Starting over

#51 Spa and Spying

Naruto POV

I woke up with Temari still in my arms sound asleep. I thought about my life while caressing my sleeping girlfriend and couldn't help but grin widely. After all I had everything that I have ever dreamed of; a loving family along with a beautiful girlfriend, a bunch of friends. I finally got to learn my parent's techniques and have even partly mastered them since I could use the hiraishin at the same level that my father had used to perform, while becoming the youngest seal master due to my mother's scrolls. Over all my life has been only improving since I decided to travel back in time. I smiled hugging Temari and closed my eyes again.

When I woke up again Temari was still sleeping. The sun had already risen and was shining through the shutters. Temari was stirring in my arms and slowly opened her eyes. I smiled at her before she lifted her head from my chest and smiled back at me. She leaned back down and captured my lips in a deep kiss. I closed my arms behind her back and pulled her down deepening our kiss even further. Temari yelped into the kiss before putting her arms around my neck. After a few more seconds, Temari shifted her weight a bit and forcefully turned us over and continued our little make out session.

After a few more minutes we got up and dressed ourselves while discussing what we would do with our free day. Temari had suggested that we would just go to the hot springs but I knew that the owners were some of the people who had participated in almost every one of the beatings that I had received when I had lived in Konoha so they would most likely be suspicious of me because of my resemblance to the monster that they had successfully gotten rid of. That is why I suggested to just go to the Namikaze Spa. Temari looked at me with questioning eyes knowing that we would need way too much time to travel there. I just grinned at her and held out my hand. She took it with wide eyes, understanding what I wanted to do. I pecked her on her lips before a bright flash engulfed us.

"When did you place a marker here?", Temari asked as we walked into the large entrance hall of the spa. "A few weeks before we went to Konoha, I knew that we would probably get some time to relax and to regenerate and I also knew that we couldn't go to the Konoha spa so I just put it here when I had time.", I explained. The receptionist smiled at us handing me the blood sealed box with the keys to the private part of the spa. I took the keys and gave her the box back.

Temari and I had put a few sets of bathing clothes as well as normal clothes in the bedroom that we always used when we stayed there. Temari took a bikini and I went through the closet to find one of my trunks. We went into the changing rooms and met again in the pool starting a relaxing day of doing nothing.

Gaara POV

Waking up I noticed that it was just past sunrise which meant that it was probably around six am. I got up and changed into my normal battle gear. Strapping my small gourd of sand to my belt I went out of my room to get some breakfast. I smiled when I remembered the times before Naruto had changed my seal and when I couldn't afford to sleep. That blonde guy had changed so much since he had come to us, I couldn't help but to silently thank him for that. I shook my head and focused on the task at hand; since we would not train today I planned on finding out what Kabuto was doing here and what he and his master had planned. In my mind there was only one logical explanation for the behaviour of Kabuto and his teammates in the exams. This was that Orochimaru still planned to attack Konoha during the finals as he had proposed to the Kazekage and Baki before attacking us since we had declined to help him. Kabuto and his teammates probably had orders to test the genin since they were the shinobi which had the most unknown abilities since they had yet to be on any high profile missions. They probably also had secondary orders to hold back and to drop out of the exams before the finals, although the one that fought that Sasuke guy had not forfeit like his teammates, which was a mystery to me since he still obviously didn't go all out. Maybe Orochimaru wanted to scout out Sasuke's abilities more thorough, for some unknown reason. I was done with eating my breakfast in the hotel dining room when I finally had come up with the theory that seemed to explain all the things that the sound shinobi had done up until now. Going out into the busy streets of Konoha I set out to find Kabuto and to shadow him.

Finding the traitorous man in a hotel I followed him with my chakra suppressed and with a henge active to minimize the chance of me being discovered. The grey haired man did what apparently was his usual morning routine; he ate breakfast, went to the hot springs and then he met with his teammates to train a bit. After that training Kabuto did the first thing that seemed somewhat unusual; he went into the forest of death. In there I almost lost him several times but I was lucky and managed to stay on his heels whilst being undetected.

When Kabuto finally stopped I hid myself as far away as possible while still being able to hear what he said. Then another person appeared. I immediately knew that this person was Orochimaru since Kabuto kneeled down as soon as he got in sight. "You can rise, Kabuto. Have you been followed?", the snake like man asked. "No, I wasn't followed, I made sure of that, I even changed directions inside the forest a few times to throw off any potential spies.", his grey haired subordinate replied. "Good. Tell me, what have you found out?", Orochimaru asked in his usual menacing voice. "Well, Sasuke's progress is far greater than we had expected, I guess he will be ready at the finals. The only genin that might be a problem is the team from Sunagakure. We will have to watch out, they didn't show anything new in the exams Hinata and Neji Hyuuga may also be of concern since they have the Byakugan but they have not shown too much of their abilities. But I think we will have little problems overall as long as you handle the Hokage and Kimimaro joins the fight.", Kabuto elaborated, confirming my theory that they would attack during the finals. Although I didn't get any information on what they had planned with Sasuke but he was obviously somehow involved in their plans. "Good, very good. I trust that you will keep a low profile until the finals. Don't attract any suspicions.", Orochimaru ordered. "That will be hard my lord, since I already got a lot of attention in the preliminaries when me and Dosu forfeited our matches. I think the sand team is really suspicious and they know that something is going on. But I will try to not attract any more attention.", Kabuto explained. "Well it was to be expected. Just stay away from them. You are dismissed.", Orochimaru said and with that Kabuto jumped away and into the trees. I decided to stay here with Orochimaru and see what he was going to do now, but was disappointed when he just melted into the ground disappearing without a trace. I waited a bit to be sure that Kabuto wasn't in the area anymore before I disappeared in a cloud of sand.