Sorry if last chapter was a little underwhelming, I promised monthly updates ages ago and I have been trying to keep that promise. Hope you guys are having a fun New Year's Eve!


Sakura, Sasuke and the nurse all grabbed for weapons when they heard an explosion nearby. Sakura dashed over to the window.

"Orochimaru is fighting a black-haired young man, I think he's one of the people who was playing ninja with the children." 'The children,' Sakura thought. It was as though they were her and Sasuke's children! Like they were already married with children to seal the deal!

But she had much less trouble focusing than she would have had before Sasuke hired her, especially since Inner Sakura could gloat while Outer Sakura was professional, with Sasuke listening to her report.

"First you tried to steal my eyes… I won't let you take my younger brother from Konoha. He can't focus on growing stronger as your body slave," said the young man, and as he vanished to begin an attack on Orochimaru everyone in the room knew what that meant.

Itachi! Sasuke's fists clenched. So soon after Wave: did he have Itachi's interest now that he was beginning missions? Did Itachi watch the Chuunin Exams to judge Sasuke's strength and if it was time to use Sasuke to test himself? Not yet, Sasuke was nowhere near on that level yet, even with Naruto to free up more time for training and Jiraiya beginning to teach him summoning! What would happen to the children… No, he knew exactly what would happen to the children if Itachi killed him, Danzo would happen to the children.

"I will have Sasuke's body, and his little accountant too…" Orochimaru cackled.

"Nobody's getting Sasuke's body but me!" someone yelled out the window.

Oh shit, Sakura realized. Wrong Sakura. She'd said that with the one that had the body and was currently speaking out loud.

She raised her chin and jumped out the window to cling to the wall of the hospital lower down. Nothing to do but brazen it out and hope there weren't any Hyuuga within earshot. Hinata would feel terrible about having to 'put Sakura in her place' in a public scene, even with Sakura to reassure her that she wouldn't take it personally.

"Fight, fight, fight!" yelled Tsunade, hefting a jug of sake, as a shark-man and Zabuza joined in.

"Oh, what's this? My old teammate, cheering me on?" Orochimaru chuckled.

"When two missing-nin fight, Konoha wins. I'm warning you two, break the hospital and I'll either fight the winner or I won't."

So ensuring that the hospital ended up collateral damage to piss off Tsunade and aim her at their opponent wasn't a good strategy, since she'd know that if the hospital was damaged, both of them must have let it happen. A little analysis of their objectives in doing so, and she'd do whatever would inconvenience them most instead of just wading in swinging.

Tsunade might be an overly simplistic fighter compared to Orochimaru, which was why he could beat her, but that was because when you had such an excellent fist, all your problems started to look like people's faces. She wasn't incapable of subtlety: she was a ninja after all.

"They're not fighting," Sakura insisted.

As the smartest kunoichi in her class she wanted to grab herself by the throat and demand what she was thinking, but she also knew exactly what she was thinking and why she was trapped into this. Itachi killed Sasuke's family. Right now, Sasuke was near-helpless recovering from chakra exhaustion. There was nothing he could do with Orochimaru after him, but letting Itachi save his life, when Itachi killed Sasuke's parents? Finding himself in debt to his family's killer because of his own weakness?

Sakura still wasn't the best when it came to emotional things (although she was certainly the best at being over-emotional), otherwise she would have known that Sasuke wouldn't have cared that much about the wound to his pride. Pride was for people who didn't have anything more important to do.

It still would have stung, would have proven that he was still inadequate as a ninja, but Sasuke knew he was no genius.

What was important was that he was still inadequate as Uchiha clan head, if the only minion he had to fend off an attack from an S-ranked missing nin was a genin, potential or no potential. It was more likely that Itachi would snuff her out to force Sasuke to be self-reliant because he wasn't a good enough commander to rein her in before she came to his attention, and that would be a failure. Proof he wasn't good enough to keep his people alive, even if Sakura was only a civilian-born ninja.

But Sakura was loyal enough to do the best she could for him, even if Sasuke certainly hoped that her real plan here was to delay things, so she said, "I'm fighting for Sasuke!" and spat a fireball at Orochimaru.

Her hands were already making the seals to throw up a mud wall between Sasuke's hospital room and where those two were standing: fighting with her back to the hospital meant they couldn't use area effect jutsu to kill her.

The biggest advantage she had was her weakness, she thought, ruthlessly backstabbing her pride as a ninja. Normally distractions on a battlefield were to be eliminated so one could focus on the true enemy, and because while an enemy was alive there was always a chance they could do something that mattered.

In a battle between two geniuses, a source of chaos like a mere genin (effectively a chuunin or no) was valuable because it might distract the opponent, while neither of them would hopefully want to take their attention off the real enemy long enough to swat her.

Or had she miscalculated? Her eyes widened with fear when a body appeared next to her. The fact it looked like her didn't mean anything – the way it vanished with a single frantic blow to the chest did.

Thank the gods, Naruto was here, and injecting enough chaos into the battlefield that the opponents would be busy trying to seize openings.

"It's the battle of the jutsu-freak mad scientists!" she heard her own voice call. "Winner gets Sasuke's body!"

Now people would think the embarrassing thing she'd yelled earlier might have been Naruto! He was the best! Aside from Sasuke, of course, she added loyally.

She'd fight for Sasuke's body by protecting Sasuke's body: keeping the other two away from him.

That meant!

Internally squeeing, she jumped back into the hospital room and picked up Sasuke from the bed, holding him like a bride because there wasn't any groom carry.


"I'll," said the clone of his accountant that was henged into the girl.

"Trade you!" said another, after that one burst.

"Three years of paperwork for the snake summon contract."

What. He split off a clone to laugh. "Send my paperwork to Konoha?"

"Uchiha clan seal."

Which Sarutobi would respect but Danzo wouldn't, allowing him to put traps for that meddling old man in there. "Why the summon contract?"

"For Sakura. I've got slugs, and Sasuke's got frogs." So he needed the snake contract to complete the set? "Sakura's really smart, and she experiments a lot. On children even! Since they haven't graduated yet."

Ah, the need of civilian-born students for more power remained the same, then. Not a surprise.

He didn't need to be one of the sannin to know that Sakura was the girl who had managed to draw his blood, and then was willing to put herself on the same battlefield as him in order to keep an Uchiha's body in her possession.

"Deal," he said, because once he got his accountant in enough trouble – dealing with missing nin was treason, then the boy would be in need of rescue and have no choice but to join him. Then Orochimaru would have the kyuubi vessel with his skillset and ability to summon hundreds of shadow clones for village construction projects all to himself.

Or he could just kidnap the boy now along with Sasuke and his new apprentice Sakura and have the Second Sannin join his village, boosting Sound's prestige and proving that he could run a good Hidden Village. Not clever enough to run Konoha was he, he'd show that old…