A/N: I apologize for the long wait. I'm not going to bore you with my excuses. Enjoy the chapter :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
"Hey, Forehead! Over here!"
Sakura made her way towards the table her three female friends were seated at. She supposed she should have skipped their little get-together, seeing as how she had a mission the following morning, and early at that. But the truth was that the girls were rarely in town at the same time nowadays. The last time they all got together was nearly a month ago.
"Hey, Ino-pig! Hinata, Tenten!" Sakura smiled at her friends and sat down.
"About time. I was beginning to think you wouldn't show up at all. Kakashi rubbing off on you, Forehead?" Ino teased.
"Tsunade-shishou assigned me a mission. The, um, preparation took a bit longer than expected."
"New mission? Do tell."
Sakura sighed. "I'm supposed to find out who's behind a series of kidnappings in some Fire Country town."
"Sounds easy enough" quipped Tenten.
"You'd think so. But apparently most kidnappings took place in some sort of dancing joint and now I'm supposed to pose as a dancer there."
"That's awesome!"
"That's t-terrible!" Hinata and Ino both exclaimed at the same time. Upon realizing this, all four girls started giggling.
"Well now we know why you two are friends," said Tenten. "So, Sakura, Tsunade-sama kept you so long to give you some, shall we say, hints?"
"It's not that kind of mission" Sakura defended. "I'll just be dancing, that's all. Dressed in a harem outfit, but still, merely a dance. I had to memorize a routine."
"That sounds like so much fun! Too bad I'm swamped with pharmacy research" complained Ino.
"So, are you g-going alone, Sakura?"
"Actually, no. I'm in a two-man cell. And you guys will never guess who's coming with me."
The pinkette was interrupted by a loud noise, caused by the front door of the small Konoha tavern being suddenly thrown open and a certain blond-haired ninja entering.
"SAKURA-CHAN! IS IT TRUE?"
"Oh, dear Kami-sama" said pinkette groaned. 'Here we go…'
"You're going with Naruto?" Tenten asked.
"Worse. It's-"
"Sakura-chan, is it true you and the teme are going on a mission together?"
Naruto managed to find his pink-haired teammate and made his way to their table, dragging Sasuke behind him, who looked like he'd rather be anywhere else at the moment.
"You're going to dance in a harem costume in front of Sasuke? Oh that is just priceless" exclaimed Ino while trying to contain her laugh, and failing at it. Tenten was having trouble with that too.
Sakura's face grew redder by the second. "Could you guys at least try not to announce the fact to the whole village?"
"But Sakura-chan, we were supposed to have a mission TOGETHER! Me and you and the bastard!"
"Dobe."
"Shut up, teme! I'm trying to reunite our team here, and you don't even care! I thought you cared, Sakura-chan, but …"
"Of course I care, Naruto!" Sakura interjected. "Calm down, would you? I'll explain everything."
"NARUTO" came another loud yell from the door, by a different blonde. "Where the hell have you been? You were supposed to handle paperwork this afternoon!"
"Tsunade baa-chan! I was training with the teme!"
"You should have been training to be Hokage!"
"But all you ever let me do is paperwork!"
"That's an essential part of being Hokage, you brat!"
"You're just too lazy to do it yourself!"
Their conversation might have been tolerable if they weren't yelling at each other from across the tavern.
"GUYS" Sakura loudly interjected. "This is neither the time nor the place."
"Yeah! We were talking about Sakura-chan's mission! Why can't I go?" Naruto whined.
"Because you are loud and brash, and this mission calls for stealth."
"But Sakura-chan's gonna be a dancer and the bastard will be all over her! I have to protect her!"
Sakura's face instantly became red. She couldn't decide which of his scandalous accusations to address first. "I-I don't need protection!"
"Dobe, stop spouting nonsense."
"Teme! You better not try something on Sakura-chan, you hear?"
"Hn."
"Enough, Naruto!" Tsunade intervened. "As Hokage, I order you to leave this matter alone and GET THE HELL BACK TO PAPERWORK!"
"But it's eight o'clock!"
"I don't give a rat's ass! If you don't finish your duties as official Hokage trainee I will personally make sure you will never be Hokage, EVER."
With that, a fuming Tsunade turned around and left, with a grumbling Naruto following her. Sasuke quietly made an exit as well, not sparing a glance to anything or anyone else.
"Well, you don't see that every day" Ino said.
Sakura buried her face in her palms and groaned. 'I like my teammates, I like my teammates, I like my teammates…' she recited the mantra in her head.
"He's right, you know. Sasuke will totally be all over you" Ino said off-handedly.
"Ino-pig! Sasuke's not that kind of person."
"Earth to Forehead! He is a man. They are all the same."
"And since when are you such an "expert"?"
"It's just common sense."
"I think I know my teammate well enough, thank you."
"Actually Sakura, I kind of agree with crazy-Ino" said Tenten.
"Hmpf. Hinata agrees with me, don't you, Hinata?"
"A-actually, no. I think Ino is right a-as well."
"What? All three of you think Sasuke will suddenly fall in love with me after a dance?"
"Oh, you naïve little Forehead!" Ino laughed. "Who said anything about love?"
Sakura blushed. "I didn't mean it like that! I was just being sarcastic!"
"And now you're being defensive" said Tenten. Sakura shot her a dirty look, to which she just smirked.
"Listen, Sakura," Ino started more seriously, "Sasuke may be Sasuke, but he is a grown man like any other man, no matter how hard he may try pretending otherwise. I'm not saying he'll immediately jump you or anything, but if I were you I'd think twice before dismissing this as just another mission."
Sasuke was pissed.
After the mission briefing (if it could be called that) ended, he decided to find Naruto and train a bit, then go home, prepare for the mission and rest. Instead the dobe kept pestering him about where he had been until he just told him he had a mission.
The idiot went nuts.
Soon their sparring had turned into an interrogation. Naruto, being Naruto, wouldn't stop blabbering and yelling until Sasuke had enough and just told him he would accompany Sakura while she posed as a dancer.
The idiot went even more nuts.
At this point Sasuke just wanted to head home, training be damned, but Naruto had other plans. The idiot wanted to find Sakura and accused Sasuke of not caring about Team 7 and being a traitor all over again if he didn't help.
That hit a sore spot.
So Sasuke followed Naruto around for the better part of the afternoon searching for their female teammate, until Naruto spotted her going into that stupid tavern.
They went in too, and Naruto promptly started yelling.
It was all he could do not to punch the blonde loudmouth all the way to the moon.
So instead he ground his teeth and was determined to act like a human statue until Naruto was finished with his tantrum and left (or was beaten into silence by Tsunade).
"But Sakura-chan's gonna be a dancer and the bastard will be all over her! I have to protect her!"
He had to work at not strangling the idiot to death.
Was that what this was all about? Naruto was worried that he'd try something on Sakura? What the hell was he thinking? She was his teammate.
When Naruto was finally brought into submission by the Hokage, Sasuke quickly made an escape too, not wanting to face Sakura. Did she think the same thing as Naruto? Was that why she had insisted that she could handle the mission alone? Was she afraid of him?
Maybe not afraid, Sasuke decided. Maybe she just didn't trust him.
Which was, in his opinion, completely justified. He had betrayed them before, after all, and in the worst way possible, at that.
So then he'd just have to take this mission as an opportunity to prove himself, to both Sakura and Naruto. Sakura was his teammate, maybe even his friend. Their relationship was purely platonic, and both he and Sakura were content with it that way. So he would do the right thing and keep it the way it is.
It was at that exact moment that the memory of Sakura in her harem outfit popped into his head.
Maybe this mission was a bad idea after all.
"I just realized something."
Sakura waited for some sort of non-committal reply from the shinobi she had addressed, but then remembered who she was talking to. So she opted to just continue.
"Tsunade-sama didn't tell us if the bar owner knows I'm a Konoha nin or not."
Still no comment. Medical instincts kicking in, Sakura wondered if his larynx might atrophy from the lack of use.
"I guess I'll just play it safe. If he asks, I won't hide it, but if he doesn't say anything then I won't either."
More silence. Did he even hear her? They might be in a forest whizzing past trees, but she knew he had excellent hearing.
"Sasuke, what do you think?" she asked, clearly annoyed.
"Hn."
"Is that all you can say? How about 'Sure, great plan' or 'No, it's a stupid idea'?"
Normally she wouldn't have snapped at him like that, but they had been traveling together for the past few days and his silence was just driving her crazy.
"Why do you need my approval?"
Now that took her by surprise. Of course she wasn't "looking for his approval". She was perfectly confident in her reasoning.
"We're teammates. The success of the mission depends on us working together."
"We both know you're capable of completing this mission by yourself. The Hokage doesn't trust me enough to send me on solo missions. You are essentially babysitting me."
Sakura's first thought was 'Holy hell. He just spoke more words to me in ten seconds than he did in the three days we've been traveling.'
Her second thought was 'Wait. Did he just compliment me?'
Deciding not to dwell on the implications of that realization, she focused instead on the more immediate concern his words brought.
"I am not babysitting you. Tsunade-shishou knows my abilities better than anyone else and trust me, she knows perfectly well I am capable of completing this by myself. If she sent you along, this means she really has no idea how difficult this mission is."
They didn't get the chance to finish this rather one-sided conversation, because in a few moments they reached the edge of the forest they had been travelling in for the past day.
Both of them skidding to a halt, Sakura reached around in her backpack and took out the Fire Country map Tsunade had given her.
"According to the map, if we head due north from here we should reach the main road in about twenty minutes. Then it's just a matter of following it to the town."
There actually is a road that leads to Okama straight from Konoha, but it would have taken them five days of travel instead of three, as that road went around the forest they had just finished crossing.
Sakura folded the map and put it back in its place, heading for the direction she had just described. She wasn't expecting an answer from Sasuke, and she was proven correct.
A few more days of this and she might just get used to it.
A/N: It's short, but it's the logical place to end it at. As before, links to additional content and goodies related to this story can be found on my profile. Next chapter, the mission begins! Don't forget to review if you enjoyed this chapter! :)
