Sakura-chan didn't talk to anybody that next morning, not even when Naruto did his best to engage her in conversation. He thought he might have to start asking about what she saw, while under the genjutsu. It was different than what he saw, that much he was sure of. Anything that could make smart, pretty Sakura-chan so frightened and sick-feeling...well...he didn't like it.
Her energy felt okay today, it was back to its pretty, petal blue and only feeling a little greasy. After the genjutsu yesterday, it had been a slick, black whirlwind of fear. He hadn't liked that, and had felt frightened...just a little bit. Even with the distance of a good night's sleep, he still wasn't too fond of that feeling.
"Sakura-chan, are you sure you're feeling better? I can tell Kakashi-sensei that you needed to go home because you weren't feeling okay. Do you need that? Do you need a snack? I think I have some ramen in my kunai pouch! You can have it, if you'd like?" He said, eyeing her with concern and more than a little wariness.
He didn't really want barf on his sandals either…
She just shook her head and sat underneath one of the ground's trees, picking at a sleeve and looking upset. He hated it when his teammates were upset (yeah, even Sasuke-teme. He might not be a nice guy, but Sasuke was dependable and didn't seem to hate him at least, even if they weren't friends, so that was something), but there wasn't too much he could do except find something to occupy himself with.
Sasuke-teme was doing kata, ones he didn't recognize (though the bastard's energy was fluctuating with something...like anger, disappointment, hunger? He hadn't had a lot of practice reading the feel of a person yet, but it was good for simple stuff) from the Academy. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't interested, but what could he even bargain for an explanation? Teme wasn't good with sharing.
"Maa, my short students," Kakashi-sensei greeted them, fallen leaves skittering away from the jounin's feet. "Do we want to guess what today is? Team picture day!" Sakura paled, and her hand went to her hair, and her energy immediately corkscrewed. Actually, that reminded him...she'd been kinda subdued ever since she'd cut her hair.
Maybe she didn't like it?
"Yeah!" Naruto said anyway, putting Sakura's hair dilemma at the back of his mind for the moment. He was immediately busy thinking of all the ways he might make the photo more interesting. Like "accidentally" tripping into paint, and taking the rest of Team 7 with him. Then they'd all show up in a tastefully matching mess.
Team solidarity at its best right?
In the end his prank backfired, and he was the only one wearing paint in their official team photo. But that was okay, because Sakura-chan laughed, and Teme's energy made that little wiggle he'd come to associate with smiles (from other people), and even Kakashi-sensei felt pleased with them! So he felt pretty pleased with himself, for cheering up his more somber squadmates even despite the gross feeling of slowly drying paint.
"And now, oh miniscule subordinates, a mission." Kakashi-sensei said, ruffling Sasuke's hair (much to the teme's distress and annoyance). Without further preamble he handed their mission scroll off to Sakura-chan. He dumped the radios into Sasuke's hands, and patted Naruto on the head. "Now be good," and he vanished.
"What's the mission, Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked, rubbing at a fast drying bit of paint on his cheek (it itched something awful, never again). "I hope it's not that one with the stupid, evil cat again, I really -"
"Tora-chan retrieval." Sakura intoned, scowling outright at the paper. Sasuke was the only one the cat even could stand, and once Sakura had even gotten scratched! (And it had scarred over a little, so now there were three thin, pale scars along the back of her hand!) Needless to say, Tora didn't like him either, though he always healed up with no problems.
"Last seen?" Sasuke prompted, shoving radios at each of them. Teme was smirking, maybe thinking about the last time they'd gone after the runaway beast. (It hadn't ended pretty at all, Sasuke had calmed her down and it had let Sakura snap a leash onto that collar, but when he'd approached it had literally snapped, snarled and then scratched until it got free. And then Tora had proceeded to lead them a merry chase around downtown.)
"Training Ground 23, according to the group of chuunin using it for practice." Sakura said, squinting at the scroll. "We'll have to be careful, apparently they were testing traps, and aren't sure they deactivated all the minor ones." Sasuke grunted an affirmative, and they moved to position.
Sasuke was taking the northernmost point, Sakura the eastern, and Naruto had been assigned to cover the south and west between him and his clones. The plan was to work inwards, hoping that the quarry hadn't escaped them and that their net would flush Tora-chan towards Sasuke and hopefully a successful retrieval.
The first hiccup was when Naruto noticed one of his clones had dismissed itself. He got the tell-tale flashback, promptly misjudged the distance from one branch to another, and face planted into a tree.
Whatever it was that took out N-4 was definitely not a chuunin-level trap. While he pulled himself back off the floor and careened back into action, Naruto made sure to transmit, "Teme, Sakura-chan, keep an eye out for traps. There's more than just chuunin level shit out here. Over."
They both radioed in an affirmative, and the search resumed. After N-4's demise at the hands of an over-complicated and unexpected trap, Naruto suffered more flashbacks from punctured or trapped clones. Replacing them was but a moment's work, even though it did give him pause. Every now and then, Sasuke or Sakura-chan would radio in, and with each check in the net closed.
"Found her!" Sakura called in, "Chasing her towards Sasuke, over!" He beamed, racing forward. They were close, so close! They reconvened in the large open space at the center of the training field. "Where's that evil cat?" Naruto asked, head swiveling between his teammates. Neither of them would look at him.
Sasuke looked a little battered, and Sakura-chan had definitely suffered the monster's claws. "We almost had Tora-chan, but then a nin-kin ran through and startled her away. She ran this way, but we lost her." Sakura supplied, rubbing at a reddened scratch on her hand with a sort of detachment. "You didn't see her, did you?"
Naruto shook his head in the negative. "Nah, me'n my clones haven't seen her at all." The three genin stared at each other in dismayed silence until various Naruto clones arrived. Clones N-1 through N-3, and N-12 through N-19 all insisted they'd seen nothing.
A couple more clones, dragging behind the rest, dispersed just outside the brush ringing the open area. "Uh...guys?" Naruto hedged, turning with aching slowness towards where N-21 and N-22 had been. "I think we need to go see…" A piercing howl, feline and all the more terrible for it, from the woods. "Tora's stuck in a trap."
Naruto and Sakura had to run dog distraction duty, since the mangy mutt that had scared the demon had also chased it into a trap, but Sasuke finally did get that awful cat. Panting, all three of them were glad Sasuke managed to "coax" the beast into a collapsible carrier. "I hate this mission." Naruto moaned, nicks and scratches already healed up. "Hate it with fire."
Sakura made a noise of agreement, his sense of her feeling lethargic and tired. Sasuke didn't feel much better, though his signature was smug? It felt smug, and tired as well. He wasn't tired himself, but he felt pretty exhausted. That many clones wasn't usually a problem, but the Tora mission always made him feel like his insides had been wrung out.
Gah, he hated that cat!
"Maa, my cute students." As always, Kakashi-sensei's chakra reappeared out of nowhere. Jounin were good at hiding their energy, he'd noticed. "It looks like you caught the creature." And he felt like a smile, despite the mask and the neutral slope of his shoulders, so Naruto smiled up at his sensei.
"Taught her not to mess with the Leaf!" Naruto crowed, before Sasuke's arm smacked into his stomach. His breath gushed out all at once at the impact, and Sakura shook beside him with disguised laughter.
"Okay, settle down." Kakashi-sensei said, and maybe that was amusement twisting his energy like that. "Let's go give the Daimyo's wife her cat back." And he ruffled Sasuke's hair again, once everyone was back on their feet, despite the fierce glower the bastard shot at him.
Naruto kept his senses on the way his team felt, knowing that Sakura and Sasuke both were pleased, and smiled to himself. This wasn't the way he thought being a ninja would go, but he rather liked it. He had a team. If they weren't family yet, well...Iruka-sensei always said a team could become like a family. He just had to give it time.
