Summary: The Kazekage had quite a bit on his plate, trying to stop an upcoming of another war was one thing. The proposed solution? Utter madness! To swoon the Hokage's only daughter was no small feat, especially since she had suitors lined out the door. He had heard rumors about her ruthless nature. If true, she was gonna be one hell of a spitfire.
Gaara walked into his office to start the day. Everything had to go smoothly, he had to make sure of it. Sakura Senju had one hell of a reputation, a strong kunoichi ranked with S-Class criminals, a true beauty that many men were after, a genius, a medical prodigy, and of course, her fiery temper. He had dealt with the current Konoha Hokage and had a run-in with her temper when something in her village became messy during a meeting, if her daughter was anything like that then she could mean a lot of trouble for their upcoming marriage. His siblings knew about the marriage alliance and how it would ease tensions between the two Nations.
The redhead found a small note on top of his relatively clean desk. He barely slept with the one-tailed beast inside of him so getting paperwork done was no problem. He did wonder, however, if he could ever get a good night's rest. Perhaps he should check out the medical department within his village to see if they had anything. It might help the marriage flow smoothly, he wondered to himself.
The young Kazekage sat down in his large chair and opened the letter carefully, he immediately recognized his older sister's handwriting. His sea foam orbs read over the letter and left to leave towards the entrance to his home, he would meet her soon.
Dear Little Brother,
I left the following rules or checklist if you wish to call it so, to help you gain her love and trust, thus saving all of us from another cruel war. You and I both know we cannot afford another war, we are already low on men, low on medics, as well as money. An alliance with Konoha is the best chance we have for moving towards a positive future. I have attached the following three rules, and the rest of the rules will be given to you so long as she stays here… I pray you find a way to make this work.
Love your big sis,
Temari
Rule 1: Make a good first impression.
Rule 2: Give a compliment.
Rule 3: Shake her hand.
The moment Gaara had arrived at the palace entrance they were nowhere to be seen. Hell, even some of the guards were missing, thus signaling that their guests had arrived. But where were they? None of the Suna guards had notified him of their arrival. He could suppose that they had yet to meet, as it was a custom for guards to go out further into the desert and meet important people farther from the entrance of his beloved village. Perhaps they had yet to arrive, or their messenger bird had yet to come in. It could be argued that either one of these options was currently happening. For everyone's sake, he prayed it was the latter.
XOXOXO
"Sakura Senju?" called out a gruff voice. His strong arms were crossed and he had a heavy beige coat on which covered the majority of his body from the harsh rays of the sun. His Suna forehead protector shone brightly and shot a glare in the face of a particular animal hidden in between pink locks. The animal hissed and bore its teeth.
"Yes," a feminine voice rang out. Although her face was hidden under the hood of her long dusty rose trench coat, there was no mistake in the strength laced in her one-word reply. Sakura turned her head slightly and cooed at the animal on her shoulders. Her personal bodyguard rarely left her person, even in his animal form, and rarely left her side from the constant attacks from varied parties all seeking to hurt the princess.
He, truly, had saved her on more than a few occasions. Sakura, although her reputation for violence and quick-thinking agility, had a habit of over-doing herself and was still prone to fainting. That fact was clearly left out of any bingo book for no one outside her immediate friend group knew. She had gotten past those days, thankfully.
But the vulnerability of those rare occasions in the past left her unable to protect herself, leaving her to rely on her bodyguard. Of course, her team never wanted to leave her side either, as she was the glue that held them together through their toughest times and their wonderful victories.
So her shadow, as she would call it, often stayed in his animal henge to give off the feeling that she could walk freely throughout the roughest areas. It made her a great decoy for stealth missions as she looked like a young child still... if her clothes were baggy enough. Besides, who could look at a tiny black and white ferret with beady black eyes and think it could be a deadly ninja? The mere idea baffled people.
The sound of a throat clearing caused the woman to fully turn her head back towards the lone guard before her. He still couldn't see her eyes as he can only see the bottom half of her face and a few strands of hair that he couldn't discriminate the color of. "The Kazekage is expecting us."
His head turned back towards the village and he stuck his thumb out towards the tower behind him to signal that that was their destination. "He is waiting at the tower for your arrival," He turned on his heel and trekked back towards Suna without regarding whether or not they were going to move anytime soon. They would have to come eventually, he reasoned to himself.
A heavy sigh came from a man who traveled with Sakura. He was taller than her, for sure, seeing as Princess Sakura's isn't even five and a half feet tall. "Troublesome," he mumbled under his breath. He placed a hand on her shoulder and began to follow the guard towards the city he would stay in while his princess could grow accustomed to her new environment.
"C'mon, Sakura-chan. I can't wait to see Gaara again!" urged a hyperactive blond boy with whiskered cheeks. He half hugged his best friend and teammate and left his right arm around her shoulder in a protective manner. "This'll be fun! I can't believe you've never met him, I mean, it feels like every mission we go on lately is without you…" he grimaced as those words fell out of his mouth before he could take them back. He tried to make up for his poor word choice, "But hey, I'm getting ahead of myself! This is-"
"Shut up, Dobe." A deep voice came from Sakura's right side. "Sakura's going to be fine. It's just a quick trip anyways." A heavy sigh came from the third member of her team, Sasuke Uchiha. His usual brooding tone for speaking was gone as this was a diplomatic mission. Although he couldn't put a finger on what was diplomatic about it.
He had seen his pink haired teammate place a highly official scroll into her pack before leaving when he had stopped by her apartment before departing to Suna. If it was a simple scroll the homage wanted to send then he could've gone himself. Why did five Konoha ninja have to transport it in the first place?
There was a jonin, future Hokage, two Anbu and whatever the hell Sakura was ranked as of lately. Now that he thought about it, he had heard that Sakura had gotten a promotion of some sort while he and Naruto we're away on their last mission... had none of them ever brought it up? For fuck's sake, he heard this from his brother who was talking to their mother in the kitchen. When Itachi and Sakura had gotten close he would never know, not that he cared anyway, not that it kept him up some nights, no. Of course not.
The only one missing was Kakashi-sensei and it would've been a full team Kakashi trip, nonetheless, it was a team seven trip either way. For that, they could all be thankful for.
A loud whining sound came from the loud mouth blonde, the most vocal of the team. "That's true. But at least all of us get to go on another trip as team seven!" He turned back towards the girl in between the two taller men. "Ne, Sakura-chan, what do you want to do when we get back to Konoha? We need to celebrate going on our first diplomatic mission!"
The younger Uchiha brother resisted the urge to roll his eyes and summoned a small surge of lightning chakra in his fingertips and pressed it to Sakura's neck and the fake Sakura poofed into thin air. "Naruto, you idiot," he grumbled.
The taller of the two boys ran forward at an almost alarming speed to try and catch up to his female teammate, who had slipped past the two of them without either of them noticing for at least some time since they arrived in Suna. He cursed under his breath and scanned the area with his eye doujutsu.
XOXOXO
The pink haired princess had put up quite a fight coming, to Suna to begin with, she was next to the strongest kunoichi in all of the 5 nations, next to her mother of course, although many could argue that she had surpassed her quite some time ago. Like hell, she would agree to marry someone she had only met once! And who tried to kill her no less! Did anyone even remember that? It was bad enough that most people wanted her for their clans, for the daimyo's sons, and now for a peace treaty? After some thought, she knew that this was the only answer to solidify the treaty between the Fire and Wind Nations.
Truthfully, she wasn't Tsunade's biological daughter, her pseudo-mother had taken her in years after the massacre of her own clan which had left the young 8-year-old the sole survivor. It wasn't something that haunted her, especially the fact that it remained a mystery who had held a grudge against the family enough to kill them. They were a non-ninja family as both her parents left after graduating the academy to pursue other interests. For Peet's sake, they owned a bakery, no less.
But no one could imagine losing their whole family like that, even though Naruto who had lost his father in a senseless war that had trapped that damn demon inside of him, had lost both parents. And he had made peace with that. In truth, he had made many connections in the past simply because of who he is and given his joyous personality, that helped a lot as well. Hell, he had even pulled his Sakura-chan out of her downward spiral even before they were placed on the same team.
Putting the sole Haruno, the second Uchiha Prince, and everyone's beloved Kyuubi was almost a pure genius move. They balanced out each other in the exact way that everyone needed. While Naruto and Sasuke competed like there was no tomorrow, Sakura was there to soothe out the roughness. Even Sai was pulled out of his shell when he was placed on their team. Sakura brought out the love that everyone hid inside themselves and would rarely show. She was special that way, and if you asked anyone in the village they would wholeheartedly agree.
Although, there was that temper she had… most of her team had experienced it once a week as it was almost like a gift bestowed upon her by her adoptive mother. Sakura was no avenger, her heart was too weak for that, that weakness slowed down much of her career when she was younger. Her first chunin exams went terribly, they made it up to the forest of death without a hitch thanks to her two boys, she had been knocked unconscious by her rival at the time, Yamanaka Ino, as was her opponent. During the training for the final exam, Sasuke had left the village as did her Naruto-kun. Even after the exam had been postponed due to the war breaking out, both her boys had left again. Kakashi-sensei had returned to Anbu and would not train her no matter how much she bothered him. In an act of desperation, she sought out the newest Hokage and poured her heart out in all of her training and through all her success.
Starting that moment, she had decided that she would make a name for herself and no one would leave her ever again. Her new mom and sister, Tsunade and Shizune, trained her until her arms and legs gave out every day for three years. There was no stopping her training and she often found herself beating Tsunade in arrival times, length of commitment, and even drinking games. Tsunade would agree to all except the last… she always found herself blackout drunk at the end and it would be Shizune who told her of her losses against her star pupil.
She had made friends along the way during all her training at the hospital and on the training fields. Hell, she sought out help and guidance in more than one mother figure as Kushina Uzumaki had found her crying in an alleyway one day and Mikoto Uchiha had found her two weeks later crying at her parent's gravestones. Her boys had become her family so easily that she felt peace and clarity when she began to know their families as well.
She had known this marriage alliance was going to happen for quite some time. The sole time she had met her future husband and his family were at the exact chunin exams where she had failed miserably. But she was better now, stronger, held an air of confidence that couldn't be taken away until her dying breath came. With the purple diamond on her large forehead, all the world could see how strong she had become.
She was no force to be toyed with, she had surpassed her mother and was well on her way to becoming on par with Sasuke and Naruto, although many would argue that she already was. To Sakura, enough would never be enough. She would push herself and train herself to become a better medic, shinobi, and person in general. But now? She had to be a diplomat from her home and make a whole new life in the middle of the fucking desert! Whoever thought of this ridiculousness should be put in their place.
XOXOXO
Naruto and Sasuke appeared before the village gates but could not feel her chakra signature anywhere. Even Sasuke had a hard time finding her, although neither could deny that they hadn't been around her as frequently. The only person who had been around her recently was either back at home, in Konoha, or her personal bodyguard who never left her side. If anything, they should find him instead. The two spoke to the village gate guards so they could alert the Kazekage that they had arrived although their own lazy cloud-gazer beat them to it.
Grunting, Sasuke told his blond teammate that he would meet him at the Kazekage palace and 'find Sakura before she does something idiotic'. The dark-haired man followed the guards' instructions on how to get to the palace and shoved his hands in his pockets, grumbling about how their sole female teammate could cause such trouble. If anyone overheard, they could accuse him of sounding like the Nara who rounded out their group.
Naruto stretched his arms above his head and yawned widely. They made it quite quickly but with Sakura missing, it would be more of a pain to find her without any clue as to where she had gone. The whiskered teen's eyes shot open at the sudden realization, he had given her a hairpin laced with his chakra from his father's secret jutsu.
A quick hand sign later he found himself clinging to his pink haired best friend as she dangled upside down from a balcony facing an unknown person's bedroom window from the Kazekage tower. "Ahh! Sakura-chan!"
Said girl sighed heavily and sent a glare towards her makeshift brother as he settled on hanging upside down with her. "Naruto-kun, you're going to scare her to death." Her emerald eyes never left the window of her target's house.
"Uhh Sakura-Chan," the whiskered boy began, "whose house is this, anyway?" His eyes followed her line of sight and stared at the humble house quizzically. He noted how the citizens of Suna didn't seem to notice their appearance and the oddness of the couple to be perched on the underside of a balcony on the Kazekage palace, no less!
The blond boy scratched his cheek when he was met with silence. "Ne," he nudged the woman next to him, "I think we're supposed to meet Gaara now." He turned to face her and noticed black eyes staring back at him from the animal in her arms. How the hell did she get away with keeping him in the guise of a ferret to begin with?
A soft sigh came from the soon-to-be bride, "let's go Naruto-kun." Sakura and Naruto disappeared from the outside of the Kazekage tower hand in hand, knowing that this would be one of the last times she could be like this with her pseudo-brother from a long time. He did not know the purpose of this trip, neither did any of her other teammates, and she'd be in trouble if she didn't tell them first. Only the tiny creature in her arms knew why they traveled so far. That, and her mother.
The next few days we're going to be shit, and she'd be in the doghouse for this damned secret.
BOOP BOOP. Happy new year! It's 1:30am here and I'm beyond tired. But I missed you guys. I'm gonna be kind of crazy with updates, so please don't make me feel bad, I just have a full-time school schedule, and two part time jobs. So things are crazy! Thank goodness one of them is a remote job so it's a little bit easier. But it takes place at crazy hours...ahh! Just know that I love you guys like there's no tomorrow! Here's to my first update of the new year!
