A/N: I dread writing this. I really do. There are SO many horrible AU school related fics out there. SO SO MANY. I hate them. Really. However, I hate the excessive drama, and how completely unlike HS/college the situations really are. I don't hate AU school fics. I just hate the immense drama. Hopefully I won't fail horridly. This fic is mostly college randomness. There's some pairing, maybe more later if I feel like it, but mostly randomness. This fic is made for the Sakura Oekaki board! Thanks for all of your help in suggesting things for this fic! Please keep in mind that what with this being AU, the characters have had completely different lives up until this point so they might be somewhat OOC. I also don't know shit about math. Expect discrepancies.

Three of a Kind - Ch. 1

It's business as usual for Sakura. She was fortunate enough to get high enough test scores to join a private college, uniforms and all. She graduated in the top ten percent of her class, though she missed valedictorian by a few points. However, she wouldn't let it get to her. Her new school was full of interesting characters, but the most peculiar pair just happened to be in her math class. Uchiha Itachi... he had actually made valedictorian, and after seeing him rise quietly to solve an extremely complicated math problem on the board, she wasn't surprised. It was math that had killed her scores, it had only been two questions. The guy sitting next to the quiet, refined, handsome Itachi was the strangest guy she had ever seen. Hell, he looked for all the world to be an overgrown fish. Hoshigake Kisame, that was his name. Odder still, Itachi and Kisame had been friends since early childhood from what she had heard, and always sat in the same classes right next to each other.

She sighed. Well, it wasn't up to her to judge anyway. He seemed alright, even if he didn't seem to want to volunteer to be in front of the class like Itachi did. Their professor was a piece of work too. He insisted on simply being called "Professor" and she didn't even know what his real name was. It probably said somewhere on her schedule, but every time she thought to look at it, she quickly forgot. His flaming orange hair spiked out seemingly of its own accord, but his bored expression and tired gray eyes made everyone know he didn't really want to come to work today.

Her chin poised on her hand, she lapsed in and out of attentiveness, bored with watching the scratching of chalk on the board as Itachi wrote away. The Professor had initially called on Kisame, but Itachi immediately volunteered in Kisame's place. Kisame seemed relieved, and she quickly figured that this was how they had worked all the time they knew each other. Fortunately for him, The Professor didn't care who solved the problem as long as someone did it. Although the college was private and attracted more serious students, the students here ranged from attentive to outright asleep.

A sharp rap on the door brought everyone to attention, the dean of the school letting himself in. He was an older man in his fifties, graying and balding at the same time, but a kind smile on his face. With a shrug of apology, he stepped closer. "Sorry for interrupting your class, but we have a new addition this year. I hope you don't mind training an intern."

The Professor closed his eyes, obviously holding in a sigh. Well, maybe an intern could help with the students a little. Then again, the last one had been... interesting. He didn't really have much of a choice. "Very well. I'll do what I can."

"Well... just don't throw this one out the window, alright?" He chuckled, opening the door, letting in the new intern. Every mouth in the room dropped -except Itachi's- as the gracefully curvy blue-haired woman entered the room, looking over the class cautiously. As the dean left, she approached the front of the room, bowing politely. "Hello, class. You may call me Konan, pleased to meet you."

Itachi turned away indifferently, returning to solving the problem, but that was the only noise in the room as The Professor's eyes widened slightly, a blush quickly spreading across his face. He recovered quickly, gesturing to the side of the classroom. "Er... well, you can just watch for today if you want. I... uh... well." He yanked at his tie. Was it getting warmer in here? "Itachi here is one of our brightest, he's showing us all how to solve this problem." His smile was nervous, and he turned back to the task at hand, pointing to one area of the problem. "Like right here, you need to replace x with y."

She stepped closer, looking over his shoulder with interest. While getting a better look, she bumped into his back slightly, making him turn even redder. However, she was unaware of what she was doing, and adjusted her glasses, pointing to another area. "Right, and here, z is equivalent to one, not two."

"Y-yes, right... it... it is." He waved her away again. "For today though, just watch, please." He stifled a sigh of relief when she stood against the wall. A few of the students were snickering, knowing darn well what just went on there. Who could blame him, though? The woman was a bombshell, her business uniform hugging her curves, tiny shirt showing just enough leg, cleavage readily visible. Not to mention, those cute little glasses on her nose nearly killed him. Her hair was an exotic blue, too, a natural blue even, accenting her pale blue eyes. Damn, he was sweating.

Itachi saved him from further humiliation. "I am finished, sir."

"Excellent..." He took the save with great relief, examining the problem before pointing to the end result for the class to see. "Here is a great example of inverting fractions and cross canceling. When you have two problems within parentheses, what do you do then?" His eyes scanned the class. "Kisame?"

Kisame jerked in his seat with a start. "Uh..."

Itachi started to cut in, but Sakura held up her hand. "You multiply the first sequence in the first set of parentheses by the first set in the second, and then the second set in the parentheses the same way, and so on if you have more."

The Professor blinked with surprise at the outburst, but nodded. "That's right, thank you miss.. uh..." He glanced down at the class roster on the podium. "Miss Haruno. Ah yes, Miss Haruno Sakura, right? Thank you. And could you remind us of the order of operations?"

She stood. "Parentheses come first, followed by multiplications and divisions, from left to right. Then you do all adding and subtracting."

"Thank you. You may be seated. Now as for inverting fractions..."

As he droned on, his back turned to the class, Sakura caught Kisame's eye. He gave a thumbs-up, and she offered him a grin in return. She expected it to end there, but he made another gesture to her, looking like the opening and closing of invisible chopsticks. His brows raised questioningly. Did he want her to join them for lunch? He then made an exaggerated gesture of being so full he could barely move, complete with a hilarious, bulging face. She couldn't help it. A small giggle brought the entire room's attention to her. The Professor froze, then turned around.

"Yes? You find something funny about quadratic equations?"

She didn't even realize he had gone on to a different problem. Quick, Sakura, think! "Uh..."

Kisame waved dismissively. "Nah, it's nothing, Prof, I was just telling her a story about a time I had to use one of those quadratic equations. It was funny, you know?"

The man folded his arms against his chest, completely unamused. "No, I don't know. Please, share this story with us, it might be relevant to the problem at hand."

Kisame was completely unperturbed, making a story up as he went. "Well hey, you see, where I come from, there's a lot of fish, and--"

"Yeah we figured!" someone hooted from the back.

"...anyway, my buddy Zabuza and I figured out one time that we could use this equation to figure out how many fish we could fit in our boat. Well you know, we could only eat so many of them too, so that had to be in the equation too, figuring out how many we would need before they spoiled..."

"You are what you eat!" shouted another anonymous character. A sharp, menacing glare silenced any other idiots in the crowd.

"ANYWAY... after figuring this problem out, we could always go out and catch exactly what we needed. Zabuza was so impressed, he said to me one day, damn, Kisame, you suppose there would be a way we could use this equation to find out the measurements of every girl in town?" Kisame snickered. "So I said what, you mean like the average size of the bust minus the amount of times you get slapped?"

Sakura laughed at that. She couldn't help it, it was funny. That, and she was helping to cover for Kisame's story. Other students found this funny in their own way, some having an outright laugh attack, clutching their desks. The Professor slapped his hand on the podium, bringing everyone to attention. "Well, Kisame, the first half of the story was surprisingly relevant." He turned back, pointing to part of the equation. "See, here would be a constant, the weight of your boat, and here would be the fish you could carry. Once you subtract how many you will actually eat, you are left with a climbing variable of how many you need to throw back."

As soon as he turned his back again, explaining more math, Itachi returned to his seat next to Kisame. She was sitting on the other side of Kisame, and gave the shark her own thumbs-up. He grinned wide with teeth that looked unusually sharp, the smirk almost menacing. It might have unsettled someone with a weaker constitution, but she could tell by the wide set of his jaw that he really couldn't grin without seeming like he was about to eat whatever he grinned at.

Itachi was staring. Not the kind of stare she got from the guys that thought she was pretty, no. He was just staring blankly, intensely, with no sort of emotion on his face. No, Kisame wasn't creepy at all, but Itachi sure was. He finally turned back to watch the chalkboard and Sakura felt like a great weight lifted from her shoulders. Looking in those eyes was like carrying a ton of bricks. At least Kisame had a way of lightening the mood.

"...which brings us to the solution here. Miss Haruno!"

She sat up, startled. "Yes sir?"

"As for this problem here, on the right, could you show us how to solve this one?" He smiled at that. He knew she had been spacing off while his back was turned. Even he had a bit of trouble with this kind of math. That would teach her to pay attention.

She stared up at the figures on the board. Factoring? That was easy, at least for her. Well, at least as long as she used the right algorithm. It had been intricate geometry that had tripped her up in the past. Algebra, though, was no problem at all. Grabbing a bit of chalk, she turned around briefly. "For factoring large numbers, you would use this factoring algorithm here to solve the problem..." Quick strokes marked the start of the algorithm. X is... replace it with that... Right. "And once you have substituted the variables for the right numbers, you can solve the equation piece by piece." When she at last came to the solution, she turned to the teacher to make sure she did it right.

"Ah... very good. Yes..." He stood there, puzzled. Well didn't that just beat all. So much for the real lesson. Maybe she could solve the final problem on the board... "How about the last problem here? Can you solve that one? I don't expect you to, I put this up here to remind all of you that there are much greater things to come in your future math classes."

Indeed, Sakura had no idea how to solve it. It was beyond her comprehension, involving too many square roots, too many variables and fractions all in the same problem. She brushed it off with a nervous laugh, scratching her head. "No sir, I don't know this one."

"Thank you, yo may be seated." As soon as she had returned to her seat, he gestured lazily to the last problem. "Again, I don't expect any of you to answer this problem right, but if by the end of the year you can solve this problem, I'll give you extra credit. Now--"

"Sir?" Konan spoke up, her hand raised slightly. "If I may, sir...?"

His brows raised with surprise. "Yes? Did you want to add something to this?"

She smiled, simply walking up to the front and taking up a piece of chalk. He moved aside, watching. With a soft scratch, she began to work on what looked to everyone else like the hardest math problem ever. Nobody moved, didn't even breathe, as she quietly tapped away at the board, often changing positions to follow the order of operations properly. Several minutes passed, the problem as hard as it was. With one final stroke, she paused, the problem complete. A small smile lit her face and she straightened, turning to him. "Did I get it right... Professor?"

He tried to gulp down a lump forming in his throat. Why did she have to look at him like that? Standing against the wall like she had, he had almost been able to forget about her. Almost. Now she had to go and bring attention to her again. Her and her shapely lips pouting in an innocent smile, those cute rimless glasses letting her eyes just peek over the top so perfectly... No! Stop thinking like that! With a mental shake of his head, he glanced at her solution briefly. "Well... I've never had to teach the advanced classes, so I can't be sure, but I could ask one of the advanced professors if you wish."

As impossible as it might have seemed, her expression grew even more adorable as she clasped her hands in front of her. "That would be wonderful, I want to know that I'm doing alright." Her mouth slid into a wider smile, which he secretly found very attractive. "Does this mean I get extra credit?"

Pause. He couldn't think of anything to say. "Uh..." Just then, the tall clock tower outside chimed noon, everyone suddenly getting up to exit the class. He choked down a sigh of relief at the intervention, stacking up his papers as he too got ready to go. Finally back in the real world and not this strange little place she seemed to make his mind go, he was able to brush her off. "Well it's time for lunch, Miss Konan, feel free to go around and introduce yourself to the other teachers, I'll be down in the lounge eating."

She chuckled at that. "There's no need to dissemble, I'm sure you don't want the stress of an intern around you all the time, but if you don't mind, once I'm done with introducing myself to the others, I'd like to come down to the lounge also."

"Uh well..." He was cut off by Kisame brushing past him, barely missing running full into him.

"Sorry Prof. Hey, hey, if you ever wanna use that joke, you sure can!" He grinned wide, the same menacing look on his face. "I've got clean ones, dirty ones, and good ones, in that order."

The Professor didn't look impressed, a blank, slightly aggravated look on his face. "I'll... be sure to let you know if I ever find a use for your kind of humor."

Kisame thumped his shoulder so hard he stumbled, then moved on with a casual wave. "Alright Prof, I'll be waiting!"

Sakura passed by him next, smiling slightly and shrugging. Well, that was Kisame, after all. "See you tomorrow, sir."

Itachi had more grace than that, bowing slightly as he passed by. "Until tomorrow, Professor Pein."

So that was his name. Leave it to Itachi to know that. Pein only half-waved with a tired look. "Yeah." Oh well. At least some students here were dedicated to their classwork. Maybe those three could try and set a good example for the rest of the class. Maybe.

Sakura was actually glad she had lunch at the same time as Itachi and Kisame. Though Itachi was a little creepy at first, he was actually pleasant to talk to. When he talked. Kisame, however, couldn't seem to stop talking, and Itachi pretty much just let him do whatever he liked. Without them, though, she wouldn't have known who to sit with since hardly anyone she had known before came to this school. Everyone else had gone to public colleges in different towns. She knew Shikamaru could have gone here if he wasn't so damn lazy. Even so, her new friends made it easier to start off on the right foot.

A tall, blond, blue eyed girl spotted their table, waltzing up to Itachi instantly. She looked starry-eyed, and Sakura held in a gag. Yeah, she was pretty, but she looked like a ditz. Even her voice was annoying, sounding coy. "Itachi, right? You mind if I sit with you?"

Itachi brushed her off without a second glance, his eyes slitting closed. "I mind."

She didn't give up, changing her strategy from being coy to being playful. "I won't be a bother, I have nobody else to sit with!"

He glanced up at her, then out at many other empty chairs around the room. "There's room enough for you elsewhere."

"Oh, they're all boring! I'd much rather sit with you!"

"I'd much rather you didn't." He brushed her off with a wave, though he gave Kisame a glance. Kisame seemed to understand the subtle look well.

"Please? I'll be quiet!"

Kisame leaped to his feet, hands on the table, a mock snarl on his face, growling. That was all it took to send the girl running for safety. With a thankful sigh, Itachi returned to his food. "Thank you, Kisame."

Sakura scoffed at that. "I take it this happens a lot?"

Itachi sighed again. "Yes."

Kisame grimaced after the girl briefly before looking back. "All the fucking time! Those stupid girls!"

She smirked a little at that. "So why are you letting me sit with you?"

"You're not a moron."

Itachi nodded slightly. "You are here because did not ask to be here."

Kisame shrugged at that. "Yeah, pretty much. When was the first meeting for kendo club again?"

"It's next week."

"Hey, yeah, um... what's your name again, girl?"

She let out a short laugh. "It's Sakura."

"Right. Oh... I get it!" He smirked, gesturing at her hair. "Pink. Got it."

She dead-panned. "My parents weren't very creative..."

"Well whatever, you should check out the kendo club, we're both in it. Itachi's a lot better with the smaller swords we use, but I'm better at the bigger ones."

She finished the last bite of her small meal, pondering. Itachi was finished too, but Kisame, with his heartier appetite, still had a few bites left. "I've never tried kendo. I've tried a lot of other sports though, I guess I'd be good at it. I'll see if I can sign up for it."

"Good! We'll make sure you learn how it goes! Right, Itachi-san?" When Itachi didn't answer, Kisame only smirked and put a pear on Itachi's plate. Itachi looked up at him slowly.

"What am I supposed to do with that... Kisame?"

"What, you eat it, of course!"

"You know I don't like pears."

"You gotta get your fruits, you know!"

"Kisame, I don't want it."

"Hey, hey, I'm getting full, someone's got to eat it!"

"Just put it back."

"I already touched it."

"Nobody cares about that."

"Yeah but just look at it, it's just begging you to eat it!"

"I don't like pears."

Sakura reached over, plucking the pear from the plate and taking a bite. "Well I like pears."

Kisame spread his arms nonchalantly. "There, see? Problem solved. I think I'll like having her around, huh?"

Itachi only stayed as he was. "It doesn't matter."

Sakura was glad she had changed so much over the years. In years past, she would have been much like that girl that had come by earlier, eager to sit by the cutest guy in class. However, a few bitter rejections and a couple failures later, her personality had become more subdued, and she threw herself even more into her schoolwork, no longer afraid of showing she was just as good as any of the smarter guys. The intensity with which she had studied in high school had almost scared her parents, but they seemed to understand to some degree. Well, it didn't matter, she was far away from them now. "Hey, if you get my back, I'll get yours."

Kisame grinned wider. "Perfect! Thanks for the save, by the way. I never know the answers!"

She couldn't help but be a little puzzled. "How did you get into the class then?"

"Oh no, no, don't get me wrong! When it's on paper and I have time to solve it, it's alright! But damn, answering stuff on the spot like that, in front of everyone...! I can't do that!"

"I knew a few people like that before. And hey, you saved me too, you know!" Then her expression grew a bit annoyed. "Although it was your fault to begin with..."

He laughed. "I know, I know, sorry. Hey, I made up for it. And if you ever get puzzled when the Prof asks you something on the spot, I'm sure my bud here could help you out. Right, Itachi-san?"

Itachi inclined his head slightly. "If it is needed."

She huffed slightly with relief. "I'll take you up on that sometime. Geez, what was up with that new teacher though? She's crazy smart, going up to solve the last problem."

Kisame shook his head. "No clue on that one, she's really good." With a snicker, his eyebrows wriggled suggestively. "Sure seems that the Prof thinks she's pretty good too!"

Itachi scoffed. "I'm sure he's just nervous about teaching someone new."

"You kidding me Itachi-san?? Come on! You saw the way he was looking at her, it's so obvious!"

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Yeah no kidding, but she wasn't really helping."

Itachi only stared at them blankly. "What do you mean?"

Kisame leaned a bit closer to her briefly, whispering. "He's not so good with the social stuff." He winced as Itachi's eyes narrowed slightly. Well, so much for whispering. "Anyway, this is good, the Prof needs a little excitement in his life, you know?"

"I'm not sure I can fathom that, Kisame..."

"Hey, you don't have to. What do you think, Sakura?"

She shrugged, her expression uncertain. "Well, we'll just have to wait and see."

"Yeah, I guess." The clock chimed one, lunch time over for the day. "Well hey, it was interesting and all, so we'll see you tomorrow in class. You find out about that kendo club, alright?"

With a wave, she moved on to her own class, still a bit curious about the interesting friends she had just made. Kisame took insults with good humor, and looked like he could give as good as he got. Itachi never said much, but he defended his friend with unrelenting loyalty. In return, Kisame did the same for him. They had a well established working relationship, built on many years of experience. She wasn't sure how she would be able to fit in the group with that hanging over her head, she barely knew them. However, she was optimistic. After all, tomorrow was another day.

Professor Pein was really hating his life right now. It was all due to the beautiful, intelligent woman sitting across from him in the lounge, her leg crossed primly over the other, eating her meal so delicately with those little chopsticks and... Snap out of it! It was enough to make his teeth want to grind. Damn it. Damn that cute little skirt. Damn those lovely, shapely legs, and and those long, elegant fingers and... He mentally slapped himself. He could get in serious trouble for fraternizing with an intern. Hell, he could get fired for that. Wait. This was a college, they might be a bit more lenient with it... He was immediately distracted by her uncrossing her legs, sitting a bit differently. Damn that perfect little curve of her waist.

They sat in complete silence, him eating mechanically, trying not to look at her chest or legs, and her eating coyly and trying not to stare at his handsome face. It was all she could do to not blush. Damn him and that intense stare of his, those mystifying eyes of his boring a hole right through the wall. She could lose her internship for consorting with a faculty member, and probably lose other potential internships in the process. Thus the meal continued, neither of them speaking for fear of so much potential loss. Damn it all.

A/N: Whew. That was long. So, hope I didn't disappoint. These five will be the only major characters in the story. Quite often with AU school fics, people try to fit too many viewpoints into the same story. Not here, my friends. The story is based around these people. So. I'll be posting the link to the Sakura-chan Oekaki board and the pics that started this whole mess on my main page after I post this. Enjoy.