Ahh... I haven't stopped writing yet... I was just super jet-lagged from coming back. :( Jet-lag sucks. Especially when you still have to go to school.
But here's a new chapter, sorry it took me so long, my updates are really random and irregular.
Enjoy!
ANBU Come to Hogwarts Chapter 4
Sakura found an empty compartment and plopped down into a seat. The four of them had decided to spread out so that they could cover more ground. They had found 9 ¾ station easily thanks to Neji's Byakugan, but once they had passed through the wall they were met with cries of "Death Eaters" from many people. Luckily Moody had been wandering around and had yelled at the people that Sakura's group were not 'Death Eaters', but the new Hogwarts guard.
What a pain. These wizards are so weak, they crumble at the slightest threat. Harry's so-called accomplishments are nothing compared to even a Genin. And this Voldemort person would have died long ago had he been fighting our ninja community. Her thoughts were disrupted as she saw Harry, Ron, and Hermione slid open the door.
"Hi Dragon, can we join you?" Hermione asked. Harry glared at the guard. He did NOT need to be guarded by some pink-hair GIRL. Sakura nodded and ignored them as they began chatting about Hogwarts.
"Um, Dragon?" Ron timidly asked. He didn't want her to beat him up after he saw what Raccoon had taken.
"Yes?" She replied.
"Is your hair color naturally pink?"
"Yes." She then mentally sighed as the annoying Hermione began asking her questions.
'I dub thee WAY TOO NOSY.' Inner scowled and made some even ruder nicknames for Hermione.
"So where do you guards come from? What's with the tattoos? Are you guys a part of a group?" Hermione rattled off question after question as Sakura refrained from choking the girl to death.
"We come from Japan. Our tattoos show that we are a part of ANBU." She replied shortly.
"What's ANBU?" Harry asked, curious.
"Secret."
She saw Hermione frowned and smirked under her mask. She loved being mysterious and annoying.
"I'm going to go walk around." Sakura got up and slid open the door. "Stay out of trouble." She called as she closed the door behind her.
Sakura opened the door of the train and applied chakra to her feet so she could walk on top of the train. She sat down and enjoyed the rush of wind past her face fighting back a yawn. I'll just lay down here for a bit…
[Almost a year ago]
"Sakura… They said they're bringing Sasuke back." Tsunade took in Sakura's blank expression.
Her team and friends had left nearly two years ago to bring back Sasuke and in that time Sakura had trained and gotten much stronger. She had become an ANBU captain a few months ago after the Elders and Tsunade had recognized her full potential. No one knew that Sakura was an ANBU Captain except for Tsunade, Shizune, the elders, the Sand Siblings, and her squad: Sai, Neji, and Shikamaru. All of them had understood her reasons for keeping it a secret and supported her.
"Will you be okay?" Tsunade regarded Sakura as her daughter and had been worried that ANBU would be too much for Sakura because her of emotionless and doll-like manner. Instead, she had seen her apprentice regain her cheerful personality and become an ANBU Captain. Now she worried that the return of Sakura's friend would send her back into that cold state.
"Hai shishou. My love for him faded long ago. I've got Sai now." Tsunade smiled at that. She hadn't expected Sai of all people to help Sakura but both of them had changed in a positive way.
"Alright. They'll be back in a week, so take some time to prepare yourself."
"Hai, shishou." Sakura poofed away.
[One week after the conversation.]
Tsunade gazed at the group in front of her. Naruto, Hinata, Ino, Kiba, Sasuke, and Kakashi. Sasuke had been allowed back into the village by the elders because he had killed Orochimaru and the elders wanted to keep the Sharingan in the village. Keh. Manipulative old people.
"Baaa-san! How's Sakura-chan!" Naruto yelled, hopping up and down. Sasuke smacked him and told him to shut up.
"She's fine don't worry." Tsunade smirked a little. These twerps were going to be in for a surprise if they ever found out that Sakura was an ANBU Captain. Kakashi noticed her weird smile and frowned a little. Was Tsunade hiding something about Sakura? He quickly dismissed those thoughts. No, Sakura wouldn't have been sent on any dangerous missions, Tsunade would protect her from that. He breathed a sigh of relief and tuned back into the conversation.
"Baa-san, where's Sakura?" Naruto asked. "I want to train with her again! Don't worry we'll go easy on her so she won't get hurt."
Tsunade laughed a little but stopped when she saw Stag pop into the room. The other ninja's tensed at the sight of the ANBU.
"Hawk and I successfully completed the mission. It was troublesome." He lazily drawled.
"Troublesome? Hey… SHIKAMARU!" Ino squealed, happy to see her team mate after two years. She ran over to give him a hug and missed as Shikamaru stepped to the side.
"Hi Ino. Still troublesome." He said, a tad coldly. He considered Sakura as his sister and didn't want to see her broken again. He turned to the Hokage. "Any more missions?"
"Actually yes. I want Squad One to leave in two days for a 2-week mission. S-Ranked." Tsunade pulled out a scroll and handed it to him.
"Hai, Hokage-sama." He bowed and turned to the returning ninjas. "See you around, I guess." He disappeared with a poof.
"Baa-san what was that! Shikamaru's a part of ANBU now?" Naruto yelled. "Who else?"
"Neji and Sai are also ANBU members now."
"That makes sense, so which squads do they lead?" Ino asked, still a little confused as to why Shikamaru was being so cold. Hinata wondered when they had made it to ANBU Captain. Neji, Shikamaru, and Sai were all elite and efficient. It made sense that they would lead their own squads.
"Actually, they're a part of Squad One. Their taichou is Dragon, also the ANBU Commander." Tsunade smirked again as jaws dropped.
Kakashi looked up from his ever present orange book to look up. "Dragon? S-ranked, ANBU, assumed to be six-feet tall but no one's sure because he or his team have taken out all who have seen them?" He had heard the tales of the legendary Dragon start about a year ago during their mission to bring back Sasuke.
"Daaamn! So who's Dragon? Do we know him?" Kiba asked, eyes shining.
Ino piped up. "Oooh! I bet he's hot!"
Tsunade snorted and rolled her eyes. "As if I'm going to tell you that. Less than ten people know Dragon's true identity and it's going to stay that way. Now get out, I have paperwork." And with that Tsunade pulled out a bottle of sake and began pretending to read some papers. The ninjas shuffled out of her office still thinking about the mysterious Dragon.
"Well I guess we'll go find our teammates and have a fun sparring session." Kiba grinned. The others nodded and split up.
"Hey, hey teme, you think Sakura's even prettier now?" Naruto grinned as they headed for the hospital.
"Dobe just shut up. I'm never going to date her so she should just resign herself to being weak." Sasuke deadpanned. Kakashi didn't like the way Sasuke was talking about Sakura, but deep inside he felt the same. Sakura wasn't meant to be a kunoichi, she was much too pure. They reached the hospital and walked in.
"Hi there, do you know where Sakura is?" Kakashi asked the receptionist. The lady blushed.
"Sakura-san is usually on the first or second floor taking care of either the emergency section or the intensive care section." Kakashi nodded her thanks and felt around for Sakura's chakra. He found it on the second floor.
"Alright, she's on the second floor, let's go." They walked upstairs and headed down a hallway just in time to see Sakura stumble out of a door, trembling and looking pasty. Naruto caught her just as she started to collapse.
"Sakura, you okay? You look exhausted, you shouldn't overwork yourself." Naruto led her down to a chair where she sat down and popped a soldier pill.
"Still as weak as ever Sakura." Sasuke smirked.
"Hi Naruto. Hey Kakashi. Hi Sasuke. What's up?" She pushed herself off the chair and started heading towards another room. The three guys looked at her carefully; they had expected more of a reaction to Sasuke's presence. She went into a room with an ANBU member in bed with some nasty wounds on his back. Her hands glowed green as she began healing him.
"We wanted to ask if you would train with us tomorrow!" Naruto grinned. "Just like old times!" Sakura frowned. Old times her ass. They probably just wanted to call her weak again. Whatever, just put on the old-Sakura charade and get it over with.
"Sure!" She smiled tired at them. She finished healing the ANBU member and started walking to another room. "See you guys at Training Ground 7, eight in the morning, okay? I gotta go, bye!" She turned a corner and frowned. Later she would find Sai and cuddle. Cuddling with him always cleared her mind.
[the next day]
Sakura showed up at the Training Grounds at seven. She hadn't been able to sleep well and instead opted to warm up before the boys arrive. She did a light warmup; 100 laps around Konoha, 250 pushups, and 300 sit ups. Her endurance was nearly as good as Gai's, she had taken up training with them when her team had left. She then found that even though they wore green spandex bodysuits and acted like weirdos, they were more encouraging than Team 7 had ever been. And although she would NEVER wear that green spandex and scream youthful things, she was quite close to them now and they would always arrange a sparring session when all of them were in town. She smiled and began shifting into yoga positions. She had just gone into the Scorpion position when she felt Shikamaru's chakra approaching.
"Hey Shika, why are you up so early on this troublesome day?" She grinned as she looked up at him.
"Hokage gave us an S-Ranked mission, we leave in two days." He muttered. "Also, I wanted to see Naruto and Sasuke fight."
Sakura sighed. "I'm not telling them."
Shikamaru nodded. "They still seem to think you're some weak little girl." He managed to scowl and smirk at the same time. "You should probably not use more than one-fifth of your strength. If you do, Kakashi will get suspicious."
She nodded. "Thanks Shika." He winced as she slid into the splits.
"SAKURA-CHAAAN!" Naruto came running over with Sasuke and Kakashi walking behind him. "Oh my Kami. Doesn't that hurt?" He stared at Sakura's splits.
"No." She stood up and smiled at them. "Sparring just like old times, right?" Shikamaru snorted. How wrong they were to think of Sakura as weak. Sai, Neji, and Ino showed up, claiming they wanted to watch the fight.
"So, did your forehead grow even more?" Ino teased.
"Get fatter, pig?" Sakura turned to Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi.
"All four of us, Battle Royale. Each fights his own side and the winner is the last one standing. Sound good?" Sakura asked.
"Are you sure Sakura? I don't want to get you hurt." Naruto looked slightly uncomfortable.
'GET THOSE BITCHES SAKURA. SHANNARO.' Inner seethed.
Sakura put on a fake smile she had learned from Sai. "I'll be fine." And so the fight began. She purposely lost first, and headed over to sit with Shika, Sai, Neji, and Ino as the 3 boys continued sparring.
"That was a nice spar." Ino looked over at Sakura. "Just to let you know, I'm still going for Sasuke."
"Alright. That's fine." Sakura shrugged as the spar ended with Kakashi knocking Sasuke and Naruto both unconscious. "I'm going to go to my hospital shift now, bye guys!" She waved and gave a special wink to Sai before heading off.
Kakashi studied Sakura"s indifferent mood. Her training outfit was different, before it had been hampered by random things to impress Sasuke. Now Sakura wore black short-shorts and a large black t-shirt with the Haruno Clan symbol on the back. Her legs were wrapped up to mid-thigh and the bandages on her arms vanished into her t-shirt. As she walked away he also noticed that she carried herself proudly and didn't seem to obsess over Sasuke anymore. He had also noticed the wink she had sent Sai and the closeness she seemed to have with Shikamaru and Neji. And during the spar he knew she could have done a teeny bit more. He left Ino to deal with Naruto and Sasuke and he headed to see the Hokage.
"Kakashi, is there something you need?" Tsunade asked.
"What's wrong with Sakura?" Kakashi questioned, and noticed how Tsunade tensed.
"What do you mean?" She asked quietly.
"Sakura's hiding something. And you know it." Kakashi accused. "What's wrong with her?"
Tsunade smiled. "That's not for you to know but I will tell you that it's a good thing. Now get out before I throw you out." When Kakashi hesitated she picked up the nearest object, a stapler, and chucked it at his head.
Kakashi hurriedly teleported out as he tried to work with the information he had. After a few minutes he gave up. It's probably nothing.