Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto/Naruto Shippuden.

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A/N: Plot bunny strikes again. I'm hoping I can finish it in time for Ino's birthday. Or by the end of the year.

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Warning: I love Sai. But I'm not sure if I can do him justice here. Same goes for the rest.

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Grab. Latch On. Maintain Pressure.

Prologue

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Sai stared at Naruto as the jinchuriki had been in deep thought as soon as the wave of his excitement half an hour ago had died down. He and Sakura had been watching Sasuke and Naruto spar at the Third training ground when two of the former Team 10 came earlier. The pineapple-head and Ms. Beautiful informed them that the Hidden Villages had come to an agreement to hold the Chunin Examination a year earlier than scheduled. Due to a big number of war casualties, the villages are in dire need of new batches of shinobis to function properly.

Konoha would definitely benefit from it. They're so short in staff that the Hokage had given out double missions to fresh batch of genins, promoted all the chunins who participated and survived the war to jonins, recruited almost a quarter of willing jonins who served well at the war to ANBU and even ended up sending out Kakashi-sensei as one of the representatives to post-war meetings.

And since Naruto's still a genin officially, he was so overjoyed he sounded like the green clad shit-eyebrows for a while. Sasuke was happy as well if you'd considered the miniscule upward tug of his lips as a smile. He's still a genin too and one of the conditions that the ex-avenger had to agree on before he was released from prison was he had to pass the Chunin Exam before he can be sent out to missions.

Naruto and Sasuke's spar never resumed after that. Sakura was silently sitting closely beside Sasuke who's cleaning his sword while the usual blabber mouth had been silent for the past ten minutes now. Sai would usually welcome the comfortable silence but it's been weeks since he last saw his former team. He was recruited by the grandma-Hokage to ANBU and was placed in a team with the stoic face Neji Hyuga and Captain Yamato. The dynamic of that team was different. It's more matured compared to Team Kakashi.

Calmness was a natural part of it. Truth be told, he missed Naruto's loud mouth, Sakura's nagging and Kakashi-sensei's laziness. Plus he's still very curious to see Sasuke's bond with the team.

"Naruto," Sai called. "What are you thinking?"

The blonde looked at him. "There's something different."

"With what?"

"I can't really pinpoint it." Naruto sighed. He plopped down on the grass with a thud. "I feel there's something different when we see Ino. There's something missing."

"How is it different, Naruto?" Sai asked. He tried to remember the times when they met Ino. Most of them consist of the blonde kunoichi always being friendly and cheery then arguing and or gossiping with Sakura. The same thing happened earlier which prompted Shikamaru to utter troublesome a few times. "I didn't notice anything new."

"That's expected Sai. You weren't with us before so you wouldn't know." Sakura chuckled. Moving towards Naruto, she playfully punched his arms. "However, you Naruto, I'm getting worried about your forgetfulness."

"Ne, Sakura. What is it?" Naruto asked eager to know what he had forgotten.

She nodded her head towards Sasuke. "I'll give you a clue. It's got to do with Sasuke."

Sai and Naruto simultaneously look over to Sasuke, who's already done cleaning his sword and scowling at them. "What?" he asked.

Sai smiled, it wasn't often that Sasuke would join a conversation willingly. "Naruto's bothered that there's something different with Ms. Beautiful. Sakura said it has to do with you. Can you help?"

"Tch. I don't know what you're talking about."

Sai noticed that Sasuke's scowl softened a bit. He saw a flash of recognition in his eyes for a few seconds as well before Sasuke averted his gaze. He definitely knows what they're talking about. But why wouldn't he tell us? To annoy Naruto more or it's because of Ino? He was about to voice out his question when Naruto suddenly stood up.

"That's it!" the blonde boy exclaimed. He pointed at Sasuke. "Ino doesn't glomp you anymore!"

"Bingo." Sakura confirmed. "Took you what, just a few months to notice?"

"That's not too long considering it's me, right Sakura?" Naruto scratched his nose, not getting offended with the pink-haired girl's sarcasm. "Now that I think about it, Ino never glomp Sasuke ever since he came back huh? Do you know why Sakura?"

Sakura frowned a bit. "She never really gave a straight answer when I asked her about it some time ago. She just told me that she's too old for glomping." Shrugging her shoulders, she smiled. "But I guess that's good because she's not annoying Sasuke anymore."

"One less competition for you, you mean." Naruto teased.

"I don't mean it like that!" Sakura stammered, her face starting to become the same color of her hair.

She raised her hands into a punching stance, making Naruto raised his arms in surrender. "Of course you didn't mean that!"

"Good." Situating herself in the middle of them four, Sakura smiled.

Sensing that the bantering was over for now, Sai took out a small pocket-book from his bag.

"Whatcha got there Sai?" Naruto asked before he plopped down to the grass again. This time nearer Sasuke's side.

"It's a dictionary." He smiled towards Sakura. "It's the hag's gift."

The kunoichi just rolled her eyes at his nickname for her. "What word are you looking for?"

"Glomp. It's not here though." He looked up from his book to Sakura. "It spells g-l-o-m-p right?"

Sakura chuckled. "You're not going to find it there because glomp is slang. I think the library has a slang dictionary somewhere. "

"Is that so?" Sai put his dictionary back. Securing the strap of his bag to his shoulders, he stood up. "Then I'll head over there now while I have time. Bye."

"Hey Sai! I'll go with you. I want to know what slang is!"

"Naruto baka!"

"Dobe."

Yes, Sai missed this. He won't admit it out loud though.

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Prologue End

August 7. 2012