"If you chose life, you know what fear is like. If you welcome addiction, this is your kingdom." -IAMX; Kingdom of Welcome Addiction

IT SEEMED INCREDIBLE to Sakura just how greatly things could change in a few short months. The sheer irony of it all was that no matter how much things seemed to change, they never truly did. Every single one of them was still locked up at the Institution... each and every one of them were still plagued with the title of UFS, deeming them unfit and unsafe for society. They were never getting out of here. Nothing had changed and yet everything was different.

Sakura scowled, dropping her gaze into her lap as she reflected over the past three months. Gaara stirred slightly in his sleep, his tongue lashing out to lick his lips before retreating back into his mouth. Gaara and Sasori's birthday have been a complete cluster-fuck of a failure in every sense of the word. Sasori and Gaara ended up getting into a vicious fist-fight, which resulted in the two of them spending the next three days in solitary. As of late, they were continually at each other's throats; everything that one did enraged the other. Sakura was having a hard time keeping Gaara from bludgeoning his twin to death.

Sasuke and Naruto bickered constantly, though they didn't seem any worse for the wear. Orochimaru made regular classroom examples of their odd relationship, which irked Naruto to no end. Sasuke rather enjoyed it. Tsunade, however, had to discourage Orochimaru's behavior, citing it as unprofessional. She was actually just worried about covering her ass.

Sakura brushed a lock of hair out of her face as she watched Gaara sleep, his arm strewn across her torso to dangle over the arm of the couch. He was so much prettier when he was asleep. Gone were his rugged, sexually predatory looks. In their wake were smoother, softer lines of a face that didn't look so haunted, at least when he wasn't having the nightmares...

At the other end of the L-shaped couch, Kankuro and Kai were laying together in a way that Sakura had quickly become accustomed to seeing. That was one thing that brought Sakura peace, oddly enough. She worried more about Kankuro than she did for Gaara. Gaara opened up to her about some things; Kankuro bottled up a lot of things. Sakura smiled slightly as Kankuro idly toyed with Kai's hair in his sleep. He was like an over-grown child with a doll.

Her frustrations of recent times often left her feeling as helpless as a child. Despite the pact they'd agreed to with Tsunade and Jiraiya on Christmas day three month's previous, her wing had yet to do any real work. All this time had passed, wasted. Tsunade and Jiraiya were 'teaching' them how to kill efficiently. Sakura felt that they were teaching them to bore their targets to death.

Killing was not something they had ever done without a plan. Now it seemed that all they'd ever do anymore was plan the death, not actually carry it out. The point behind the killing could be considered noble, though the motives of a group of teenagers in an insane asylum would always be questionable. Their goal was to rid the world of the scum that didn't deserve to breath; not with the atrocities they'd performed.

Naruto in particular was itching to make a kill, as was Sasori. Sasori himself had never actually had an opportunity to kill the vermin of the Institution with them; he'd only ever come to the place as a favor to his father. Tsunade had owed him; apparently they went back a few good years and she'd owed a favor. However, this favor had worked out much more in her benefit than it had for Kaze. Sasori had been having issues, particularly with his certifiably insane mother. After a visit with Sasori, she'd learned that Gaara was the twin his mother had been obsessed with finding after her brother stolen him, Temari, and Kankuro away shortly after Gaara and Sasori's birth. How opportune that Gaara had been so close-by and yet so far away all that time... though, it didn't help that Sasori had been forced to move any time he even seemed to have a potential friend.

Sakura felt rather sorry for Gaara's peculiar twin. His mother had been so determined to find Gaara that she lost sight of her remaining son. Hell, she hadn't even cared so much about finding Kankuro or Temari, only Gaara. Sakura glanced down in her lap again, smoothing some of his blood-red hair away from his face. He looked so fragile... Absently she wondered if he'd have been any better off with his mother. Perhaps not.

The sound of a loud shout tugged her from her thoughts and drew the pinkette's gaze to the wooden door on her left that housed Kiba and Shikamaru. Shikamaru was vehemently yelling at Kiba, his words slurring together with the enormity of his rage. Sakura's brow knit together above her emerald green eyes, lazily portraying her confusion. Shikamaru was never loud and definitely never adamant about anything. For something to have gotten him so riled up... Sakura didn't envy Kiba at the moment, for whatever he had done, probably inadvertently, to Shikamaru must have been pretty offensive.

Gaara stirred suddenly, his features twisting with anger and bemused wonder at the sound of Shikamaru yelling. He, too, glanced across the living room to see if he could make sense of the strangeness. Perhaps he was dreaming?

Kankuro was sitting up as well, having been closer to the door than either of them. He'd lain in silence for a moment or two before realizing he wasn't the only one hearing the strange shouts. He could decipher brief bits of what Shikamaru was spewing on and on about, but Shikamaru was speaking too quickly and using such vocabulary that it was a bit difficult to keep pace. His face registered surprise for a brief moment as he watched Gaara roll off the couch and stalk over to the door and throw it wide.

"What could you possibly have to scream about at this hour of night?" he demanded, his voice gravelly with fatigue and the desire to pummel the dark-haired boy before him.

Shikamaru didn't acknowledge the red-haired menace behind him; he instead continued to berate Kiba for his carelessness. "You vapid, troublesome, insipid waste of flesh! I've told you time after time not to touch my belongings for the simple fact that they do not belong to you! Is that too much for your infantile excuse of a brain to fucking process? Do not touch my things because they do not belong to you! Do you realize what you've done? Do you even have a fucking clue?" snarled Shikamaru, his normally impassive features now wracked with almost inhuman rage. The atmosphere in the room was darkened and Gaara could almost see the rage rippling off of the enraged genius before him.

"You've ruined it! Get out, just get out!"

Gaara was mildly impressed by the sheer malice and gravelly, intense quality of Shikamaru's voice. It almost rattled him. He watched wearily as Kiba scrambled from the room like an injured pup with its tail between its legs. How fitting.

Gaara glanced up as Sasori brushed past him, his eyes heavy with fatigue. Had he even slept. "Go, Gaara, I got this..."

"What?" Gaara's eyes darkened maliciously. "Are you saying-"

"Oh, fuck off. I'm not saying anything except that I've got this." Sasori's shoulders heaved slightly with the extent of his anger. Gaara had an inborn propensity for pissing him off. "Now go."

Gaara punched him once, for good measure, before turning on heel and striding out of the room. Sasori lingered, wondering what Shikamaru was so angry about. It was more a matter of curiosity than worry for the boy. At least, that's what he told himself. As of late the boys frequently played chess together. A strange apathy/hate relationship had formed between the two. Blue-green eyes met with dark brown, almost black, eyes for a brief moment before the raven-haired boy turned away, trying to will away the tears that he knew would come. Sasori repressed the brief flicked of amusement from his features; it was a strange thought to wonder if a ghost could cry.

"What did he do?" he asked, being careful to leave out any words that depicted any notion of caring, instead electing for a blunt, curious question choice. This was not missed by Shikamaru.

"He ruined it," Shikamaru snapped thickly, flinging a book at Sasori. "It was all I had left..."

Sasori squatted down to pick up the water-logged book, turning it over in his hands carefully, almost reverently. "The Missing Akimichi?" His lips quirked downward slightly, inflecting a frown before his mouth smoothed out again. It took a matter of about six milli-seconds, but Shikamaru caught it nonetheless. He watched as Sasori slowly turned the book over to read the back. His eyes darkened when he read it. "It's about you? Who the fuck would write a book about your lazy ass?"

Shikamaru choked on his laugh, sniffing loudly as he furiously scrubbed at his nose with the back of his forearm. "The mother of the boy I let overdose. My bestfriend... I guess he could have picked a better friend, eh?"

"Meh. He could have picked a better fitness plan," sneered Sasori, looking at the now-fading picture on the plastic-coated book-cover. "But I wouldn't know. I'd have to read the book, ne?"

"Fat lot of good it'll do you now... it's damned near unreadable. That... idiot tried to read it in the bathtub. I walked in and saw him with it and he dropped it in the tub. Who the hell reads in the tub—in the middle of the goddamned night?"

"Kiba, apparently." Sasori didn't wait for a response from Shikamaru. He stood up and made to leave, only stopping when Shikamaru spoke up again. "Where are you going with that?"

"It's ruined, isn't it?"

"Yeah..."

"No point keeping it then, hmm?"

"Oh... yeah."

Sasori smirked slightly as he ambled out of the dark bedroom, completely at ease. He had work to do now that he was awake. Sleep was not his forte, but thinking most definitely was.

[.-_-.]

KANKURO WATCHED AS his brother slyly ducked into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Sakura's questioning look fell upon him, as Sasoris brother, to explain the strange boy's mysterious actions. Kankuro merely shrugged, just as clueless to his actions as she.

Kai shifted, obviously awake, trying to readjust herself so that she could fall back asleep. Kankuro absently smoothed a hand over her hair as he began to think. He wondered what on earth it could have been, but from the looks of it, Kiba wouldn't be talking about it any time soon. His hair was drenched and he was wrapped in a towel. Kankuro almost felt bad for him; no one liked getting yelled at while naked.

Naruto and Sasuke briefly poked their heads out of their room to see what the matter was, but when Kiba glared at the two boys they receded back into the bedroom. Since their prank with Fae about them having a threesome, their relationship had become increasingly strained. The fact that Kiba wasn't getting any and that the girl he'd set his sights upon would rather play hard-to-get with him and easy-to-get with the two openly involved men of the wing had been a significant blow to his pride. Not that the girl had intended to do such a thing; it had been all in good fun. Kiba seemed to have lost his humor since Kallou, his previous girlfriend, had left the wing. Times were tough and it seemed they were only getting harder.

Kankuro laid his head back down, attempting to fall back asleep so that he wouldn't be piss tired the next day. They had class, after all. It was almost time for school to be let out. They had another another two months or so before summer "vacation." Kankuro was excited for the first time he could even vaguely remember in years. As a child, he'd always hated vacations because that meant he was stuck at home with the man who'd he later learn was not even truly his father. What a terrific childhood that had been... or perhaps lack there of would have been more of an appropriate term.

[.-_-.]

NARUTO INCLINED HIS head as he pondered the probable answers to the question before him. He'd totally zoned out the past week; sometimes he got into swings when he'd be unable to focus and all he wanted to do was wallow in his own misery. Though, he supposed such up and down bouts came with being manic depressive. His medicine was supposed to stem such disparities of mood but it hardly ever did the trick; more often than not it only lessened the severity of his mood swings.

"The Swahili culture is the result of a synthesis of the cultures coastal East Africa and colonizers from:

A.] India

B.] Portugal

C.] Indonesia

D.] Arabia"

Naruto groaned slightly as he tried to remember what Kakashi had said... Absently, he began to tap his pencil against the weather surface of the old desk. He cast an anxiously glance over to Sasuke who'd already finished the test and was leaning back in his chair with apparent ease. Smug bastard...

Closing his eyes, he tried to picture everything he could remember about the Swahili people. A vague remembrance of some meaning behind the word tickled at the back of his mind, lapping like the edges of a body water against his conscience as it flitted back and forth within his mental grasp. That's it! Swahili meant "the coast," where oceans were. The coast... who would have called it that? Ugh. This was pointless. He sighed again, trying to visual the geography of the eastern half of the world. Indonesia was an island, he was pretty sure of that. Portugal was by Spain, which he supposed was too far away, though boats weren't beyond possibility. What about India... That was relatively close, hmm... He had a distinct feeling that it wasn't India, so with a scowl he circled "D" for Arabia and moved on to the next question.

Sasuke watched, amused, as Naruto struggled through his test. The boy wasn't stupid, but sometimes his mind was his own worst enemy. He couldn't learn if he couldn't focus. The dark-eyed boy watched calmly as Kakashi collected the tests, humming softly as he did so. A rather annoying habit if you asked Sasuke. People had learned not to ask him such things.

Immediately after the tests were collected, Kai and Kiba began debating the wonders of life-very loudly. It wouldn't have been so annoying if Kiba had actually had some good points, other than his brief mention of how much better it was to be able to pee standing up than sitting down. Sasuke was momentarily pleased that Naruto wasn't quite so silly, but then he sighed because sometimes Naruto was worse.

"Kiba! That's gross, nobody should pee standing up if they don't have a penis!" snapped Kai, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "I swear, some days I wonder if you'd chew your own leg off if you thought it would get you out of here quicker."

"Hell yeah I would!"

"Which is exactly why you won't be getting out anytime soon," pointed out Genma with a wicked smile. Kiba rolled his eyes in response.

"Why would you want to leave?" murmured Haku, his eyes flicking up from his small, plastic mirror for once. It had been a long time since he'd resurface from his reflection for reasons other than those of a purely academic nature. "It's perfect here. I get to do whatever I want and people don't stop me."

"Haku, that's because you're in love with yourself..." TenTen frowned suddenly, wishing she liked herself a bit more. Perhaps later she could find new pointy objects to carve a better message into her body. Perhaps one of love this time...

"Damn right I am! I'm incredibly sexy, don't you know... Worst part of the day is when I see someone super sexy and I try to hug them but my face hits the mirror..." From anyone else that would have been a joke, but Haku had a rather interesting case of a narcissistic personality disorder.

Kakashi sighed loudly from the front of the classroom as he watched the strange banter between the students. Sasuke and Naruto were shooting uncomfortable glares at one another, something that was beginning to become the norm. It seemed all they ever did anymore was fight... it was getting to be a classroom disturbance, actually. "Now that you've all gotten nice and sidetracked, I'd like to call your attention back to the beginning of the sixteenth century..."

Sometimes he hated being a history teacher when no one could appreciate his genius.

[.-_-.]

THIS WAS NOT good. Sakura frowned as she roamed down the hallway, her shoulders hunched with regret. Somehow or another, she'd managed to inadvertently cause another of Naruto and Sasuke's spats. The number of those fights was increasing with startling frequency. However, that didn't negate the fact that she still felt completely responsible.

They'd been eating lunch, mindlessly chattering about some mundane subject when she'd said the wrong thing and the both of them had begun to bicker almost immediately. One thing had led to another until Naruto had begun screaming at Sasuke, drawing quite a bit of attention from the numerous tables around them, before stomping out of the cafeteria and off to only God knew where. Because Sakura sure as hell couldn't find him.

She checked the library, the last place she could think to check, hurriedly poking her head through the door and scanning the room. When she saw no trace of him, she scowled and headed off to Tsunade's office. She hadn't exactly expected him to be there, anyway, but she'd still been hoping. She didn't fancy having to ask Tsunade to hunt the boy down, but it had to be done. She didn't want him to miss the test that Deidara was giving today—it was worth nearly three hundred points—because Naruto's grades for the past week had been more abysmal than usual. He was honestly quite smart but he couldn't focus the long hour that a day of teaching demanded.

Sakura knocked on the door of Tsunade's office, brushing a few strands of pink hair away from her face as she waited. When no one answered, she sighed and pressed her forehead against the door. What a terrible day this was turning out to be. Shikamaru hadn't hardly spoken to anybody, save for Sasori. The two had played chess compulsively for the past month and today was no different. Lunch had consisted of them playing chess, Naruto and Sasuke getting into that ridiculous argument, Kiba trying to get into Fae's pants, Gaara watching with a mild look of amusement, and Kai sitting their silently while Kankuro fumed about the idiocy of Naruto and Sasuke's fight. He hated to see them upset with each other, but he refused to admit it.

When still, no one answer the door, Sakura sighed again and twisted the handle and gently pushed the door open. Empty. Go figure. Were all the blondes disappearing? Sakura furrowed her brow and bit her lip as she tried to think of the next person who might know where Naruto would be. Of course. Jiraiya.

[.-_-.]

IT WAS TOUGH, this business of working in a mental institution. Some people ended up as crazy as the people worked with. However, he did not meet that criteria because he had an outlet for his pent up frustrations.

Jiraiya smirked as he pressed his lips against Tsunade's, briefly amused by the feint blush that colored her cheeks. He'd caused that blush and he knew it—which pleased him and irritated her. Sex. He had lots of sex. Usually with her, though not always. Sometimes he got off by himself to the porn he either read or wrote himself. He'd already author quite a series, but it was a little-known fact that he was the author. Perhaps that was beneficial to him, at least in the work place. It was also beneficial to Tsunade, who knew that he knew each of the various ways to pleasure a woman to an incoherent puddle of limbs and useless words.

He'd done it precisely forty-three different ways already. He didn't like to repeat himself, but she had become enamored with some of his more skillful techniques and what kind of gentleman would he be if he didn't comply?

Neither of them noticed the soft knock on the door. Jiraiya was too wrapped up in what he was doing and Tsunade was dually wrapped up in what was being done to her. It was one of the few times they'd gotten it on during work hours and it always made him feel a little more randy to know they were breaking rules. He hated rules and he loved to break them. Frequently.

Perhaps that was the part of him that didn't quite compute the fact that he should stop and cover himself when an unwitting young woman that he knew quite well opened the door and stared at him in shock. Rule number 17 that he'd broken today. One of the patients had seen him naked. Rule 18. He was doing obscene things on the premises, in front of a patient... Eighteen. She wasn't eighteen. Technically a child...

His erection died immediately. "Goddamit, get out. Don't stand there and stare at my dangly bits!" he snapped hoarsely, unable to hide his shame.

"Wait! Hang on! Let me get dressed, I have to talk to you!" panted Tsunade, having covered herself with a lab coat by now. This was humiliating. But it would be even more humiliating and even potentially dangerous if word got out that this had happened... Tsunade swallowed nervously, ashamed that they'd been caught in such a state. They were too old to be getting into this kind of trouble. Poor Sakura... she hoped the girl wasn't scarred. Furthermore, she hoped she wasn't going to lose her job.

[.-_-.]

GAARA NARROWED HIS eyes when Sakura avoided his gaze for the third time in the past five minutes. She'd been acting this way since lunch. All through Art he'd had trouble getting her to even look at him. Something was up and he wanted to know what it was. He gently shoved against her shoulder, his large hand wrapped around her shoulder as he did so. She turned around in her seat, glaring at him. 'Leave me alone!'

He wrinkled his brow in agitation at the unspoken communication. How dare her be irritated with him for being curious. Gaara glanced over to make sure Iruka wasn't looking before he continued his casual interrogation. Again, he jabbed at her shoulder with the heel of his palm. She lurched forward this time. Gaara felt just a little bit bad about the force he'd implemented behind the motion, but she still needed to respect him in public. He appearances to maintain. At least, that was how he validated his wounded pride.

"What the fuck, Gaara?" she snapped, twisting around in her chair. Gaara repressed a smile; he loved it when he pissed her off. She was cute when she was mad.

"Why are you acting weird?" he demanded, leaning forward as he met her gaze. She wilted slightly before regaining her composure.

"I'll tell you later... and I am not acting weird." Sakura glared at her for a moment before turning around. "You're acting weirder than I am."

"That's for sure," muttered Fae, giving the two of them a peculiar look. They were both acting weird as far as she was concerned.

"This does not concern you!" he snarled, flinging his pencil at her. Kiba glared at him viciously when he it the length of the pencil connected with her shoulder.

Gaara growled deep in his throat. She would not deny him and especially not in public; he wouldn't be made a mockery of. "No, you'll tell me now."

When Sakura didn't answer him, he growled again. Sakura hated it when he did that to her in public. Just because he had this bizarre alpha male thing going on—which she thought was weird because he didn't have any dog-like tendencies—didn't mean she had to comply with it. She was her own woman, dammit. Besides, she hated that he expected her to give in to his every whim and fancy just because he was Gaara. That shit didn't fly with her.

"Sakura." She ignored him, casually twirling her hair around her finger as she pondered the meaning of parabolas.

"Sakura." Did Avogadro really calculate the number of particles in a mole?

"...Fine." Gaara casually began to kick the metal basket beneath her desk. It was connected to the desk; its primary use was to hold the textbooks that wouldn't fit on the top of the desk. Its secondary use was to aid Gaara in annoying Sakura. With each kick, her desk was forced forward. Occasionally he would dip his feet beneath the basket to pull her desk back so she didn't bump into TenTen.

"Stop it, asshole," she spat, reaching back without turning around to punch him. She missed wildly, which only caused his smirk to grin. He even chuckled a bit. "Stop it! I'm not even supposed to tell!"

"Tell me or I'm going to start pushing other buttons," he purred, leaning forward to trail a lazy fingertip along the column of her throat. "You wouldn't want that would you? Or perhaps you're..." he leaned forward to whisper in her ear, licking her earlobe too quickly for anyone else to see. "an exhibitionist? Hmm?"

Sakura went rigid, trying to ignore the warm flush that was creeping up onto her shoulders and neck. "Stop it."

"Never," he whispered, his eyes flicking over to where Iruka was grading tests. He was busy mincing words with Naruto, who was trying to refuse to do his work. Iruka wasn't taking it well, even though they were still arguing in hushed tones. That bought Gaara a little bit of torture time. Others, like TenTen, were beginning to stare. The brown haired girl had twisted around in her chair, a devilish smirk playing across her pale lips.

She watched as Gaara brushed his lips against Sakura's throat. Sakura was torn between arching away from his touch or into it. She hated that he was doing this to her, but it felt too good to simply let it... No! She wasn't going to act this way in public.

Noticing her resolve to keep her secret and her dignity, Gaara smirked. She groaned in frustration, trying to lean away from him but he deftly reached around her, cupping a breast. He heard Genma hiss, and glanced over to see the young man leaning forward, watching with baited breath.

"Do you still wish to keep secrets, Sa-ku-ra?" he purred, her name rolling off of his tongue in a heavily mocking tone. Sakura gritted her teeth together and batted his hands away.

"That's not fair... if I did that, I'd be a face-full of fist!" bemoaned Genma, throwing his hands up in the air. Gaara chuckled and kissed Sakura's neck, just below the ear.

"I caught Tsunade and Jiraiya doing it in his office, okay!? Are you happy now!?" shrieked Sakura, trying to shove him off of her. Both she and Gaara immediately froze, realizing what she had just said and, more importantly, how loudly she'd just said it in front of such a large group of people.

Iruka's gaze was heavy upon them within a millisecond. His face was slack with surprise, his jaw nearly grazing the surface of his desk. "WHAT?!"

"I am so dead. I'm dead. Fucking dead." Sakura whimpered. Gaara was so shocked that he was still positioned mid-grope. They were both in a lot of trouble now.

Author's Note: I hope that new readers and returning readers find this to be a promising start. :] There's nothing for you to help me decide on right now. I have a decent plot set up for what I want to do. I won't have voting unless it's either something I can't decide on or something that I think you all might have good ideas on.

ALSO I'm doing something new. If you noticed at the top, there's a lyric-quote from a song. I'm going to start doing that if I can remember to. If the song fits, or has a line that does a nice job of introducing the chapter... It will be up there. I was originally going to do all Pink Floyd, but I decided against that.

PLEASE read and review. I'd love to know what you think of the pilot. :]