Disclaimer: The Naruto setting and characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. I'm just using it for fun. Enjoy!
Three
By Metacarius
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"What! You've gotta be crazy! Why would we want him! He's so…" Sakura paused searching for the words, "...annoying."
"Ano… he's really nice though and I know he likes you," Hinata said quietly as she blushed furiously.
"I mean why would we want to go after him when we could go for Sasuke-kun? I mean, Sasuke's handsome, strong, and cool," Sakura gushed. "What more could you want?"
Hinata's eyes narrowed as she frowned, "I would only be able to tell this to you because you're my best friend. He's cold not cool. And what more could I want? How about going after somebody who didn't hate me for starters?" Hinata sighed. "Sasuke's going to grow old eventually. Then we're not going to care about cool or handsome, but whether he cares about us and we care about him…"
"How can you say that he's not going to care? It'd be only natural after that long, right?" countered Sakura. It didn't sound like a convincing argument, but it was a tough one to refute.
Hinata gave Sakura a sad half smile and got up and stretched. "Want to go for a walk?"
"You're avoiding the question," Sakura said as she grinned viciously as she stood up. (Inner Sakura: Thumbs up – Score! As a scoreboard lit up with Sakura 1 – Hinata 0)
"Um… more thinking of a good way to answer," she replied as they left her room. They walked past the dojo on their way out. Hiashi was sparring with Neji at the time. Looking at them Hinata had an idea. "Just a second Sakura, I'm going to tell my father where I'm going."
"Ok," Sakura replied somewhat confused. 'She never tells her dad where she's going. What's she up to?' she thought.
Immediately noting her presence, Hiashi and Neji stopped their sparring and looked at Hinata. "What do you want," Hiashi asked coldly.
"Um… I was just going to let you know that I'm heading out for a walk with Sakura," she replied quietly all of a sudden wondering if this was such a good idea. 'Better than Sakura's idea though,' She thought.
"You bothered us for that? Get out of here, you shouldn't bother us with such trivial things," spat Neji in disgust.
"Leave and do not disrupt our training like this again," Hiashi said in a dead pan voice as he glared at her.
Hinata returned to Sakura and started walking away. Sakura followed after Hinata after recovering from what she just saw. Hinata just walked quietly with Sakura beside her. Unable to keep the question in any longer, finally Sakura asked, "Why did you do that? You knew they were going to be like that. There's no reason for you to get beat up like that."
Hinata just smiled sadly and looked at her. "Yeah, but they were cool, weren't they?" she asked and changed her voice to mimic Sakura's, "I mean, Neji's handsome, strong, and cool. What more could you want?"
Sakura stopped as Inner Sakura face faulted as the scoreboard reversed itself to Hinata 1 – Sakura 0. She couldn't believe Hinata did that to prove a point. Looking at her feet, she thought about Sasuke. Not just the handsome teammate, but she really thought about him. He was handsome, but he never cared, not about her anyway. She thought about Sasuke as Hiashi's age. He had the same dark eyes and no smile. She pictured her and Hinata standing next to him like she was seeing a photo and just shivered. It was a very disturbing image.
On a whim she tried swapping an older version of Naruto in for Sasuke. The change was… dramatic. It was easy to imagine him with his big silly grin that he always had and holding Hinata in one arm and her in the other. It was an image that was very easy to smile at.
"You know, Hinata," Sakura started quietly. "Think I'd want somebody who didn't hate me. I think I'd want somebody who would make me happy and smile a lot."
"Yeah, me too."
They looked at each other and smiled.
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By the time they reached the park they were both talking and enjoying the beautiful day. They were almost to the bridge when Sakura suddenly pulled Hinata into the bushes. "Wha…?" Hinata started before Sakura put a hand over her mouth.
"Shhh…" she hushed as Hinata calmed. "Look," she whisper as she pointed at the bridge. Standing in the middle of it looking over the pond was Naruto. "I have an idea…" she started as she whispered something into Hinata's ear. Hinata blushed, but smiled and nodded.
Naruto was standing on the bridge enjoying the day. No training today, just a day to bum around. Hearing foot falls on the bridge he looked over and saw Sasuke and Sakura walking across the bridge he was on. They didn't even seem to notice him. 'Bah, what's so great about him? He just ignores her anyway,' he thought and was about to turn back when something about the couple struck him as odd. They were having a rather heated argument. 'Eh…? Sasuke never gets that pissed for an argument. What's with those two?'
They were just about to him when he heard Sasuke raise his voice, "Just stop hitting him alright! Naruto's going to be my man and I don't want you beating on him!" Sakura looked absolutely shocked, then seemed to notice Naruto standing there staring at Sasuke with a very strange look on his face.
"Um…" Sakura tried to break in.
"Don't try to change the subject!" shouted Sasuke angrily.
"But…"
"But what?!" Sasuke growled angrily.
"GAAAHH!!! Sasuke! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!!!" shouted Naruto while pointing at Sasuke in shock.
"Umm… Hi Naruto," said Sakura shyly.
Sasuke froze for a second and slowly turned around while sweat dropping with his eyes half closed. "Um… Hi, Naruto. Heh Heh… Um… fancy meeting you gulp here… heh…" Sasuke stuttered. "Ahem…" he cleared his throat and regained his composure. He went over and leaned against the railing near a still very shocked Naruto. He stayed silent.
Sakura grinned evilly and moved over to the other side of Naruto, "Oh come on… you were just telling me how great he was." She switched to a more teasing tone, "Don't want to say it now that your number one, hyperactive ninja is… umm… standing here?" she questioned as she poked the unmoving form of Naruto who was still rigidly pointing at the place where Sasuke was with the same shocked look on his face. "Naruto?" she questioned as she snapped her fingers in front of his face a couple times, with no response.
"I got it," smirked Sasuke as he leaned over and blew in Naruto's ear. Naruto's head turned towards Sasuke stiffly, as if was being forced to look. Naruto panicked again and scuttled backwards on all fours to the opposite railing of the bridge. Looking at Naruto's predicament, Sasuke started trying to hold in a laugh, but failed miserably. Sakura soon followed, unable to contain herself any longer.
As the both continued to laugh themselves hoarse they both changed in a puff of smoke as their Henge no Jutsus dropped to reveal Sakura as Hinata and Sasuke as Sakura. "Gah! What the…? I…? You…? Oi…" Naruto finally relaxed and sighed. Hinata and Sakura just laughed louder. It wasn't long before Naruto was laughing with them. Prying himself up while still trying to stifle his laughter he walked over and put one under each arm in a headlock. "That was a good one! You really had me going. You two are really great!"
"Glad you approve," said Sakura between laughs. "Wanna walk with us? Nice day, two pretty ladies, can't get much better than that." Naruto let them up and looked back and forth between the two of them with a slightly confused look. He scratched the back of his head and gave his usual fox like grin. "Yeah! That would be great!" shouted excitedly. Hinata and Sakura looked at each other and giggled as they each took an arm.
They were to the other side of the bridge before Naruto actually said anything. "So, why didn't Sakura just be herself?" he asked.
"Well…" began Hinata.
At that time all three of them were thinking the same thing, 'It really is a nice day.'
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End
For now…
Notes:
This idea was drifting around my head a long time ago. As a matter of fact, this was written before the Sasuke retrieval arc hit Japan in manga form. The concept behind this actually came from a novel a co-worker of mine was reading at the time. It was an alternate history novel, which I couldn't even make an attempt to recall the name of now. Basically, the damage to the population of Japan in WW2 was critical, especially to the male population. The book itself dealt a lot with the sociological development of a culture that had a 2 or 3:1 ratio of women to men. For this book, best friends looking and eventually dating as a 'unit' became the norm since there were just not enough guys to go around. I wrote this with that story in mind and am currently working on the full multi-chapter version of this story… which turned out to have a lot more WAFF than I originally intended, but I'm generally happy with the results so far. And before anybody asks… I won't put that one out until it's finished and fully betaed and edited. NO DEAD FICS FROM ME!
It's currently on chapter 13 and has another two or three chapters at most.
I hope you all enjoyed this one shot!