I'm taking from my main fic for now, mainly because I'm tired of writing it at the moment, but I had this idea while reading some Naruto fics and had to write it down before I forget it.
Sakura blinked.
Only mere minutes ago, she, Naruto and Choji had been leaping along the treetops of the woods north of Konoha, heading towards a possible lead on Sasuke's whereabouts, Yamato had been on a mission, and Sai was in the hospital recovering from his 'quarrel' with root... so Sakura and Naruto asked Choji to be their third teammate left for their mission.
They had been moving at a quick pace, trying to conserve as much energy as possible so they didn't have to stop...
But that was then... This was now.
As they passed through a clearing a dozen sound shinobi had leaped on them.
"Uchiha-sama is getting very fed up with your 'rescue' attempts!" one of them hissed
"Well tell him I said: 'Tough!" roared Naruto, and he threw all the shinobi on him away with a burst of red chakra.
He grabbed one of the retreating ninja by the ankle, "Get off her!" he bellowed, swinging the poor guy into his comrades sending them flying...
Strong as Choji was, he didn't need any help with his enemies.
"Thanks." said Sakura standing up and pulling on her gloves, "Lets send these guys back in halves!"
"How about quarters?" replied Naruto, "Kage Bunsion no Jutsu!" Three fox chakra-enhanced clones appeared in a puff and all pulled out kunai.
The ensuing battle did not last long considering that 12 sound shinobi were up against two very pissed off students two of the sannin and one of the best of the Akimichi clan.
As the last sound ninja fell with thunk and a splat, the sound squad captain stepped forward. Sakura and Naruto knew just from looking at this man that he would not go down easily. He was among the elite of the late Orochimaru's shinobi.
"This is annoying the shit out of me!" groaned the sound nin. "Well, lets end this."
The ninja moved like no other sound nin they had fought before. With two quick jabs he disarmed Choji and with another he sent him crashing to the ground, out cold.
He dodged Naruto's lunge and as Naruto flew past him the sound ninja grabbed Naruto's foot and swung him in to the trunk of a tree and then into Sakura, Naruto feel in a heap, his back and ribs fractured...
Sakura saw Naruto fall limp, and suddenly became enraged, "You'll pay for that!" she bellowed, and brought her fist down on the earth, causing a shockwave that caused the sound jonin to lose his footing, as he recovered Sakura sent him flying with an uppercut.
But he wasn't done, he growled with anger, and unsheathed the katana on his back. Sakura met him half way to the ground with her kunai. They clashed several times.
But the sound nin was anbu level at least... and eventually Sakura had to fall... the ninja slashed her right quad and she fell to her knees, the sound nin leveled the sword at her throat.
"Say good-bye!"
He did a spin to add more power to his swing, expecting to see a fountain of blood in the next moment...
But what his sword struck was not the neck a helpless koinichi but the right side of an extremely angry biju container. The fox had healed his back enough that he could leap in front of Sakura, ending with the katana embedded in his right side as far as his spine.
Blood streamed out of the wound, covering the ground.
The sound ninja stared at him in shock.
"Uchiha-sama told me about you, your greatest dream is to be Hokage isn't it? If you could run, why didn't you try to escape?"
"And abandon my friends?"
"You place that much value on your friends?" the enemy asked stupefied.
"Of coarse." Naruto gasped, beginning to draw chakra into his palm, "and besides, becoming Hokage is meaningless compared to protecting Sakura-chan!!!!!"
Naruto grabbed the sound nin's wrist, and raised his palm full of spinning chakra, "Now good-bye yourself! Rasengan!!!!!"
Naruto's attack shredded the top half of the sound ninja's body, such was the intensity of Naruto's anger.
"Regret your deeds in hell you bastard." and with that Naruto collapsed.
Sakura rushed over to Naruto, her leg injury insignificant now; "Naruto!!!!" she cried.
Sakura had always known that Naruto liked her, but she had always dismissed it as a silly little crush, she thought he would simply get over her with time, but it was clear that for the first time she was wrong...
She was wrong in every sense of the word when it came to Naruto, her eyes were finally opened now that this young man was dying in her lap...
She realized now that everything he had ever done had been, under the surface, for her.
She remembered him as child throwing some small rocks at a group of girls making fun of her forehead...
She realized that he wanted to be Hokage to impress her, as much as earn everyone else's respect...
She had claimed to 'love' Sasuke, when really that had been a silly crush...
He had put his life on the line to bring back Sasuke for her, even if it cost him both of his dreams...
He would just simply smile and do it just so she would smile again...
"You... really are... in love with me aren't you?" she asked the unconscious dreamer.
She knew know that the extent of his feelings for her were far deeper than she had ever imagined, and now just as the life in him was beginning to fade... she realized that if he were to die... she would die too.
Sakura felt as if she would collapse from the weight of these emotions torwards her teamate that she had discovered, she shook her head to clear it and took a look at Naruto, the color quickly leaving his face...
She examined the wound quickly, she could not heal this with out help, she just didn't have that kind of chakra...
Unless...
She looked over to Choji, he was still out cold, but his life was not in danger. She dug in his pockets and found a small plastic capsule with three sections, each with a single pill inside.
The pills were color-coded, there was a yellow, a green, and a red one; each more dangerous than the last...
"Naruto, you've put you're life in danger for me so many time... now maybe I can begin to pay you back!"
Without hesitation, she swallowed the red pill, and in moments she felt a great surge of power unlike anything she had ever experienced! Her chakra grew to incredible heights, so much so that it started to leak from her body.
But obviously it came with a price, these pills were designed for the heavy-set Akimichi clan, so using this pill herself was most definitely suicidal... she already felt as if her very essence was being drained away...
Wasting no time, she ran sprinted back to Naruto and used her chakra to cut away his jacket and shirt... then using her years of medical training, began to surgically remove the katana blade and heal all the severed muscles and organs.
She put forth all of her considerable power, and the work of a whole unit of medninjas was done in mere minutes!
Naruto's life was saved! There was hardly a trace of the wound except for a fine white line accross his side.
Using the last of her will power to stay conscious, Sakura used a simple ninja technique to regurgitate the rest of the chili pill from her stomach, hopefully she could avoid its constant cell-destruction side-effect in this way... but her hopes weren't high...
... So she simply lay down next to Naruto and as her vision faded into blackness, she watched Naruto's re-colored face, and wondered what could have been...