Note: There is no Kyuubi host in this story line.

Sasuke didn't grow up liking Sakura. At first he saw her as everyone else did: that emo creepy girl that never spoke a word outside or inside of class. Her grades were fairly high, second only to him but that didn't impress him. A lot of people were beneath him and he didn't have time to care about them.

Even when he read his team assignments at graduation, having been placed with Naruto and Sakura, Sasuke still didn't give a damn about her.

Yeah she was the only girl in school that didn't chase after him but so what? He never valued any of his 'fangirls' as anything more than nuisances anyway; so she was a little better than a nuisance, big whoop.

He just wanted to continue his training to live up to the legacy of his clan, and someday join his brother Itachi inside the ANBU. To make his parents proud of him, like they were with Itachi. Everything else -everyone else- was unimportant.

This was the philosophy he'd lived by until the very first day of training under Kakashi.

The masked man had introduced himself and then given the simple task of retrieving two bells from within his grasp -with the punishment of whosoever not getting a bell being forced to go without lunch.

The instant Kakashi blew his whistle, Sasuke took off, not caring about the rest of his team members and going to hide out within a high off tree branch. When he reached his perch, he saw that Sakura and Naruto had both disappeared as well, probably also going their separate paths, and choosing to wait for their turn to snatch a bell.

Naruto came out first, literally a horde of multiple shadow clones that dived down from high up in the air to come plowing down upon Kakashi with their kunais.

They failed.

Kakashi vanished from beneath them before impact and a face planted heap of messy limbs was the end result for Naruto before all of his clones vanished, and leaving his original self unconscious and defeated on the ground.

Pft. Pathetic.

Sasuke wanted to wait until Sakura made her move but no matter how much time he waited, the girl did not appear. They had a time limit and he knew that they were nearing the deadline fast.

Whatever. If she was going to take the coward route out, it was fine by him.

Sasuke materialized to right in front of Kakashi and initiated a fireball jutsu, much to the man's surprise. Never underestimate an Uchiha, Sasuke thought as he sent the barrage of explosions toward the masked man. Kakashi dodged out of the way for each of them but right when his guard was at its weakest Sasuke came charging forth.

The young Uchiha very nearly grabbed onto a bell –literally his fingers touched the surface! But Kakashi teleported his entire body out of the way before he could actually grab it.

Then, to Sasuke's horror, he realized the old man had moved to right behind him. Sasuke tried turning around before the man could strike but his movement was too slow and Kakashi sent a mind numbing slice of his palm straight into the young man's vertebrae.

The attack wasn't permanently damaging, just extremely painful and numbing for Sasuke's entire body.

The young Uchiha collapsed face first onto the flat grass, his entire body electrified in pain and preventing him from really moving. All he could do was lie flat on his front, glaring at the smug Kakashi as he pulled out some orange colored book and took to reading it as he waited for the last of the three to make their attack.

And he waited and waited.

The deadline he'd given had been until noon and soon there was only five minutes left. Sasuke had been trying to break free of his paralysis during the whole time Kakashi stood there waiting but try as he might, the young Uchiha couldn't summon his strength to move even an inch forward. Naruto had stayed unconscious the entire time.

Finally, at five minutes till, Sasuke heard the rustling of grass in front of him, right before a figure materialized into the air in front of him. It was Sakura.

She could teleport already? That was a technique that ranked on par with the fire jutsus, something a genin wasn't expected to know about.

The wind picked up right as Sakura appeared, blowing her long hair kept back by her headband to the left.

Kakashi kept his eyes glued on his opened book as he stated: "Pretty late to act, aren't you?"

Sakura didn't reply. Her expression stayed stoically calm and silent as usual while she looked at the man. She raised her right hand and to everyone's amazement, there dangling between her fingers were the two bells!

Kakashi's eyes widened in absolute shock, before dropping to look at his belt, where he'd last seen those two bells tied to.

There were gone!

Kakashi finally pocketed his book and stood up straight to his height now. He motioned for Sakura to toss them to him and the pinkette obliged. Team Seven's masked mentor took extra care to examine the bells in his palm now, checking to see if they were a forgery.

And they weren't!

The bells were made unique by a mark with his own chakra and the mark was only visible through his single sharingan eye. There's no way Sakura could have copied it.

Which means they had to be real.

How in the world had she taken them without his knowledge?

This was the first time in all his years of tutelage that anybody had managed to actually take a bell from him! Let alone both! He didn't even have an alternative lesson planned for this situation!

Usually this was just the first part of his lesson about respecting each other's strengths and working together as a unified unit, ect, ect.

But now…

Kakashi cleared his throat, pretending like this was a part of his test all along. "Ahem, very good Sakura."

He thought for a second, trying to hide his unpreparedness. "…since you were the only one that succeeded this mission, you will be the only one that gets lunch. Congratulations. You may…uh, choose who you want to give the second bell to."

Sakura met his eyes for a long silent moment. Her eyes narrowing ever so slightly for one second, before returning to normal and the girl intoned. "Neither."

Kakashi eyes widened at her audacity. "Excuse me?"

"If even one person doesn't get to eat, then neither should anyone else. We are a team and no one should get better treatment than another."

Needless to say, Sakura aced that assignment. It was almost like she could read Kakashi's intentions verbatim.

Kakashi had his suspicions but no matter how much he asked, Sakura refused to divulge how she'd managed to take those bells.

She just humbly stated that she had gotten lucky when he was busy reading his book.

Sasuke knew this was all bullshit.

He'd been watching Kakashi and Sakura's interaction since she first showed off the retrieved bells, just as astonished as their mentor.

He wanted to know Sakura's secret too and knew that asking wasn't the way to get her to tell the truth, after witnessing Kakashi's attempts.

Which is why right after they were released from today's lesson and everyone went their separate ways, Sasuke attacked Sakura.

He waited until they were far from potential bystanders (hiding in the shadows) before he struck.

He came raining down from above with a shinobi fist, expecting to catch the girl by surprise but Sakura turned and blocked the attack at the last second.

Her usually stoic expression gained aggravation and confusion. "What are you doing?"

"Tell me how you got those bells," Sasuke ordered simply as he sent a low kick beneath Sakura, trying to knock her off her feet but the girl once again dodged by jumping into the air.

Her movements weren't particularly refined but she moved as if she could see his next actions before he inflicted them.

Blow after blow he sent towards Sakura and no matter what he did, he couldn't seem to land an attack! Even with his fireball jutsu Sakura merely back flipped in the air at the last second to avoid any contact.

What the hell?!

Sweat beaded across his forehead in rivulets now and Sasuke genuinely felt exhaustion pool into his limbs while Sakura looked barely even a little flustered.

Soon his actions grew slow with paraphesia and in that one moment, Sakura chose to go on the offensive. She sent her elbow straight into Sasuke's jugular, cutting off his oxygen flow right as she pinned his body to a wide tree trunk.

"Are we finished?" Sakura asked plainly and in slight annoyance.

Sasuke's mind was inundated with a mix of fury, shame, embarrassment and…slight admiration.

His wounded pride added the 'slight' bit because it was still in denial that he –Sasuke FREAKING Uchiha- had actually been bested, by a girl no less!

His clan was heavily misogynistic and growing up Sasuke had always been raised by the philosophy that women were in general weaker to men.

Which is why Sasuke was in so much shock at Sakura's defeat of him that he couldn't even think of a reply to her question. Eventually Sakura realized he wasn't going to respond and was only going to continue staring at her with those flabbergasted wide eyes; she simply rolled her eyes and let go of him.

Sasuke's body collapsed to the ground and it was only then that he got shaken out of his reverie.

"Wait! We're not done-"

His words got cut off by a sudden kunai getting sent straight towards his shoulder, piercing his flesh and the trunk behind him.

"Yes, we are."

And that was the last Sakura said to him before leaping up into the trees and disappearing out of sight.

Awesome Sakura is AWESOME.