I was away on a mission when it happened. Sai, Kakashi, Naruto, and I were investigating some strong rumors we had heard about someone with "red eyes" and "demonic companions" laying waste to half of a remote village in Whirlpool country. One of Tsunade-shishou's undercover shinobi in Whirlpool country had been en route to rendezvous with an ANBU member to give his bi-weekly report when he noticed that his favorite cherry blossom tree statue was missing a limb. The shinobi, at first thinking that his cover had been compromised, had prepared for imminent attack and, with his subsequent scan of the area, realized that the village to which the statue belonged was... off. At first he couldn't place it, and he knew that anyone who hadn't walked by here once every two weeks for three years wouldn't have noticed. In fact, he was only able to notice because of the tree statue and the foggiest trace of a chakra signature along the edge of the village. Once he was aware of the disturbance in the village, he investigated further and found that it bore all of the signs of having been subjected to search, and he included this event in his report. Naturally, when Tsunade-shishou received this news, she sent us along to investigate further, as those who both knew Sasuke the most and also could handle him with the least casualties.

When we talked with them, the locals all claimed to have seen four demons streak through their quaint land (the reported number actually varied from four demons to twelve demons, but the person who said twelve was known by his friends to exaggerate). These demons were fervently searching for something, although none of the villagers could recall what that something was. It was rather odd, really, because each villager we interviewed had seemed certain that the "demons" questioned them about the object, but they couldn't recall any of the words used to question them. I analyzed their brains for any chakra-based irregularities, but no one seemed to have tampered with their memories. I didn't think that anyone on Sasuke's team had the ability to alter memories anyway. Try as we might, we couldn't find a single explanation for what the team had been looking for, as none of the villagers were able to report anything missing.

At that point, it seemed that Sasuke's team had not found what they were looking for and Kakashi had taken my suggestion to continue into the next town over and wait because Sasuke was likely to search the area again. I believed that we were investigating a site that Sasuke had no way of expecting us to find since there were no obvious changes visible to an outsider. Under that assumption, this village was our best bet of ambushing Sasuke's team to be able to subdue them and bring Sasuke home.

However, my surreptitious plan was not to be. We took shelter in an abandoned building within the small village and began writing our updated plan on our communication scroll (linked to an identical scroll in Tsunade-shishou's office) only to be interrupted by Tsunade-shishou frantically scribbling back a message. Uchiha Itachi and Hoshigake Kisame had been spotted along the Konoha border by two ANBU scouts. That part of the message was oddly not the most worrisome, although Kakashi's face went stern, I gasped audibly, and Naruto started yelling about how he would get revenge on those Akatsuki bastards. No, the worrisome part was that Shishou herself chose to confront them with only her ANBU guard. The pain slowly and coldly slicing through my heart as I waited for her to finish writing what happened was almost surreal.

Now, Shishou, Shizune-senpai and I had been working on a particular poison for use in capturing Sasuke, poison that was in fact sitting in my thigh pouch at that very moment. We took the poison favored by Sasori and distilled it, then used its chemical composition to create a new, weaker poison with a specific goal: incapacitating the target's eyes. The idea was that as long as we could just graze Sasuke with this poison, it would shut down his Sharingan in a matter of minutes, and the shock to his system would render him unconscious. As far as capture-without-death went, the poison was ideal: the only challenge was to stay alive until the poison's effect could take place.

Since Tsunade-shishou was writing to us from her scroll (for only her chakra could activate her scroll), we knew that she was conscious and well enough to write to us, so the crushing fear pulsing through every inch of my body as I waited for more characters to appear was possibly unwarranted. Nevertheless, I didn't breathe out until she finished her next message, which started with "I'm surprisingly fine" and ended with "Kisame got away and killed two of my guard." That revelation stung me because I was familiar with all of the ANBU in Shishou's guard, and Kisame must have had a scary amount of strength to take out one of them, let alone two, while they were protecting her.

Her next entry was so surprising I honestly read it five times to make sure I wasn't under a genjutsu. "Daichi died giving me my opportunity to slice Itachi with the poison; Kisame was swinging his sword behind Itachi to protect him from my kunai while Daichi was assaulting Itachi from the front, and at the last second, Daichi switched places with me, allowing me to slice Itachi's arm. Uchiha Itachi is in our custody."

Kakashi was the first of us to formulate a coherent response, and scribbled back a question about why we would want the Uchiha in custody, since surely the other Akatsuki members would return for him and would also seek out Naruto while they were at it.

"While we were fighting, Kisame mentioned something about infiltrating Konoha. I don't think he would have said that if he knew I would survive, but we need to know what plans the Akatsuki already have in place, and Itachi is our best chance to get that information."

Naruto was extremely tense when he read that message. I think he knew that he was the reason the Akatsuki would risk confronting an entire village, and it was against his ninja way to allow any danger to come to his loved ones.

"I need all of you to report back immediately for debriefing. Sakura, I need you in particular. We designed this poison for Sasuke, whose eyes were not as damaged as Itachi's are, and the poison does not appear to have acted the way we expected it to. I could use your delicacy and creativity in repairing some of the damage."

Kakashi sent a short reply of assent to Tsunade-shishou while I felt my face get a little warm at the small compliment. It wasn't that she never complimented me, just that I wasn't used to her saying such an obvious compliment in front of others.

"The hokage thinks that you're delicate, I guess you're more feminine than I thought, Ugl—" Sai began, only to be stopped by my fist connecting with his jaw.

"Sakura! You'll need that chakra for our run back to Konoha; we're not going to stop mid-way this time," Kakashi chided with a crinkle in his eye.

I just let out a "hmph" and bounded out the window of the abandoned building, showing that I had plenty of chakra left for the journey home.

"Ne, Sakura-chan, want to race back?" Naruto yelled after me, frowning slightly. He still seemed upset that the Akatsuki had some sort of plans to undermine Konoha, presumably just to get to him.

So before I could really think better of it, I yelled "Shannaro!" and poured on the speed. I was rewarded with Naruto's toothy grin, and some of the anxiety I had been feeling settled. Maybe Naruto could get through this, maybe he could learn to lean on the village and let us protect him for once. Something inside me was so scared that he would run off, just like Sasuke, but for a very different, less selfish reason. I quickly shook that thought away: Naruto was not the type to run away, he always ran headfirst into a problem, much like the race we were currently participating in. I looked back briefly to see Kakashi shaking his head, seemingly defeated, but when his eyes met mine, he gave me a single, small nod. He had seen it too, the lack of light in Naruto's eyes, and he knew that distracting Naruto was the best option for now.

Shooting chakra down my legs to fuel my run didn't require much concentration, so I couldn't stop thinking of all the implications for this situation. Would Sasuke find out that Itachi was being held by Konoha and return to kill him? Would the Akatsuki attack just to retrieve Itachi, or would they leave him to rot? What did the damage to Itachi's eyes look like? Maybe examining Itachi's eyes would help me fine-tune the poison to be sure that the damage done to Sasuke's eyes would be reversible when we used the poison on him. Sasuke deserved to be able to see because he was my friend and he was part of Team 7 and he was the first boy I loved and… he left me unconscious on a bench at night and tried to kill me and… Not going down that train of thought because I still don't know where it ends.

But that was all Itachi's fault anyway. Uchiha Itachi, the man who ruined Sasuke's life and made him so hungry for revenge. That was the man who awaited me in Konoha, the same man who taunted Sasuke into his lust for power and subsequent defection from Konoha. The man whose fault it was that Sasuke might soon be added to Konoha's bingo book with 1,000,000 ryo on his head. Yes, I would focus my emotions on Itachi, someone who was an unequivocal symbol of evil: traitorous, mocking, and unrelenting. It was his fault that Sasuke left, and now I had the chance to make sure he felt every ounce of pain that Sasuke's defection had caused me.

Before I had fully managed to pull myself out of my thoughts, I was standing in front of the Konoha gates. I looked around and saw that, oddly enough, I beat Naruto. And so did Sai. And Kakashi. I guess the shortcut he had yelled to me about wasn't actually shorter after all.

Fifteen minutes went by and I actually started to get worried, that is until the guard at the gate smiled at me extra big and transformed into a very curvaceous naked woman.

"Naruto, will you ever grow up?!" I yelled in exasperation, punching away his jutsu. I was actually impressed that he had finally learned how to successfully hide his chakra while performing a henge, but there was no way I was going to tell him that now.

He had the grace to look sheepish and scratch the back of his head.

"He can't grow up because he doesn't have a d—" Sai provided, only to be cut off by the poof of Kakashi's transportation jutsu.

We all appeared just outside of Tsunade-shishou's office, which made it rather unfortunate when Naruto screamed, "I'm going to kill you, you emotionless Picasso-wannabe!"

Tsunade-shishou just cleared her throat, glaring through the open door.

"I haven't had enough sake yet to deal with this," she muttered to herself, but unless you knew her well, you wouldn't have been able to distinguish the words. Shizune-senpai, who was next to Shishou, shot her a withering look over Ton-ton that said "you're a medic and you should know how bad drinking on the job is."

"Hello, Shishou," I offered, bowing slightly to diffuse the tension.

"Hello, Sakura," Tsunade replied, then fixed her gaze on Kakashi. "Kakashi, please debrief me about your mission," Tsunade-shishou commanded in full hokage-mode. When Kakashi was done, she sent all of us home to rest because we had been running back to Konoha for the entirety of the day.

"But Tsunade-baa-chan, I don't need any sleep! I want to know why you're letting that bastard live in—" Naruto burst, but his final words were muffled by the overwhelmingly loud grumbles of his stomach. "Well, maybe after some ramen," he conceded.

We all turned to leave, but I turned back when Shishou continued, "Sakura, I want you to report to the prison at 0900 to begin examining the effects of the poison."

"Hai, Shishou!"

Tsunade-shishou nodded and I turned again to leave, giving Ton-ton an affectionate pat on the head as I walked past. My legs were tired from having to channel so much chakra all day during the run back to Fire Country, so I decided to teleport home and formed the appropriate hand signs.

If I had realized how exhausted I already was, I would have walked instead because the fatigue hit me all at once, like being knocked down by a severe wind shear. I was so tired that I took off my outer layer of clothes and crawled into bed, promising to brush my teeth twice in the morning to make up for not doing so that night. It's not like I had anyone to impress anyway.

Tomorrow is going to be such a long day. I just hope that something good will come of this. was all I managed to think before sleep pulled me into its silky rapture.