"A flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all."

.-.-.

Petal 1 - The Forbidden Scroll

.-.-.

It was currently the wee hours of the morning, and the outskirts of the Fire Country was silent and still, save for the occasional hoot from an owl or a croak from a toad.

- Leaves rustle but there is no wind. Branches droop but there is no rain. The air shifts, but nothing can be seen -

...And of course, the occasional ninja passing through. But both the ninjas currently passing through were so fast and silent that it was almost as if there wasn't such a heated up chase going on.

Almost.

The ninja leading said chase looked over one armored shoulder and saw that the blonde Leaf shinobi was getting closer. Deciding that an increase in speed was needed, the masked nin turned around to do so, only to slam into what could only be a brick wall.

...Which had a mass of spiky blond hair, sky-blue eyes and turned out to be the nin who'd been giving chase.

Not missing a beat, the foreign ninja jumped off the branch, falling backwards. The Leaf jounin simply flashed himself to the branch below, planting his feet firmly on the branch just in case he was going get slammed into again.

. . .Only to find out that he'd been tricked by a smooth feint, and that his enemy had jumped onto the next tree instead.

But he simply flashed to the next branch the nin landed on, and this time, pinned his prey to the tree with one hand, his thicker thighs pressing onto much slimmer ones, as he held the ANBU in place.

Frowning orbs scanned the tense, but surprisingly not struggling kunoichi in his grasp, as he tried to find the scroll she'd somehow stolen from what was probably the most secure place in all of Konoha.

- The Forbidden Scrolls Room -

Which obviously wasn't as secure as he had believed it to be.

Not in there, he thought as he beagn his scanning of her with a glance at the ankle-length, black, stocking like things she wore which reached mid-thigh and hugged her shapely legs. He skipped the white skirt she wore, which displayed a teasing glimpse of her flawless skin through the slits at the sides, whilst ignoring his perverted conscious, which sounded unsurprisingly like a certain sensei of his, who was telling him to seize this chance to get some 'booty' like the shameless cads in his real life version's books seemed to keep doing.

Not in there either, he decided, as he looked at the flat contours of the lower part of her black armor. So that leaves...

He stared at the upper part of her armor that protected her chest mercifully from his sight and stiffened. Sure, there was no hint at all that the scroll was in there, but unless she'd somehow made it invisible - which he would've noticed, if it'd been done by a jutsu - or made the scroll smaller through tearing or flattening it - which was impossible, since the scroll was virtually indestructible - then the only place she could have hidden it would be at that place.

And sure enough, as he stiffly leaned forward, so close that his chin almost brushed her completely covered head, he took a quick peek down her - fortunately - covered cleavage and saw that the scroll was secured snugly between her breasts.

Outwardly, all he did was quickly lean back – too quickly for it to be that of a nonchalant manner though, not that the kunoichi wouldn't have already figured out that he wasn't entirely immune to her anyway. Inwardly though, his gentlemanly conscious was having a mental breakdown and leaking blood through his nose, while his perverted conscious was doing a victory dance and mentally prodding his exterior self persistently to, in a tuned-down version of the actual sentence, "GO FOR IT!!!"

It was virtually impossible to avoid brushing against her well-endowed chest, and the skin-tight, white, sleeveless turtleneck she wore didn't help matters much either, if it did at all.

No choice then. Chakra the color of his eyes gathered at two of his fingers, as he shaped it with amazing ease into an incredibly sharp chakra needle.

Slicing through her armor smoothly, he only sliced through it until he could manage to grasp one end of the tube the scroll was wrapped around without touching her. Taking the scroll quickly, he had barely loosened his grasp on her when she slammed a kunai into his hand, making him wince and drop the scroll.

She grabbed it and the next thing they knew, a powerful light exploded from the unraveling scroll, blinding them.

Closing her eyes, she quickly muttered, "Fukumen no Jutsu!" before opening them to take this chance to leave her probably still blinded enemy in her wake.

Only to find herself to be alone.

...And that, for some reason or another, in the blink of an eye, the night that had surrounded them had turned into a lovely, cloudless morning.

.-.-.

To be continued

.-.-.

fukumen - veil