Chapter 1: Deep rivers are silent

That day started out pretty normal. First, a young black-haired shinobi came trudging up to the field with his hands inside his pockets, the first rays of sunlight too weak to distinctly cast his shadow. Around fifteen minutes or so later, a girl around his age with long pink hair shyly joined him, her burning cheeks sharply contrasting to the cold morning. And still a few minutes more after that, the shortest one of their group came, a boy with a mop of blonde hair tousled from sleep. As for the last and oldest member...well, he wouldn't be there until a few hours or so, lest a miracle happened that day.

They started their wait sitting on the ground and facing away from each other. Once in a while the blonde one would break the comfortable silence with an insult aimed at his black-haired companion, who would then either throw one back or just ignore him. The girl had somehow gotten the idea that it was her duty or something of the like to retort for him whenever the latter happened, and while the initiator of it all would snap back at the other boy to start a bickering fight that would last a few minutes, he would not do that to her. Never to her, the one he liked but only had eyes for his best friend/rival.

An hour passed, and then another. The sun had already risen past the top of the tall trees surrounding them. Suddenly, the black-haired one stood up. A silent conversation seemed to have underwent as the girl immediately moved off to the side where she would not get in the way while the other boy took out a kunai from his leg holster with a smirk.

"I'll beat you up real bad today, Uchiha."

"Don't say it, do it, dobe."

The sharp sound of metals clashing together rang in the air as their weapons met, and then the dull sound of impact from an arm blocking a kick. They leaped back from each other and then jumped forward again. The blonde-haired boy aimed for the other's face but the black-haired boy saw this and leaned backward slightly, and then let go of his kunai and grabbed the other's wrist. Feeling the hold tighten until it became painful, the blonde let out a soft yelp and released his weapon as well. But he wasn't about to lose without doing anything. Without exactly thinking it over, he reached down with his other hand and literally pulled the other's leg from beneath him. The result was he succeeded in making the other loose his balance however, he was pulled after the boy when he fell backwards.

"Ugh!" He wasn't sure whether it was Sasuke or him who had grunted in pain when his back fell on the other's chest and then their heads crashed against each other. The pain from the collision didn't leave though, instantly turning into a tremendous headache.

"Sasuke-kun!" an alarmed shout came from somewhere on their left as he tried to sat up, or at least to roll off the other. The pink-haired girl saved him the trouble though by roughly pulling him to his feet. Still a bit dazed, he fell down heavily on the ground beside them when she released him to fuss over her crush. Sasuke remained lying down on the ground, but he wasn't moaning in sheer agony like he was. Oh, so it had been him earlier.

"I'm fine, Sakura," he vaguely heard Sasuke mumble as the guy slowly sat up. His headache lessened some but a dull painful throbbing remained at the back of his head. He thought it wasn't fair that Sasuke looked as if nothing had happened while he messaged his nape with one hand. Wasn't he supposed to be the one with a head as hard as rock..?

Sakura breathed a sigh of relief and then rounded in on him. "Naruto! How dare you make Sasuke-kun fall like that?! And then fall on top of him?! He could have broken his back, or he could have had a concussion! Or he could have--"

He doesn't even have dirt on his clothes, he wanted to answer but wisely kept his mouth shut. Sakura's voice was making his headache bad again but he knew a bop on his head would be worse. Luckily, Kakashi came then, effectively cutting her off with a "Yo!'

"You're late!" Sakura and Naruto responded automatically, both jumping to their feet and forgetting whatever it was they had been saying or thinking.

"Anou...you see...my tie got lost at the cleaners and I had to wait for them to find it," Kakashi fibbed, giving them another of his outrageous if not outlandish reasons.

"Liar!" Naruto shouted the usual.

"You don't wear a tie!" Sakura added.

"Heh." Kakashi started to feel his pockets, looking as if he was searching for something. Probably his perverted book. "Hey, what's wrong with Sasuke?" he asked, eyes falling on the black-haired genin still sitting on the ground.

"I'm fine," Sasuke repeated from earlier, hastily standing up and brushing imaginary dust from his shorts. Placing his hands into his pockets, he looked back at the three of them with his cool obsidian gaze.

"Naruto made him fall and then fell on top of him," Sakura answered with a glare shot at the blonde who cowered at the look.

"It wasn't my fault, Sakura-chan!" Naruto whined.

"Ah, I see. Well, how would you like to get even Sakura?"

"What?" two voices reacted in unison, one male and the other female. Sasuke looked up at him warily.

"We don't have any mission this afternoon. Fight with him and consider it your training," Kakashi hummed, resuming his task of hunting inside his pockets. "Ah, here it is." He beamed, pulling out Come Come Paradise and flipping it open.

"Sensei, I'm fine." Sasuke was quick to protest, beating even Naruto, who wouldn't even dream of raising a hand against Sakura, to it. "No need to coddle me. Why can't I fight against Naruto?"

"Because you just did and do you think Sakura is ready to go up against you?" he answered without even looking up from his book.

Sakura's eyes lit up upon hearing this. If she beat Naruto, then it meant she could go par on par with Sasuke, right? Up until now, he had only fought against Naruto while she stayed in the sidelines, taking notes or cheering them on. But if she won...she could replace him as Sasuke's sparring partner! Not that she wanted to fight him, of course, but she would be able to spend more time with him and maybe even earn his respect. It was an opportunity too good to let pass!

'Hell yeah!' Inner Sakura cheered her on. 'We'll beat Naruto up to a pulp and show 'em!'

"Okay, I'll do it! Naruto, get ready!"

"Uh...Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked with a sweatdrop at the girl's enthusiam. But he really didn't want to fight--

"Begin," Kakashi said lazily.

!-oOo-!

That his features showed no emotion whatsoever attested to the fact that he had no intention at all of admitting that this fight did amuse him. It wasn't that both participants showed extreme skill-- quite the contrary really-- but they were definitely...well, had he allowed himself a sense of humor, he would have called it funny. The way the normally lady-like girl attacked so viciously the blonde who kept on trying to talk her out of it was simply hilarious. He wanted to see the outcome of this match...which shouldn't be for awhile. The girl, though persistent, was weak and wouldn't be able to defeat the other for another dozen hits successfully landed or so, and the boy, who he knew could easily incapacitate the girl but wouldn't, did nothing but dodge as well as he could with an unusual show of grace.

He jumped to the branch of another tree as the spot of pink below drove the blonde one farther from where they had begun. Their sensei remained where he was, standing below one of the trees back in the field and reading his perverted book, and didn't seem to realize that the fight had been moving to different areas of the forest for about six minutes now. Six minutes...a shinobi fight shouldn't last that long, he thought, now once more a bit restless and annoyed that he wasn't getting any training done.

"Sakura-chan, please, stop it!" a voice below whined yet again as another kunai barely missed its target. The blonde's arm came up to counter-attack on reflex, but stopped an inch short of the Sakura's face.

His sensitive ears picked up on the almost non-existent sound of a river somewhere to the side and below. He remembered a part of the forest ended in a cliff. It would have been the perfect launch-off for a swim except the waters below ran too deep...and too fast. If you didn't drown, you would be carried a kilometer downstream within five minutes. They were heading there, weren't they? Naruto was being forced to back into that area where the place he could run to would be limited. By design or coincidence he wasn't at all sure but he was betting on it to be the former. Sakura was top of class after all, book-wise that is.

He didn't want to interfere, knowing this was her strategy. Or what she thought was strategy. Because in truth it wasn't. She wasn't only placing Naruto at a disadvantage, but also herself. Wait. Scratch disadvantage. She had placed their lives on the line.

And just as these things occurred to Sasuke, when a particularly large tree trunk blocked his view of the two genins fighting, an alarmed voice reached his ears, a startled shout, and then a scream.

!-end of prologue-!

Disclaimers: Unfortunately, I don't own Naruto.

Author's notes:

1. Here I am starting another Naruto fic. With luck, I may actually be able to update regularly and finish this.

2. Now I've found a new character to have a problem with in keeping IC-- Kakashi! Now I'm deliberating whether or not to include him in the next chapters. What do you guys think?

3. In the case that I have to exclude Kakashi (see no. 2), I'll have to have one of the genin teams enter the picture. Ino Team for a Shikamaru/Ino pairing or Kiba Team for a Naruto/Hinata pairing? Thoughts, anyone?

4. Reviews please! CCs are welcome and even some flames, maybe.