Um. I DO NOT KNOW? A little Team Hebi interaction, just after they collected Jyuugo, I suppose. (Sasuke is loopy.) Done in two or three hours.
Disclaimer: STILL VALID.
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They were having a juice break.
Sasuke hadn't had a juice break since he was just beginning at the Academy, but there they were, having a juice break.
Well, Suigetsu was having a juice break. Sasuke was mostly just scooting millimeters along the flat rock he was sitting on so Karin could find adequate space to perch herself down as well. She seemed to be getting closer and closer all of the time, but he guessed that this was just a girl thing. Sakura had used to do this as well.
He glanced down to his right and saw that he was going to fall off of the long rock, soon. Gaze lifting up to stare past Karin, he observed quite calmly that she had a good meter of space, but was still sitting on his left sleeve.
Maybe girls were always cold and needed to sit beside him. Or maybe Karin and other women just thought that they had really fat asses and required such room. Hell, maybe she was sick of sitting around and was trying to push him off of the rock so he'd stand up and say that they could keep walking again.
Rolling this around in his mind, considering, Sasuke guessed that the latter was probably it. She hated Suigetsu's juice breaks.
Standing up suddenly, and effectively knocking Karin onto her side since she had been sitting on his wide sleeve, he adjusted his katana casually and murmured, "Let's go."
A distinct, whined curse sounded behind him. Okay, so maybe he'd guessed wrong about what she'd wanted. He didn't particularly give a damn, as long as she and Suigetsu didn't argue the entire way until Suigetsu insisted that he needed more juice. Karin seemed to complain about these breaks a lot, but Sasuke didn't understand why. They were all valuable members-- teammates?-- whatever, to his plan. The Uchiha had a feeling that he was the only one that realized that Suigetsu needed to drink a lot to keep himself properly hydrated.
How else was he supposed to perform water jutsu without any water around except for the liquid that composed his body?
As the group of teenagers rose and began to walk the stretch of wide, flat dirt that made up this dry terrain, Sasuke had an inkling that maybe girls were just as stupid about boys as boys were about girls. Their neurons were wired differently, after all; synapses firing off at all kinds of different things.
Suigetsu pulled out another juice box and began to slurp loudly.
Karin smacked him upside the head and told him to stop making such a racket.
Suigetsu kicked at her and told her to walk five miles to the side if it was bothering her so much; there was more than enough space in this rocky stretch of desert.
Karin actually seemed to consider this, and Sasuke sensed her come closer to grabbing the back of his clothes, as though she was cold again or something. Which didn't even make sense at all, because they were in a desert, for god sakes.
Still sipping his juice, Suigetsu supplied dryly, "He's not going with you; he's the one that knows where the hell he's taking us… Stupid."
The girl's presence slipped back a few feet again, and he could tell that she was sulking. Why would he want to walk five miles over, anyway? It would take an extra hour or two, and the less time they spent in the desert, the fewer juice breaks they would need to let Suigetsu recuperate.
Sasuke had nothing against juice. He liked juice. But stopping to sit down and watch Suigetsu drink grape juice out of a box or pouch reminded him of being a little kid, which was utterly ridiculous considering that they were going to go find the Akatsuki and kill them. Namely, Itachi. But they didn't know that yet, exactly.
Suigetsu and Karin continued to bicker none too quietly. He glanced over at Jyuugo, who was very quiet except for when he wasn't and went crazy and tried to kill every living thing on the planet until it was an unrecognizable pulp mashed in with every other corpse in the area so that everything would just be a big bloody heap of mangled bodies, and thought that at least he was normal. Sasuke could sometimes relate to the urge to do the whole pulp-mashing bit, but he tried to ignore it. Unnecessary killing wasn't his thing.
He scrunched up his nose and squeezed his eyes halfway shut against the bright sun that glared off of the cracked ground. The Uchiha imagined himself stabbing Itachi's larynx through, with blood spurting all over the place and making everything gross and sticky and slippery, all while he was offhandedly sipping juice through a straw. Absurd. But still, he could almost feel the weight of Itachi's body sliding off of his katana and thudding to the ground in front of him…
In front of him…
Sasuke looked down and said, "Hm," tilting his head to the side.
At his toes, there was about a two-hundred foot drop off straight down the side of a canyon. When he looked up to judge the distance, it seemed to span about half of the world.
Beside him, Suigetsu whistled lowly. "Well, at least there's a bridge." Sasuke looked up to see him motion to a bridge about thirty feet away.
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"…Hm," Sasuke said again, staring at the bridge. Jyuugo nodded and made a silent 'Hm' sound in reply.
Suigetsu made noisy slurping sounds with the straw as he got to the bottom of the juice box, then stuck his massive sword into the dry earth and leaned on it.
The bridge trembled with apprehension.
"THAT'S NOT A BRIDGE, DUMBASS!" Karin exploded in a violent frothing of verbal lava, and Sasuke looked across the wide canyon, pushing a bit of hair behind his ear. "IT'S JUST SOME POPSICLE STICKS AND DENTAL FLOSS!"
Though the comparison was unfair to the bridge in an over excessive way, Sasuke had to agree.
"What the hell, woman… If you could have seen it like this from that distance, you should have said something and saved us the trouble of walking over here!" Suigetsu tossed his juice box over his shoulder, and Sasuke almost told him off.
He was no environmentalist, but he didn't exactly want to be tracked by a trail of crushed juice containers.
"Stop fighting," Sasuke whispered quietly. He didn't put much effort into his words all that often, but after Suigetsu and Jyuugo hadn't listened to him the first three times he'd said that, everyone knew the consequences. It wasn't so much that they feared Sasuke, just that it was a coping mechanism to survive his personality quirks. Just like how Sasuke let his imagination wander a little to block out their bickering.
All four of them looked skywards and watched a fat black crow perch himself right in the middle of the sagging bridge. The rotting boards and rope seemed to simply disintegrate before their very eyes, breaking off in chunks and falling into the canyon below, not even leaving the ropes to climb across on. They watched this in quiet fascination as they comprehended this.
The crow flew away, and Sasuke swore that it was laughing. He wasn't exactly angry, but he wanted very much to just fly after it, catch it, and tear its stupid feathery head off of its stupid fat body with his bare hands, and then he'd--
He looked over at Jyuugo for the second time.
No pulp-mashing, Sasuke told himself.
Jyuugo wondered what Sasuke was thinking about, and if he'd figured out a way to get across.
Everyone looked at Sasuke, since he was mostly their leader.
"Hm," Sasuke said again.
"Any ideas?" Suigetsu asked, as though bored.
Karin seemed to think that he was trying to make Sasuke flustered by asking him this, and punched him in the arm. Sasuke looked over his shoulder and both promptly pretended that they hadn't been secretly fighting right after Sasuke had told them to stop it.
"Yeah," Sasuke muttered, staring out over the horizon. "About thirty good ones, but they all involve some sort of individual exertion."
They all frowned collectively, understanding the problem. Usually, they wouldn't have a problem with tiring themselves out, but they were in the middle of the desert and quickly running out of supplies.
"…Aw, damn, last one." Suigetsu sighed dramatically and tossed an orange juice box in one hand.
"Save it," Sasuke said. He knew that if Suigetsu got too dehydrated, it would be troublesome, so he couldn't let the boy fight or run too much until they found more liquids. "You won't be using those jutsu soon anyway. You can drink it when we see forest on the horizon."
Mock saluting the Uchiha, Suigetsu stuffed the drink back into his bag.
"I'll make a bridge out of chakra, and you two," Sasuke nodded to Jyuugo and Karin, "hurry up and cross it. Jyuugo, take Suigetsu's sword for him."
Forming a few quick seals, then molding a band of chakra between his hands, Sasuke met an unsure protest in the form of Karin's voice.
"Er… Not that I'm doubting you or anything, Sasuke-kun… But…" The girl adjusted her glasses, standing very straight-backed.
"But?" Sasuke queried calmly.
Getting slightly nervous, Karin continued quickly, "Is that exactly solid enough to stretch such a distance?"
A great spear of chakra formed in Sasuke's hand, and he deadpanned, "Will its solidity be verified if I stab something?"
Yet another glance at Jyuugo, then a shake of his head to banish his thoughts. "Well, anyway, you can go across on it. I'm not used to such a distance, you're right, but that doesn't mean I can't do it." Sasuke crouched down at the beginning of the cliff edge and his chakra leapt upwards, stretching across the gap as he concentrated.
Karin had yet another protest, though, seeing the error in his logic. "But you'll be over exerting yourself, then, right?!"
Suigetsu handed his sword over to Jyuugo, and Sasuke replied, "Doesn't matter. I'm used to expending chakra to my limits, and I am the one that pulled all of you together." He looked forwards and watched as his chakra slowed in midair, flickering, and he pushed more out of his body. "And besides, I'd be a pretty shitty leader if I just bossed people around."
Realizing that this sounded almost tender, Sasuke suddenly barked, glaring over his shoulder, "Now get your asses moving! I'm not holding this up all day!"
Jyuugo and Karin rushed off over the improvised bridge without further argument, the narrow walkway disappearing at their heels to relieve some of the exhaustion from the Uchiha boy.
Once they were safely across, Sasuke counted ten seconds before he rose to his feet and turned to Suigetsu, who was now sitting cross-legged in the dry, hot dirt.
"So, 'Boss', how are we getting across? You're not so mean as to stick poor Jyuugo with that woman, right?"
Well, since Sasuke was supposed to be keeping Jyuugo in check whenever his seal-disease took over, and he was now adequately displaced to do such a job, and Jyuugo also had Suigetsu's massive sword…
"I think it's the other way around…" Sasuke murmured thoughtfully, pushing his robe down to his waist, revealing his bare chest, and tying the long sleeves together neatly.
"Um… Hey, what're you doing…?" Suigetsu stared up at Sasuke apprehensively, slowly standing up with one hand raised defensively.
"Hm?" Sasuke glanced over, "We're flying over. No need for you to run across, since this weather has put you at a disadvantage." The sun was indeed scorching, and he could afford some chakra, even if Jyuugo decided to go pulp-mashing later.
"Oh! Right, of course. Flying... Wait, flying?" Suigetsu blinked as he watched Sasuke activate to the second level of his seal, two enormous leathery wings bursting out of his shoulder blades.
Grabbing Suigetsu's shirt by the scruff of the neck and lifting him up into the air with a few heavy beats of his wings, Sasuke scowled, "Don't make me repeat it." He pushed a piece of wild, grey-blue hair out of his face as he held onto Suigetsu carelessly with the other.
Suigetsu decided that this wouldn't have been so bad if Sasuke would bother to use both of his hands and maybe look like he gave a damn, but he didn't voice this on the slight chance that Sasuke would actually drop him. As much as he hated to admit it, this dryness and heat did bring his abilities down a lot, but at least Sasuke was thinking logically to try and keep everyone at their best.
Well, excepting himself. But Sasuke had always been sort of a die-hard; very unconcerned when it came to his own well being. Maybe it just didn't matter because he knew his limits, and they were beyond comprehension at times. Sasuke wasn't stupid enough to put himself in jeopardy on purpose.
When they'd gotten across, things fell back into the usual pace. Jyuugo had a minor outbreak that Sasuke, true to his word, had dealt with. Four days later, after many arguments about water rations that Karin had not wanted to split with Suigetsu (but had finally relented when Sasuke had thrown his entire water canteen at the other boy, saying that he may as well make more sacrifices even after his chakra drain. Sasuke knew how to read people and guilt them into doing things, even if he was a little ignorant to the ways of a girl's mind), they could see a glimmer of green over the curvature of the earth.
"Where are we going, Sasuke?" Jyuugo spoke for the first time in a while.
Not pausing in his pace, the Uchiha replied, "Konoha. It's the nearest capital of the five nations, and I need to steal some information about Akatsuki. I won't be long."
"You make it sound like you're going alone," Karin pouted in an adorable manner that she'd been perfecting. Sasuke didn't take notice.
"Aren't you from Konoha, anyway?" Suigetsu drawled, searching through his bag for something.
Nodding fractionally, Sasuke clarified, "It will be easier if I go in alone, since I'm not aiming to make a scene. I know my way around, and don't get any wrong ideas about me," A pause, and then a tone with an edge of underlying intenseness that he rarely used in normal conversation, "I have no intention of rejoining them. It is merely a coincidence that the location of Konoha is convenient to what we're doing. If we were closer to any other Hidden Village, we would have gone there."
"No reunions, then? How sad," Suigetsu joked, still fishing around in his bag.
Shaking his head in response, Sasuke thought about his old team for a moment. Surely, they still remembered him, but he had cut off those bonds a long time ago. Sakura and Naruto had come searching for him, but he could not pretend that he'd be gentle with them if they tried to impede his progress. It was enough that he'd been held back in Konoha, unable to train as well as he'd wanted to.
Regardless of the past, it was different now. He was strong enough. No one in Konoha would ever know he was there, at least not until he was long gone and off to the Akatsuki hideout.
"Oi, Sasuke."
Looking up at Suigetsu and automatically catching a box of orange juice in his hands, he quirked an eyebrow in question.
"I'm fine, you have that one," Suigetsu hitched his bag back onto his shoulder and folded his hands behind his head. "We're almost at the forest anyway, and there will be rivers and whatnot." He laughed, then, and continued, "You should see yourself; you look ready to keel over! Too much sun for you, hey, boss-man?"
Sasuke looked down at himself and shrugged. He felt a little tired, was all, and that was to be expected after such a trek. Everyone was tired. Nevertheless, he punched the plastic straw through the seal at the top of the box and took a sip. His hands had been much smaller the last time he'd gone through these motions.
"Aren't we going to stop?" Karin asked suddenly. Now she wanted to stop for juice? Women.
"No," Sasuke muttered. He didn't hate juice. He'd just never had a juice break since he was a child.
Situation considered, he wasn't going to start now.