As they were approaching the blast site, Karin could perceive a weird chakra scattered all over the place. It was subtle, but it was there and the whole small village seemed empty. Sasuke and Naruto were near behind her.

Suddenly she felt the weird chakra even closer and behind them. She stopped and turned just to find Sasuke and Naruto's surprised faces and a stranger behind them. It was so fast that it took them all for surprise.

"Well, well, well… what a wonderful surprise!" His… no, her voice sounded like a kid's but she was pretty tall. Her face was covered with a hood. Naruto and Sasuke jumped back to Karin's side as fast as they could and they three went on guard. "Hey! Take it easy! I won't hurt you" It seemed she was really having fun.

"Who the hell are you?!" Naruto shouted. He really wanted to talk on a situation like that? He really was dumber than she thought.

"That's irrelevant." The hooded girl made an attempt to move forward and rise her hand.

"STOP!" Shouted Sasuke stopping Naruto from attacking the girl and probably stopping the stranger too. Then he aimed his sword at the girl and continued "You're coming with us"

"Hahaha… really?" Said the girl. Karin could now see her smiling mouth. "Don't think so" She was amazingly fast. She jumped over them and with a quick move she hit Karin's nape. Karin fainted and fell forward.

"Karin!" Sasuke caught her with his one arm, dropping the sword.

"Damn it!" Naruto went after the hooded girl. He followed her till they were almost outside the small village, but when he thought he was shortening the distance between them, she turned to face him and showing that weird smile on her face again, she vanished.

Naruto abruptly stopped. He had seen that kind of vanishing before. He was pretty sure it was something only the ones with sharingan were capable to do. "Damn it!" He was about to go back with Sasuke and Karin when he felt a hand touching his nape and heard the girl's voice again saying "We'll meet again soon, I promise!" But when he turned around with a fist ready to punch her he found no one there.

He started to feel dizzy but managed to get where his comrades were and as soon as he put a knee on the ground to help Sasuke, his head started hurting so bad that he thought his head might explode.

"What happened?" Asked Sasuke, and when he saw Naruto holding his head with a painful expression he asked "Are you ok?"

"Yeah… I'm fine. Let's get out of here" Naruto's headache was attenuating and the dizziness had passed. Soon he was feeling better again. He carried Karin on his back all the way to the place where they spent the night.

Shikamaru was nervous. She was sure of it.

Even though they were at Yakiniku Q with Ino and Chouji, Shikamaru had been quietly looking at how his hands were playing with a pen since they got there.

"So, Temari, how's everything going in Suna?" Ino's question got her out of her thoughts. "I heard that one of the attacks took place on the borderline with your country, it's been the only attack there so far, right?"

"Well, I hadn't received any information about an attack on my country, so I guess that's been the only one" She was getting a little uncomfortable. Temari could see with the corner of her right eye how Shikamaru was still playing with that pen, but now she could also feel Shikamaru's eyes staring her.

"That's good! That way you won't have to go back soon, right Shikamaru?" Ino probably had noticed that Shikamaru was acting weird too. She was a very close friend of him anyway. "Is everything ok, Shikamaru?" He hadn't taken his eyes off her yet and he didn't until she looked at him too. Then he slowly returned to stare at that pen in his hands.

"What's wrong, Shikamaru?" Chouji finally stopped biting the rib he had on his hands. "Are you-"

"Shikamaru!" A pretty young lady with long black hair and blue framed glasses popped out of nowhere "I've been looking for you all day! Where the hell have you been?" Temari noticed almost immediately the crimson color of that girl's lips and her hazelnut eyes behind her glasses. She was a pretty good looking girl.

Shikamaru sighted and stood up. "Ok, ok, you found me." He offered her the pen.

"Is this my pen?" She took it with a fast move. "Stop playing around! We have tons of work to do!"

"Sorry, but I have to go" He sighted again. "How problematic" The girl took him by the hand and started dragging him out of the place, but before they got too far he turned his face to them and said "See you!"

"Ok… that was weird" Said Ino when the other two were gone.

"Yeah… who was that girl anyway?" Temari didn't know why but she suddenly felt the need to punch that girl in the face.

"I have no idea. I'd never seen her before" It didn't seem like it was a big deal for Ino, so she had no idea why she cared that much.

"Her name is Tomoko" Said Chouji between bites. "She's the lead medic ninja in Sakura's absence and Shikamaru is working with her analyzing the information that Sakura had sent from the villages she's been to"

"How do you know that?" Asked Ino. It was as if she couldn't believe that Chouji knew something about Shikamaru that she didn't.

"Two days ago I ran into Shikamaru, and while we were talking she appeared and left with Shikamaru just as she did just now. But that day she at least had the courtesy to introduce herself" He gave the last bite to his rib and put the bone away. "I guess today she really was in a hurry"

Ino and Temari exchanged a look showing no expression till Ino asked "So… what have you been doing lately?" For some reason Temari wasn't able to take the picture of that girl holding Shikamaru's hand and getting away out of her head.

"I'm working with Kakashi, helping him to coordinate the watch in all the villages with the help of the Suna's shinobis that got here three days ago" Now she was the one looking down at the table. "I have to go now. Thanks for the meal"

Ino looked at her worried, and Chouji even stopped eating his last rib to look as she was getting out of there but she didn't care. She needed to be alone.

Naruto left Sasuke taking care of Karin in a half destructed house. He had to find out what happened before they got there and where were all the people. He wandered the town for a while but apparently there was no one to be found.

"It's useless" Said Kurama from inside of him.

"No, we have to keep looking. What would be the point on attacking a ghost town?" They kept looking for any sign of life until…

"Hey boy, stop! Can you feel that?" Kurama was right, he could feel a little and weak amount of chakra coming from under a pile of rubble. Naruto got closer and…

"No way" He whispered to himself when he saw that pink hair coming out from under the rubble. His eyes started to fill with tears and his whole body started shaking. He's only seen one girl with that color of hair in his life.

"Calm down!" Screamed Kurama. "Take the rubble away"

Naruto tried to calm down but his hands wouldn't stop shaking. He approached to the rubble, took some stones and put them away, but when he turned to the rubble again and looked for the pink hair, it was gone. He was surprised and didn't know what to expect anymore. He rushed and started to take the rubble away as fast as he could. When he finally could see the ground he found a dirty carpet.

"There it is. The chakra is coming from that spot on the ground" Naruto heard Kurama but he was still stunned. "Look under the carpet, you baka!" When he finally moved the carpet, a kunai flew from a hole in the ground and he barely dodged it.

"Get away from us!" Screamed a woman's voice from the hole.

"I'm not gonna hurt you… I'm Naruto Uzumaki from Konoha" He waited for an answer but instead of that, a pink haired girl pumped out of the ground, but she wasn't the one Naruto expected to find. Her hair was longer than Sakura's, her face was rounded and her eyes were almost completely black. She looked at him as if she wasn't sure she could trust him and then she asked "Is she gone now?"

"What?" Asked Naruto back.

"She's gone, right? The crazy girl with the hood" Naruto nodded. "It's ok!" She screamed towards the hole. "The crazy girl is gone and this guy's apparently a Konoha's ninja" She smiled at him. 'Apparently?' Naruto thought, but before he could replay he started seeing how a lot of people were coming out from the hole on the ground. The last man who came out needed help from others. He was an anbu but he didn't look ok. He even needed help to walk.

When the anbu was finally sitting on the ground, Naruto approached to him. "What happened here? What happened to you?"

He made a huge effort to talk "I was sent by Konoha to protect this town. We made a plan in case we needed to hide and when that weird girl appeared almost all the people made it into the bunker I made"

"You made it?"

"Yeah… I'm a doton user. We needed more space so I made it bigger once we all were down there"

"And what happened to you?" Naruto asked while he could hear how the pink haired girl was counting the villagers.

"I… I didn't feel her presence immediately. I was telling all the villagers to be alert and she appeared out of nowhere. She took me by surprise and gently touched the back of my head while she was making fun of me, saying that I would not be able to do nothing. When I turned I saw her face for a fraction of a second. She looked like a little girl and I think I saw a sharingan"

"Sharingan?! I knew it!" He shouted. "Sorry, keep going"

"So, when I tried to stop her she disappeared and I gave the alarm. She appeared again almost immediately and somehow hit me from the back. I couldn't see the hit but it really hurt. I tried to help everyone to get in the bunker, but then we heard her voice again and someone pull me into the bunker. We hid. We could hear her screaming like crazy. She was expecting us to be up here and got really mad when she learned we weren't. She apparently destroyed almost the whole village as if she was throwing a tantrum"

"But then, you're this bad because of that last hit she gave you?"

"I don't know. I didn't feel this bad till I used my doton to make the bunker bigger"

Naruto now had a lot of new information about the enemy. He ensured everyone was ok and promised to send help soon. As fast as he could he wrote down on a scroll everything he learned and sent a frog with it to Konoha.

He was alone with Karin.

Naruto had left a few hours before. He'd said he was going to investigate the town but it wasn't a big town. What was taking him so long?

Karin hadn't awakened yet. She was laid down on the floor and he was sitting next to her, near to her head. On her barely lit forehead he could see little sweat tears. That couldn't be good. He leaned down to touch her forehead with his right hand and, just as he thought, she was burning. He took his hand off her and leaned his head back. What could he do for her? Who the hell was that strange girl and what had she done to Karin?

Sasuke remembered that the best thing to do when someone had fever was to let the body cool down by itself, and it had to be done uncovering as much of the body as possible. He looked at Karin's clothes. There wasn't a lot he could take off without letting her underwear at sight. He bushed and turned to the other side.

On the other side of the half destroyed room he saw a big hole on the wall and could perceive the cold air that was coming through it. He had a better idea now. He looked at Karin for a brief moment but when he felt his cheeks warming he had to look away again.

He stood up and lifted Karin with the help of his susanoo. He tried to move her quickly to that side of the room so that the air could help her fight that fever. As soon as he put Karin on the ground again he stopped his Susanoo, he knew it would be pretty easy for the enemy to find them following susanoo's chakra trace.

He sat now in front of the hole on the wall with Karin between them. He took her glasses off and put them away. She looked pretty different without her glasses on but he thought she was still beau…

"augh!" He stood up and walked to the wall to take a look outside. What was he thinking about? Karin was his ally, his friend… Was it wrong to think that she was also beautiful? He rested his back against the broken wall and looked at the moon while he was trying to figure out why or when he had started to think like that.

He stood there for a while. He could hear nothing but Karin's and his own breath, but suddenly Karin started shivering. Sasuke leaned down to touch her forehead again, the fever had lowered a bit but she was still warmer than she should be.

He returned to the wall. She was still shivering, he didn't like to see her that way but there was nothing he could do for her till the fever was gone. He sat by her side again, this time between Karin and the wall but facing to the street and with his one hand behind him. Suddenly he felt soft and cold fingers touching his hand. He turned and confirmed it was Karin's hand. His cheeks turned red again but he didn't push away her hand, she was at ease again so he stayed there, sighted and closed his eyes.