Haku blinked, glancing around the room of a two-story house on the outskirts of the biggest village in Nami. The Konoha ninja's client led them to it, introduced them to his mild-mannered daughter and her ill-tempered son. They were nice people, as far as Haku could tell.

She turned her eyes to the ninja. The three Genin were in one corner of the room. The pale one was scribbling on a piece of paper, looking up every now and then to mutter something. The pink-haired female one was just sort of… well, Zabuza-sama described it as 'swooning' once, although Haku could never figure out what that actually meant. The pink Genin would occasionally interrupt the swooning thing to glare at the pale Genin and throw some sort of insult at him. Well, Haku presumed it was an insult; she couldn't really make anything out. The last Genin, another pale boy, but slightly less so than the other one, was… well, he was just kind of sitting there and doing his best to ignore everything. Although he would occasionally glance at the adults and the floating guy.

Speaking of them, the adults were sitting at the table. Well, Hatake and Zabuza-sama were, along with their hosts. Zabuza-sama was talking about something, waving his hands in the air animatedly, while Hatake just seemed to ignore him and read some little orange book. At one point he glanced up from it and muttered something, sending Zabuza-sama to the floor in a rather comical fashion, although Haku would never admit that out loud.

The final adults were sitting on the couch in the living room. No, that wasn't exactly correct. If Haku had managed to understand the situation completely, the pink floating man was a teen, roughly around her age, and the woman sitting there holding his hand was an adult. They were a special team, one Genin and one Jōnin Sensei. They were also together. Haku would've thought Konoha had some rules about that, but who was she to judge. They were sitting on the couch, the woman trying to cuddle her Genin who just floated next to her with a flat expression on his face. It was almost like she was the love-struck teenager and he the older object of her affection.

So Haku was sitting there, watching the various ninja act absolutely nothing like what would come to mind with words like 'soldiers' and 'professional assassins'. "Excuse me, Haku-san, was it?" The daughter of the client, a black-haired woman named Tsunami, walked up to her with a cup in her hands. "Would you like some tea?"

"Sure." Haku took the cup, taking a small sip. "Thank you Tsunami-san." She returned to watching the others, Tsunami sitting in a chair next to her with her own cup.

"Haku-san, may I ask you a question?"

"Hm?"

"Are you… well, are you sure these people are ninja?" Haku blinked, tilting her head in thought.

"No." Haku answered simply. "But, then again, neither am I." She gave a small smile to the woman. "Don't worry Tsunami-san. You and your family will be fine. I promise."

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The next day Kakashi gathered them all outside, at the edge of the forest.

"Alright my Genin." He stood in front of the three. "Since you've gotten your cute little asses handed to you by Zabuza, we'll be doing some training today. Everybody up for it?"

"We never faced them." The Uchiha grumbled. "That one stopped the fight before it could even happen." He shot a glare at Naruto, who was floating off to the side and completely ignoring him. "You have no way of knowing that's how things would happen."

"Alright, you'd like me to amend my statement then?" Sasuke nodded. "Fine, I don't mind. Since you would've gotten your cute little asses handed to you if you had faced Zabuza, we're going to be doing some training. Better?" Sasuke glared at him. "Good. Face the trees now; you're going to be climbing them."

"Um, Sensei?" Sakura raised her hand.

"You're not in the classroom anymore little girl." Tsume commented. "Just ask what you wanna ask."

"R-right." She blushed in embarrassment, lowering the hand back down. "We already know how to climb trees Sensei."

"Ah, do you now? Without your hands, you mean?"

"Without my…."

"Watch." Kakashi casually walked over to the tree and then kept on casually walking up the tree, not braking his stride. The three Genin looked at him with wide eyes.

"It's almost like they didn't even know it was possible." Zabuza commented.

::They didn't.::

"Wait, how do you know?" Naruto just gave him a flat stare. "Right." Zabuza looked back over to the Genin. Sasuke was taking a running start with a determined expression on his face, clutching a kunai in his right hand. He'd managed all of two steps up the tree before the bark shattered under his foot and sent him tumbling down. The other male Genin, Sai, found his foot sliding down after the fourth step, making his chin impact the tree rather forcefully. "Are you sure these guys are ninja?"

::No.::

"Hey, this isn't so hard." Sakura's voice sounded from above them. She'd managed to make it to the top of the tree in record time and was now standing upside-down on one of the top branches.

"Congratulations Sakura." Kakashi sent her an eye-smile. "So much for the valued Uchiha bloodline, eh?" Sasuke sent him a glare, and then one at Sakura, making her recoil. The momentary lapse in concentration made her break the control she had on her chakra and slip off the tree, falling down to the ground.

Kakashi readied to move but was cut off by a blur. Haku set off quickly, jumping against one of the trees and grabbing Sakura in midair, doing a little spin and landing on the ground with the pink-haired girl in her arms. "Are you ok?" She looked at her.

"I…" Sakura glanced up and the calm, smiling face of her savior. "Yeah. Thanks Haku-san."

"Don't worry about it Sakura-san."

"I'm surprised." Tsume looked at her floating boyfriend as Kakashi sent Sakura off with Haku and the other two Genin back to climbing trees. "I thought you'd stop her."

::I would've.:: He looked at her, giving a smile that was largely unnoticeable to anyone but her.

"Ah, I see." She put her index finger to her nose. "Sneaky, sneaky. You wanna do that?" She motioned to the boys.

::No need, I'm fine without it.:: Naruto commented, earning a nod from Tsume.

"Then you're coming with me." He raised an eyebrow at her. "There should be some game in these woods, we might as well help out since we're here."

::Just one last thing before we go.:: A medium-sized log sailed out of the forest and hit Sasuke upside the head, sending him tumbling down the tree again. He stood up and glared at the offending object. ::Alright, now we can go.::

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I think I mentioned somewhere that the difficult thing is to start these old stories back up. It's why the oldest ones are the only one let. But hey, at least I managed to get to single digits.

I decided to give Sakura some development. It's starting already. I think I've said before I mellowed out a lot on her, and it's really noticeable. At least to me.