A/N- I am sooo sorry for the delay yet again, I promised to have this up a week ago, but for reasons it wasn't. please forgive me! Thank you for your reviews and continuous support, it means a lot^^

Sasuke's PoV

Weeks had passed and before I knew it we were down to our last two children. Nicola and Zoe. The rest of the mission had gone successfully. We had managed to disarm the bombs without further implications and had delivered the children to their respective homes safely. We just had one more village left to go, and then we could go home.

"Sasuke!" Neji called from in front of me "The last village is just up ahead." I nodded in reply and between the two of us, we picked up the two girls and sped off towards the village.

We were already a month ahead of our required time limit for the mission, and I wanted to get this over quickly. I wanted to get home… to Naruto.

Naruto, Naruto, Naruto! I couldn't seem to get him off my mind and it was beginning to affect my mission, I was sure of it.

I began to wonder more and more about my blonde only shortly after leaving the first village. I thought about a lot of things, how he was faring, if his mission was a success; if he was alive.

And, well, I missed him.

I missed his endless azure eyes, his bright sunshine hair, his lovable personality and his dazzling smile. Those traits make Naruto, and I wouldn't change him for anything. A small smile made its way onto my lips at the thought of my Dobe.

My thoughts seem weird right? I agree. I've never thought about anybody like this in my life. Sure I've reminisced about my parents, and Itachi, but never like this. Naruto was special, I knew that, everyone else knew that, but for some reason unknown to me, I wanted him all to myself. I shouldn't be thinking like that about my best friend… right?

"Uchiha" Shikamaru brought me out of my internal debate "We're here."

I lifted my head up and glanced around at our surroundings. We had arrived at the entrance gate of the village. The Village was a little like Konoha with its big intimidating wall and large heavy gates, though not as large as Konoha's. From what I could see through the aforementioned gates the village itself looked to be at least half the size of Konohagakure.

Though this one seemed to be bigger than the ones we had visited previously. Shikamaru and I put the girls down and started to make our way into the village, Neji following silently behind us.

We were greeted with a warm reception. The children found their parents within the crowed that had gathered to welcome us.

With a little argument, Neji, Shikamaru and I decided to spend the next day resting in the village. We were overly tired, and in the case of an attack on us while we travelled back it would be best if we stayed one day to let ourselves fully recover.

Regardless of the latent period, we still had an explosive to locate and defuse.

Neji had managed to locate the bomb within two hours of our arrival. The Village was still full with celebratory events in honour of the children's safe return. Shikamaru quickly picked up the bomb carefully before looking around for a safe place to defuse it.

This one seemed different from the rest. The design was totally different. Even Shikamaru spent the better part of an hour trying to decipher the mechanics of the explosive. So far we had nothing, and to make matters worse, we had a time limit. We had exactly 49 minutes to disarm it. Fun.

"How's it going, Nara?" I asked as I sat next to the lazy genius. Neji sat in the corner of the room we were in; he had managed to find us an abandoned shack a few minutes away from the village.

"About as good as it gets Uchiha. There's something regarding this one that's different from the others, the components are different, and the wires are all the same colours."

"Can you disarm it?" I asked.

"I'm trying, Uchiha." He sighed and continued to work on it. Time was pressing on; I needed a positive result. I ran my hand through my hair before quickly pulling it away as if it had been burnt. The strangest thought had passed through my mind in those very short seconds, I had thought of Naruto's hand in my hair instead. I shook my head in frustration, I needed to get out of here..

"I'm back." Neji called out as he entered the hut. He had gone into town to get more supplies for our journey back home to Konoha. "Have you made any progress yet?" He asked Shika as he put the supplies down next to the table the lazy ninja was working on. "Oh… 40 minutes left." Neji said with a shrug.

"Hey, why is it only me that's worried about this bomb going off and destroying this village!?" Shika growled rather loudly.

"Of course you're not the only one; I want this mission to be a success as well." I retort to his accusation. "Look Nara. We're all tired and we all want to go home. We appreciate it's not an easy job to do, especially with the chance that it could blow up anyway. Regardless of the fact we have to keep trying, we have to save the village." From the corner of my eye I could see the Hyuuga smirk.

"You've been around Naruto for too long Uchiha."

"Shut up Hyuuga." I rolled my eyes at him and turned my attention back to Shikamaru and the explosive. The thought of 'would we get out of this alive' kept doing loops in my head, trying to drive me insane.

"Look I can't do this with you two towering over me. Go do something productive while I continue with my work here." Neji and I nodded in unison and left the grouchy genius to his devices. We left the hut to Shikamaru's mumbles of 'so troublesome'

xox

Meanwhile, back in Konoha, the search for Naruto's whereabouts were turning out to be completely useless. None of the teams that were dispatched to hunt for the missing nin had come back with any further information. The Hokage was nearly at the end of her tether; Sasuke's team would be back in less than a week and Naruto could still not be located. The Uchiha was going to play hell.

She had secretly thought, for the village's safety of course, that she would tie him up and lock him in a cell until Naruto could be found. But then she came to her senses and realised that if her team couldn't find the missing blonde, Sasuke could.

It was just a waiting game, a game she did not want to play.

"Hokage-Sama. Kakashi-Sensei's team is back".

"Send them in please Shizune." The assistant nodded and let Kakashi and his team into the Hokage's office.
"What do you have to report, Kakashi?"

The silver haired man sighed as he looked to his Hokage.

"I'm afraid I have nothing. Only a weird aura in the room that Naruto was hospitalized in. I'm sorry, Tsunade-Sama." The man bowed to show his sincerity. The Blonde haired Hokage just sighed and ran a hand through her blonde tresses in agitation.

"This isn't good Kakashi, the Uchiha team will be back in less than a week, I received their status report yesterday. We'll continue the search until Sasuke gets back. If we have nothing, I'll pardon him from the village to search for Naruto, no matter how long it takes." She slammed her hand down on her desk for a dramatic effect.

"I'm sure Sasuke will find him, Tsunade-Sama." Sakura piped in. Tsunade just nodded.

"For Naruto's sake, and Sasuke's also, I hope he does." Tsunade replied. She then sighed and eyed Kakashi's team; they all looked exhausted, Sakura's hair could do with a proper wash, Sai looked paler than usual and Kakashi, well, he looked run down. She ran a hand through her blonde tresses and sighed once more. "Take the rest of the day off and get yourselves back up to par. Tomorrow you will set out again to start another search." They nodded and departed.

The blonde Hokage groaned in frustration "Where are you Naruto, it's been five months already…"

Xox

The next time I entered the hut there were just ten minutes left on the timer.

Shikamaru had sweat running down his forehead and Neji, who had entered sometime before me, looked to be sitting on the edge of his seat.

"How is it going?" I asked as I entered the grubby looking cabin once more. We had covered the windows with wooden planks and some shabby material to hide what was inside from view of others.

"I'm almost there, I'm just trying to decipher which wire to cut" Shikamaru replied as he eyed up the same coloured leads of the explosive.

"If he cuts the wrong one, the bomb might explode or it might not…" I pinched the bridge of my nose in frustration "He has to work out the correct wire." Neji added his two cents. The usually quiet Hyuuga looked lightly worried himself, and why shouldn't he when impending doom is deciding when to stab him in the back. I nodded my head and chose to lean up against a wall. So much for Nara being a great tactician, he can't even work out the correct wire to cut.

The remainder of the minutes passed in what seemed like forever. The steady beep of the clocks' countdown put us on edge every time. The tension in the dully lit damp room was high, and soon it would be at its peak.

A minute to go.

I watched as Shikamaru did an eeany-meany-miney-mo action towards the wires. His eyes fixated on the blackened leads.

"Nara, hurry up!" I yelled impatiently at the lazy now perspiring Nin. My thoughts began to turn to the worst case scenario, what if we all died here! What if the village went up in smoke just because we couldn't cut the correct wire? Dead or not, I wouldn't have been able to bare that on my shoulders.

"Shut it Uchiha, I'm trying here!" He retorted whilst wiping the sweat off his brow.

My eyes darted between Shikamaru and the time now displayed on the count down clock. We had just less than thirty seconds until it was all over. I felt like praying to whatever god was up there to get us safely through this.

10, 9, 8, 7, oh shit, 6, 5, 4, 3… SNIP! H

Shikamaru had cut a wire…

A/N- oooohhhhh suspense… don't you just hate me? Acctually, you can hate my friend who told me to write it like this. I dedicate this chapter to him Lol. And I think I better inform you now, the next chapter will take a while to get up. I'm having trouble with its construction, how I want it laid out/set. So I'm apologising now before hand!