The other pair of shinobi was scouring the land for any secret passages or locations, but thus far had no such luck. Abruptly, Yamato signaled for Sakura to halt.
"Captain, what's…" Sakura began to ask before Yamato quickly hushed her. She peered through the trees to try and see what the man was looking at. He eyes widened as she realized what it was.
Orochimaru was making his way through a clearing just ahead. The two leaf members were watching him intently when he stopped and turned towards them.
"I know you are over there." He said casually.
Yamato and Sakura stepped into the clearing, but remained quite a distance from the sannin. They stared each other down.
"This is rather troublesome; I didn't plan to fight anyone today. Oh well, this isn't going to be much of a challenge." The snake smirked.
Before Yamato could speak, Sakura's emotions took over. "Where's Sasuke?" She cried.
Orochimaru laughed. "I can't tell you that."
"You better! Or I'll… I'll make you regret it!"
Orochimaru erupted with laughter again. "As sure as I am that you would," he said sarcastically, "I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to. I don't know where he is at the moment, either."
Sakura tightened her fist and seriously considered charging at the man, but Yamato gripped her wrist. "That's enough, Sakura. We can't take him on. Even if we had the aid of Naruto and Sai, the odds of winning would still be in his favor." He turned to face Orochimaru, "We don't want a fight. We are just passing through to reach lightning country."
"For some obscure reason, I don't believe you. However, I have more important issues I must deal with." Orochimaru replied. His quest of finding Sasuke took priority over a fight with a former experiment and overly emotional teen. With his last statement made, he continued onward.
"Captain Yamato, we have to go after him!" Sakura urged him, but her efforts were futile.
"We can't just go after him. He would sense us and then we would get attacked. It was extremely fortunate that he was preoccupied; we may not be standing here if he had decided to assault us."
"But he could be heading to his hideout!" She refuted, though she knew that Yamato was right.
"That's enough. He knows we are here, so our best option is to report back to Lady Tsunade."
Yamato relayed the information through his clone system back to the Naruto and Sai; the four met up at camp site they used last night.
"You mean you saw Orochimaru and let him escape?" Naruto demanded.
"You know as well as I do that we stand no chance against him." Yamato replied.
"But he could lead us to Sasuke!" Naruto exclaimed.
"That wasn't the point of this mission!" Yamato shouted back. "We can't do anything else now that Orochimaru knows we are here. He will keep an eye out for us, and we can't fight him! It's too dangerous."
"I don't care about any of that! We have to go after him!"
"Naruto… he's right." Sakura added.
"So you're giving up, too?" He interrogated.
She was taken aback by his question before answering in a serious tone. "We must obey the orders we receive."
Naruto stared at Sakura. He could not believe what he was hearing. He never expected Sakura to give up on an opportunity to retrieve Sasuke. He lowered his gaze, "I guess that's true…"
"We are going back to the leaf village now." Yamato ordered and took off. Sai followed him immediately, but Sakura and Naruto hung back for a moment.
"I have a plan," Sakura whispered, "we are going to get Sasuke."