Starting over

#9 Death

Timeskip : 1 year

The last year had been fun for Naruto. He had grown exponentially stronger to the point that his chakra reserves were large enough to make three Rasenshuriken without fainting from exhaustion. The Kazekage's kids became close friends with him, especially Temari, with whom he had made it a habit to eat breakfast together. Baki had allowed Naruto to enroll into the academy alongside of his new friends, with Rasa's consent of course. Naruto also had started to learn sealing as it was something that he didn't do in his old life. Right now he was sitting in class and listening to the teacher rambling on about how the Genin-Exams were coming up and that they would spend the coming week preparing for it.

Naruto POV

"As you all know the exam will consist of a small taijutsu-battle, the transformation jutsu and a Jutsu of your choice, so we will be going to rehearse taijutsu and the transformation jutsu.", our sensei said, earning groans of annoyance from most of the class. I leaned to my right and whispered in Temari's ear; "If they can't do it by now then they won't learn it in a week.". Temari smiled at me, nodding. I looked around the classroom and saw Kankuro wiggling his eyebrows in my direction. I sighed and rolled my eyes, ever since he realised that I was close to Temari he had tried to bring us together, not even refraining from luring me into the bathroom when Temari was under the shower. Luckily she hadn't been to mad at me, but we both got to beat Kankuro later that day. I turned towards the sensei and started paying attention again. " Ok, let's start with taijutsu, meet me at training ground 1 in ten minutes.", the sensei said. I sighed, Taijutsu without Gaara wasn't as much fun. But Gaara was with Rasa on a diplomatic visit in Yugakure from which they would return today hopefully. Kankuro, Temari and I made our way to the mentioned training ground and waited for our sensei and the rest of the class.

Temari and I were currently fighting a little bit away from the rest of the class, because we were throwing Kunai and Shuriken around and didn't want to injure anyone. That was when we heard the scream of Kioku, Kankuro's sparring partner, and the loud bang of an explosion. Temari and I instantly stopped fighting and were on full alert. Even we were not allowed to use explosive attacks, so we knew that whoever had caused the explosion was most likely noone from the academy. We sprinted to the field where the other students were fighting and stopped once we saw what was happening there.

Our sensei was fighting a masked Shinobi who wore an Iwa headband. "Kankuro!", Temari suddenly cried out. That when I realized that there was another attacker that was currently slaughtering through the academy students. Temari ran to one of the bodies that were laying behind him, most of them badly cut. I ran with her, drawing a Kunai and positioned me defensively between her and the two attackers. "No, no, no, Kankuro, please don't be dead.", she whispered while going through the corpses. I kept my eyes on the two masked Shinobi, while staying close to the blonde girl. I heard her gasping and turned slightly to see what she had found.

Temari was leaning over a body, murmuring that it couldn't be true. She turned the corpse of the boy and cried out loud. Kankuro's face was almost not recognizable, but the fact that the dead boy wore the same clothes as Kankuro had earlier this morning and that we couldn't spot Kankuro amongst the living, made it clear that it had to be him. I lowered my Kunai and went to comfort the blonde girl, but the two Shinobi, having kept an eye on us, saw this and instantly decided to attack. I barely could evade the blade from on of them, while the other, who was going for Temari, luckily was blocked by our sensei, who kept the attacker occupied.

I trained my eyes on the remaining Shinobi and raised my Kunai. The masked man looked at me awkwardly before sprinting in the direction of the, still mourning, oblivious, girl. I could see his eyes widen, when he saw me intercept his way. I brought my Kunai down and tried to stab him square in the chest, but he met steel with steel and then jumped back a bit. I, again, stood protectively between Temari and the attacking Anbu, with a Kunai in each hand. The Anbu renewed his grip on his sword, went into a crouched position and went through one-handed hand signs. As soon as I recognized the series of hand signs and the Jutsu, which they catalyzed, I myself flashed through hand signs, throwing away the Kunai I had in my hands. When the masked man finished his hand signs, a giant dragon, made completely out of fire emerged from his hands, which formed a circle in front of his mouth, and headed straight for me. Just a few moments later, I was finished with my own Jutsu and slammed my hands down on the ground. The air seemed to shift as I pumped chakra into the wind, creating a solid wall of air between me and the flaming dragon. The fiery Jutsu disappeared into nothingness, as soon as it collided with my defensive technique. The Anbu tensed, seeing that I had negated his Jutsu without a problem. I grinned, knowing that it was my turn to attack. I took a Kunai, glanced at our sensei, and seeing that he was still holding his own against the other Anbu, I flashed towards my enemy. He blocked my Kunai, I secretly took out another Kunai before blocking his sword. He blocked my first Kunai which came straight for his heart but wasn't as lucky as the second Kunai got him by surprise and I managed to cut his cervical artery, killing him. His partner, after seeing this, threw an explosive seal and used the smoke it summoned to make a quick retreat.