Chapter 160: CH 160
"Hello Naruto." The fan freed itself from Naruto's head, allowing the boy to turn around to catch sight of her. Temari now wore a black Suna hitae-ate on her head, a black battle dress, black gloves, and a red sash around her waist. Her ever-present iron fan was strapped to her back as always, "You don't know how to keep in contact with people?"
Naruto sighed, "I could have told you where I had been for a lot of the last two years, but I would have had to kill you after sending the letter."
Temari placed her hands on her hips, "Anything to say in your defense?" "Yes actually." Naruto said with full confidence, "Blame her." He said pointing at Tsunade, "You should know being a rookie chunin sucks. Well try that being cranked up to twelve with the rate she had me working at. In the last two years, 14 months of it have been spent working long missions. Add that on to the banes of my existence; gate guarding duty and routine border patrol, and my ass has been run ragged." He looked at Tsunade, "Why the hell did you make me work so much anyway Tsunade-baachan? I know for a fact that Shikamaru didn't work one third of the schedule I kept."
Tsunade shrugged, "When I had a joint meeting with the upper ranked ninja a few months after my inauguration to go over our mission influx I talked about how I needed someone to fall on the explosive note of picking up a lot of the slack. Gai, Kakashi, Anko, Genma, and you raised your hands to volunteer."
"Oh..." He said as he thought back to it, "I honestly was not paying attention to a single word you said in that meeting, it was so boring. I just raised my hand at the end because I saw other people doing it. You never elaborated on what it was I had raised hand for, and nobody said anything about it after that so I thought it was totally inconsequential, especially when nothing happened after that."
Tsunade and Shizune sweatdropped, "And that's why we haven't promoted you yet." They said in unison.
Naruto stood up abruptly, "Oh come on! It was staff meeting! Not a war meeting, not a mission briefing, but a staff meeting! Nothing important is ever said at staff meetings, especially to the chunin in attendance! We're too high ranked to avoid them, and too low ranked to get anything out of them."
Temari gave Naruto a look that had an air of indifference, but listening to her tone one could tell that she was somewhat perturbed, "Well the last time I was in Konoha I found something quite interesting. How long have you had a girl living in your house with you?"
This one was an easy bullet to dodge for Naruto, "It depends on when you were there. She's been there for almost six months, but I haven't been there in six months, so technically she only lived with me for about a week, then I left, then I lived with her another week."