Hence why Orochi was following her. If things went to hell he could go into a fight with the beasts.
He lowered his hands. "So..." He ventured. "What's your other sensei like?" He fished for conversation even as he answered his own question.
Big, scary, uses a huge sword, sharp teeth, no eyebrows gray skin, eats children and small animals.'
"Zabuza-sensei is great?" She said quickly. "He's one of Kirigakure's seven swordsmen, Kisame-sensei is another. But Zabuza-sensei is the greatest user of the silent killing techniques of the Sho-daime Mizukage."
Will be scaring off every potential boyfriend in the future, probably by growling angrily and glaring maliciously or just plain old cutting off an arm or two.
He smiled at his inner jokes.
"What can you tell me about Orochimaru-dono?"
"He poisoned us...and he bites." The blond deadpanned.
She raised an eyebrow. "Bites?"
Why is it that the 'poisoned us' part is the one that takes a back seat here?
He still nodded though remembering the forest of death. The First forest of death. "Oh yeah. You want an unnecessarily creepy fight. He's the one to go see. Bites, peeling skin, sword out of stomach, licking." He shuddered at the last one.
Haku's eyebrow rose. This was certainly not what she had been picturing for the legendary Death Dealer. "You're making this up." She accused.
Naruto was about to open his mouth when he realized that, he might have just...okay he did trip over his own blatant stupid here and just spouted a whole bunch of things about a guy that he hadn't seen yet.
He grinned. "Had you going though right?" Then he frowned. "Seriously though. He did poison us!"
She nodded. "Zabuza and Kisame sensei have their eccentricities but what you were saying was just absurd."
Again...why do you not seem to give a rats ass on this poisoning thing?
He decided to move the subject away from the snake. "So you and Kimimoko are bloodline users?"
"Kimimaro."
"Right, that guy." Why could he never remember the name? He was normally good with names.
"We are." She said. "He's of the Kaguya can, they can manipulate their bones. Which I'm sure you gathered since Kisame-sensei keeps calling him bone boy. So what about you? What are your skills to graduate so early?"
"I'm just awesome!" Naruto laughed, catching the unsubtle shift in conversation. He wanted Haku and him to be friends but he wasn't about to brag.
Especially when he had very little to brag about.
There were a lot of things he could do. But there were more things he couldn't.
The Rasengan, his shadow clones the summoning technique, his sage mode. These were all staples of his fighting style that he simply couldn't do yet because he couldn't explain them yet.
He didn't have access to the shadow-clone technique, he didn't know Jiraiya and the Rasengan had never been taught to him, he didn't know the summoning technique let alone be able to just summon toads.
He could just pull all of this "out of his ass" but there was only so very much people would buy from "my false memories told me to do it" before they called him out on his bullshit.
His graduation was less about how exceptional his power was and more on how quickly he "learned" things.
Sure his experience in the war gave him more options and skills per-se but he was still very limited.
In comparison to Haku, who despite being younger no doubt already knew and had mastered a great deal of her bloodline, along with Kimimaro, they might be younger than they'd been when he fought them the first time and thus, weaker, but they could very likely be stronger than him as it stood right now anyway. Gaara had supposedly had to bury the bone guy a mile deep. The only weapon he had that could match those two kekei-genkai was his wind element and that's if Haku didn't pump him full of Senbon before he could get too close.
Still...that would change. It was just the anxiousness of waiting for that change to come that was killing him.
He grinned, starting up some of his handseals again. This was enough of a break. "Hey Haku after the exam and we're done beating eachother up." He said after a moment. "Wanna be friends?"
She smiled at him, somewhat bemusedly at the innocence of his question and he suspected, that she suspected Ryoko's teasing of his supposed crush was in-fact more than just teasing.
But if he was gonna be stuck in this six year old body he was gonna use the one advantage it offered.
Cuteness.
She let out a soft laugh. "Sure we can Naruto-kun."
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