"It is your task as a stealth member to do this."
The papers were handed over.
The brief sounds of hands flipping through.
"Just for Her?"
"Well, I suppose observing the other one wouldn't harm, either."
The masked face nodded.
The transaction was done.
Sakura tucked the stray hairs behind her ears that fell out of the ponytail as she leaned over the paper with a dropper, pattering a small section of the surface carefully before allowing it to soak and holding it up to the ultraviolet lamp that made the room glow softly in the dim light of the evening.
"Damn," Sakura cursed aloud as nothing showed, and pushed back the white sleeves of her standard lab coat in frustration—a force of habit.
She placed the paper back down and grabbed a cotton ball, dipping it in a different solution and rubbing the next allocated section with it before holding it up to the ultraviolet.
Nothing.
This was endless.
She'd spent the better part of her evening eating to-go dumplings and running tests on the letter in the basement lab of the hospital. But so far, nothing had turned up. She'd shaded the paper in pencil, felt over it with chakra to sense ridges, tapped it to remove genjutsu…and gone through possibly every paper test imaginable in the ninja world to decode things and found…nothing.
Even the envelope was spotless.
There weren't even any signs of fingerprints aside from her own—which she found strange but let slide regardless.
For all intents and purposes, it was just a regular, blank sheet of paper.
Except it couldn't be just a regular sheet of paper because what kind of organization folded up regular paper, shoved it in an envelope, paid for postage, and then mailed it to people? There was no logic in that.
Sakura sat back in her rolling stool with a sigh, her fingers grabbing the chopsticks resting on top of the container on the side table, scooping some food into her mouth.
Sakura was not a happy camper. And if she didn't figure this out, Sasuke wouldn't be a happy camper, either. In fact, if this sheet of paper, she thought to herself as she gave the parchment a dirty look, insisted on being nothing but a sheet of paper, the entire figurative camping trip would be ruined.
It was akin to letting a wild bear tear into their happy tent and eat all of their food. And then take a dump on their spare clothes and even worse—her medical supplies.
Sakura moaned incoherently as she chewed, her head falling into her hands.
At this rate, she wouldn't have a campsite left at all. She would never go camping again. Ever.
At this rate, Sasuke was going to murder her.
.x.
The Fan Club
of illusions and the obvious
(written by seleneswan)
…
"Because nothing is ever what it seems when it comes to Sasuke Uchiha."
(eyes heavenwards)
.x.
"Sasuke, I quit," she announced to him over their weekly Team Seven dinner at Ichiraku as she absentmindedly swirled her noodles around.
Naruto looked up from his bowl curiously. "Quit what?"
"This is the fourth time you've quit since this afternoon, Sakura, and this will be the fourth time that I've explained that you can't quit because I'm paying you to do this mission," he explained tersely, closing his eyes.
"Quit what?" Naruto insisted, tapping the table impatiently.
Kakashi peered at Sasuke over the edge of his current selection of literature, an eyebrow raised. "Have you been going to your therapy sessions? You know that you have to uphold your end of the bargain or they'll throw you in prison—"
"They're not therapy sessions; they're mental evaluations. I don't sit there and talk about my feelings to some idiot who thinks they know my mind," he corrected derisively, lips pulled up in a sneer.
"That still doesn't answer—"
"Quit what?" Naruto interrupted both of them, lip jutting outwards in a pout. "You can't just ignore—"
Sakura grinned, her eyes crinkling in the process. "I missed this," she sighed, resting her chin in her hands giddily.
"Sakura-chan," Naruto whined, brows tilting upwards in the beginnings of a full on pout session, "What is he paying you for? You could do so much better than to let him to pay you for sex—"
"What?" she screeched, her previous happy glow long gone.
People in the diner were starting to stare.
All of a sudden, Kakashi's insistence on questioning Sasuke's agreement with the courts was long forgotten. "Huh, who would've thought…" he trailed off to no one in particular, placing his book face down on the table, deciding that the possible sex lives of his ex-students-now-current-colleagues were much more important than the fictional sex lives of the characters in his smut-ridden novella.
"She is not getting paid for sex—" Sasuke deadpanned.
"He is not paying me for sex; what do you think I am, Naruto?" she hissed, suddenly aware they were discussing these things in a very public place.
Kakashi looked a little disappointed and quietly resumed reading.
Naruto looked a little wild-eyed as he held up his hands at the murderous glares of his two teammates. "Okay, okay! Fine, he's not paying you for—"
Sai chose to saunter in at that moment, ducking under the coverings of the eatery, uncharacteristically late. "I never thought you'd stoop to prostitution, Ugly. No one with taste would ever pay for you anyways," he said airily, sliding into a seat. "I apologize for being late; I was accosted by Shizune-san to get a physical at the hospital."
Sakura seethed. "For your information, I am not selling sex, nor will I ever, but if I did, plenty of people would pay for me. Naruto would pay for me, wouldn't you, Naruto?" she shot back, not noticing how Naruto floundered around in his seat, looking excessively uncomfortable.
"Ah…I…Sakura…" he trailed off, looking panicked as he gaze flitted from the steady anger Sakura was exuding to Sasuke's careful poker face that he was certain was hiding a menacing death threat to the ceiling and then to his pants.
Sakura slid her gaze over to her other teammate, all of a sudden. "Okay, fine. Naruto has Hinata, anyways, but Sasuke—"
She was cut off when Sasuke avoided answering the question by a not-so-subtle topic change. "Sakura's on a mission to remove idiotic fan girls from the face of the planet. That's what she's trying to quit."
Naruto blinked.
Sakura rubbed her forehead tiredly. "That was supposed to be confidential, Sasuke; we are in a public place. For all we know, you just screwed over the entire—"
"Why d'you want to quit, Sakura-chan?" Naruto scrunched up his face, confused. "It can't be that hard—"
"We can't talk about this here," she stressed in hushed tones. "You know what, just shut up for now. I'll tell you all about it later, I promise."
Sai placed a hand on Sakura's back in what was supposed to be sympathizing. "Well, we always knew Ugly was a chicken about missions," he shrugged.
Sakura glared at him balefully out of the corner of her eye as her hand snuck up to the juncture between his neck and his shoulder, and she smiled fakely. "We did always know that, didn't we," she said flatly, and squeezed hard as Sai crumpled beneath her fingers.
Sai woke up hours later, disoriented, to the sound of children laughing at the dress, bonnet, and the copious amounts of red lipstick he was wearing.
Naruto stepped back from the lamp post to observe his handiwork with a maniacal grin. "This is the most fun I've had in ages," he exclaimed cheerfully to Sakura, who could laugh only lightly in return, something else other than humor coloring her voice.
Sasuke had already headed to the Hokage tower to pick up Miho, who that day, was being watched by the security guards already on duty over there. Kakashi had retired for an early night a while ago, and so it was just herself and Naruto and an unconscious Sai in the evening streets.
She broke their comfortable silence with a thought. "You know, he's kind of right. I am chickening out. It's just…this is somehow so much more than I expected it to be. It's as if they kind of…hold some power over me. Like we're playing a card game and I have all the crappy number cards and they hold the ace of spades. They're more than I thought they would be," she mused. "They're…smarter."
Naruto shook his head as he slipped the bonnet onto Sai's head, tying the laces into an oversized bow. "But you're brilliant, Sakura-chan. You knocked Sai out by touching his shoulder. You can smash the ground into pieces, and you can solve any puzzle I've ever known. You kick ass," he insisted earnestly.
Sakura's lips curled upwards in a small smile. "I suppose all of those things are true…" she said cheekily.
"So then how come you want to quit?"
"Well, so I've told you about the paper," she said, distressed. "And I think I have come to the realization that there are just some puzzles no one can solve," she said, wrapping her arms around herself as she paced around.
"Every puzzle has an answer key, though," Naruto insisted.
Sakura could only shake her head dejectedly, trying to think about what she could have possibly missed, what it could possibly mean. She wrung her fingers together and stared at her hands for a moment, contemplative as a bare sketch of an idea occurred to her…
"Can you give me your lipstick?" he asked, interrupting her train of thought.
"Uh, yeah, sure," Sakura said distractedly as she rummaged in the small bag she had with her. She didn't really ever wear lipstick, but Ino had given her a few tubes for her last birthday and she had dumped them in her purse without a second thought.
She uncapped it and rolled the red waxy substance to the surface, a little getting on her fingers in the process as she handed it, ready to be used, to Naruto.
He immediately set to work, painting Sai's lips scarlet.
She rubbed her hands together, the stray red lipstick that had gotten on her index finger smearing over her finger, and she studied her hand contemplatively, her thoughts tracing back to what had happened earlier in the day with the incredible emptiness of the paper-not just in words but in everything.
The envelope, the letter…none of them had any fingerprints. What could it mean?
There was no way she could know for sure. There was no way anyone could know for sure. Not unless...
Her eyebrows drew together. "Every puzzle has an answer key," she repeated softly as the easiest answer came to her all of a sudden.
Not unless she asked.
"Sometimes, the right answer is the simplest one," she said to herself victoriously, vowing to herself that by the end of the night, she would know what they wanted her to do.
She looked up at Naruto who was basking in his artwork, wielding the lipstick like a marker, and smiled as she threw her arms around Naruto all of a sudden, cheery. "Thank you!" she exhaled excitedly, pressing a sisterly kiss to his temple before running off, leaving her lipstick at the mercy of a maniac.
Naruto rubbed the back of his head, confused, and tucked the half used tube of lipstick into the floral dress pocket.
All in a day's work, he thought to himself, walking away with a bounce in his step.
Sakura pushed open the glass doors of the fan club building, walking up to the counter decisively, pressing the blank letter onto the countertop of the small lobby they had.
The girl at the counter looked up curiously, pushing her glasses up her nose. "Name?"
"Sakura Haruno," Sakura replied back decisively, watching as the lady pulled out a list of names, crossing her name off with a purple pen. About half of the names had been marked as such.
"You have finally understood that not all answers lie in your hands, and you have finally been humbled enough to realize that asking is not beneath you. Your final task is in the symbolism of the paper," she said in a bored monotone, as if she'd repeated it a million and one times already. "You are to create your own final task. You have a clean slate, a blank piece of paper, if you will, to impress the Selection Committee. You have until four days from now at this exact time to turn in whatever it is you come up with.
"I wish you the best of luck," the young girl said, pushing her long black hair behind her ears, an almost ominous look on her face. "You will need it."
A/N: I love you all. So, so very much. If I could travel around the world and squeeze the life out of all of you-most affectionately-I would.
(But I have to admit, I'm a little confused. Last chapter's review response was much, much...less than I normally get. And I don't like to ask you guys to tell me what you think because I'd like to know which of you are honestly kind enough to take the time to give me feedback of your own accord, but I'd like to know what I've done that you don't like? Because when I get so few reviews-the least by quite the margin it's ever been on this story for a chapter-I start to wonder what I've done that's...prompted the lack thereof. What I've done wrong. What has made you...displeased or unhappy or apathetic or...or-maybe I'm overthinking this.
But it'd be nice if you could tell me your thoughts?)
In other news, I have plotted away an orig!fic so my updates may be slower as I'm working on that. Also, I baked brownies. Also, I love you~