Disclaimer: I DON’T OWN NARUTO, if I did, Naruto’s Sexy-no-jutsu wouldn’t have any clouds around it…. XD

Takes place in the more or less modern times (Europe). Ninjas do still exist.
“blah” – speech
‘blah’ – thoughts

I apologize in advance for the bad grammar and misspellings. And please excuse the probably time discreptancy, since I haven't written this story in 8+ months.

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Chapter 4 – Training

"Let’s go! We're going for a walk!" yelled Kane as he turned on the light.

"A walk?" mumbled Sakura loudly, "It's three o'clock in the morning!"

"Yes, it's the perfect time," replied Kane with a smile, "Come on, I said we would start training today."

"But it's freezing in here, and you're talking about going outside?" asked Sasuke. Kane, however, had already walked out of the room and light chatter could be heard between him and Naruto.

Naruto suddenly popped in to the room, "Hey sleepy heads, time to get up and get warmed up!" he said loudly.

Sasuke and Sakura just stared at Naruto, unable to even formulate a sentence. He was dressed in tennis shoes, khaki shorts and a sleeveless shirt. The most shocking thing was that he seemed to be as warm, as if he were on the beach in the middle of summer.

"What's wrong guys? Guys?" asked Naruto with large sweat-drops forming on the back of his head.

"Y-Y-You... i-in... t-t-that..." said Sasuke slowly.

"I know you're half asleep, but you use your chakra to get warm," he was about to leave, "Oh and dress light, trust me," he said with a wink and smile. Sasuke and Sakura both shuddered, Naruto never ever winked unless they were really in for it.

In twenty minutes time Sasuke and Sakura had gotten up and were ready to set out. They walked into the other room and found a very annoyed Kane, but no Naruto.

“Hey, where’s Naruto?” asked Sakura.

“Hey,” said a lazy voice from above. They looked up to find Naruto, with his back glued to the ceiling, “you guys sure take your sweet time,” he commented, shifting his eyes to Kane.

“You two!” said Kane forcefully, making Sakura jump a little. “You just wasted twenty minutes of our training,” he growled and muttered curses under his breath. He smirked slightly, “well I have a little, remedy, for times like these.”

Naruto scoffed and jumped down to stand by Kane, “shall we?” he asked calmly.

“Yes,” replied Kane and walked to the window. “Now look, here’s the objective: you jump…err… wait you probably don’t know how to…” he mumbled to himself incoherently for a few second. “All right… out the window, down the wall and onto the snow. Absolute silence and no foot prints, got it?” they all nodded. “Naruto you’ll leave last, so close the window and don’t use the wall,” Sasuke and Sakura were confused by the second part, but Naruto just nodded in compliance.

Kane led the way, by running down the wall and stepping softly onto the snow; the whole time not making a single sound or leaving any footprints. Sasuke and Sakura followed, making a minimal amount of noise, but no footprints. Once at ground level, they stood beside Kane and waited for Naruto to join them.

‘What the hell did Kane mean by not using the wall?’ wondered Sasuke as he watched Naruto lock the window.

Suddenly Naruto just jumped off the wall and started free falling down to the group. Sakura was about to shout at Naruto for being stupid enough to just jump off like that, when Kane closed her mouth with his hand and motioned her to keep quiet.

Naruto flipped so that his back was facing the ground and stretched out his hand in front of him. He quickly lowered his hand, so that the palm was facing down and just kept it there. Almost immediately, he started slowing down. When he was about five meters above them, he flipped back around and landed, in a crouched position, without a single sound.

“H-How?” Sasuke managed to stutter out.

“You’ve never seen me dive?” asked Naruto and thought a little. “Hmm, I guess you haven’t. Well, you ever hear of the ‘Wind Pillow’ effect?” asked Naruto.

“We’ll talk on the way,” Kane motioned them to follow. “Whisper, that is.”

Naruto nodded and turned back to Sasuke, “You use chakra to generate wind, much like you would for a wind jutsu,” Naruto continued in hushed tones. “Except that you make this wind hit you from the back.”

“Thus propelling you upwards,” finished Sakura.

Naruto nodded, “Exactly.”

“How come…” Sasuke meant to ask, but was cut off by Naruto.

“How come they don’t teach this in Konoha?” he asked. Sasuke nodded. “Well, you see most hidden villages are very sheltered when it comes to techniques or elements not commonly used in that village. The Snow branches out more, simply because of necessity.”

“A necessity for what?” Sasuke eyed him suspiciously.

“No time for stories now,” interrupted Kane. “We’re going to make a circle around the city and then… something a little more interesting. Same rules apply: no footprints and make as little noise as possible.”

Kane ran off to the north and then slowly started arching to the northwest and then down south, all in all making a circular pattern around the entire city. Kane also constantly increased his speed, until they were nothing but a blur to most people. Team seven for the most part did not have any trouble keeping up; they had had a lot of training during the last several years.

Kane watched Sasuke and Sakura during the run, evaluating their movements, thus measuring their level and worth. Worth, now that was interesting term to use for these two people that were traveling with Naruto. After all, it wasn’t like Kane was actually training shinobi that would later benefit his country. Even if he had spent the last few weeks in their presence that didn’t mean that they were anything more than acquaintances.

No, Kane shook his head, he couldn’t just think of them as strangers. If he were to do that, then he wouldn’t be able to teach them anything. You must always apply feelings when training someone; otherwise they will never learn anything. That was the problem with Naruto’s first teacher, Kakashi, from what Naruto told him that guy just gave out orders and only told Naruto what he did wrong.

Kane sighed as he noticed Sasuke and Sakura leaving a very vague, but at the same time distinctive trail in the snow. ‘To think I’ll have to go so far back into basics as to teach light-footedness,’ he thought glumly. ‘Naruto is leaps and bounds ahead of them in this area, so what the hell will I teach him?’

The old Snow-nin turned slightly, navigating the group back towards the house. This didn’t go unnoticed by Naruto, who turned a questioning gaze onto Kane, but only received a hard look in return. The blond shinobi shrugged and let his old teacher guide them back home.

Kane didn’t speak until they were on roof of his apartment building. “You have endurance and speed, but you lack light-footedness,” explained the old man.

“Light-footedness?” wondered Sakura. “What is that?”

“That is the ability to tread soft ground, like snow for instance, and not leave any sort of marks,” explicated Naruto. “I noticed it too, when I fell to the back of the group. While the tracks you leave are vague, they are tracks nonetheless, and an experienced tracker will have to problem following them.”

Sakura lowered her head; she had never been very good at stealth. Sasuke on the hand was shocked and somewhat angry; he always considered stealth one of his best areas and to be told straight out by both Naruto and this mysterious friend of his that he was second rate, it was not something he would take lightly.

“Don’t get angry Sasuke,” calmly said Naruto. “Just improve in the area you’re lacking in and don’t be arrogant about it. You know which path that leads to.” Sasuke nodded and took a deep breath to calm down.

“All right, I’ll be teaching Uchiha-san and Haruno-san the light-footed stealth techniques,” announced Kane.

“What will I be doing?” asked Naruto.

“I don’t know,” honestly answered the Snow-nin. “I’ll need time to figure out what to teach you. For now, practice the more advanced techniques I taught you.” Naruto nodded and started going through several advanced stealth techniques.

Training lasted until the sun rose in the east and the streets below were buzzing with busy, everyday city life. Sasuke and Sakura went to rest in their room, after Kane managed to completely exhaust the two Leaf-nin. Naruto was about to go inside too when Kane pulled him aside and backed him against the wall.

“What the hell were you doing?” he asked in a low dangerous tone.

“What do you mean?” responded Naruto in confusion.

“The techniques you did were no better than that of a mid-ranked chuunin,” said Kane. Naruto frowned; he knew what Kane was going to say next and it wasn’t something he had wanted to discuss. “Why weren’t you using the cloaking techniques?” demanded the older man. Naruto remained quiet. He couldn’t find an excuse, anything he said would easily be thrown back in his face as absolute stupidity.

“What are you afraid of?” asked Kane. Naruto knew he could have used the cloaking techniques a long time ago, he should have! What was he afraid of? That his teammates would find out about them, that they would discover their origin? But they knew about his darkness, and they didn’t care, so what was it really that kept Naruto back?

“Are you afraid of the darkness that the seal still holds even with It gone?” asked Kane, and continued when Naruto shook his head. “Then what’s holding you back?” he demanded. Kane studied Naruto intently before grumbling, “Embarrassment is it?” he asked. “You didn’t use the abilities in the beginning and now you’re, what, afraid that they’ll look down on you because you didn’t use them back then and allowed them to get hurt, is that it?”

Naruto roughly pushed away his mentor and hissed out, “Shut up!” before jumping onto the edge of the roof.

“You know I’m right,” said Kane in a level voice.

He heard Naruto mumble an, “I know,” before the blond dove off the roof and disappeared into the crowd.

‘Naruto, you’re still the same lost little kid that you were back when we first met.’ He slowly made his way back into the house and started cooking breakfast.

“Um, Kane-san?” slowly asked Sakura. “Where is Naruto?”

“He went out for a walk,” was the level reply. “Breakfast will be ready soon, I suggest you not fall asleep for it will not be made again.”

Sakura nodded, “But what about Naruto, won't he come back for breakfast?”

“No, the kid will find his own food. This is not his first time here, so I’m not worried.”

Sakura nodded again and went back to her and Sasuke’s room. “Kane-san says that Naruto went out for a walk, and that he won't be coming back for breakfast.”

Sasuke was shocked momentarily before regaining composure. Even if it had been two years since Naruto had come back changed, his ‘new’ personality was such a contrast to his ‘old’ one. However, the Uchiha genius often wondered whether there was an old and a new, or if the old was simply a mask.

))))) Flashback (((((

It had been four years since Naruto’s mysterious disappearance after an S-Ranked mission in the eastern mountains next to the Earth Country. Only one person, of their four-man, ANBU team came back to Konoha to tell the tale. Naruto had stayed back to help a fallen comrade, ordering the survivor to go on. Not two minutes later the entire mansion blew apart. The mansion in which the mission took place was on peak surrounded on most sides by cliffs, so everyone thought Naruto and the rest of the ANBU team to be dead.

Then one day, when Sasuke was visiting the monument of the fallen heroes, he saw a man with wild blond hair dressed in all black standing beside the monument and laughing. The Uchiha frowned deeply and instantly attacked the man for disrespecting the dead. Surprisingly all of Sasuke’s attacks were blocked and he was roughly thrown back by a harsh knee to the stomach, which was instantly followed up by spin-kick to the face.

“You’ve gotten slower, Sasuke,” said the blond man. “And you still let your rage blind you; tsk tsk tsk. I thought I taught you that an enraged Sharingan spins slower, have you forgotten already?”

‘My rage blind me?’ thought Sasuke. Suddenly a shiver ran down his spine as he recognized the voice and recognized the advice of his supposedly long-dead friend. “Naruto?” he asked uncertainly.

The man turned and lifted up his black hat, so that the Uchiha could see his brilliant cerulean eyes, and then proceeded to lower his facemask to show the whisker marks on his cheeks. “In the flesh!” he said loudly, before covering himself up once more.

“Naruto, but why? How?” asked Sasuke quickly.

Naruto turned away again to face the monument, “Were they so eager to declare their demon dead that they didn’t even search the surrounding areas for his corpse?” he asked sadly.

“There had been a search,” replied Sasuke. “It had to be discrete because of the newly carried out mission, but it was conducted. The only thing they found was your forehead protector, otherwise the report said that there was no body or anything else pertaining to your person found in the surrounding areas.”

“So I did float for longer than I thought,” mumbled Naruto to himself. “Fine, whatever! I’m here now!” he said cheerfully.

For the first time in years Sasuke was happy. His best and oldest friend had just come back from the dead, so now, he thought, everything would go back to the happier times. However, as the months dragged on everyone noticed that this Naruto was not the same hyperactive loud blond that had left them four years ago. He was now calm and relaxed but at the same time ever watchful of his surroundings, his mind was sharp and could make lightning fast decisions, which had saved his teammates on more than a dozen missions, and most of all he seemed to carry about him a dark authoritative presence.

He had given them a vague story for had happened to him in the last four years, but nothing specific. However, no one really paid attention since they were all happy that Naruto was finally back. When Naruto started getting more and more withdrawn from them, they finally went back to his version of the last four years and re-evaluated everything he had told them. Maps were rolled out and the geniuses started digging into the details of the story.

That’s when they realized that Naruto had not given details, and they could not pin points, on a map, where Naruto had stayed and recovered. When all the facts were added together the ends didn’t meet and anything Naruto may have told them about his last four years was proven false. They went then to Naruto, pushing the facts in his face and demanding the truth, but only received cold laughter in return.

“So you finally figured it out?” he asked. “Only took you five and half months.”

“Naruto, what are you hiding?” demanded Ino in a harsh tone.

“Don’t use that tone with me, girl!” snapped Naruto. “You can't handle the truth. Just like you couldn’t handle that the Kyuubi was sealed inside of me.”

Shikamaru instantly caught on to Naruto’s innuendo. “So this has something to do with the demon fox,” he reasoned.

“Very perceptive Nara-san, as usual, but I’m afraid I cannot chat right now because I have to report to Godaime-sama.” Naruto vanished with that.

He was not seen for the next two days, and when his friends went to find out what happened to him, Tsunade simply told them that she had given Naruto a Sennin status allowing him to come and go from the village as he pleased.

“There was a specific reason Naruto had to leave the village?” asked Shikamaru.

“Yes,” the Godaime did not want to lie to Naruto’s friends, but also did not want to worry them with the truth. “He left to protect this village.”

“Protect it? From who?” demanded Sasuke. Tsunade sent him a knowing look and the Uchiha scowled. ‘From the Akatsuki and hence Itachi.’ Sasuke turned and stormed out of the office. He was going to follow Naruto this time, and help him in his fight no matter what the Hokage hinted. ‘I will not fail you again.’

))))) End Flashback (((((

‘And that is how we finally ended up here,’ thought Sasuke. ‘Naruto left to protect Konoha from a large scale Akatsuki invasion, since that organization only wants him,’ he sighed and lay back on the bed. “To think that the Akatsuki still chase after him even after he has absorbed the Kyuubi.”

“But they don’t know that,” said Sakura. “And it’s not like they give us enough time to stop and explain ourselves.” Sasuke chuckled, softly at first them burst out into full-blown laughter. “What’s so funny?” inquired the female.

“Something Naruto once said to me,” answered Sasuke in between laughs. “He said, ‘wouldn’t it be just quaint to sit down with the Akatsuki, drink tea and eat cake. Then, after that we could calmly discuss the whole Kyuubi business and make strategic business decisions.’ I frowned at the time, even though I knew he was joking.”

“He was a lot more optimistic back then,” she said sadly. Sasuke nodded in agreement. Before they could continue their trip down memory lane, Kane knocked announcing breakfast to be ready.

))))) With Naruto (((((

‘Damn! I hate and love him for that,’ thought Naruto. ‘Being able to see through any kind of mask I put up and to be able to tell exactly what I need to change.’

Naruto was walking through the nearby park towards the metro station. He wasn’t in a really big hurry and often stopped to check out some trinkets in the stands on side of the road. ‘It’s a wonder such little trivial and useless things actually sell.’ He walked into the metro, paid for his ticket and descended down the long escalator to the train platform. ‘Ah… where to go?’ he wondered as he got on the southbound train. ‘I guess I’ll hang around downtown for a while,’ thought Naruto already planning the route.

Naruto got out close to the Red Square and went for a walk on the grounds. He grabbed a quick breakfast-lunch at a fast food place, before continuing on. ‘This place had changed quite a bit from the time I was here last,’ thought Naruto as he walked through the newly built mall. ‘And to think I was here only three years ago. However, back then I had much more important things to take care of. Hanging out in downtown was not in the daily routine.’

Naruto closed his eyes and shook his head. Those times were filled with bad memories, which he didn’t need to remember. The blond looked down at his watch and nodded, ‘Better be getting home.’ He, of course, took a large detour walking through several historical attractions before returning home.

It was past nightfall when he finally rang the doorbell to Kane’s apartment. The said man opened the door and motioned his to walk in. “You want dinner, we have just started eating?”

“I’ll eat a little, but really I ate about an hour ago,” responded Naruto in a calm tone.

“Understandable,” nodded Kane. “You really took your sweet time.”

“I haven't to this city in ten years,” reasoned Naruto. “That time three years ago doesn’t count since we were much more focused on the Kyuubi issue.”

They walked in to the kitchen and sat down at the table.

“Hey Naruto, where the hell did you go?” asked Sasuke.

“Like I said, for a walk,” replied Naruto.

“A twelve hour walk?”

“Well, this place has changed quite a bit in ten years.”

“So, it during your training time with Jiraiya that you met Kane-san?” asked Sakura.

“Yes, Jiraiya and I was old friends,” answered Kane. “He dropped Naruto off for some training with me when the kid was fifteen. Naruto stayed here for a little over a year.”

“And you haven't seen each since?” inquired Sasuke.

Naruto and Kane had already talked about this earlier so they both nodded in agreement. “It was quite a shock to have Naruto call me and say that he was in town.”

Sakura suddenly noticed that Naruto wasn’t eating much, “Naruto, are you sick?”

“Huh?” wondered Naruto. “Oh, I ate about an hour ago.”

Sakura nodded in understand. “Where did you go?” she asked.

“Just around the downtown, they built a lot of stuff there. Then I took a historically scenic route back here,” he caught the look Kane was giving him. “Yes, I did walk in the opposite direction of home on this detour.”

“Naruto, you do know that we have another early training session tomorrow again?” asked Sasuke.

“Actually, Naruto is just going to go on the run,” corrected Kane. “I need a lot more space to continue Naruto’s training, so he’ll just be doing basic training for now until it gets warmer and we can move out to my summer house.” Sakura scowled and mumbled something like unfair before returning to her food.

For the next month things were in a training monotone. Sasuke and Sakura would train with Kane, while Naruto did his training exercises and then either went back inside the apartment to meditate or ran off to someplace in the city. In the middle of all the training, Naruto and Kane gave Sasuke and Sakura a tour of the city.

It was the first week of April when they moved out to Kane’s summerhouse. The summerhouse was located about half an hour north of the city, in one of the small surrounding cities, and only several miles from the international airport. They came up to it by bus as far as the highway would go and then walked the rest of the way; about a mile.

It turned out to be two houses; one was two-story and significantly larger than the other single-story house. The two-story house contained all of the bedrooms; four on the first floor. The top floor was completely empty, with the exception of some tools and pieces of wood. The second house had the kitchen, with a small kitchen table and a couch off to the side. The property, as Kane told them, was really intended to growing food. Apple trees lined the outside of the property, closer to the houses stood several greenhouses in which Kane said he would be growing the tomatoes and some other vegetables, there were several large bushes on which fruit would grow and ripen by the middle of summer, the rest of the property was just soil into which Kane would plant more vegetables.

Kane bade them to pick a room in the larger house and to unpack everything they had because they would be here for a while. Since they had arrived in the late afternoon, by the time they had unpacked the sun had set and Kane invited to eat a light dinner and drink tea.

“We’ll start on the planting tomorrow,” said Kane. “That should take us two to three days.”

“Planting?” wondered Sasuke.

“Yes, planting the food we are later going to be eating,” explained Kane.

Naruto bent over to Sasuke and whispered, “We are his free manual labor.” Sasuke scowled.

“Sasuke, please disregard what that blond radical is saying,” smirked the older man. “This is special planting, you will learn useful skills for later in life.”

“Later in the life of a farmer,” whispered Naruto before scooting away, and snickering softly into his tea.

“We’ll take turns cooking each day,” said Kane. “There will be no trading of cooking assignments. Well, I should clarify, if you’re very badly injured then you will be excused from it, or if the person who’s duty it is to cook the next day can win three times in a row in a card game then he will win his way out of a day of cooking.”

“A card game?” asked Sakura. “Which card game?”

“It’s a traditional Russian card game, I’ll teach you how to play,” said Kane.

“Who is it that does the cooking then, if the person wins three times in a row?” inquired Sasuke.

“The order is simply moved up,” replied Kane.

“What is the order?” asked Sakura.

“Me, Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura,” said Kane.

“So you are going tomorrow, Kane-san,” stated Sasuke.

“Not at all,” corrected Kane. “Naruto is going tomorrow, since I cooked dinner today.”

Sasuke and Sakura looked over at Naruto expecting him to object, but were very surprised when he just kept quiet and continued sipping his tea. When he noticed their gaze on him he explained. “There is no use arguing, I tried ten years ago and failed, so it is a waste of energy right now.” It was quiet once again until Naruto finished his tea and took his leave to sleep.

“He’s so much more docile nowadays,” commented Sakura.

“Yea,” agreed the Uchiha. “I always expect him to start talking uncontrollably and jumping around in a hyper-active craze.”

“He’s simply matured,” said Kane. “He’s let go of some of his childhood ambitions and grown up into a calm young man.”

“I think we missed his growing up period,” sadly said Sakura. “He disappeared at twenty while on an S-Class mission and didn’t reappear for three years. When he felt he was only starting to calm down, and he came back as almost the complete opposite of his childhood self.”

“Naruto is the type that grows up to be the opposite of what he was in childhood,” explained Kane. “Though I think there are other contributing factors.” The older man got up and left at that point, leaving Sasuke and Sakura alone.

“I think one of our goals this summer should be to figure out exactly what happened to Naruto during those three missing years,” said Sasuke and motioned for Sakura to follow him back to their bedroom.

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A/N: When will I update you ask? Who the hell knows...

There's plans of a joint fic btwn me and a friend of mine... that'll be done along side of BW, so basically if neither of them go, then i'll update this...
In case you ppl didn't notice, I'm increadibly lazy... and this isn't much of an author's note either...