This is a fragment set after the time-skip in a possible future of my main story, 'Another Player in the Game. It just begged to be written, so behold! Yamato and Sai meet Naruto!

Meeting Sai

Sakura leant against a tree in training ground seven, staring idly at the sky. While she understood perfectly well why Sasuke would not be rejoining team seven in the field any time soon -if ever- she did not get why Kakashi-sensei had been removed from the team. True, Amemai-san had recently given birth again, but that had not been an issue three years ago when she'd had the triplets. Not to mention that the journin replacing the copy-nin was... strange. Not to mention the fact that in the last three years working in the hospital and around the village she had never even seen the man before.

The kunoichi turned her gaze away from the azure curve overhead and turned to look at Naruto, who was absent-mindedly juggling a kunai in one hand. The blond had changed a lot while he was away. For one thing, he was a whole lot taller. His once short hair now hung over his hitai-ite and face in long spikes at the front and was tied in a high, shoulder length ponytail at the back. He wore loose white hakama tucked into ankle boots and a long sleeved kimono decorated in rusty orange and lime green at the shoulders and cuffs -orange on the right sleeve and green on the left- with the Uzumaki spiral and the odd, geometric mon Amemai used picked out in white here and there on the coloured areas. Naruto also wore an uwa-obi patterned and dyed mimicking a stormy sea around his waist with a daishou hanging off it at the back, making him look strangely samurai-like. The total absence of visible weapons gave him the appearance of a lord in the gardens of his home, armed as honour required but otherwise unprepared for battle.

Sakura knew very well that an apparently unarmed Naruto was in many ways more dangerous than a visibly prepared one; his outfit, just like her own, was designed to lure the opponent into a false sense of security. She had no idea how he managed those huge, loose and impractical sleeves or where he had stashed his kunai and shuriken, but she wasn't going to ask. Naruto-humour was traumatic enough for a third party, let alone an unwitting participant.

She had to wonder about him though; she'd heard some very disconcerting accounts of things he'd done while he was away and nothing he'd said or done since returning had dispelled her uneasy suspicions.

"Naruto, Sakura," their new sensei, Yamato, said as he entered the training ground with a pale, dark haired boy their age at his heels, "this is your new team-mate, Sai. He's a former Yuurei, so be aware that he is unaccustomed to a normal team environment."

"Hello," The newly introduced Sai said blandly. "My name is Sai and I like painting. I hope we can get along."

"That's a fake smile," Naruto said cooly, narrowing his eyes ever so slightly at the other boy. "It isn't even a good fake smile. Either get better at faking or learn how to smile sincerely."

Sai stared blankly at the taller blond. "I was trying to be properly sociable, dickless."

Sakura drew in a breath with a hiss; this was going to be bad. Everything she'd heard indicated that Naruto's no-holds-barred sense of humour had only become more bizarre in his time away from Konoha, merging into his frankly disturbing tendency to see gender as optional.

She did not have to hold her breath for very long.

"Sai-kuun!" A suddenly extremely curvy and female Naruto gushed, eyelashes fluttering and hands clasped against her heart, "I'm so flattered! You're such a sweetheart!" The well-endowed blond lunged forward with journin-level speed, trapping the wide-eyes Sai in a hug that smooshed him against her breasts. "We are going to get along wonderfully, I can just see it." The blonde nuzzled his hear, smiling alluringly while her eyes held a hard, predatory gleam.

There was a long moment of total silence as both the new additions to team seven froze, brains unable to take in the magnificent insanity that was Uzumaki Naruto.

"Get off me," Sai eventually managed, fake smile wiped away as his true, icy personality surfaced.

"But, but Sai-kun! I thought you wanted to be friends!"

Sai glanced at Yamato, who was clearly still in shock, then at Sakura: "Is this normal behavior?"

"Only for Naruto. My one consolation is that he doesn't wear green spandex," Sakura sighed. "Naruto, let Sai go, please."

The busty blond turned to the pinkette with puppy dog eyes and a pout. "But Sakura-chan! He all but begged for it! You heard what he called me."

"This is a reaction to 'dickless'?"

The blond smiled sweetly. "If he calls me a girl, then a girl I will be."

Sakura groaned. "Sai, unless you want Naruto to spent every single second of our team time as a clingy female you'll have to apologise." She had had a great many encounters with the Yuurei over the past few years and knew exactly how socially inept most of them were.

Sai narrowed his eyes at the blonde hanging all over him. "Naruto, I will never call you dickless ever again. Now let go of me, whore."

Naruto bounced swifly out of reach, twirling merrily. "Oh, whore am I?" He asked, amused, shifting back into male form halfway through the query. "I'm a ninja, Sai-kun. I do all kinds of interesting things for money. Want to explore my qualifications?"

"Man-whore," Sai said flatly.

"Cold fish," Naruto retaliated, not offended in the slightest.

Sakura groaned. This is going to be a nightmare.

A/N: MWAHAHAHAHA! Naruko-chan breaks brains!