A Month in Your Shoes

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, however I might own nurato..hehe jk.

Note: Since Sasuke never left, Team 7 never needed a replacement so thus Sai won't be in the fanfic, sorry to disappoint Sai lovers.

"Speech"

'Thoughts'

'Inner'

VVVVV

Chapter 2

Sakura's POV

It had been a long restless night for Sakura. The exact kind she didn't want to have when she was going to train with a team known for its fitness the following morning. Seeing how Gai wasn't famous to be late unlike her sensei, Sakura set her alarm clock to go off earlier so she wouldn't be late and give off a bad impression. The last thing she needed was Gai going off on a rant about how she was picking up his 'eternal rival's' habits which she had swore she would never ever pick up. She abhorred the thought of being tardy and would rather die than to be caught with one those infamous books of his.

'Stop moping about our lack of beauty sleep and get your ass out of bed!'

'Hai hai...'

Rolling out of bed and falling onto the floor, Sakura untangled herself from the blankets and headed for the dresser. This was a routine of hers; to just fall out of bed instead of lying in the warm place where she liked to think of as heaven. It helped her get up. She was the type of person who if it wasn't done immediately, it would not get done. Pulling out her traditional red vest with the Haruno clan symbol on the back and her black shorts and medic skirt, Sakura got dressed and stomped down the stairs.

"Morning Sakura, you're up early." Her mother's voice resounded through the kitchen. Sometimes, she hated her mother for being such a morning person.

"Hmph." Sakura was able to mumble out as she made her way to the toaster. Oh how she loved the toaster.

"Training with your new team today?" her mother never understood how her daughter could be a ninja but not a morning person- it was like an oxymoron. After all, weren't shinobi supposed to be alert at all times?

"Hai." Sakura murmured, watching intently as both sides of her toast became nicely browned before taking it out to douse it in butter. With toast in her mouth and shoes on her feet, she made her way out the door without another word.

'Ah fresh air! Our version of coffee. Cha!'

The sudden drop of temperature in the air inhaled into her lungs always, without fail, shocked her awake in the early mornings. After hearing the refreshing cracks of her arms and shoulders as she stretched, Sakura headed off to where Tenten had informed her their training ground was located.

'Alright we can do this! All we have to do is get past their insane warm out and it's home free!' Inner Sakura cheered, meanwhile, in the background, a banner was hung up- 'Sasuke is number one!'

'Tenten is so going to lose.'both minds thought in unison and similar rants as such filled her head until she reached the training ground for team Gai.

Gai was there at the edge of the forest with Lee at his side engaging in a heated discussion about something, which Sakura presumed it was probably something about youthfulness.

What else did they talk about anyway?

Sakura was rather surprised they were already at the training ground since she was over half an hour early. Even Sasuke doesn't arrive this early, but then again, if he did, he would be a fool. Why would any of them want to wait longer than they already did?

'Heh. Tenten's going to be in for such a shock if her team is this early.'

Sakura shook her head in pity, already missing the lame excuse her sensei would come up with.

"Ah Sakura-san, it's great to see you so youthful in the morning!" Lee shouted as he stood with Gai-sensei near a couple of stumps.

"Good morning Lee-san, Gai-san." Sakura exchanged greetings and saw a slight frown crossed Gai's features.

"Nonsense Sakura! Call me Gai-sensei, any student of my rival is a student of mine," she cringed inwardly as he stood in his trademark stance with glaringly white teeth.

"Aa." Sakura pulled a leaf from Sasuke-kun's book. She couldn't decided whether or not she wanted to address him that.

However, she didn't have time to dwell on it as Neji walked into the clearing, holding himself high with confidence streaming out of his pores while each stride he took were full of grace that Sakura wished she possessed.

Gai and Lee smiled and called out to their team-mate in greeting, who politely nodded his head in their direction before looking at Sakura.

"Good morning Haruno-san," his voice was polite, the same cool politeness he had always used when he was brought into the hospital with 'minor' injuries.

Minor injuries my ass, 'Mr. I-refuse-to-go-to-the-hospital-unless-I-have-a-gaping-hole-in-my-side-and-am-about-to-pass-out!' I swear that man will die one of these days from infection and I'll be there, standing over him laughing.'

'I really don't need you right now, I'm trying to give a good impression and you just have to go and ruin it with your incessant talking.'

"Call me Sakura, we're team-mates for now," Sakura said, she was already driven mad at the hospital by 'Sakura-sama' this and 'Haruno-san' that. Honestly, she had always wanted respect but they were just a bit of an overkill for her.

"Alright, Sakura-san," the Hyuuga replied, still trying to show some respect, Sakura wondered how long it took for Tenten to make him finally drop the honorific.

"Yosh! Lets start than with a youthful warm-up of 30 laps of Konoha!" Gai's voice rang through the clearing, and Sakura felt like she was going to faint.

'30 laps?! WARM UP?!'

Schooling her face not to portray her evident fear, Sakura followed Lee and Neji as they set off, determinded to keep up.

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Tenten's POV

Tenten reached the bridge a good ten minutes early, knowing that her team would already be setting off by now. She had been utterly confused when Sakura had told her to take her time in arriving at the meeting spot, especially since the pink haired kunoich was a very punctual person. Walking up to the red bridge that Sakura had shown her the other day, she only saw a brooding Uchiha.

"Good morning." Tenten smiled, being her normal chirpy self in the morning.

"Hn," was her only reply.

"Good weather for training today ne?" never being the one to sit well with awkward silences, she attempted to make a small talk.

On the other hand, being one to enjoy silences, the stoic Uchiha paid no heed to her. Giving up, Tenten turned away fro him and started tapping her finger on the bridge's railing wondering were Naruto and Kakashi were.

Five minutes later...

Okay, so maybe Sakura had a little more to her argument than she had originally thought. Maybe Tenten should have taken her time.

Nine minutes later...

"Hey Teme, Tenten. Sorry, I slept in." Called the energetic blond as he rubbed the back of his head in an embarrassed gesture.

'Teme? Where is this team's respect?'

"Shut up dobe," came the typical monotone retort of the Uchiha.

'Dobe? What the hell do they call Sakura?'

"Um, Naruto? Where's your sensei?" Tenten asked, there was an obvious difference in Naruto and Sasuke's behaviour, maybe she won't mind the blond that much.

"Kakashi-sensei? Oh, he's not going to be here for at least a couple of hours." Tenten's eyebrow instantly shot up.

"Then why does he say meeting is at six?" Naruto crossed his arms and scrunched up his face in an attempt to look like he was explaining something that was obvious.

"Well Kakashi-sensei is chronically late, I think it's a disease he has, I like to call it CLS- short for the Chronically Late Syndrome." had Tenten not been so bewildered by the fact that a sensei being late by a couple hours she might have found that little joke about 'CLS' funny, especially when it looked like Naruto thought it was actually a disease, and appeared to be really serious about it.

"Then why don't you guys just show up later? You know, sleep in longer." Tenten found it odd that they didn't do just that.

"We could, but we would never be able to live it down if Kakashi-sensei actually beat us here. That would just be plain humiliating," even Sasuke seemed to nod at that explanation- the first thing he had done for over ten minutes.

"I see..." she still didn't quite understand but left it at that.

As another uncomfortable silence ensued, Tenten returned to her task of tapping on the railing while Naruto tried to provoke Sasuke into a fight with him. The ever stoic prodigy merely disregarded all his baiting, although, at one point, Tenten thought it seemed like he had him when Sasuke's eye twitched but evidently managed to restrain and ignore him.

How did Sakura do it?

No wonder she seemed to develop a weird habit of talking to herself. Tenten turned back to look at the two younger and temporary team-mates. This had to be the weirdest, and by far the most awkward team ever.

One hour later...

"Yo!" Kakashi started and Naruto immediately launched a shrill 'you're late!' while Tenten had a rather lost expression on her face as she watched Naruto yell at his sensei about being late.

"Sorry I'm late a cat crossed my path on the road of life..." Kakashi began to explain his tardiness but was interrupted by Naruto as he yelled 'liar' at him, and Tenten, who had been listening, just blinked.

'He didn't even finish his excuse and it already sounds far-fetched.'

She watched as Sasuke stood up from his leaning position against the bridge to finally take part in this bizarre conversation.

"What are we doing today Kakashi?" at once, all of their crazy everyday rituals ceased and Kakashi finally took on a guise that had at least a little bit of authority in it.

"We're going to see how well you work as a team," his eye closed and crinkled in what Tenten thought might have been smile. She caught Naruto and Sasuke sharing a glance and said in unison:

"The bell test."

tbc...

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Sorry for the delay. However I tried to get this chapter out a fast as I could, so the content may not be as good as I know I'm capable of. Also I just wanted to do the team interactions this chapter and not focus to much on the training. The actual pairing might take a bit to put together, since both girls obviously like their crushes and aren't just going to jump ship all of a sudden.

Thanks for all your reviews.

Congrats to those who got the riddle, lets try for a harder one shall we?

starfireyumiabi, scarletpyro91 (yes it has something to do with a photo), sand tessen, Cloudy Skies 77, EvilFaerie17 (You were right for the most part), Golden-Fire-Goddess, ArT-tHoU-StRaNgE,

Previous Riddle Answer: The woman was a photographer. She shot a picture of her husband, developed it, and hung it up to dry

Riddle: I pass before the sun, yet make no shadow. What am I?

Thanks to my editor YufVin-Valentine for doing an amazing job as always, she makes me sound so much smarter : )