Protection

At first Sakura thought her new assignment was a joke. She suspiciously held the scroll close to her face and carefully examined the printed instructions. The letters were the same blue-black ink as all of her previous mission scrolls had been, and when she held the paper towards the sunlight, it appeared to be the proper thickness. Her next thought was that Naruto had somehow played a trick on her, but she quickly dismissed the thought. Subtlety was not Naruto's strong point. And Sasuke… it was best to just not think about Sasuke. She rolled the scroll up and tucked it into her belt pouch. The scroll could wait until after she had eaten lunch.

Lunch was the usual affair, eaten in a large cafeteria at a table with the rest of her former classmates who were currently not on missions. Sakura listened to the hum and buzz of the conversations around her and occasionally added a word or two as she ate her lunch. She had almost pushed the scroll from her mind when something unexpected happened. Kakashi Hatake appeared in the cafeteria. Generally, her former teacher preferred to each lunch by himself, unless you counted his ever present book as a companion. He meandered through the lunchroom towards her table greeted Sakura with a "Yo", and wandered off again. Nonplussed, Sakura watched him wander off. Kakashi's greeting was the equivalent of a long conversation with anyone else. As she continued to watch him she suddenly remembered that the mission scroll had said that he was to be her only other partner for this mission.

The next morning she got up early and went to the building where she was to have the first pre-mission meeting. She entered a small room and sat down to wait. There was not much to look at. Just a plain room with a table, two chairs, and a cabinet against the wall. Sakura wished she had brought something to do. If she was waiting for Kakashi then she was in for a long wait. She got up and walked over to the cabinet to see if it was unlocked. To her surprise it was, but the contents were not what she had expected.

Hairpins, several strings of pearls, buttons, and numerous tiny decorative pins. She had no idea what any of these items were doing here. Usually the cabinets in the meeting rooms were stocked with maps, pencils, paper and occasionally coffee. Extra weapons were stored on the lower floors and supplies such as food were in a different building. She turned the pins over in her hands and wondered if they had anything to do with the mission. The mission scroll had stated that she would be attending a formal party, but that made no sense to her.

Sakura's current teachers had indicated now that she had more experience, she would be able to go on slightly more harder missions. Maybe this was to be the first harder mission. When she was younger this announcement would have been a cause for celebration, but now that she was older she knew better. Harder missions meant a greater chance of being killed. Which was why the value of teamwork had been pounded into their heads at the very beginning. She was grateful that Kakashi had taught them that.

Sakura put the pins back and took out the pearls. While she had been grateful to have Kakashi as a teacher, it seemed to her that she could have learned a lot more from him. After he had taught her, Naruto, and Sasuke the basics, they had all been whisked away to do field work with a new teacher because there had been a major skirmish at the border. She had felt divided about getting a new teacher. On one hand Kakashi was extremely competent, intelligent, and resourceful, but on the other hand he was absentminded, chronically late, and indecipherable. She was also somewhat intimidated by him.

"Careful with those" said a voice in her ear.

"You're late" she replied.

Sakura started to put the pearls back, but Kakashi took them from her and sat down at the table.

"Do you know what these are?"

Sakura shrugged. Kakashi took one pearl off the string and swallowed it. Sakura raised an eyebrow.

"Enhancer pills and vitamins" he told her.

"But…shouldn't they be a different color?"

He shook his head. "The colors are only for coding. When you first start out as a ninja everything is simplified, but now you will learn a deeper level of deception. Our mission is to protect a guest at an important political gathering, but before we leave I have a few new things to teach you. We have several weeks until then, I suggest you pay attention. And make sure not to be late." Sakura rolled her eyes.

Over the next few weeks, Sakura was busy preparing for the mission. Some things she learned from Kakashi and others she learned on her own. The string of pearls which Kakashi showed her on the first day turned out to be in a specific order. By counting from the end of the string one could determine what the function of each pearl was. The hairpins turned out to be needles for throwing once the blunt end was taken off. The buttons hid extremely small radios for communicating short distances.

In addition to learning about new weapons and equipment, she also learned new techniques. And not just ninja techniques. Dancing, etiquette, and the current political situation. Proper etiquette for the proper situation she had learned when she had been a young ninja, but at the time she had thought it was stupid and had promptly forgotten most of it after the test. Except for dancing. She distinctly remembered learning how to dance because she and the rest of the girls in the class had all wanted to dance with Sasuke. Sasuke had wanted nothing to do with learning to dance, and had been conspicuously absent after he had learned when the dancing lessons were to be held. The one time she had managed to dance with Sasuke he had stiffly stayed as far away from her as he possibly could. For the rest of the lessons she had danced with Naruto who had extremely sweaty palms and smelled strongly of ramen.

Kakashi was quite different. He held her hands firmly and when she made a mistake he patiently corrected her. Once she learned the basic steps, she then learned how to smoothly move from dancing to her ninja training. At first it had not been so smooth. The first time she had fully opened her senses while dancing she became so distracted that she stumbled and fell. Even with her enhanced senses Kakashi's breathing was no more than a quiet whisper, and she felt the faint tingling where their chakras met up, but it was the smell that was distracting. As Kakashi caught her the smell intensified. As he held her steady she gave him an accusing glare.

"You smell like cinnamon rolls!"

"Hmm?"

She started patting his vest pockets in search of the delicious smell.

After letting her search all his pockets he said vaguely "Oh…I live near a bakery."

Sakura was disappointed, but she leaned in closer to get a better smell. All the other times that she had opened her senses around people generally all she could smell of them was sweat. She could still smell that too, but the cinnamon scent made everything much nicer. She wondered what she smelled like to him.

Finally the night of the mission arrived. Sakura arrived at the meeting spot and only had to wait a half hour for Kakashi. She always had an adrenaline rush before the beginning of a mission and when she saw him arrive she leapt up and would have run off to their destination if he had not put a hand on her shoulder to restrain her. He carefully looked her over. She knew her was checking to make sure all of her weapons were concealed, but since she was wearing a dress this time rather than her usual ninja uniform she felt slightly self-conscious. Perhaps sensing her thoughts, Kakashi murmured a vague "You look nice" and Sakura nodded in response. He ran his hands down her sides and paused at each of the thin needles she had concealed in her clothing. Finally he was finished and removed something from his pocket. The pearls he had shown her during their first meeting. He leaned in closer to tie them around her neck and she breathed in his cinnamon smell. Kakashi gave her a long look.

"I'm ready!" she told him impatiently. He put a hand to her shoulder one more time and they started off.

The building in which the gathering was to be held was large, open and airy. Even though the sun had set, lanterns had been hung in the rafters and provided a good light. There were a lot of people attending the gathering and it took them several minutes to find the man which they had been hired to guard. Once they spotted him they started to make a slow circuit of the room, stopping now and then to politely converse with people.

Several hours later was when the trouble started. Sakura had danced nine times with several different people and was on her tenth partner when she heard an explosion. She quickly shoved her dance partner under a table and ran to the source of the commotion. A thin dart whisked past her ear and she barely dodged it in time. She could see that Kakashi had gotten to the person which they were guarding and was quickly hauling him outside. Another dart zipped past her and this time clipped her on the ear. She spotted several more bombs and yanked the thin needles out of her dress to disable them. The first two she disabled but the third one went off. The building shook with the blast and part of a wall had a hole in it. She desperately looked around for the person who had set the bombs off, but could not see anyone. Sakura looked around but did not see any more bombs. She had just started to herd the remaining people outside when Kakashi ran inside.

"Outside. Now!" he shouted at her and grabbed two people. Sakura grabbed another two and they ran outside. They set the people down and the entire building exploded. As she watched the building in shock other people from nearby houses started to arrive and help those who had gotten outside. Sakura took a step towards the burning building, but Kakashi picked her up and turned to leave.

"Hey! What are you doing? We should help those people!" Sakura struggled to get out of his grip.

"This was a set-up, if we stay to help, people will believe that Konoha was involved. We have to leave as fast as possible."

"But what about the injured people?!"

"The ones that survived will be taken care of."

"The ones that survived….?" Sakura thought with horror of all of the people who had still been inside the building when it had exploded. If Kakashi had not been carrying her she would have fallen over from shock. She was silent for the rest of the trip home.

When Kakashi finally set her down she wanted to tell him that he was wrong to leave those people there, that they should have stayed even if it would have endangered Konoha, and that she hated his stupid decision to leave. But everything got tangled together and when she tried to speak all she managed to get out was an angry sob. And that was just a gateway to her other emotions. She thought of all those people that were still in the building. She could have saved them if she had just been a few seconds faster. Why had Kakashi not told her that the building was going to explode? Still sobbing she hit him with her closed fists. Kakashi said nothing, but simply stood there. How could she measure the value of the lives of those in her village to other innocent people? It just was not fair!

With all the energy gone from her Sakura slid towards the ground. Kakashi caught her and did something he had never done before: he pulled her close into an embrace. Sakura was still angry, but she had no energy left to resist. After several minutes he said "Everyone has to make hard choices. Ninja often have to make the hardest." She looked up at his face, but he was staring off into the distance as if lost in memories. Sakura realized that he had been through even more of these missions than she had. She looked into his eyes and saw pain and unhappy memories. If people like ninjas did not protect the innocent people then who would protect them? She fiercely returned Kakashi's embrace. She would still try to protect them all. Especially Kakashi.