I feel that this is a good time to say that they probably won't be on teams and going on official missions and such until the sequel. Which is closer than you might think.
...On second thought, don't get your panties in a bunch. You should know how slowly I update by now.
He'd been looking forward to his cousin's birthday party for weeks. It was marked on his calendar: May 28th, Sakura's Birthday Party! Sai found the thought of a birthday party exciting. His father usually gave him presents and money before sending him outside to play, and Sakura's last few birthdays had always been on rainy or busy days when nothing was happening. Nobody else he knew seemed to do much on their birthdays besides spend time with their families.
Sai realized that he probably wasn't the only one who had really, really wanted for May 28th to finally come. He didn't know how many of the students in their class had been invited, but it made no sense to him at all that somebody might not be excited about a birthday party. There would be food, and games, and of course everybody could give their gifts to Sakura, and he thought it felt very good to have someone like a gift you picked out or made. Yakumo had helped Sai with his gift for Sakura, so he just knew that she would love it. But maybe she would love all the gifts anyways. They were all for her, after all.
So he couldn't understand why Sakura didn't seem all that excited. It was her birthday. Shouldn't she be smiling?
If it were his birthday and his party, he would be smiling. He'd never seen streamers as colorful as the ones decorating the back yard, and every time his eyes caught sight of the piñata, he almost shook in anticipation of breaking it to pieces. Not only was it colorful, but it had candy inside, and he could grab as much of it as he wanted without otousan or Nadeshiko-obaasan taking it away!
Maybe Sakura just hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before? She did seem tired, Sai noticed. And he knew she liked to stay awake when Jinya wasn't home so she could see him when he came back. But Jinya wasn't at the birthday party, so maybe whatever mission he had was going on longer than it should be. Jinya was a good ninja though, so there probably wasn't anything wrong. He didn't know why Sakura was so worried.
But then, his cousin never had made much sense to him. Maybe it was just something he didn't understand yet. There were a lot of things that Sai didn't understand yet.
Making up his mind to stop thinking about it, Sai turned his attention to other matters, such as the two blonde heads bent together in a corner nearby. Naruto had explained to him about good tricks and bad tricks a few days ago, and he thought that he had an idea for a really good one, even better than the hugs he gave the whiskered boy all the time.
Dropping low to the ground, the black haired boy smiled and began the arduous task of trying to sneak up on a plotting Naruto. If he was lucky, the boy would be distracted by Ino's chatter...
Hanabi stared back and forth across the breakfast table with large eyes and an odd, shaky feeling of disquiet in the pit of her stomach. On one side of her, her father was sitting straight-backed and rigid, as he had been for the past three hours. His hands were both at the edge of the table, clenched so tightly that she could see little specks of blood in the creases of his palms where his fingers curled in, and his forehead was set in the worst frown she'd ever seen him wear. She'd never seen him so silent when he was angry; he tended to snarl.
But then, she'd never seen him so angry before either.
On her other side, opposite their father, Hinata sat in her usual perfectly demure pose, her hands resting flat on her lap and her head bowed so low that her hair shaded her eyes and her chin touched her chest. She hadn't moved for ages, not since she first sat down in seiza at the table. Hanabi couldn't do that; sitting seiza hurt after just few minutes, and always made her legs itchy and tingly and prickly when she stood back up, which was worse.
So she couldn't understand how her neesan looked so relaxed. Especially with their father glaring at her so harshly. After all, Hinata had awakened her Byakugan years ago; even though it wasn't activated, she could almost surely still see something of their father's contorted face. Hanabi would be terrified if she were on the receiving end of that glare. Anyone would, really... Except, apparently, her gentle and quiet older sister. It was strange.
Hanabi's head snapped up when she heard footsteps, but she was the only one who moved. At that same moment, the shoji door slid open silently and an anxious-looking servant placed entered with a large, steaming tray of food. Shakily, and avoiding any sort of eye contact with the direction where Hiashi sat, she switched out the fresh tray of lunch for the cold, untouched breakfast from hours ago. Then, without so much as a bow or stammer, she scurried from the room and shut the door behind her.
Her stomach rumbled.
Blushing, Hanabi looked down, but she didn't miss it when Hinata finally looked up, her face surprisingly gentle despite the situation. Then, she almost bit through her lip when her older sister reached out, unhesitatingly, for the serving utensils.
The entire standoff that Hanabi was still stuck watching had begun when, hours ago, Hinata had tried to serve an already-angry Hiashi breakfast. His hand had shot out like lightning and smacked hers away from his bowl, spilling rice all over the wooden tray. And then both of them had sat back and begun their gargoyle impressions. If Hinata tried to serve him all over again...
The soft clinking of chopsticks on delicate china drew her attention to the table itself, where Hanabi was more than delighted to find a bowl of fully prepped donburi waiting for her. Her stomach rumbled again, but this time she didn't even consider embarrassment. Food!
All manners and etiquette forgotten, the girl dug in, only sparing the briefest thought to her older sister as the girl began serving herself, ignoring their father completely. Maybe he would serve himself for once. Hinata surely didn't look like she was going to do it.
Sarutobi had a headache. Not twelve hours ago, he'd been awakened in the middle of the night by Patrol Omega, a group of jounin led by his son Asuma, in the company of chuunin Haruno Jinya, who he was beginning to think he should watch more closely for potential. The reason he was drawn from bed had to do with the first of several foreign sealing arrays to be found inscribed on the surface of various Konoha buildings.
These arrays weren't unfamiliar. In fact, Operation Rabbit Hole had searched out three or four in the times before the Deep Ground Incident, although no purposes had been divined from them. Standard procedure was simply to remove them as quickly and effectively as possible before they could be activated for any reason. Now, however, there were black ops teams scouting them out, copying them down and then destroying them as they went. Since the one that the Haruno boy had pointed out was half activated from some outside source, there was no telling what would happen if the others began activating.
As it happened, however, a pattern had emerged as the locations of the seals were mapped out. Each and every one of them that had been found so far was put in a specific place; the home of one of the original thirty four children taken during the Deep Ground incident. On further inspection of the homes, it was found that a second seal had already been activated in each; they had deduced that this was the method used to silently take the children without a single trace. It was baffling, because to date, there was no knowledge of a seal that could do such a thing.
And the knowledge would have to remain locked until Jiraiya came back to Konoha and inspected the arrays, because nobody in Konoha had an in-depth enough understanding of them. The most they could guess was that the seals had a resonance to some point outside of the village. However, something very interesting had been found out for sure: the sealing style used was one that originated in Suna. And more specifically, at the hand of the legend, Akasuna no Sasori.
How coincidental that this should be revealed to me just after the Analysis squad decoded the section of the scroll with all of Sasori's information in it. His thoughts referred, of course, to the frustratingly coded information that had been received before the Lilac-Breathing-Earth conclave. The amount of time and the number of minds that had to come together in order to break down each separate section was ridiculous, and so was the amount of work he had to set Inoichi and Aoba whenever it was time to erase the information from the different teams' minds.
But the information... It was true gold. Even if some of it didn't quite make sense. After all, why include Hoshigaki Kisame of Mizugakure or Deidara of Iwagakure alongside several nuke-nin, the likes of Orochimaru and Kakuzu? How could they possibly be involved with one another? Perhaps it would all make sense in time. Until then, however, the questions would linger.
A series of knocks against the solid wood of his office door added an unpleasant rhythm to the throbbing headache he had, and Sarutobi was quick to call for whoever was on the other side to enter.
In walked chuunin cell 19, also known as Team Shiranui. It was composed of Koizumi Tatsuki, Aburame Suzumushi, Haruno Jinya, and their instructor Shiranui Genma. Even as he watched them move into a standard formation, faces calm and shoulders straight, the Sandaime couldn't help but get an underlying sense of tension from the three students, particularly the white haired boy who looked very much like his father. Briefly, he imagined that the boy was still bothered by his early morning discovery, but the thought was discarded, simply based on the tension from his teammates as well. In any case, it wasn't his business at the moment.
"Hokage-sama," Genma greeted from around the senbon he chewed. His hand raised in an almost-salute before dropping to his side once again as his three students bowed and stood in quick order.
"Cell 19." Sarutobi nodded his head to them, then steepled his hands in front of his face as he eyed the team again. He wondered, only briefly, if he should select a different team for the mission... And then, at some nudge from his inner self, he decided against it. "I find myself in need of your particular talents for a mission above your usual rank. The details can only be disclosed if and when each of you has agreed to take on the assignment. Are there any objections to this?"
The bandana wearing jounin raised a single eyebrow, but nothing about his typical dull expression changed. "Not from this corner, sir."
In front of him, however, the three chuunin were casting silent conversation between one another with shifting glances, tugged flak jackets and openly visible frowns. It was impossible to truly understand, in the way that it was hard to interpret the secret languages that twins and triplets seemed to speak to each other, but Sarutobi gathered that the three held some reservations about the only male's participation from the way they teamed up on him.
But his face abruptly went blank, and he stared hard at each of them for a few seconds, and that somehow seemed to calm the conflict. It was Suzumushi, the Aburame heiress, that spoke up in cool tones: "We will accept, Hokage-sama."
He glanced at each of them, but their resolves had hardened in their eyes. It almost made him smile. "Very well. As you well know, your team has been trained to specialize in tracking and infiltration." The third aspect, 'assassination,' went unsaid. "But it has become apparent, through your track record, that you are capable of packing a certain amount of destructive force as well when parameters allow for such. It is for this reason that you, among several others of varying ranks, have been chosen for an upcoming A-Rank Search and Destroy operation..."
A chill and a shudder traveled the course of her spine, and they had nothing to do with the howl and the piercing shriek that rang through the air as Sai finally managed to sneak up on Naruto and Ino for his surprise water ninjutsu. Sakura went instantly from dazed and unhappy to alert and uneasy, but it went unnoticed as everyone's attention was drawn to the growing spectacle in the corner of her back yard. Of it's own volition, her hand rose to rest on her stomach, where a familiar sensation of dread was coiling unto itself.
The pink haired girl found herself assessing people and possible exit points even as she moved further and further away from the center of the gathering, trying to figure out where her sudden sense of horror had come from. She hoped it was nowhere nearby. She couldn't imagine an attack like the one she'd participated in the last time she got a gut feeling this strong ending up quite as well as the one at her family's reunion had. This wasn't a house full of trained shinobi. It was a back yard full of children and gossiping mothers.
Suddenly, the streamers were liabilities. They could be set on fire so easily. The tables and chairs were obstacles set between her and the safe exits her insides were clamoring for her to move her friends towards, and they seemed larger than life all of a sudden. Every civilian and inactive shinobi hear to watch their children at her birthday celebration was a liability. The trees. The mountain of presents. The small box of sharp tacks from set up earlier. The cake. The umbrella over the food table-
"Sakura-chan?"
A hand landed on her arm and it was like having a bucket of ice water poured over her head. Sakura glanced to her left with widened eyes, only to find Sasuke staring at her with no small amount of concern hidden in the furrow of his brows. His expression only twisted more when she schooled her face into a façade of calm once again. For a moment, she had the fleeting thought that he could sense exactly what she sensed, but it was discarded just as soon as it came.
"...Are you okay?" Sasuke asked cautiously. He was more than familiar with Sakura's rapid changes in moods, and more specifically, her hair trigger temper. It wasn't often turned on him, but even so, he had no desire to chance it. An anxious Sakura was a dangerous one.
With barely a thought, the green eyed girl pasted on a small, if somewhat shaky smile and nodded. "Don't worry about it. What's up?" As she asked, both of them took two large steps closer to the fencing of the back yard. Shortly afterward, they felt a breeze go by as Naruto and Ino passed in a soaking wet tag team chase, destination 'Sai'.
Sasuke lowered his shoulders and sent brief glances in either direction around him. His blank expression gave her a startling flashback to the teen that used to be Team 7's unofficial leader. "Naruto fixed that thing from yesterday," he spoke in the lowest pitch his childish voice could reach. At her once-again widened eyes, he continued, "He gave me some weird paper. It made a grey-looking copy of the one on his neck. But he couldn't figure out much of what was there before we fell asleep." Then, he held both hands out and presented her with a folded square of what she recognized to be chakra-treated paper. "This copy is for you."
Sakura was quick to accept it, before stuffing it somewhere that she knew it wouldn't somehow make it's way out from: between her skin of her lower back and the elastic of her underwear. The paper dug at her and she was beyond sensitive to the chakra held within it, but it was nothing that she couldn't deal with. Instead, the pinkette focused more intently on Sasuke, after glancing around to make sure that everyone else was still distracted by the spectacle that Sai, Naruto and Ino had created. "So, this was the only seal?"
The Uchiha nodded, frowning a bit. "Why would there be another one?"
Part of her mind focused immediately onto the conundrum it had been presented, drawing away from the ever-niggling unease she felt; why had Naruto's main seal not shown up when this one did? But on the outside, Sakura just shook her head. "There's no way to know. I was just concerned that Hinata's father might not have been the only one with the idea..."
The obsidian eyed boy frowned deeper, some of his old upset forcing its' way to the surface. He still couldn't believe that someone would do that to Naruto. What was wrong with adults? "Well, he was, so that's that." A shriek sounded, and he looked with Sakura to the opposite side of the yard, where Sai had finally been captured after a sour-looking Tayuya, who claimed to have a harsh migraine, tripped him up to stop the action.
"Maa, let's calm down now, ne? Don't you all want to Sakura-san open her presents?" It was Kakashi, who had escorted Naruto that day, speaking above the noise. The man was scratching lazily at his masked cheek as cheers went up and a rush towards the presents (and Sakura) began. "Eh, that's not my idea of calm..."
Now that the attention was on the two of them, both children resumed their previous expressions, while Sakura took it further and finally put her head into the game, smiling and deciding to be excited about her birthday while it lasted, even if her older brother wasn't there.
If her eyes remained guarded and searching during the rest of the party, nobody seemed to notice.
When Itachi finally located the one he'd been searching for since noon, he was relieved. But the relief wasn't enough to keep him from punching his friend in the arm. Hard.
"Ow! What the hell, Itachi?" Jin hissed out, rubbing at his arm that he could already feel bruising.
"You lied to me," the Uchiha heir replied in a dull tone that couldn't his amusement at Jinya's suffering. "Even if it was for a... Good cause, or something to that effect."
The white haired boy glared at the teen opposite him. "I didn't lie. I just selectively omitted certain details of my observations." Or at least, that was how he was going to justify it. And even if it was lying, who cared? He was a shinobi. Lying for the sake of the mission was just what they did.
After staring at his friend's expression for a moment, Itachi felt his face settling into a frown. "Something has upset you." And it was a kind of upset that he had never seen from Jinya, ever. His friend actually seemed angry at something.
He didn't even bother trying to hide from the question. Jinya's glare melted into a plaintive frown as he looked at Itachi. Then he raised on of his hands up in an awkward looking fist with the thumb resting beneath his fingers, rather than tucked in, and began walking away from the grocery store he'd originally been heading to.
The Uchiha heir followed after the other teen with neither a sound nor an expression. The signal he'd just been shown was perhaps the simplest code in ANBU sign-language: 'touchstone.' It referred to an ANBU's singular outside confidant. It was rare for any ANBU to take on a touchstone and let someone know who they were behind the mask, but he'd chosen Jinya what felt like ages ago. However, this was the first time that his friend was the one wanting to relate classified information, rather than Itachi himself. He was understandably apprehensive.
After some fifteen minutes of traveling through Konoha's winding streets in silence, they ended up in the civilian district, where the familiar path ending at the Haruno household was taken. The two of them bypassed the loud gathering downstairs altogether, entering Jinya's room through the window. Belatedly, Itachi realized that Jinya was not, in fact, at his doted-upon younger sister's birthday party. And he couldn't think of anything stranger.
Jinya's room was completely silent once the window was closed behind them.
"When was Crow last on duty?" The green eyed boy asked as he folded in on himself atop his bed. He had a strange habit of referring to Itachi and 'Crow' as separate identities, which the Uchiha didn't truly mind. It helped him feel a bit less torn about his different duties when he thought of himself that way.
"Crow's two week break began three hours ago. Why?" Itachi asked, feeling an eyebrow raise of its' own volition.
His reply was another question. "Was Crow assigned to the search that went out early this morning?"
How does he know about that? Curious. "Indeed."
"Before or after they began analyzing the half-activated one?"
Now, Itachi was becoming slightly irritated with all the questions. "Stop stalling and explain."
Jinya sighed loudly, buried his face in his knees, and began his muffled-sounding dialogue. But not before raising the sign for 'touchstone' again; here, it meant that whatever he was about to stay would have to stay absolutely secret.
And as he listened, Itachi completely understood why.
"...she didn't say a thing. Not a single word. And really... I don't think I would've believed her if she had spoken. I can't figure out where our bond disappeared to, and it's killing me." The minty green eyed teen huffed, thinking back to the alleyway scene that had kept him from sleeping properly. "I still couldn't bring her in though. I know it's against protocol, but... No matter how shaky things are, she's still my imouto. I keep hoping that she'll come to me... Maa. I did report the seal to Hokage-sama though. And it's after that one was found that all the available jounin and ANBU were drafted into sweeper teams for the search that went out."
"But?" Itachi prodded, shifting closer to the bed from his position on the floor. "You explained all of this for a reason."
For the third time, 'touchstone' was raised in the air. Completely confidential. Jinya raised his face from his knees, rubbed harshly at both cheeks, and then continued his talking. "My team was called in by Hokage-sama a little while ago. We're built for tracking, infiltration and assassination," he outlined bluntly. "But you've encountered me after a full spar with Tatsuki and Suzu. One of them controls insects that can plant exploding chakra and the other creates her own explosive tags by the bundle. We've become known for demolition tactics as well. Because of this, Hokage-sama asked for our cell to join an A-Rank Search and Destroy operation." Here, he subconsciously began to frown. "The target is the resonance point that the seal analysis team found. It's for the one Sakura stopped from activating, but they think all of the others will end up there as well. Hokage-sama decided it was too much of a liability."
"Wasn't your team already assigned to an escort operation beginning two days from now?" He replied, furrowing his brows.
"Funny thing about that... The locations are in, essentially, the same place. So we'll still be doing the original mission. It just won't begin until after we break off from the two jounin cells that we'll be back-up for. Assuming that everything doesn't go horribly wrong, of course." The weak joke at the end was accompanied by the first, slight smile Jinya had shown all evening.
But Itachi knew his friend too well by now to miss it's purpose; the other teen had tried to hide the shiver that went down his spine.
He couldn't help but recall the last time Jinya had gotten a bad feeling from something.
Maybe that was the cause of the shiver that suddenly went down his own spine.
"Do you think the two of us can really get it off?"
Sakura's small fists tightened on the sheet of paper she'd been trying, again, to dissect into pieces that could be broken properly. She focused her verdant glare on the soft white carpet that she and Naruto were seated on, instead of the questioning blonde, and tried to calm herself before she did something stupid. By now, she already knew that she didn't handle stress very well.
After a few moments of silence, she took in a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and then let out as many of her worries as she could on the exhale. Feeling that she could interact with the world outside herself again, the pinkette finally looked to Naruto, who had set down his own papers in favor of flopping to the ground and staring at the ceiling. "We will remove it, Naruto," she stated with all the conviction in her body. "No matter how long it takes or how stressful it is, I refuse to give up until you have control over everything that's yours!" She didn't mean to snap at the end, but she did. Her only solace was that he knew it wasn't directed at him. "...Sorry."
Naruto just grinned at her. "Who ever said anything about giving up, Sakura-chan?" He lightly patted one her hands, then folded both of his own under his head and began making that contorted, squinty expression that he always got when he thought deeply. She could tell by the way he was clenching at his fists that he was fighting off a headache already. It was another example of his inherent headstrong attitude when it came to dealing with problems.
"I just can't figure out why this one isn't the same as the way it started anymore," he was speaking when the guilt finally hit her.
Sakura had been avoiding the topic for what felt like forever. Years and events and semi-missions between the two of them all went by without her mentioning even once a large factor of the chaotic future she came from: the Kyuubi no Youko. The detection seal was supposed to be the push she finally needed to tell him about the burden he carried and what it meant, but that had come and gone with no consequence. She still didn't know why the seal hadn't shown up for the detection seal, when it appeared effortlessly every time Naruto focused enough chakra.
But still, it was becoming clearer that she would have to tell Naruto about the Kyuubi. If for nothing else than the sake of removing the seal Hinata had placed. Unlike Sakura, who genuinely wasn't that skilled with seals, Naruto was operating on several handicaps. Beyond actually being affected by the seal, he was actually almost nine years old, unlike her, and he was also operating without knowing why the seal had changed, also unlike her.
Imparting knowledge was the only way she could help him; and it was becoming more and more necessary. He had an intrinsic sort of understanding for seals, even if it wasn't quite advanced yet, that she would never be able to replicate. But if she never told him about the Kyuubi and the seal that held it inside of him, then his understanding would all be for naught.
They couldn't afford that. Not even when there were years to go before the real conflicts began, at least in the original timeline.
Just do it.
...Hai...
"Naruto? I need to talk to you about something..."
A/N: I used the (fake) word pinkette. Twice. Also, I apparently have daddy issues and it comes out in my writing. Huh.
But anyways, here's the first of two updates that I've been struggling to move around and put together for a while. The second is still incomplete, but hey, that's better than 'not even an idea yet'. Hope you're enjoying this.