A/N: Written ages ago (and promptly forgotten about) for a challenge at the kakasaku livejournal community. Prompts were as follows:

Basic Level: Peach
Intermediate: Must include toaster waffles being used with deadly force.
Masochist level: First line must be "There's a monster under my bed!"

I, of course, went for Masochist Level, which means including all the previous prompts as well. What follows is pure, unadulterated, and completely nonsensical crack. You have been warned.

Snack Attack and the Monster of Improbability

"There's a monster under my bed! Oh no, whatever shall I do?" Sakura drawled out the lines with as disjointed and apathetic voice as she could muster.

She glowered at Kakashi, who sat at the back of the audience near the local village elders. When he smiled and cheekily waved back, her eyes chilled to a deadly glare. In turn he just made a show of cutting up the veritable feast of a breakfast laid before him.

Her hand twitched toward her missing kunai pouch. They hadn't let her wear it, citing that she wouldn't make a very believable damsel in distress if she was openly touting weapons. She'd had to bite back a comment that the well defined muscles in her arms and legs proclaimed her skill just as well, worried they'd try to force her into some kind of covered up costume, which would probably be one of the farm-wives' clothes. Not that there was anything wrong with their garb, but a long, billowy skirt was hardly conducive to combat-readiness in the unlikely event of an attack.

She was half-convinced Kakashi had gone along with it just so she wouldn't be able to lob a kunai at his overly-large head. Sniffing delicately, she hoped he knew she was wearing a veritable cornucopia of weapons, hidden discretely in her clothing and across her body. She ever so subtly rubbed at a senbon hidden in the hemming of her shirt.

He just smiled. The smug bastard.

Rolling her eyes, she turned her focus back to the 'demonstration' she was participating in.

This mission officially sucked.

Team Kakashi had been sent out three days earlier to analyze and disable the threat to this small farming village near the border of fire country. They'd scoured the surrounding area but hadn't found any trace of the supposed mercenaries. Either the bandits were extremely skilled at covering their tracks or someone in this village was highly paranoid and/or seeing things. She was half-surprised they hadn't yet been sent on the hunt for a kappa or a tanuki or something else equally ludicrous.

Four of the last ten rural missions they'd taken had actually been something of the like. Of course, they hadn't been told the true nature of the mission by their client until they arrived at their destination. She was certain Kakashi had been in the know at least once, though, because he'd been far too nonplussed and entirely too amused at their reactions to the news.

She wouldn't put it past him to accept such a job just to mess with his teammates. (In fact, it was right about when they started having a mass of these inane missions that Yamato was suddenly and inexplicably needed as ANBU again. Go figure.)

Luckily these particular elders didn't question Team Kakashi's skill or conclusions but instead offered another way for them to earn their pay: teaching. Since they hadn't neutralized the supposed threat they would demonstrate to the villagers what to do when under attack. It made sense and was a much better plan than running around doing nothing productive.

Unfortunately, that's when things got out of hand.

It turned out one of the elder's sons fancied himself a playwright and decided to script the demonstration. To say his skills were lacking was an understatement, but Kakashi had already committed them to going ahead with the plan.

She supposed they'd had stranger requirements for missions before. (There was the one where they'd had to discretely cover themselves in cloves of garlic. They'd needed it in order to smell strongly enough of the stuff to blend in with the natives who'd lived in the garlic capital of Fire Country for all their lives. Then there was the time they'd been hired for a mission on a tiny island that was completely matriarchal, and she'd acted as the unofficial head of Team Kakashi for the duration of the mission. Having Sai call her 'mistress' instead of 'hag' for the duration of the mission had been quite sweet.)

Regardless, she didn't exactly savor her role. "Why do I have to be the damsel in distress?" Sure, she'd get to punch some stuff afterward, but still, it was embarrassing.

Naruto looked at her like she was daft. "Uh, because you're the only girl here."

She refused to listen to his logic. "What about Sai? He's prettier than I am anyway."

"That's true," Sai conceded, "but you're still the best choice. While Naruto loves being the center of attention, he's even worse at acting than you are, and far too likely to go off script. As for me, the elders glare at me every time I walk by, by which I must conclude they are intimidated by my sculpted abs and innate good looks."

The fact that he could still say this with no inflection whatsoever still boggled Sakura's mind.

"They'd be sure to demand a change in wardrobe, at which point I would look like one of the adult males from the village acting as security detail, which would defeat the purpose of the exercise."

Said exercise was to teach the children and those women who didn't work the fields to not attack an intruder, but instead to run and find help. It was good advice and the correct course of action for those unfamiliar with combat and how to make even the most basic of defensive stances. Still, it rankled.

"Why not Kakashi-sensei?" she groused, knowing there was no chance in hell of that happening, even if the mental image it inspired was truly genius.

"As team leader it's my duty to stay with the village elders and make sure everything proceeds without a hitch. Besides, Sakura, you should be flattered. Goki-san wrote this for each of you particularly, and yours is the largest part. Is it really so strange that he'd want the pretty young woman to be in the spotlight the longest?"

She had caught him leering at her legs once. "Great, I went from token-helpless-female to eye-candy."

Sakura sat stewing, only managing to maintain her calm for about thirty seconds before she erupted again. She could've sworn she heard Naruto actually counting but she knew he valued his life more than that.

"But I'm not a run-and-get-help kind of person!" she whined. "I'm the one that kicks ass!"

Kakashi flipped a page in his book, not bothering to look up. "Gee thanks, Sakura. We never would've figured that out on our own. You've now cleared up years of misunderstanding. It's a good thing you said something, otherwise we might've mistaken the way that this morning you turned an entire tree into firewood for the village as something…domestic." He shivered delicately on the last word.

Naruto leaned over to her and in a loud whisper confided, "I think that's why it's called acting, Sakura-chan."

She fumed.

So now here she was, standing in front of the entire village, acting out this ridiculous 'demonstration'. As if to add insult to injury the kids – and the elders and Kakashi – were eating. Like it was a freaking dinner, er breakfast, theatre! She did not sign up to get up this early in the morning for something like this. It was enough to make her sick to her stomach and she hadn't even eaten yet!

She mimed running away from the bed that had been dragged out of some poor sap's house, until she found Naruto and clutched onto his arm, painfully hard. She had to suppress a smirk at the grunt he tried to hide. "Oh, proper guardian figure of the village, won't you please remove the monster from my house so that it'll be safe for me to go back inside? You look so strong, you must be able to handle the task!"

If Sakura hadn't been forced to participate in this monstrosity she would've been laughing. A quick glance in Kakashi's direction as good as confirmed that he was thinking along the same lines she was.

She had to wonder, though, about the continual reference to the enemy as a monster. Did Goki-san wish to dehumanize the enemy? It would certainly make dealing with them less tricky, as people tended to get squeamish about fighting and figuring out the proper punishment for prisoners who looked like they could be their neighbors. Or could this be the superstition references she'd been searching for, the villagers' way of saying they weren't actually looking for bandits at all? Or maybe Goki-san was just that bad a writer and sought to add a flair of drama to his script. Whatever the reason, it was making her feel sillier by the second.

Naruto puffed himself up and patted her on the arm as Sai narrated from the sidelines, going through the correct steps, as outlined by the village leaders and carefully gone over by Kakashi, of what to do and who in particular to find if just such an occurrence were to happen.

Sakura zoned out, instead studying the villagers seated in front of her. How they could eat when listening to such drivel was beyond her, but she found her own mouth watering at the scents wafting up from the tables and plates laid out.

"…ra-chan?" Naruto shook her arm. "Sakura-chan?"

"Wh-what?" she drawled, snapping back to herself.

"I said you should wait here while I go take care of the problem, all right?"

"Ah, yes, of course. I'll be right here."

Satisfied she'd done her part, Naruto nodded before heading back toward the bed. Thankfully the acting part of the demonstration was almost done and soon they could start teaching something actually useful to the group, like some very, very rudimentary self-defense moves. If they actually ever faced off against any bandits they would still be trampled – one day, let alone one hour of lessons wasn't going to make any real difference to their skill levels – but the confidence boost would surely help them through the situation.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and stilled. It couldn't have been Naruto; he was still playing out his part and making a great show out of wrestling the disguised bunshin playing the part of the 'monster', hamming it up to the great amusement of the crowd as they cheered, jeered, and laughed along with him. Sai stood to the side, watching as well, something almost resembling a smile playing across his face. Normally she'd have found the whole scene almost endearing, but the movement she'd not-quite seen was on the opposite side of the clearing from them, and she stood stock still waiting for it to reappear.

Shit, it seemed the bandits were real after all.

Automatically she reached for her missing kunai pouch, cursing herself for going for those weapons first when she had plenty others at her disposal, but luckily Kakashi had noticed her noticing. He was up and out of his seat, engaging the first attacker before her fingers landed on her first concealed senbon.

Sometimes she hated his speed.

Now they had everyone's attention, the villagers screaming and diving under tables, Naruto jumping into the fray, Sai hanging back and pulling out his ink and paper. Sakura flipped out her senbon, one after another, and stood her ground, hoping to get a final tally and full understanding of the enemy before jumping into close combat. She counted six men, one woman, and was just set to jump off the little platform they'd erected when it barreled out of the tree line.

A hibagon. No, no, not a hibagon, just something else that was large, hairy, twice as tall as her, and with hands the size of meat cleavers.

She steepled her fingers and shouted, "Kai!" It was still there.

They had to be fucking kidding.

None of the attackers seemed surprised by the addition; in fact they seemed to be deferring to it. Great, it was their leader.

That snapped her out of it. There was no way this side of hell that a group of men were deferring to a large, hairy, legendary, non-existent beast, so it simply couldn't be one. It was a dummy or a puppet, an elaborate costume meant to frighten or an ultra-high level genjutsu. She wouldn't believe it was anything else until she had her chakra running through its body.

She took a step toward the fighting, then froze when her hands came up empty. She'd already used all her hidden weapons. Dammit. She couldn't use her super-strength either; the bandits were now mixed in among the villagers and some of the locals were haphazardly trying to fight them, creating more of a melee of chaos than a battlefield, because they lacked the skill and timing to know when and how to get out of the way. She could pull a punch and hit someone behind her, or crack a table that some kids were hiding behind, or punch an enemy into the villager behind him. She'd already seen Naruto accidentally hit one of the men, and now he was kneeling over him, apologizing profusely, ignoring the enemy until one came so close he could strike out at the man from his hunched position. Well that was one more civilian she'd be healing after this was all done.

She'd waited too long. Just flippin' fantastic.

Still, a kunoichi was nothing if not inventive and ingenious. She eyed the disarrayed breakfast lying out in front of her and smirked. After having to dodge sake bottles for the past few years, and getting knocked in the head by them more often than she liked to admit – drunk or not, Tsunade was still one of the sannin – she knew that food and kitchen items actually made for pretty decent weapons.

She took a look at the poor, unloved, almost untouched fruit bowl lying in front of her. Such a waste. She picked up a pineapple and lobbed it with dizzying accuracy at one of the bandits on the far side of the field. It hit his face with a crunch and a splatter. She almost bemoaned its loss – it looked like it had been sweetly, perfectly ripe – but the welts and scratches on his face, coupled with his look of concussed incredulity, let her know she was on the right track.

Only throwing the hard, unripened fruits – the juicy ones she could save them for a snack later since she'd had no breakfast – she quickly ran out of ammunition. So then she turned to the preparation tables. She threw the frying pan. She'd heard rumor that it was actually a rather fantastic weapon. She threw the toaster. She even tossed out the kitchen sink, resulting in a rather spectacular tumble that sent her targeted enemy flying, a tangled mess of limbs and plumbing.

It was almost beautiful, in an I'm-trying-really-hard-not-to-laugh-at-you sort of way.

Then she turned to the last item on the table: the waffles. She sighed at her poor turn of luck. What could a poor waffle do? If they were toasted to a brittle crisp, maybe, but these were still only the lightest of brown. Pushing up her sleeves and clenching her fists she resigned herself to simply having to heal more civilians later and spend the rest of her day groveling in apologies, when her finger happened to graze one of the piles.

They were frozen.

This was perfect.

She picked up an entire stack, ignoring the instant shivering that made its way up her now frigid arm, and tossed them out one at a time like they were shuriken. The first couple flew wide, as she had to adjust for weight and mass, but then she was all but deadly with them.

In fact, that was the best part. She pelted one poor sod with frozen, processed pastry after frozen, processed pastry. (She'd think that a farm of all places would have freshmade waffles. Maybe they were and they were just flash-frozen to keep them at the peak of tasty goodness?) Musings aside, she watched in awe as her target was pummeled unconscious, though left alive – the benefit of waffles over shuriken. If they weren't so danged cold, large, cumbersome, and she didn't have to eat on missions, she'd consider carrying them instead of their metal counterparts, just so she wouldn't have to worry about holding back in order to have a prisoner to interrogate.

Erm, strike that. She'd just managed to catch one bandit with a frozen waffle to the throat, and from the way he dropped instantly she knew she'd succeeded in crushing his trachea, and quite possibly his carotid artery as well. He was dead before he even knew what hit him.

She stared down in fascinated awe at the pastry she was holding.

She felt bad for whoever ended up relaying the news back to his home, though; death by waffle wasn't exactly the noblest of ways to go.

Her flinging of food had started something of a precedent amongst those in hiding, so they were now grabbing any and all edible items within reach and lobbing them at the oncoming enemy. She'd unintentionally started a full on food fight, which just added to the general confusion.

It was one of the small saving graces of the situation that she was situated up on this little platform. That, coupled with her quite recognizable shock of bright pink hair, saved her from being the target of any of these clumsily thrown attacks. Her male counterparts weren't so lucky, considering they were right in the thick of things, but they were quite adept at dodging the would-be missiles.

Too bad.

Between them all they had the enemy downed within two minutes flat. Apparently all the bandits' skill was concentrated in their ability to cover their tracks, and none had anything more than even basic combat capabilities. She shrugged. At least that made their lives easier.

All that left was the non-hibagon, who was currently wrestling an overly enthusiastic Naruto. She rolled her eyes. She sincerely hoped this wasn't an animal-instinct thing. Her teammate was strange enough without throwing in demonic chakra and the occasional, weird fox-like behaviors. (For instance, she knew foxes were canine related – right? She'd never really studied animal genealogy and classification – but did he really have to mark his territory every time they set up camp for the night? And then there was the sniffing. And the licking.)

Her mind was working overtime on the whole 'hibagon' problem though. If it had been a puppet or genjutsu, then as soon as all the enemy had been incapacitated the beast should have disappeared or dropped. Unless there was another nin hiding in the trees somewhere. She scanned the forest, looking for any sign of chakra-use, but came up empty. She looked over at Kakashi, to get his take on it, just in time to see him get a soggy, syrupy, ooey-gooey pancake to the face.

Apparently the village kids hadn't gotten the memo that the fight was all but over. And apparently Kakashi's spidey-sense only worked on projectiles thrown with malicious intent. Not that she was complaining. Watching the bits of food slide off his mask was doing wonders to soothe her angst over the nature of this mission. It might've all been worth it just for this moment. She didn't bother holding back her laughter at his luck.

He glared. She stuck out her tongue. His eyes lingered until she had to look away, hoping she hadn't turned five shades of red.

Sauntering over to the tangled mass that was Naruto and the hibagon, she decided that maybe the non-hibagon was actually kind of cute. Maybe once they dragged it home, if it didn't dematerialize depending on what it really was, she'd keep it as a pet. Then she got within whiffing range of it and changed her mind. The only things she tolerated that smelled that bad were Naruto at the end of a month-long mission and her own fridge.

Instead she watched impatiently until Naruto finally had the beast knocked unconscious and then she knelt and set to work. She placed a hand on its chest, chakra entering its system and poking around, trying to unravel whatever jutsu had resulted in its abnormal appearance. Then she searched some more. And some more. And…

By the time her chakra had danced through every single pathway in the beast she knew her eyes to be the size of saucers. Her head shot up and she stared disbelievingly at Kakashi

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. This was simply not possible. She glanced back and forth from the hibagon – oh goodness, it might actually be a HIBAGON – to Kakashi, who was giving her the most self-satisfied look he could muster.

The realization dropped like a bomb into her consciousness.

No. He didn't. There was no way he had them traipsing back and forth across the country just to prove some stupid point to her. So what if he constantly razzed her for being a cynic? She was entitled to it. Not only was she a medic – by way of which she was also something of a chemist and scientist, and expected things to fall into the carefully categorized structures of the known world – but she was a shinobi, for crying out loud. Skepticism was like a job requirement! The only optimistic shinobi she knew was Naruto, and he wasn't exactly the epitome of normality.

On the other hand, Kakashi himself was sometimes gratingly optimistic as well, but she was pretty sure he did that just to needle them. Or, at least, she had been sure.

He couldn't. He wouldn't. One look at the smug bastard, though, was enough to quash that notion. He was entirely too pleased with himself, as he looked on at her and the hibagon, and the happy crease to his eye was as good as a spoken, "See? I told you so."

It was stupid. And insane. And irresponsible, negligent, wasteful, ridiculous, flighty, unpragmatic, and uneconomical. Not to mention her bank account had suffered mightily for these continual B- and C-rank missions.

It was also quite possibly one of the sweetest things anyone had ever done for her. Suddenly all the drudgery of wandering all over the country didn't seem bothersome anymore.

The hibagon was starting to move so Naruto walked back over and kicked it again. It flailed about, so Naruto kept kicking, and when it finally stopped Sakura placed a stasis jutsu over it to keep it immobile until she could get it home and study it.

The elders were already fluttering around Kakashi, no doubt 'politely' requesting that they leave immediately, taking the over-grown ape with them. She sighed. She really couldn't blame them but she certainly didn't want to have the smelly beast draped over her shoulder as they headed out.

Mischief glinting in her eyes she turned to Naruto. "Oh, proper figure-head of the team, won't you please remove the monster from the ground so that I'll have enough chakra to monitor its stasis? You look so strong, you must be able to handle the task!"

He cackled at her poorly made-over rendition of the line she'd spoken not fifteen minutes earlier, but gave in easily enough. It wasn't like he ever had a problem with showing off his skills and how much he was capable of.

Sai packed his tools and cantered lazily after Naruto. They knew well enough that if they went at anything faster that they'd be able to completely make camp before Kakashi caught up. He was fastidiously, notoriously slow on the return trip to Konoha.

Sakura's stomach grumbled and she hefted the few pieces of fruit left intact after the whole debacle, munching on one as she waited for Kakashi to finish the whole business of payment and signatures. Transaction complete, he graced her with one final look before hefting his book and meandering toward the path out of town.

Once they were out of earshot of the villagers she started in on him. "So…a hibagon, huh?"

He gave her a one-shoulder shrug. "Who'd have guessed, eh?"

"Yeah, who'd have guessed?" She smiled up at him, moving so she was in front of him, walking backwards. His mask was still tacky with syrup and he tugged at it irritably. She couldn't even imagine how cloying the sticky sweetness made it seem.

"Peach?" she asked, holding out the fruit in her hand as a peace offering.

His grimace deepened. "You know I don't like sweet things." He tugged even more on the mask, going so far as to pour some of the water from his canteen on it.

She grinned. "I know." She leaned in, her voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "But I do."

Her eyes lowered to his lips, her intentions plain, and he took the peach without complaint, a smirk working its way across his mouth.

"Hey guys. Guys!" Naruto yelled, coming around a bend in the path. "I think Larry's starting to wake up already."

"Larry?" Sakura asked, eyebrow raised.

"Yeah, he looks like a Larry," Naruto explained as if it was obvious. "I think the jutsu's effect is wearing off already; you should check him."

Her hands hovered over the hibagon's – Larry's – chest again, tangling in his inner workings, and sure enough, he was hovered just at the point of unconsciousness. Huh. It seemed hibagon physiology was more disparate from human physiology than she'd originally surmised. "Guess I'll be keeping a close eye on this guy," she said, patting his chest genially.

Kakashi coughed, drawing their attention. "All right, Naruto, let's get going. We're making it back to Konoha double-time."

"Double-time?!" the blond squawked. "But Larry's heavy. Why the sudden change?"

Kakashi flicked a glance at Sakura before leveling his gaze on Naruto. "If you don't think you're fit enough for the challenge then I think we need to up your endurance training. What do you think?"

Naruto squeaked. "No, it's fine, it's fine!" Naruto loved learning new techniques but he loathed endurance training. He made a show of thumping his chest. "You'll see – I'm a one-man hibagon-moving machine!"

He bounded back around the corner and out of sight, leaving Kakashi just enough time to lean over and press his syrup-coated, mask-covered lips to Sakura's in a quick kiss.

"What?" he asked innocently as he pulled back. "You said you like sweet things."

He pocketed the peach. "I'll be saving this for once we're home."

Her eyes glittered and she smiled up at him invitingly. "Race you there?"

"You're on."

A/N: A hibagon is the Japanese version of Bigfoot or the Yeti.