been back before now."

"Yes, well first there was a black cat, and then the road of life got all tangled up, and don't get me started about all of the rain and stuff that slowed us down." Kakashi explained to the two men. Haku looked at Kakashi with confusion, while everyone else just seemed to wearily accept the odd explanation that the Jonnin gave to them all. "We are also escorting a potential new recruit to see the Hokage, if you could send a messenger to warn him and the Anbu before we got to the tower it would be nice."

"Yeah well our messenger isn't you, so it should get there before you do." One of the guards joked, as he handed the passports back to Kakashi who returned them to his students.

The ninja all calmly walked through the gates, and then took the long winding path through the streets that led up to the Hokage office. Haku's eyes darted around, and he frowned a bit as he noticed some things, Naruto and Peter were given dark or indifferent looks while Kakashi and Sakura were treated with smiles or nods of acknowledgement. The Ice user couldn't help but wonder why the people seemed to have such differing opinions on Team 7. He did his best to ignore it, figuring that if he was allowed to remain in the village such things would be made clear.

The group was forced to stop though as a boy around the age of Team 7 walked down the road. "Sasuke!" Sakura screeched in excitement, and the three boys watched as the normally collected girl turned into a squealing fangirl. She leaped at the boy and hugged him tightly, and the others all winced as they heard his back pop in a painful manner.

"Sasuke," Naruto grumbled, while glaring at the boy.

Haku took in his appearance. He was wearing a dark blue shirt and white shorts with matching arm and leg warmers. He was pale skinned, had long dark hair that hung around his face, while a Leaf headband was on top of his head.

The boy managed to pry Sakura off of him, and trudged past not even bothering to acknowledge the others. "Hey Sasuke! The least you could do is tell Sakura hello after she gave you a greeting like that." Naruto yelled at the back of the boy.

The dark haired boy froze at that and then turned to look over his shoulder. "What do you care loser? She's still just as annoying as ever." He said dismissivly before turning back around.

"What, why I outa." Naruto growled as he took a step forward. It was only the quick reflexes of Sakura that saved the dark haired boy from being attacked by her teammates. Sakura was visibly latched onto both arms of the boys in attempts to stop them from attacking the boy. Whether she was trying to protect them or her crush was unknown though.

"And if she's able to hold you guys back I guess there's nothing special about you either. Then again they probably have the three of you still doing D ranks." Sasuke added with a superior smirk at Team 7.

"Come on Sakura-Chan let me at him." Naruto pleaded, not moving his arm though as he allowed the girl to direct his next move.

"No Naruto, besides we're not done with our mission we still have to escort Haku to the Hokage's Tower and make our report." Sakura said.