26. Nightly events

After she had left the hospital and picked up her dog, Sayuri decided to have a short walk around the village, to settle her thoughts. Sakura's words had really affected her; to some extend, she could understand her friend's reaction: She knew about her feelings for Sasuke, even though she hadn't believed that they were still this strong… However it was painful that she hadn't talked to her first, but had drawn her own conclusions at once, which had been pretty offending as well… Especially those last words just remained stuck in her mind – Sakura had seriously thought, she had thrown herself at Sasuke and had even slept with him… In other words, that meant that one of her closest friends regarded her as a cheap slut – awesome.

A wry smile crossed her lips and she sighed in frustration, before she looked up to orientate herself, since she had just been strolling around aimlessly, for the last hour and had actually no idea of where exactly she was at the moment. She looked at her dog, as if expecting him to know, but he just wagged his tale, delighted by the attention he was getting and barked joyfully.

Still fairly clueless, the girl just decided to carry on walking and soon found herself at the western gate of Konoha-Gakure. She knew that it was quite far away from the Uchiha-mansion and since she hadn't really walked in a hurry, she must have been on the move, for at least one and a half hours and hadn't even noticed it.

"Awesome…" she sighed again and looked around, before she decided to head home again, hardly feeling better despite all her thinking, or more likely because of it.

…

…

About twenty minutes later, she came into a district, which mainly contained some small pubs and a few inns – it was a rather shabby borough judged by Konoha's standards, even though it wasn't even half as bad, as some entire villages were, she had seen during some of their missions. All the more surprising it was for her, to find a well-known person, wandering around in the still fairly crowded streets.

"Temari-san?!" she called out, causing the blonde-girl to turn around, with a first kind of baffled, but then merely grinning face.

"Sayuri-san, you're feeling better already?"

"Uh-huh – has taken long enough I guess…" The girl replied as she caught up to her friend.

"Maybe so; anyway - what are you doing here?" Temari asked curiously, while they started walking down the street.

"That's what I wanted to ask you – what the hell are you doing at a place like this?" Sayuri let her eyes wander inconspicuously over the shabby buildings, to emphasize what she meant.

"Well, I've asked someone where I could find some good restaurants and this is where I ended up… but you didn't answer my question, so?"

"Oh, well I'm on my way home; so just passing through – anyway, how are your preparations going?"

"Everything's fine, at this rate we'll be done far sooner than I had expected and than I preferred, which isn't good at all… I really don't know what has gotten into Shikamaru, but he is seriously doing something – I mean working! Can you imagine that?"

A sardonic grin appeared on the dark-haired girl's face and she started teasing her friend with a purring voice: "Speaking about Shikamaru… did you confess your feelings to him already?"

"What feelings? – are you kidding me?!" Temari shrieked angrily, causing the people near her to turn around in irritation, while her friend just grinned triumphantly.

"Tze – talking about feelings…" Temari commenced her counter-attack. "How come you didn't tell me about your 'thing' with the Uchiha, huh? I've heard some juicy stories about you two having an affair and so on…"
Temari was still lost in her talking, so she hadn't noticed that the girl beside her had remained rooted to the spot after her last words. However as soon as she had finished speaking and was actually expecting a response, she turned around to her friend and eyed her totally stiff figure curiously.

"Sayuri-san?"

"Where the hell did you get that from?"

"During our preparations I've overheard some Chunin talking about it – even though I doubt you wanna hear their exact words, they were kind of vulgar… but I guess you know about all that at first hand, right?" Temari was unable to suppress a leer to flash over her face.

"You don't seriously believe any of that stuff, do you?" The Konoha-nin turned to her friend with a desperate look in her eyes, leading the girl to look at her in surprise.

"I… don't…?" Temari replied questioningly, but the girl next to her merely sighed in obvious frustration.

"Of course not! That's not even anywhere near the truth at all…" Sayuri retorted, shocked that the Suna-nin had seriously considered some truth behind these stories.

"Why would someone spread the rumours then?"

"Because Sakura believed them to be true and apparently ran right to Ino –"
"Oh – I see!" Temari exclaimed; she knew Ino's reputation and didn't need to ask anything further.

"So it's really making the round, huh? Great…"

"But how come Sakura would think that…well… you two and –"
"She has seen me talking to him and then we have also been sharing a room lately… well, as it seems that was enough for her." Sayuri interrupted her friend bitterly.

"I see, so there is really nothing between…-"

"Temari!"

"Okay, okay… well then you should just quash the rumours, right? Just go to Ino and she'll do that for you… well in case she believes you…"

"I've been able to convince Sakura by now, so maybe she'll clarify things herself, after all she's the source of all the rumours…"
"Man, I guess Sakura has been really pissed as she 'found out', right?"

"Too right… the last days have been really devastating and the best part about all that was, that I didn't even know, what her behaviour was all about. I've only just been able to get her to talk and she didn't mince her matters – I can tell you!"

"That bad?"

"Pretty bad, but I don't really want to talk about it…"
This statement actually made Temari even more curious, but as she looked at her friend, she realized that she was still affected by what had happened and so she decided to change the topic.

"So… how is living with the Uchiha like? Is he behaving like you would expect a real Nuke-nin to?"

"How would that be?" The dark haired girl giggled, relieved that her opposite had respected her silent request and now eyed her curiously.

"Well like always grumpy for example and uttering death threats all the time, hiding corpses in the closets and – you know what I mean?"

"The grumpy is true, however he hasn't uttered enough words yet to make a death threat out of them… he's more or less just there, you hardly realize his presence most of the time… and about the corpses – well they are pretty bothersome – I always have bloodstains on my clothes when he decides to hide them somewhere among my things, but I've gotten him to pay the laundry at least…" She sighed dramatically and looked at her grinning friend.

"Oh I see – really social of him… so… well… do you think he's planning something, or has he really come back because he missed this place?"

The events, that had caused this late trouble in the first place, ran through Sayuri's mind and she pondered whether she should induct Temari in her suspicions or not, but decided against it.

"I don't know yet… I guess we'll see soon…"

"Yeah right – my hotel is here… you wanna come in and have a cup of tea?"

"Hm… I don't know… I guess I should go home now –"

"Ah come on, just a few minutes - it's not that late yet and if you left me alone now, I would just bore myself to death, so – pretty please?" Temari intertwined her fingers and fluttered her eyelashes, receiving a devious grin in return.

"Is that how you get Shikamaru to do what you want?"

"Exactly!" She exclaimed and just took hold of the other girls hand and dragged her upstairs with her.

…

…

"How trustworthy is this information?" Tsunade asked her assistant gravely, while she thumbed through some documents, lying on the huge time-worn oak table in front of her.

"We've heard from numerous sources, about their being on the move again. They've crossed and occasionally even attacked some of the villages in the Land of Thunder. They are still far away, but there is no doubt that they are moving towards Konoha." The black haired woman concluded and looked at her opposite, who had just emptied another glass of tea, anxiously, since in consideration of the rather precarious situation, Sake would be quite inappropriate.

"How many are they?"

"As it seems, they are journeying in a team of two people."

"Just as always…"
"Yes." Shizune replied, looking down to the floor, before she asked: "Tsunade-sama? Do you think they'll come for –"

"Naruto?" The blonde concluded "most likely…"

"So what are we going to do?"

"I've actually meant to send Naruto's team on a mission to Suna-Gakure, however I'll just exchange that mission with the one I had actually meant for Team-Guy, since, with Tenten in the hospital, they are incomplete at the moment anyway."
"You want to send them to the Land of Snow?" Tsunade's assistant asked incredulously. "You don't think Naruto would seriously leave if he knew about any of this?"

"He wouldn't, but that's why he won't get to know anything… Anyway, I have trust in his team, they'll do well for the mission and Naruto will be as far away from the danger as possible. Besides we shouldn't forget that the Uchiha is with him too – they should be fine, but just in case I'll place someone else in their team, to support them – someone who is informed about the threat emerging from the Akatsuki…"

"Who would that be?" Shizune asked, refilling Tsunade's glass out of sheer habit, as she held it up in an appellative manner.

"Well, I already have someone in mind…"

…

…

The 'few minutes' had turned into a few hours, so as Sayuri finally left the small, old-fashioned hotel Temari was staying in, it was already close to midnight. The two girls had been so lost in their chatting that they hadn't even realized just how much time had passed and now Sayuri still had a fairly long way back home, even though she had to get up early next morning, since they finally had another meeting with Tsunade. They didn't know what it was about yet, but since they were all invited, they figured they would finally get a new mission.

It was good that she had more or less cleared things up with Sakura again, otherwise this mission would have been a pain in the neck - no doubt about that. She was still somewhat hurt by Sakura's words, but decided not to make a fuss about it – it couldn't be changed now anyway, so there was no use in whining about it.

On her way back, she came across the path, she usually took, when she headed towards the cliffs – the place she had met Sasuke again.

She stood there pondering for quite some time whether she should take a quick side trip or not, when she realized that her feet had already started moving and just a short time later she was already outside of the village.

This time she was feeling different than she usually did when she came here; she just seated herself on the ground and stroked her dog, not reflecting about her own state of mind, but about the things that had happened right after she had been here the last time.

A lot of things had changed, there was no point in denying that and even though she wasn't feeling too good at the moment, she nonetheless felt as if it had been a change for the better. She enjoyed having room-mates and she was glad that her old team was kind of back together again, even though she still had some slight concerns about Sasuke, but she didn't want to let them get the best of her - nevertheless she would stay alert, just in case… but she actually doubted it was necessary.

…

…

Hidden in the shadows, a dark figure was on the watch, in the woods outside of Konoha, just like the other days before, too.

It was another uneventful night – as boring as ever – until he caught sight of a person, sneaking out of the village.

Not lifting his eyes off the suspect, he suppressed his chakra and remained hidden in the dense foliage of the numerous trees, making sure he was invisible to the other person – not really a difficult task, since the moonless night caused his figure to melt completely into the shadows. However the darkness also had its negative sides – he had to stick close to the person, so that he wouldn't loose sight of it and it was hard to discern, whether the person was male or female, armed or not and so on… However the fact, that this person had sneaked out of the village in the middle of the night made it suspicious and after - the girl, as it seemed, had gotten out of the woody part and therefore into the at least a little bit brighter region, he also perceived an animal – probably a dog walking right next to her.

He had actually hoped that finally something a little more spectacular would happen – this however turned out to be a little disappointing. The girl didn't really look suspicious any longer and was probably just walking her dog or something – but then why outside of Konoha? Maybe there was more to it than he had thought. He actually doubted it, but maybe this really was what they had been waiting for all the time… and given that he didn't really have anything better to do at the moment anyway and since he would kick himself if this really was the person they were trying to find and he hadn't realized it, he shouldered his huge sword and decided to follow her.

He was eager not to miss a single thing she did, hoping it was something that would give away her identity and the purpose of her nightly walk. Anyhow, after all the time they had been out here, hardly seeing anything more than a few stupid animals, he would finally have something to say on their next meeting, which was due in a few days… Up to now, their job had been completely fruitless, much to the frustration of their boss; they were still as clueless as at the beginning, but maybe that would change now and it would be thanks to him…

A wide grin spread on his face and his sharp white teeth stood out from the darkness surrounding him, as he jumped with experienced movements from one tree to the other.

…

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