A.N. I don't own Naruto or any of the characters! Now that's out of the way... ENJOY 3

Low rumbles bounced off the cold stone walls. It could only mean one thing to the young ninja. It's the thing he had been training for, for the last two and a half years. The only thing that had encased his mind. It would be wrong to call it thing. It had been a person that Naruto had been searching, training, just thinking all about.

"SASUKE!"

Pounding feet began to overpower the echoing explosion. His desire to save him. That's all he wanted. He just wanted to bring Sasuke home after… after all that had happened.

"Naruto wait!" Yamato's call meet nothing more than deaf ears; his words couldn't reach the young blonde's ears after this, "Naruto!"

"SASUKE!"

Light shone through the large hole that had been made, clearly Sai had screwed up and it was up to Naruto to fix it. But that didn't matter. At least the boy had found Sasuke. Now it was the time to bring the stupid Uchiha back to the village once and for all. He had to… he had to save his best friend.

Otherwise he would really be lost.

"SASUKE!"

At the end of the tunnel he could see Sai standing, facing towards the heated sun without so much as a care on his face. It could only mean that he was watching Sasuke. Who else would be there? It had to be Sasuke. It had to be. It had to be…

Naruto burst into the sunlight and without hesitating spun around to face his former teammate. He was right. Sasuke was standing there before him, one arm resting casually on his sword. His pale chest seemed to sparkle in the warming sun in complete contrast to the cold stare of his eyes. It was him. It was Uchiha Sasuke.

"Sasuke…"

"Naruto," Sasuke's cold voice resonated over the dry plane that he had been hiding inside of, "What are you doing here?"

Naruto looked up at his friend and began to plead, "Sasuke! You have to come home!"

"That's why you're here? How pathetic."

"Sasuke!"

"Come now, you've already replaced me haven't you?" Sasuke nodded towards where Sai stood, silent and waiting, "Is Kakashi also here to drag me back? And Sakura too by my guess."

"Actually Kakashi Senpai isn't here," Yamato corrected, coming into the light to join the rag tag team he had been thrown into, "Just me."

"I don't know who you are."

"Well isn't that unfortunate."

Sasuke pushed aside the existence of Yamato and focused back on the situation at hand, "So where is Sakura then?"

"I don't know."

Despite the years of being separated from each other, the memories of the blonde chiming on and on about bonds and friendship, and all of that crap that Sasuke no longer cared for, Naruto still managed to say the three words so casually.

"You don't know?"

"Oh?" Naruto managed a playful smirk when he saw the small twitch by Sasuke's eye, "You don't care do you?"

"I broke those bonds long ago."

"Bullshit."

Within a mere second Sasuke had managed to leap down and wrap an arm gently around his ex-teammates shoulder, "Say what you want but I only say what is true, besides it isn't like you to just brush aside the fact that one of your precious friends are missing."

"I never said she was missing."

"So where is she?"

"I don't know," Naruto grabbed Sasuke's wrist as a small smile curled onto his face, "Baa-chan said that she was on a mission when I got back, so I'm not worried about her. In fact now that I know that she's away then I know she's going to really happy when she comes back to find you home again."

"Why waste all you time trying to chase me down? Wasn't it you dream to become Hokage?"

"If I can interrupt…"

Both boys flicked their eyes to the other one present, the forgotten Sai had an oddly serious look on his face. He slowly pulled out his book filled of ex-shinobi, flicking to the page on the other side of Sasuke's profile.

"One Haruno Sakura," the picture of the smiling pinkette captured all the attention, stats and information laced beneath her young photo, "She abandoned the village about a year after Uchiha Sasuke. She's actually next on my list to hunt down after Sasuke was... dealt with."

There was that look of loss in Tsunade's eyes; Jiraiya would know it anywhere, "Tsunade, a Ryo for your thoughts."

"I was thinking of Naruto..."

"How he will react with the Uchiha?"

"There is something else..."

Now there was a waver in her voice. He leaned against the end of her desk and carefully watched the woman sigh to herself, "Would it have anything to do with the lack of pink hair bubbly bouncing around this village?"

"I told him that she was out on a mission, but even Naruto will figure out that she's not coming home sooner or later," Tsunade flopped into her chair and pulled out some memory erasing Sake, "I just don't know how he's going to react when he finds out that she too abandoned the village."

"Abandoned?"'

"Haruno Sakura. She had so much potential as a medic and I don't know why but one day I had her parents trying to destroy my door. 'She's missing! You're the one teaching our baby girl so where the hell is she?'" Tsunade managed to quote with ease, "All I could do was sit here blankly and question their sanity."

Jiraiya didn't know much about the cherry blossom, but even he could tell from their short time together that she wasn't one to abandon the people who loved her, "You didn't know that she had left the village?"

"Of course not. One day I'm teaching her as normal, there was nothing wrong as far as I could tell and then she's gone. I send out team after team of shinobi but I guess I taught her too well in our short time together. None of the nin-hounds could track her scent or anything. She had just... vanished."

"And you lied to Naruto about it... he won't be happy when he finds out the truth."

"He ran off with you to train just to bring back Sasuke, but even then we knew the little traitor was with Orochimaru. Sakura vanished without a reason. She never let on to anyone the day before and so we have no leads to go on if we wish to search for her..."

Tsunade didn't sound like she had finished, "Which means...?"

"Which means that Haruno Sakura went rogue. There is no reason for her to have left so all we can do is put her in the Bingo Book and pray that someone turns up with some information about her. But even if that ever happens she will be prosecuted for risking the safety of her village."

"Naruto is not going to like that."

"All I can do is pray that he doesn't figure it out until I have a plan to deal with him..."

"No…" Naruto pushed Sasuke back and ran to grab Sai's collar, "No! Baa-chan said that Sakura-chan is on a mission. She's going to come home! She hasn't abandoned the village!"

"I'm afraid she already did Naruto-kun."

"SHUT UP SAI!"

Sasuke rested his arm back on his sword, no emotion crossing his face, "I assume we are done here. I will be leaving then."

"Sasuke!" despite the obvious reactions, Naruto still spun around with a desperate plea on his face, "How could you not care? This is Sakura-chan! SA-KU-RA!"

"I heard you the first time. I broke those bonds the day I left the village."

"Don't give me that bullshit!"

"Whatever Dobe," Sasuke leaped back up to the high platform just as Orochimaru and Kabuto arrived. Without a second glance to the Konoha ninja the trio of rogue ninja vanished in a burning wave, melting into the contrasting brightness of the afternoon sun.

Sasuke had run off again, and now Naruto had learnt that his pink haired crush had also abandoned the village. How much were his 'friends' exactly hiding from him? What had happened in the past two and a half years that would've caused her to run off like that? There were so many questions that he never thought to ask. Why didn't he notice anything strange the moment that he had arrived back in the village?

"Naruto-kun?" Sai's voice sounded distant and foggy, "Is everything alright?"

Nothing made sense. Everything was rushing at him. Why? Why did this even happen? There were just too many questions that needed be answered but there was just no way to find out was there? The light of the afternoon sun began to dull, the everlasting ebony slowly filled the Jinchuriki's vision till the sounds of his comrades were little more than white noise... the only distinguishable noise was the Kyuubi's dark laughter.