A NejiSaku oneshot!! I've gotten tired ot long stories, so I'm going to take a break and write a oneshot to clear my head :D

Disclaimer: No me own.

--Sanded Silk--

Neji sighed, his tired pearl eyes scanning over the last of the thick history book on the library table before him. His researching today- and not just today's worth of searching, but months' worth of hours spent pouring over books- had been all in vain.

Sighing another empty breath, Neji snapped the book shut and heaved it back up onto the shelf of the royal library. Neji's uncle- Hyuuga Hiashi- had gone crazy with greed, and had become extremely corrupt. He hoarded almost all of the tax money for himself, forcing the tax collectors to charge more and more from the people of Konoha. Now, the streets were littered with dirty children, ragged and weary adults, and bone-thin stray animals wandering in dangerous packs.

Neji had been searching for a way to overthrow his uncle long before the corruption began- a way to remove his uncle cleanly from the throne without shedding blood. After a bit, Neji came to reality and realized that removing his uncle couldn't happen without bloodshed, and so he began to look for the way to overthrow Hiashi while shedding the least blood possible.

The only string he had managed to grasp was a legendary, elite group of rebels that had long since opposed the rule of the Hyuugas. They had been nameless, but gradually, they were dubbed the Shadow Rebels, for their dark flowing cloaks that seemed to help them meld with and disappear into the shadows. The small group that he had been trained all his life to fight had become his only hope.

Other than their name, however, Neji knew nothing- about how to find them, to contact them. They had successfully avoided capture by anyone who tried ever since they had formed. No one knew who any of the group were, which iddn't help Neji's quest at all.

As Neji reached upto grab another book, he saw something move at the corner of his eye. Turning, he found himself staring at a young woman, around his age, with sholder-length cherry pink hair that veiled her face as she bowed her head over a book, reading while leaning gracefully against the shelf. It was as though she had appeared out of nowhere. Without closing the book, she looked up and smiled at Neji- a cold, sarcastic smile. Her eyes were two emeralds embedded smoothly into her tanned, flawless skin. Snapping the book shut, she pushed herself off of the shelf to turn and replace the book, causing her cloak to whisper and billow. Her shadow-black cloak.

Neji's eyes snapped up from her cloak to her face when realization hit him, and found her still smiling coldly. With a quick twist of her body, she turned and sauntered away. It wasn't until she turned a corner when he finally forced his realization-frozen body into chasing her. "Wait!" He called, ignoring the looks he received from the other people in the library.

Turning the corner, he found himself in a heavily-shadowed hall. At the end of the hall was a tall, solid wall. Neji strode to the wall and rapped on it, but it was thick and solid, and didn't produce a hollow noise as a reversible wall would. She had disappeared into the shadows.

He had run into a Shadow Rebel, and had let her slip out of his fingertips.

With a grunt of frustration, Neji banged on the wall with his fist. Stupid!

But there was nothing he could do. All he could do now was hope that another of the Rebels would seek him out again.

-o-o-

The next two days were particularly quiet. Nothing special, nothing interesting. Neji spent a few halfhearted minutes each day in the library, scanning over books he had already poured over, dejected. Nothing new, nothing exciting. No new inspiration, new scrap of information to hang to and dig into. After actually running into a member of the Shadow Rebel, information from books wasn't enough. He had to see her again, had to see her jeweled eyes and her stony smile, had to hear the rustle of her cloak that, indeed, looked as if it were spun out of a shadow.

On the night of the third day after his encounter, he lay in bed, still wide awake and staring at the ceiling. Thinking, pondering. Giving himself a headache.

When suddenly, a knife sliced through the heavy air and buried itself into his pillow, millimeters away from his neck. Neji froze, his skin breaking out into a cold sweat. Before he could move, another knife flew out of nowhere and sliced off a tip of his hair.

A figure suddenly materialized at his bedside, crouching. The petite, lithe figure was swathed in a dark cloak that was barely distinguishable from the shadows. A thin gloved hand was holding a knife to Neji's throat securely, the other gloved hand over Neji's mouth. A hood was draped, over-sized and concealing, over the person's head.

Then the person turned their head to glance at Neji, and Neji caught a glimpse of glinting emerald in the dim light. With a gasp, Neji reached out and wrenched the hood from the person's head, to reveal a masked face with tanned, flawless skin and shoulder-length cherry-pink hair.

Her.

She turned away and sat down on the bed with her back to Neji for a moment, tugging her mask down, silent.

Finally, Neji broke the thick silence. "Who are you?"

He could almost hear her smile. "Who you obviously think I am, of course." She turned around finally to face him, her emerald eyes shining in the darkness. "I've had members of my organization watch you closely ever since your uncle began to lose his mind over greed, and knew exactly what you were looking for when you flipped through hundreds of history books and finally found our name. My spies knew from the look on your face when you flipped to the paragraph about us in a book that you were looking for information about us."

She shrugged lightly. "If you want to find out about us, you can't go looking in the royal library. They never put information about their failures in that room."

Neji ignored the heavily-implied insults in her words, taking in her face and her words. Her voice was lilting and controlled, and coldly cut. Her lips, pale-rose and dry, were curved into the ruthless smile of a murderer.

"So you're the leader of the Shadow Rebels?"

"Yes, I am." She pulled off her thick black leather glove and held out her slender, strong hand. "Haruno Sakura."

Neji hesitated, and took her hand. "...You should know who I am."

"Ah yes." She tugged her glove back on. Neji rubbed his hand against his blanket subconsciously. Her hand was icy cold, but soft.

Sakura fingered a tear in her mask. She smiled again, that ruthless curve of her lip. "I came tonight to ask you of a huge favor." Neji nodded- that much was obvious. "Go on."

"All these past years, we have been failing. The king, in his greed, has closed his grip around us, stifling our efforts to overthrow him. What we need is the ultimate spy- someone who he trusts a lot. But that person has to be willing to help us in our efforts to usurp the king and to place someone else on the thrown."

Neji's mouth went dry. "Me."

She nodded, all traces of a smile gone from her face. "Yes. You. And do you know what else? We want to put you on the thrown when we overthrow Hiashi."

Neji licked his lips. Treason was punishable by death.

Sakura continued, her parched pink lips moving flowingly. "But we won't force you into joining our group. If you refuse, however, we will have to kill you. Already you know too much about the Shadow Rebels." She moved suddenly, drawing a knife out of the depths of her cloak. Neji saw that it was different from the three flung at him before, and knew she was telling the truth.

She held the knife to his neck, her other hand clasping his shoulder. She leaned down to stare into his pearl eyes. "So, which is it?"

Neji frowned to himself. After months of obsessive searching, what Neji had been looking for had placed itself in his hands. However, now that it was in his hands, Neji was reluctant- a bit afraid, even- to use it. But Neji gazed into her glinting emerald eyes, and made his decision almost immediately. Raising a hand to wrap around her wrist, he gently lowered her knife hand.

"All right. I'll help you."

With a smooth smile, Sakura sheathed her knife, the tendons of her wrist flexing under his fingers. She looked back up from the depths of her cloak to look Neji straight in the eyes. "Good. Follow me- you will have to meet the other top-ranking people of our group."

Neji climbed out of his bed, and quickly changed from his pajamas into a dark shirt, equally dark pants, light but thick boots, and a black wool cloak with a hood. When he joined Sakura, he saw that his cloak, though it was black, was nothing like Sakura's. Her cloak held a property of a shadow itself- it was dark and thick, and filmy and flexible. It was as soft as silk, but it didn't shine like silk did. It wasn't dull, however. It was tightly and finely woven, out of a material he couldn't decipher.

Sakura tied a length of rope wrapped around her waist and hips securely to the foot of the large, heavy bed. Yanking on it to test the strength, she flipped the rope over the edge of the windowsill and motion Neji to go first. "You climb down- I'll take the rope and jump down after you."

Neji stared. "Are you sure you can do that? The distance from the window to the ground is pretty long." Sakura smiled. "You've forgotten who I am, Hyuuga Neji."

With one last doubtful glance, Neji flipped agilely over the window, grabbing the rope, and eased himself down the tall wall. After what seemed like ages of clambering, Neji found the ground with his feet. He tugged on the rope twice. It trembled, then came tumbling down. Neji watched his window, and saw Sakura climb out lithely. She closed his window with her toes, then let go of the top of the window frame. With a rush of wind, she landed by Neji in a crouch, her shadow cape fluttering up in a graceful ring around her body. She had replaced her mask and her hood, leaving only her piercing emerald eyes exposed.

With quick movements, she re-wound the rope around her waist. Then, out of the depths of her cloak, she drew a long, thin length of black cloth. Reaching up, she tied it around Neji's eyes. "Sorry, but I can't have you knowing the way to our headquarters," She said quietly. Neji remained silent.

She carefully wrapped her fingers around his wrist, and with a quick jerk of her hand, she lead the way down the shadowy streets.

A/N: Well, it looks like it's gonna be at least three chapters. Do you all REALLY want to know how Neji overthrows his uncle? :-/ I'm seriously too lazy...

Done while listening to Harder Better Faster Stronger by Daft Punk. YES.

--Sanded Silk--