Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own Naruto or any of its affiliations…I am merely borrowing its characters and settings to indulge my own fantasies and then share said fantasies with other people who equally do not own Naruto. I am not making any profit off this.

O O O

dying just to throw me, downcast whiplash down in the stall

O O O

Deidara had a very elite skill set, refined over many years and many missions; he was a master shinobi with hardened battle senses.

And so when he got a wiggy vibe from the new mission Otsuka had handed them, he knew to follow his intuition.

Bluntly, "nope."

"How can you refuse, though? And don't you think it would be nice to get out and stretch our wings a little?" Sakura was on his back as he walked, arms around his neck, legs bent at the knees on his sides. The clothing he had handed her had pleased her, and so she was in better spirits. She rested her head on his shoulder, pout evident in her voice. "Today was such a downer and this mission sounds doable. Basically just stepping in on babysitting duties. Easy!"

"Sprout, retrieving a drugged out, intoxicated, spoiled teenager from an opiate den is not easy." Not really hard, but it was annoying. And it was just so suspicious. Hadn't he just been thinking about his last mission with Sato when this sudden mission with uncanny similarities happened to drop in his lap after seeing the man in question. Nope, it was fishy.

And especially after Deidara's mission in Keryiat – that had clearly gone well. Ah, but then, he supposed they had managed to quell the labour dispute...if only by entirely removing the need for the labour in the first place. Not exactly a winning mission for Iwa, though, in the records.

He was decided. They weren't going on this new mission – even though Sakura was hearing none of it. Sounding a touch defeated, she asked, "is it because you don't think I can handle it?"

Pfft. As if he had ever been one to coddle anything or anyone, let alone her. But there was a point in there. "You're stitched up like a kid's doll that's been through a shredder, yeah."

"It's scar tissue, nice and tough already. I'll be fine."

"You haven't seen yourself yet." He meant it to come across less harsh, but bit the inside of his cheek when he felt the girl on his back stiffen ever so slightly. "Just wait until after your second healing session, when everything is set better."

"Hm," she replied after a moment. Rallying herself, she tried diplomacy. "We'll talk more after we eat, I guess."

As if food would change his mind. But there was her shining determination, even when he'd rather not have it.

It was evening and the city was lit up with oil lamps and lanterns. Everything had a sort of sheen to it from the earlier rain shower. Sakura had sighed and said it was pretty.

However, she seemed less excited by the prospect of going through the rain soaked mokuton forest than the city roads.

"So dark," she mumbled, burying her nose in his shoulder as they stood at the cliff top.

"Scared?" He teased around a smirk.

"I just have this image of you slipping on a wet branch and the two of us falling to our deaths."

Ah, probably like she had nearly dropped to her death earlier in the day. Right. She was still new to stuff like that. He would have to change that.

"You would catch yourself. You're a kunoichi, right?"

"Hm..."

Was that self-doubt he heard in her out of character, inarticulate, monosyllabic response? Where the hell was that suddenly coming from? What was he, some chump sensei who was teaching some wimpy louse? Tch. Kids were so sensitive these days. And up and down with their emotions all over the place, distracted and needy all at once; so uncool.

Maybe Sakura did need the mission to clear her head, get her priorities back together. Her company was much more preferable when she was cheerful and focused.

They could handle it. Deidara would cut off his arm the day Sato pulled a fast one on him; they could definitely handle the mission. Retrieving a runaway teen, escorting him home? No biggie.

But as to more pressing matters – "So you're not interested in running through the canopy tonight, yeah?"

He felt the girl shrug. Vaguely, she asked, "remember that first day? When I got here and I couldn't even climb down the cliffs?"

There was something in light tone of voice that suggested self-deprecation. She went on, "and months later we're back at this spot andguess what? I can't climb down it."

Now she was just being difficult.

"Extenuating circumstances. Besides, you probably could. Medic-nin are just overly cautious, yeah."

Sakura seemed to be contemplating the darkness of the forest floor. Lost in memories or something.

"Well there's always another way when you're a ninja." Deidara said, new decision made and ready to rouse the troops. He motioned for Sakura to slide off his back, which she did, coming around to his side to give him a curious look as he reached for clay from his pouch. He ignored her but couldn't keep from grinning as he worked on his sculpture.

"A bird," she said, sounding unimpressed as the clay took shape under his fingers.

"A bird!" He repeated back, snickering.

"Right."

"What, it's going to fly us home, yeah." He was trying to recover from his snickering, but oh man, he was going to crack up! Kami, it was going to be great seeing her face go all dumb and then incredibly impressed. Stay cool, stay cool.

"Uh-huh."

He finished, and giving her a very pleased grin, he tossed it up and over the cliff. She watched it arc and then start to descend, and gave him a flat look. Deidara released it to its full size out of view and waited as he directed it back to them.

She screeched, actually screeched, when it gave them a low fly-by. "What the hell, Sensei!"

He broke out into laughter, unable to help himself. "Look at you, yeah! You doubted your sensei and now look at you!"

"It's huge! And...it's sort of beautiful." Sakura watched it fly off past them, above the treetops, and tip into a turn; on its way back to them, flying low over the lip of the drop off. "What's it going to do, carry us?"

"We're going to ride it, yeah." She had the grace to give him a surprised glance. Deidara took her hand. "Ready? We're going to leap. Three, two..."

She was laughing too, eyes bright, and he felt her understanding squeeze around his palm even though she was shaking just the smallest bit. But she wanted to leap. Together, "one!"

They weren't in the air long before his feet touched down on the back of his bird, landing a second before Sakura. His stance was firm and hers was unsure, so he tugged her slighter frame against his own, anchoring her. Smartly, she latched onto the clay with chakra, but she wasn't beyond putting an arm around his middle – just in case. He found he didn't mind so much, not when she was shivering too, probably needed the extra warmth, and still laughing with some amount of exhilaration.

"Ooh, this is incredible! I've never seen this kind of jutsu before. It's really clever, too."

Hell yeah it was! Damn, he was such a good sensei. And look, she was happy again. "Go on..."

She pinched his side, but seemed content. Moving her head to speak into his shirt, and it was hard to hear her as they travelled, "thank you."

The evening went as normal; Deidara cleaned himself up and prepared a meal, and his student disappeared to shower, write home, restock and oil her weapons, all the various things girls at that age liked to do. While she was out of the room, rice cooking itself and everything else waiting, Deidara got to work on modifying some of the things he had purchased for the Leaf sprout. He'd picked up a standard issue Iwa nin shirt for her, as it was close to the shade of red she liked, and had decided to remove the asymmetrical sleeve.

And since he still had time after evening out the seam of the sleeve, he decided to sew on a patch that was the white circle of her clan. It kept him busy until the rice finished. Damn, he sure was talented, it was right on centre and the stitches looked perfectly even.

He was holding it up in front of him as he lounged by the table when Sakura came into the room. He stared at her (noting the shine to her hair after an incident free hair drying session, something he had missed sorely for several weeks) as she stared at the shirt.

"Wha...what's that?" She was smiling but there was disbelief on her face too. "Is that –"

"Nope, not for you, yeah. It's for me. I'm renouncing Iwa and joining the esteemed Haruno clan."

"It's so cute!" Sakura ignored his joke. She almost skipped over to the table and immediately planted herself next to him to pet at the shirt with admiration. He let her have it, watched as she traced the details he had put into it. Aa, it made him smile, so easy to please.

"We're going to do the mission." He announced, catching her off guard. She raised her eyebrows. "I need to stretch my legs. It will be good for me."

Sakura looked to the shirt, lips softening to a small smile. Then, perking up, she bounced back to her feet. Energised, as if making a vow, "I'm going to try it on!"

And proceeded to put it on over the tank and shorts she wore to sleep. Deidara tossed a sealing scroll at her. "Put it on properly, like it deserves, yeah!"

"Oh, right!" Not at all discouraged, she flew to the door.

"Sprout," he said, watching as she caught the door edge with one hand and swung back around the frame. He tossed her another scroll. "Try those on as well, yeah?"

Ah, he really was a cool sensei, if he did humbly say so himself.

He set the table and waited for her return.

After a while it became apparent she wasn't in a hurry.

And when he finally grew too impatient and curious about Sakura's loitering, he tracked her down in her room.

As he was a gentleman, he knocked while he pushed the door open, wise crack about her forehead on the tip of his tongue. Spotting her in front of the mirror, the remark died.

She was wearing the red shirt with her clan symbol, her tight black shorts, her new shin guards, had even put on her gear and headband. But it was the way she was staring at her new scars with a cool, detached gaze that truly sold her as a kunoichi.

Resting his shoulder on the door frame, knowing that she had heard him knock, Deidara waited for her to speak first.

After another moment she did. Sakura watched her fingers trace the scars around her neck in the mirror. A twist raised her lip. "I know they'll only be here for so long, but I was just thinking how my mother would absolutely weep if she saw me like this."

Well, that would be a waste. Scars came with the territory, might was well get used to them. "Did she not know what the academy was or...?"

Sakura scoffed. "She had this idea I would go into intelligence and get a desk job or something. I was actually tapped for the cryptology office after an assessment test last year."

Deidara had a feeling there was nothing he could say to that so he shrugged; delicately, mind you. "Sounds boring, yeah."

Using the mirror, Sakura flashed him a smile, small and brilliant. "I'm happy I turned them down." She spun in her spot, hands on her hips. "Okay! Now, are we going to do the fashion show before or after we eat?"

O O O

For their second mission Deidara had opted to wear his jounin outfit, red shirt and pants, brown vest, black hitai-ate. Standing together in the lobby outside of the Tsuchikage's office, matching in more ways than one, they sort of passed for a normal Iwa cell. They leaned on the way together, not far from the office doors.

Sakura the elite Leaf kunoichi, she thought, infiltrating the highest levels of Iwagakure at the tender age of twelve. No one was the wiser.

She must have primped a little at this thought because her sensei noticed and gave her a mildly confused, deeply unimpressed look. Okay, so one person out of a crowd of fifty odd was the wiser. But she seemed to blend in because out of all the many shinobi waiting to debrief, to get their mission scrolls, do whatever it was they needed to do in the Tsuchikage's Tower at oh-seven hundred hours, none had given her the normal double take.

It probably helped that she wore her hitai-ate like a headband. Maybe it was just that Iwa had too many shinobi altogether for her to stand out in any way. It worked for her, though. Sliding her eyes over to her sensei, she got the distinct impression he would not say the same.

He liked attention and was pouting for the lack of it. But then Deidara's luck turned and Sakura straightened her posture needlessly as a four man cell man approached them. Sakura figured the man who talked was the captain. He gave Deidara an easy smile. "Deidara-kun," and then his eyes flickered over Sakura, oddly making her pulse jump, "so then you're taking the mission?"

"Yes, Sato-tai – Sato-san." Deidara's voice was gravelly and it sounded like his teeth were clenched. Sakura gave him a covert, bewildered glance. Someone was sore about something.

"And this must be your student." The man was average looking, typical build for a shinobi, hair pulled back into a ponytail except for the fringe framing one side of his face. Unconsciously, she took in the various scars across his olive skin. Grey eyes, deeply set. Lips that seemed permanently on the edge of smiling, and when he did it was close-lipped and made a dimple on his cheek. He watched her make her quick two second assessment and the dimple made another brief appearance.

"Y-yes," she said quickly. Bowing her head, "Haruno Sakura. Pleased to meet you, Sato-san."

"The pleasure is mine. How exciting to have a Leaf here for peaceful reasons," Sato said in a pleasant, rich voice.

But she couldn't seem to get her heartbeat under control, and her ears were red with a minor flush.

"Nice performance yesterday, Haruno-san. Be sure to take care on your mission." Looking at Deidara with an affable lift to his smile, then giving Sakura a wink, "keep on eye on this one, will you?"

"Yes, of course. Thank you."

It was a moment after the group of four had gone that Deidara gave in and moaned dramatically at the ceiling. He pulled at his chin length hair. "I really, really fucking hate that guy."

"Language," Sakura half-heartedly admonished. Gesturing in the direction Sato had left, "so what's the deal there?"

"The man is a vision-less, inartistic bastard. He's the stuffy, play by the rules type that makes no sense, no sense, in the shinobi world. He's had it out for me ever since I was hand-waved through the academy. No appreciation for art, no appreciation for genius, yeah!" And then, under his breath, "you blow up one ammunitions compound – one time – that was 'meant to be seized' and the guy looses his shit."

Sakura couldn't help her weird expression; a cross between gawking and frowning suspiciously. "You blew up an entire ammunitions compound?"

"A little one, yeah." Her sensei held up his thumb and forefinger, signalling for something small. "Just a bit."

"But why?"

"Do you know the kind of explosion ammunitions make?" Deidara grinned at her, as apparently he knew and apparently it was a fabulous kind of explosion.

She couldn't help a laugh, and hid her face in the palm of her hand. "You are so completely ridiculous. But at least there's consistency in you're manner of being ridiculous."

"Not ridiculous! Art. It's very serious," he was pouting, disappointed with how his student just didn't get it. "So sad, yeah."

Sakura shrugged. "Well...I guess...I wasn't there to see it, so..."

He raised his eyebrows, grin returning. Latching on to her suggestive hanging 'so,' "Sprout?"

"No, sensei. That wasn't an invitation for you to blow up the opium den."

"She says sensei and then gives the orders, yeah..."

They were signalled to enter the office, Tsuchikage ready to receive them for their mission. Sakura, predictably enough had she given it a thought, was barred from entering the interior office – same as the last time they had reported. Deidara threw his arms behind his head, speaking again to the ceiling in a morose, whimsical way, "aa, no fun. Stay rooted, yeah."

Sakura gave the kunoichi standing guard a sheepish grin. What had been her thoughts earlier about an elite Leaf nin? As casually as she could, she lingered around the door and tried not to scuff the tiles too much in her boredom.

It wasn't long before Deidara reappeared, affected air of being bothered in place. As he walked through the door, the Tsuchikage called out, "Deidara. I want the buildings standing and in their entirety after this mission, boy."

Cheerfully, "sure thing, Tsuchikage-sama!"

"And the client would appreciate the same for his son."

"...Well, now you're just being cruel, yeah."

Sakura raised an eyebrow at her sensei. He tapped her forehead with the mission scroll in return. Answering to the Tsuchikage, the highest ranked shinobi in the village, over his shoulder, "we'll behave, old man."

His wide eyes and exposed canine seemed to suggest otherwise.

In an hour they were setting out, leaving the village through one of the secure means provided by the Tsuchikage Tower. The Iwa shinobi still (rightfully) had a hang up about Sakura coming and going any normal way.

"How long a trek is it?" Sakura asked, ever the eager one to know as much as possible.

"Five hours out, allowing for a ten minute break. Sound good, yeah?"

Sakura nodded. Before receiving orders, she had seen the medic-nin again. By sunrise, she had been cleared to go.

"Looks like rain so we'll be on foot," Deidara said, reaching into his pack to unseal a pair of brown travelling cloaks. He tossed one to her, and Sakura ran her fingers over the durable material before swinging the thing over her shoulders. Clasping it shut and pulling up her hood, she found that it was warm and not too heavy. Most importantly, it would keep her dry.

She wiggled her toes and stared down at the sandals, wishing she had considered alternative footwear. "All right, I'm ready."

The travelled through natural stone corridors, running along edges and through avenues only shinobi could easily navigate, and even then Sakura was amazed at Deidara's ability to weave through intertwined passages without trouble. They passed other groups of Iwa nin and at one point Deidara slowed to inform her that they had just gone by what he thought might have been a team of ANBU.

And when Sakura asked how he knew as much, her sensei acted very cool and mysterious. So she made fun of him and then they bickered and finally settled into silence.

Certain towns they went through and others they circumvented. Deidara started talking again, sharing stories of missions past. The first place he had done an A-Rank mission, the place where he had lost a team mate, the spot where there used to be a hostel, underground rebel movement's bunker, the place he had gotten his first han–

"What the hell, sensei? I don't want to know stuff like that!"

"Aw, come on, Sprout! This is good stuff, yeah."

"No way! I don't want to hear it. Get back to telling me the classified stuff."

"Hm. Right, well the town we're going into is actually pseudo-run by that pissed off tribal lord I mentioned earlier."

"The one who owned the caravan you 'accidentally' blew up?"

Deidara was excited, probably grinning if she had to tell from his voice. "That's the one!"

"And you're going to walk right in, 'hey, how's hanging' and you think this will go well?" Unlike shinobi, whom Sakura thought had no place for vendettas, tribal lords in Iwa loved that sort of thing.

Her sensei scoffed, clearly undeterred. "Just the opposite, I don't think they'll want to say shit to me, yeah."

Sakura looked ahead of them, into the grey evening and thought, we are so going to die.

When they arrived at their destination, the town was as she had built it in her mind, perhaps just a little rougher. Storied buildings of mismatched materials and overlaid and patched up walls and roofs. Leaking pipes, vents with awful smelling fumes, electrical wires strung haphazardly across alleyways and up buildings to crooked towers, sewer drains that overflowed. Stray animals and people reclining in dry spots, retreated from the areas vulnerable to the rain. Trash piled and littered, surfaces covered in old and new flyers for X-rated clubs. Everything glossy in rain and neon lights.

It was like every seedy bar in Konoha crammed into one town. But still a noticeable step up from Keryiat in a lot of ways. There was a hint of excess money thrumming in the belly of the town.

Deidara and Sakura pulled their cloaks tighter and kept to walking in the shadows. Deidara caught her eye as they adjusted their hoods. "Good thing for these, yeah, we're too pretty for a poorly styled place like this."

She snorted and rolled her eyes, but inwardly recognised there was a sobering thread of truth under his light-hearted tone.

Their client, a wealthy Iwa merchant, had hired the two shinobi to retrieve his son from one of his typical getaways. Apparently the child was his youngest and most troublesome and had been missing from home for nearly a month, slinking between different pleasure houses and dens. The son's name was Mitsuru, he was seventeen and by all accounts a spoiled, ungrateful, bitter, inexplicable rake with a serious drug habit. In the past, it had taken a family retainer or two to drag him home, but lately he had been hiring thugs to pose as his entourage.

But civilian thugs were nothing scary to trained shinobi.

Deidara led them to a squat building with shutters around windows that gave the impression of spectacles around pink glowing eyes. It would have been cutely comical if Sakura had not been already cringing at the pun-inspired name flashing across the building's awning in garish colours. A strip club front with the den in the basement below.

Mitsuru had been in the basement for two days already, not leaving between the highs and lows of opiate-induced sickness. He had sequestered a small private space to himself and had holed himself within it for the time being. Deidara sent in a mobile clay spider to feel out the number of men alongside the target.

"Eight, yeah." Deidara frowned, "and one with a chakra signature."

"A shinobi?"

"Seems like it. They're cloaking it, though, yeah." Cursing as he reclaimed the spider, smashing it back into shapeless clay, "I knew that asshole would pull shit like this."

"Who did what now?" Sakura whispered, trying not to feel bad for the former spider. It had actually been sort of cute.

"That Sato. I'm sure he's behind this. Hoping I'll go in there expecting a quick recovery, only to get cornered by a hired shinobi and forced into doing something stupid and botching the mission."

"But we got the mission directly from the Tsuchikage, how much could that guy have interfered?"

Deidara was scowling. "I don't know! He just did, yeah."

"Well, you outfoxed him, it seems. We can probably still get in and get out without trouble. Otherwise I'll know all that stuff about art and genius was just hot air on your part."

The teasing jab didn't stir him.

"Why not use a genjutsu to knock out the civilians and deal with the shinobi separately," Sakura tried.

"Can't mess with systems in case the drugs in them have an adverse reaction."

"Oh," she hadn't known that would be a complication.

Deidara cursed, frowned, then huffed. "I got it."

He was leaning against the wall of the strip club, next to a small window into the basement carved into the ground. There were blinds, but a vent allowed sounds and fumes to escape. A beat passed and then he was raising a seal in front of him and closing his eyes. Keeping one hand in the seal, he used the other to start moulding more spiders from his clay. Sakura crouched next to Deidara, watching attentively. She had never been privy to this style of work from her sensei before.

"What I'm doing right now, and I'll tell you as you're my student and you should learn from this, is focusing on reading the chakra signatures inside. Can you feel them?"

Sakura didn't know, she had never really tried to pick up on chakra signals.

"Copy this seal, touch my shoulder with your other hand. ...Feel it, yeah?"

With a start, she sensed it. And from there her awareness of something she had always known about but never completely appreciated grew. Another sense like hearing or seeing, but different. "I can tell there are...fifteen people in total below us."

"And does one –"

"Feel particularly more noticeable than the others? Yes."

"Picked up on that awful fast." Deidara issued a short laugh and she saw his lips grin. "Usually this is a specialist's duty, but since we're close enough, yeah, we can do this much." He was speaking lowly and paused to breathe. Then, as if directing himself, "all right. Need to determine the location of those inside the room ...move my clay into strategic positions ...make sure no one is close enough to the blasts to die, prepare to blow out the window..."

Sakura watched, nodded along though he couldn't see it. "Can't we just go through the door with a henge? Use a genjutsu on the bouncers?"

"Sprout, I don't know the layout of the building yeah, but I know where these windows go."

Sakura gave her sensei a flat look, again to his utter obliviousness. "Kind of noisy for a ninja, you know."

"Kind of pink for a ninja, yeah."

Ah, point.

"And on the count of three, we slip through the window, move to the back of the room, push through the screen wall, retrieve the kid, take off."

"Sounds a little like you just want to blow something up."

"Controlled explosions, yeah. Strategy, Sprout!"

"There isn't another way?"

Deidara broke his concentration to look at her from behind his blond fringe, his one visible eye wide and disbelieving. "This is the most artistic, yeah. I'll be taking out the one with the chakra signature, too. It's a good plan. No one will get too busted up. It's mostly the noise that will disorientate them."

And then he was back to concentrating fully and counting down.

"Katsu!" Deidara pivoted from his crouch and swung through the hallowed out window, Sakura following shortly.

The room was full of smoke from the blast and fumes from pipes, and the air was thick with the smell of filth. Bodies dotted the floor between mats and buckets of vomit, some knocked out from the clay bombs, others incapacitated from their indulgences. Pieces of wall board and ceiling tile coated everything in a white dust.

Deidara stepped around what he could and over things he couldn't. There was a hole in the shouji screen, a table with passed out men beyond and then they were through the partition and in the small private space.

Her sensei stopped short, a thin blade resting against his neck. Deidara's arm was out and Sakura stopped short, too, before the metal could touch her.

"You must be a member of the Blast Corps. Interesting having someone like you stop in." The blade, thin and dull around its edges, moved. A melodic, deep voice, "this yours by any chance?"

Sakura watched the blade dance up and down, on its tip was stuck a clay spider.

"If you're here to retrieve Mitsuru-chan, I'll have to stop you." The speaker moved into view. He was slender, thin, dressed in a kimono and hakama and everything about him was grey. Long straight hair, bored eyes, his pale skin, all winter greys but for the charcoal around his eyes and the highlight of red make-up feathering out from their corners. No contrast, just a wisp of vapour.

"Aha, were we that obvious?" Deidara laughed far too cheerfully, raising his empty hands. "I guess you will have to fight me, then."

"What a bother. Couldn't you have just been looking for karaoke?" The man had a sort of daintiness about him, but his stance was solid and relaxed with years of experience. The metal on his forehead, grey and shining in the odd lighting of the room, displayed the symbol for the Village Hidden in the Mist. A dark slash cut across it. "Shall we?"

"Tch. Let's."

Sakura dropped into a roll to avoid the two shinobi as they met in a clash. Deidara said he would be fighting the swordsman, so that left acquiring their target, a mere teen-aged, civilian boy, to Sakura.

Mitsuru was a short, fragile, and not-particularly-pretty-despite-his-styling type of boy. He was half-gone and sneering as Sakura bounced to her feet and leapt for him. Behind her were the sounds of metal skimming against metal. She only had a few metres to clear, already planning how to get behind the boy's left shoulder despite the fact he had backed into a corner.

Her eyes were on the target, her body preparing for a shunshin step, and then grey. At once she felt the sting of a sword scratch the corner of her shoulder and the tug around her middle that pulled her out and away from the strike. Deidara.

"Yes! Nice, Utsumino," the boy crowed.

Sakura refrained from sticking her tongue out.

The swordsman smirked at her as if knowing her thoughts. Then his eyes went around the room, to his feet, clad in geta, and the body he was perching on. "What a shame, such a crowded space. But the boy wishes to stay..."

"Damn. Talk about improvising, I had to toss a bucket at him," Deidara muttered to Sakura, apparently not so happy with the arrangement himself.

Sakura didn't want to know what was in the bucket, but it looked as if Utsumino had dodged it. Glancing at her sensei, she checked to see if it had been deflected on him. But Deidara was clear, for the moment.

She glared at Mitsuru, ready to blame him for the whole unfortunate mess. "No chance you'll go home to your family quietly?"

The question was preposterous judging by his flailing reaction. "Never! They treat me like a slave! I'll never go back to that household."

Sakura shared a look with her sensei. Tools for their governments and putting their lives on the line for the sake of self-entitled boys who had no idea of the gravity involved in actual struggle. Mitsuru was the third son, not an heir, and not beholden to many of the expectations his eldest sibling had. Considering his circumstance, he had a relatively secure amount of freedom, funds, and access to luxuries.

But they weren't there to enlighten the boy, just to drag him home.

"Find better ways to rebel in the future. Getting a missing-nin involved, yeah. Really bad taste." Deidara shed his cloak. "Eyes sharp, Sprout."

"Is that really your name?" The missing-nin asked, uncertain.

Sakura gave him an incredulous stare while Deidara snorted and coughed back a laugh. "It's Haruno Sakura."

"Ah," the man said, "that's pretty. Utsumino Shinju."

"G-good...to meet you."

"And I'm Deidara. Can we get back to it?"

They did, almost immediately. Deidara with a kunai in each hand and Utsumino wielding his thin, pointed sword. It took a minute of the two dancing and dodging around the room and its pillars, over its many low tables and occupants, but Sakura could see that Deidara was at the disadvantage. She waited for a chance to slip by and grab the boy, but Utsumino controlled the movements of everyone in the room.

When a few of the civilian thugs finally roused themselves, Utsumino made sure they were solely engaged with Sakura and quite out of the way of his bout with Deidara.

It was funny how slow their movements were, how heavily their larger frames fell as Sakura toppled one grown man after the other. Knives, brass knuckles, one even had a staff, and each fell nearly as quickly as the one before. She was sure to make certain they couldn't get back up any time soon, knocking them out or letting them knock themselves out with overblown movements.

The fight was sort of fun, tiptoeing in the crowded space, using the walls and ceilings as much as possible and completely pissing off her opponents. One step too close to Mitsuru, though, and she'd find Utsumino blocking the path. She tried another shunshin, only to find the swordsman had outclassed her and moved the boy by the time she'd finished her step.

He gave an especially charming smile after that move, topping it off with a small wave of the victory sign. He was playing with them.

A man grabbed Sakura from behind, taking advantage of the second she had wasted giving the swordsman the middle finger to yank at her elbow and hair. Sakura stomped her foot, threw her elbow up as the man's head came down crying about his foot. There was a crack as his nose broke, and finding her arms and head free, she spun and planted a kick to his solar plexus. "Shannaro!"

Deidara was fairing significantly worse, but only because he seemed to have resigned himself to not blowing anything up, apparently only willing to use the explosives if in the proper art form. He'd lost his second kunai and the corresponding arm was limp.

Making up her mind, Sakura moved to his side, raising her fist; she had sparred enough with her sensei, knew his movements well enough, to serve as his right hand. "How bad is your arm?"

"It will heal."

"How did he – "

"Channels lightning through the blade."

"Oh."

"Deidara," Utsumino said, lips curling up, "odds on if I can take out the other one as well?"

It was as Deidara raised his hand to make a seal that Utsumino switched his attention to the sleeve of his kimono. Sakura startled at the explosion, multiple blasts, but there was too much smoke suddenly. The room was ringing, or maybe it was just her ears, but she knew, she knew, Deidara was most vulnerable on his right side. Utsumino would counter moving past Sakura to get to him.

She moved on instinct, too shocked with her own ability to correctly calculate Utsumino's attack to think of anything other than stopping him. Chakra gathered in her fist as she knelt low, under the man's guard, and punched up, aiming for his chest to send him reeling back.

A shock of searing, blazing pain went through her body but her arm was already at his sternum. And then it was through his sternum. The searing was there and then it wasn't, but Sakura's arm stayed buried in the man's chest; his bones, innards, and cloth cutting into her, tangled in a clawing trap.

Eyes didn't stop reflecting light when a person died, she discovered, staring up into the swordsman pale face. The light didn't go out of them, but suddenly Sakura knew exactly what the phrase meant and that it was completely, horribly accurate. A hair's breadth away as Sakura watched the tension in the muscles around Utsumino Shinju's eyes go slack as the life behind them ceased. Death.

She could feel the cold air hit her fingers from where her hand stuck out from Utsumino's back. Something scraped down her wet palm and fell to the floor; a piece of bone, she thought. The man's taller frame, his muscles, organs, bones, clothing, armour, gear, the weight of it all descended on Sakura's right arm, trapped in the remains of his ribcage. Her knees trembled and she found herself hugging the corpse as she tried to stay upright, and when she couldn't she collapsed to the floor.

Someone screamed, someone yelled, and someone got sick all over her crumpled knees.

O O O