Naruto : Chapter 27

"Who was your sensei, Kakashi sensei?" Sakura asked.

"Minato Namikaze, the Yondaime Hokage." Kakashi answered.

...

Sakura looked impressed. Her sensei had been trained by the Yondaime himself. Sasuke mentally was very satisfied with the way things had played out for him. Having a student of the legendary Yondaime as his sensei would surely make him strong enough to kill Itachi.

Naruto just smiled. The way Kakashi had worded his information concealed that there could be more seal masters, they were just not acknowledged.

He would wait until Jiraiya came back; he really wanted to talk with the famous sannin about his self-invented seals. But the Hokage had said it could take a month or more until he came back to the village.

"Okay, now that you have the food, you need to prepare it. One thing every ninja needs to know is how to disembowel animals and gut fish. I know you already know how to do it, Naruto. Have either of you done it before, Sasuke and Sakura?" Kakashi asked.

"No, but I have seen how my mother gut a fish once when I was six." Sasuke said, looking sad at the mention of his mother. He missed her.

Sakura just shook her head. This didn't look promising for her. And it would be disgusting to have to do it.

"Okay, Naruto, can I have the chicken for a demonstration?" Kakashi asked.

"Sure." Naruto said and handed the dead bird to Kakashi.

"First you need to do is to pluck the feathers. Especially if you can use them for something like putting them in pillows or for rare birds, sell them. If you don't pluck a bird first, the feathers tend to get bloody and washing out blood is not that easy. With more valuable feathers that can ruin them.

With chicken and goose feathers it's not that much of a problem. Next is bleeding out the bird. You cut off the head and hang them with the head down. That will take some time.

For animals with fur you need to skin them and then bleed them out." Kakashi demonstrated his skill in quickly plucking all feathers out of the chicken and cutting off the head. He let it hang on a tree-branch.

"For a fish things are different. What do you remember of the procedure, Sasuke?" Kakashi asked.

"Well, first the fish is cut open opposite the top. Then you take out all the offal and depending on how you want to prepare the fish you either let the hide on or cut it away. I have been told in the field you mostly put the fish on sticks, which you roast over an open fire." Sasuke said.

"That's the way it is done. Try it with one of your fishes." Kakashi said.

Sasuke took one fish and cut the underside open with a kunai. He took the offal out, looked through the cut if he had overlooked something and turned to Kakashi, who gave him an eye smile.

"Well done, Sasuke. Would you mind giving one fish to Sakura so she can also learn it? I think we will leave the rabbits and the other birds to Naruto as he knows how to do it and I guess he wants to keep their furs for selling." Both Sasuke and Naruto nodded.

Sakura looked at the fish, fighting with herself if she could really do this. But then her inner voice reminded her that Sasuke wouldn't be impressed with her if she couldn't even gut a fish. So she took her kunai and tried to imitate Sasuke's former performance.

She was disgusted when she felt the offal in her hand. A lady shouldn't be forced to do things like this. But everything to impress her Sasuke.

Meanwhile Naruto with skill coming from long practice skinned the rabbits plucked the pheasants and then let them bleed out. Once the blood was out, he took to disembowelling them. He collected the offal in a bowl and had a shadow clone carry them away.

"What are you going to do with the offal?" Sakura asked, too disgusted with having to gut the fish to be overly mean to Naruto.

"Burying it far enough away so that predators don't come close to my camp. It's a habit I learned to follow after a few foxes turned up after my first hunt on rabbits. I lost a rabbit to them and barely managed to keep the second one safe." Naruto answered.

He was now cutting two rabbits in small pieces and put them in a lidded box. The pheasants got the same treatment. The last rabbit got put on a pole for roasting over a fire. "Do you want the chicken, Kakashi sensei?" Naruto asked.

"If you don't mind. I wouldn't have to go hunting myself then." Kakashi said.

"Take it; I have enough with one rabbit and the other things I collected." Naruto answered.

Kakashi thanked him and took to preparing the chicken. Once all of them had prepared their meals, Sasuke had decided to give Sakura a second fish, four were more than enough for him and he couldn't store the spare one, Kakashi had them set up campfires.

He corrected them if they made mistakes, but otherwise he was busy with his own fire.

"What is the best way to start a campfire in an area that is safe enough to even light a fire?" Kakashi asked.

"A weak fire jutsu." Naruto said.

"Correct, why would a jutsu like Sasuke's great fireball be ill-suited?" Kakashi asked.

"Because it is too flashy and too hot. Even in presumed safe terrain a ninja has to keep his camp undetected if possible.

And with a technique too hot you will burn the wood too fast and don't have enough time to roast your food.

Which isn't much of a problem in areas like Konoha which are surrounded by forested areas, but in other regions wood is limited, so you need to get the best possible result with the supplies you have." Sasuke answered, remembering that lesson.

"Indeed. There is a jutsu, one of the fire jutsus that doesn't need the affinity for fire to be used. It was developed for situations like this, lighting a campfire. It doesn't work in a fight, there you need stronger jutsu, but here it's perfect.

The handseals are hare and tiger. Try it. If you don't get it in half an hour, I will light the fires." Kakashi said.

Sasuke and Naruto had no problems with the jutsu. As Sasuke knew how to use fire jutsus already, this simple one was easy to perform. And Naruto had used that jutsu for years now. Sakura needed a few tries, but then even she got her fire started.

"Good work everybody. Now we will prepare our meals. Think how you can best prepare the things you collected. After that, I guess it will be time for an early lunch.

But as we are meeting team ten at half past one on their training ground I guess that's good." Kakashi said.

Every member of the team took to cooking their meal. After thirty minutes the fishes were done for Sasuke and Sakura, Naruto's rabbit and Kakashi's chicken needed a while longer. Sakura had pierced her mushrooms on sticks and also roasted them.

The eggs had been buried in the earth on one side of the fire as she had no pot to cook them. The nuts and berries she ate like they were, as she did the apples and plums.

Sasuke only had to roast his fishes, which looked a lot less mutilated than Sakura's, and the other things he ate like they were.

Naruto had wrapped two apples and some mushrooms in aluminium foil and put them to bake in the heat. He had added a few herbs and spices in oil to his rabbit and the mushrooms.

After cooking in the wild for so long, he knew what tasted good. He just had to make sure his rabbit was constantly kept covered in his mix.

Once everything was cooked, he took the rabbit from the fire and got his wrapped things from the heat. He had a metal claw for that sealed in his equipment scroll for cooking utensils. Soon all members of team seven were eating contently.

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