Streetgang Lovers
Chapter Thirteen
Sakura was in bed covered by a mountain of pillows when she got the text. At first she ignored it. The last two days had been draining and she decided that she deserved a night of doing absolutely nothing. Her remaining energy had been spent running a hot shower. She glared at the white wall to her left, hearing the monotonous tapping and drilling from her neighbors next door. The one day she decided to have a relaxing evening, of course they would decide to remodel their roof. Why did it sound like a staple gun going off? She debated whether she should roll up her window and complain.
Shortly after, her phone began buzzing uncontrollably and she was forced to leave the comfort of her bed and see what the groupchat was exploding about. The pink haired girl scrolled up, seeing back and forth messages between Tenten and Ino, Hinata had yet to respond.
It was only six in the evening, and still light outside. There was no reason for her to believe her bun haired friend was in danger, she was just working on the Health project with the old man Hidan. Her nostrils flared in annoyance upon remembering her own absentee excuse for a partner. She didn't even have his phone number so it would remain a mystery where he had disappeared to.
"Code Red?"
Sakura could kiss her peaceful evening goodbye.
Tenten rubbed her eyes.
I am not going crazy. I swear that was him!
The person, having made eye contact with her seconds ago, had disappeared and the brunette gritted her teeth in frustration.
"You good, Panda?" Hidan eyed her from across the table, momentarily taking focus off of the robot baby in his hands.
"Yup." She replied shortly, pulling out her phone hoping to catch some kind of response from the others. The bun haired girl was bombarded by questions from Ino, and a one sentence answer from Sakura. Tucking the device back into her pocket, she turned attention back to Hidan and squinted suspiciously.
So this Pein person calls him to tell him to hide his scythe weapon and then shows up at school? First of all, who even carries a weapon as big as that? And Hidan tells me to meet him on Shinrin University campus to work on this project and now I see the scary piercing man again?
Inner Tenten got into a thinking pose, producing a whiteboard out of thin air, in an attempt to connect the dots.
Theory One : The scary piercing man took the scythe to murder someone and now he is on the run, hiding at Shinrin University. Maybe a student at Konoha High witnessed something they shouldn't have and that's why he showed up out of nowhere to collect his spy device.
Theory Two : The scary piercing man is actually a student at Shinrin University and that's why he is here. I think that's too normal of a thought though.
Theory Three : ..?
WHY WAS THE BUG IN TSUNADE'S OFFICE?
Hidan slung an arm around her shoulder and she shot him a murderous look.
"Why do you keep being so touchy?" She peeled his hand off and squinted at him. College students passed them, staring a little too long for her liking and she cringed at the thought of the general public mistaking her and Hidan for a couple. She speedwalked down the stone pathway, ready to sprint away if he overstepped his boundaries again.
"Boy, are you dense Panda."
"I'm not used to people touching me with their slimy hands." The brunette muttered under her breath.
He is different.
Different from Neji? Hell yeah, we love his confidence.
Confidence or overinflated ego, Inner?
What started out as pure disdain for the Akatsuki member was now starting to evolve into feign disgust as a defense mechanism because Kami forbid she develop a crush on a silver haired delinquent. The troublemaker towered over her as they made their way out the common building and off the university's campus. He walked with purpose, long legs making huge steps as Tenten struggled to keep up, basically he was dragging her along. For some odd reason, he had insisted on walking her off campus and to her bus stop. She felt like a child, but also strangely protected in the most deranged way.
I don't like him! Inner Tenten screeched, swinging a hammer.
She now knew how Hinata felt around the male specimen, and perhaps to a certain degree, how Ino felt around Deidara.
"Well, we're here. Thanks for walking me." She waved bye, signaling he should leave despite the fact that it would be six more minutes until the bus arrived.
"See ya tomorrow, Panda." He leaned in for what Tenten could only assume to be a kiss and she immediately intercepted, grabbing his nose and twisting it. Hidan pulled back in surprise.
"Don't keep pushing your luck." The brunette warned,as the silver haired Akatsuki member simply smirked. An old couple standing a few feet away at the bus stop laughed, and she heard the words young love.
She could feel her gag reflex.
"Um, just to clarify, we are not a couple." Tenten smiled sweetly before turning back around to glare at Hidan who was now laughing along with them.
"She likes to joke around a lot. Funny girl, that's why I love her." He ruffled her hair, completely ruining the space buns.
The panda girl seethed as the old couple awed.
"Okay, I'm going for real now." He reached over and forced her into a side hug which made her decide it wouldn't be such a bad idea to use him as a live target for her projectiles. Tenten squirmed, trying to wriggle free from Hidan's hug. She could smell aftershave and cologne by how close he was to her.
Boy, did he know how to push her over the edge.
"YOU'RE NOT MY BOYFRIEND!" She shouted at Sakura-level volume as he crossed the street back to campus. The brunette balled her fists and bit the inside of her cheek, her entire face heating up. There were a select choice of words she had for him but he was now too far away to hear. Blood roared in her ears.
"Excuse me, miss. Will you be boarding this bus?" Tenten looked up at the annoyed face of the bus driver with his hand on the shift gear ready to close the doors on her.
"Yes sir. I'm so sorry." She mumbled, clambering up the steps all but with the grace of a baby elephant, lowering her head as she made her way down the aisle to an empty seat and slid down, face still red.
Old man looking troublemaker indeed.
"Are you positive it was the Akatsuki leader?" Ino repeated.
"I am positive! Ringing affirmative! It. Was. Him." Tenten shouted, punching into a pillow for emphasis before falling onto the bed facefirst.
"I don't necessarily think it means he was stalking you Tenten. Maybe he's a college student at Shinrin University?" Hinata suggested, setting down a tray of snacks before closing her bedroom door so they were free to gossip without interruptions.
"Look, I've come up with all the plausible theories." The bun haired girl pulled out a scroll of butcher paper from her backpack and unraveled it, revealing a plan that appeared to be about two feet long.
"I can't believe Hidan tried to kiss you." Sakura wiped tears from her eyes in disbelief. "You're trying to tell me that that wasn't the Code Red?" Tenten rolled her eyes, trying to move on from the topic of the silver haired Akatsuki member who had cost her her dignity at that bus stop. She swore to never step foot on Shinrin University's campus again.
"Let's start with the facts, assuming the Akatsuki are telling the truth. One, they are here to collect information at Konoha High. Two, the bug was planted in the school to spy on Principal Tsunade seeing as how discreetly it was placed in her office under some cup of pens."
"I'm still not seeing how that ties together." Ino hummed, tugging on her hairtie to release her long hair from its ponytail. The blonde combed her fingers through the long locks thoughtfully.
"I thought the same, but think about it. The principal is basically the head of the school and she essentially an information hub with access to a bunch of legal documents. Financial records, passwords to everything and... student scandals." The four of them shivered, remembering their little house arrest situation.
"You know, that is a possibility." Sakura said, studying the brunette's poor sketch of all the people she thought to be involved in the grand scheme. "Also, my hair color is more of a pastel pink, not magenta."
"Oh please."
"So you're saying that completely destroying this will get this Akatsuki leader off our backs?" Hinata asked, holding up the bug they had finally managed to crack open. Two thin wires overlapped one thick strand running down the middle. The brunette nodded.
"The faster we cut off their sources, the better."
"I'm on board." Hinata sighed. "Sakura, you might want to stop snacking. Dinner will be served in about ten minutes."
"It's not a matter of ten minutes, Hinata. I am hungry and my blood sugar is dropping."
Right on cue, a small knock at the door pulled the attention of the four girls deep in thought.
"Miss Hinata, dinner is ready." A voice called from the other side of the door.
"Thank you, we'll be down soon."
The four girls floated down the staircase of the Hyuuga mansion and sat themselves down at the dining table. Either the Hyuugas had gone the whole nine yards to be a welcoming host to their guests or this was just how they dined on the regular. Tenten appreciated the lengths they had gone to make her, Ino, and Sakura at home as possible, but she wouldn't have minded if they had chosen to have dinner at the regular kitchen table in the other room. The lights on this massive but elegant looking chandelier were about as blinding as Maito Gai and Rock Lee's smile and she couldn't help but wonder how unfortunate it would be if an earthquake were to happen right there and then. The chandelier looked like it weighed about as much as her. At that, she decided to seat herself at the corner of the table furthest away from the ornate light fixture. Hiashi sat at the head, a tense look on his face as a housekeeper continued setting plates and silverware.
"What's his grumpy expression?" Sakura whispered, pulling out her chair and nodding towards the head of the Hyuuga family.
"Father got a call from his assistant that there was an attempted sign in to his online banking account." Hanabi replied, setting the napkin on her lap and trying to keep her voice low. "When he called to confirm it wasn't him, the people working there seemed confused and said someone called already, requesting a copy of his yearly transactions. Thank Kami for multi factor authentication."
"Someone tried to get into his bank account?" Hinata shot her sister a nervous look.
"He's throwing out his laptop and set a temporary freeze on his account. I don't think it's that big of a deal." The younger Hyuuga shrugged.
"Rich people problems." Sakura mouthed across the table to Tenten.
After an awkward dinner filled with silence and the clinking of silverware, the four of them reconvened back upstairs in Hinata's room to carry out their scheme. It was going well until they sidetracked and somehow got to the topic of Ino's lovelife, a detail she was less than willing to share.
"Ino! You've been awfully quiet tonight. Is there someone on your mind?" Sakura scooted over to the Yamanaka who was looking intently at her phone.
Ino sweatdropped. "Can we please get to the snipping process and not sidetrack off topic?"
"I see what you did there." Sakura sideeyed her as she pulled out the blue dissection kit from her backpack and held out a hand to Hinata, who dropped the bug into her awaiting grasp.
"Let's get to it, then."
They hovered over Hinata's vanity table as Sakura seated herself, steel scissors in hand.
"So we're deciding to cut two wires but leave one." The rosette confirmed, turning around for approval from the rest of the girls.
"Wait, why?" Ino asked, confused. "If we cut one we should just cut them all."
"A little too late for that."
"Sakura!"
"I'm sorry! I was excited!"
"What if we snip them all and it blows up?" Tenten chewed her bottom lip nervously, staring at the remaining wire.
"I have an idea." Hinata began, pulling on a jacket as she took the bug from Sakura and slipped it into her front pocket.
"Follow me."
We are standing on Neji's doorstep and it's literally one in the morning. It can't get more awkward than this. And of course, this man wears monogrammed silk pajamas to bed.
Not that she didn't know, because they did go on that retreat together.
He stood out like a sore thumb while Lee and herself wore normal sleepwear.
He probably sleeps on sheets made of 1000 thread count and sprays his pillowcases with a special mist before bed. Let's see, does he also wear custom stockings that are knitted specially by elves in the countryside who use needles made of pure oak?
Tenten laughed loudly at her own thoughts but quickly coughed as Neji and the others looked at her.
"Hinata… What are you doing here at this hour?" The brown haired Hyuuga asked, opening the door and yawning. His lilac eyes blinked twice upon seeing her accompanied by three others on his doorstep. It was completely dark out aside from the yellow light illuminating from the street lamp a couple of houses down.
"Uh.. Hi Nii-san. We had a question about something." The violet haired heiress started, twiddling her thumbs nervously before saying the next sentence all in one breath.
"I know you took an elective course on mechanics last year." The Hyuuga girl fished the bug from her pocket, presenting it to her cousin who peered at it strangely.
"I mean, what is it?" Neji inquired.
"You didn't think to ask Shikamaru? He took mechanics as well and might be better at this than I am."
"He's been busy." Ino replied quickly, staring down the other three girls and daring them to refute her claim. They met her icy blue gaze meekly and said nothing.
"Where did you get something like this?"
"We found it in the trash." Tenten blurted out.
"This wouldn't happen to have anything to do with the new transfer students from Amegakure, would it?" All four of them froze.
"Ne, why would you think that?" Sakura laughed nervously as Neji held the bug between his fingers, ready to crush it if he so wished.
"N-no!" Hinata reassured him, and the Hyuuga prodigy relaxed, turning his attention back to the device at hand.
"Just checking. I know the four of you were assigned to be guides and that Itachi has been spending a little more time around you, Hinata."
Why am I always being misunderstood? Inner Hinata cried, trying to hide the discomfort on her face.
"I appreciate the concern, but there's really no need."
"I'm going to need a smaller tool to probe and look at this. Feel free to come inside." He opened the door wider to let the four of them in, and they didn't protest.
Not too far away, jostling ensued inside a black van parked along the street corner as the bright headlights and rumbling engine were quickly switched off.
"So tell me why we're doing this again, un?" Deidara's head popped into the space between the driver and passenger seat. He had been kicked to the back because for some reason, Itachi had crowned himself the best driver out of the three of them. And for some reason, Hidan was the second most reliable which was why the raven haired Uchiha had tasked him with the responsibility of navigating their way into this upper class neighborhood that was home to the Hyuugas. The blonde Akatsuki member begged to differ.
"We're here to keep an eye on them, did you forget already?" Hidan scoffed, pulling down the sun visor to check his reflection in the rectangular mirror.
"I know that, un. But why?"
"I mean, don't you want to see your girl?" Hidan laughed, and Itachi shot the blonde a knowing look through the rear view mirror. Even in the dark, both of them could see Deidara turning red.
"Did you ever think you would be able to see her in a nightgown?" The silver haired Akatsuki member jutted his thumb towards the driver's side where four figures stood in front of the house next door to the Hyuuga mansion.
Sure enough, he could make out Ino's silhouette in the dark and turned even redder.
What Itachi hadn't told his members was that he already knew the address to the Hyuuga mansion, having been here before. But it would be too conspicuous to drive up here himself so he recruited the other two to tag along. He wasn't sure why he felt so inclined to do some spying, the logical part of his consciousness told him it was to keep a close eye on Hiashi Hyuuga, since today was one of the rare days he was back in town.
And the other part of his consciousness?
Well, that was a weird thought.
"Hey hey hey. Panda and the others are going into that guy's house." Hidan climbed over the driver's seat to get a closer look and Itachi cleared his throat to remind the Jashinist exactly what he was doing.
The girls were rather disappointed to learn that Neji wasn't able to do much for them. The expertise on mechanics had told them that since two of the wires had been snipped, it would be too risky to dismantle the bug. However, he surmised that it was highly possible for it to still be traced back to the original source, which might still be up and running.
"Thank you for your help, Nii-san. Sorry if we bothered you!" And with that, the violet haired heiress herded her friends out the door and back into the Hyuuga mansion. They pelted up the winding stairs back to Hinata's room in defeat.
"I can't believe we actually did that." Sakura flopped onto the bed, closing her eyes.
"There's one more thing we can work from." The Hyuuga heiress said, as she reluctantly pulled out her phone and clicked into the photo album to show her friends the pictures she had taken of Itachi's planner.
"Hinata! You're such a badass! Look at you spying on the enemy!" Sakura clapped her on the back.
"What do the acronyms stand for though?" Ino asked, climbing over to look over Hinata's shoulder.
"Everything is written in military time and color coded to the gods." Tenten noted, pulling her eyes away from the random scrawling.
"It's just longitude and latitude lines. Does anyone even use those anymore?" The blonde asked nobody in particular as she pulled out her phone to type in said geographical marks.
"I would really like to put these people under anesthesia and take a look inside their brains."
"Ino!" Tenten looked at her friend with a shocked expression.
"Hey, my dad's a neurologist. I think about these things."
"Wait, he works at the hospital in Amegakure, right?" Sakura asked.
"It's like just on the edge of Amegakure." The blonde wrinkled her nose. "He's there for a temporary transfer because there was a shortage of specialists. Things should be back to normal at the end of this month, which means he won't have to spend so much time commuting from here all the way to the other side of town."
"AMGH… This is too crazy of a coincidence." Tenten mumbled, looking at the picture on Hinata's phone and then looking back at Ino's phone to see that the two did, in fact, match up.
"This is perfect! I have a plan." Sakura clasped her hands.
"Why do I feel scared?" Hinata gulped.
"Do you not have faith in me?" The pinkette feigned a sad expression.
"I do, but-"
"It says right there on the planner that AMGH is the stop at 13:00 military time tomorrow. We can do some snooping."
"You want us to skip school?" Ino and Tenten looked up.
"Father will kill me if he finds out."
"This is perfect. He can cover for us!" Sakura gleamed.
"We will just tell him that we want to interview and job shadow Ino's dad. That's believable right?"
"Is Neji a snitch?" The pink haired girl asked suspiciously. Hinata shook her head.
"This is going to look so bad either way." Tenten said, closing her eyes. "Shizune will definitely notice the four of us being gone tomorrow."
"Actually, I'm looking at the school calendar and it looks like tomorrow is just a half day. There's a board meeting so I feel less guilty about skipping." Ino said, scrolling through her phone to pull up an email.
"The stars have aligned, we are meant to skip school." Sakura concluded indefinitely, doing her best to hold back a yawn.
It was going to take brainpower to fool Hiashi Hyuuga. They had told him half a lie. Yes, they were on their way to see Ino's dad at the hospital because they were 'interested' in the medical field as a possible career tract. The details they had left out were the ones that would immediately raise red flags, such as the fact that the hospital was in Amegakure and they were really on a mission to spy on Itachi and whoever or whatever he was up to. Hinata explained to them in detail what Hiashi's day to day routine looked like, and the four of them soon realized he was a very particular man of habit.
It was like clockwork. His alarm went off at five thirty, and it took twenty minutes for him to get ready with those minutes elapsing into three spent brushing his teeth, ten spent in the shower, and seven spent getting dressed. At exactly five fifty, the Hyuuga patriarch would make his way into the study, presumably to answer emails and return any missed phone calls.
"Father takes twelve minutes to eat breakfast, and afterwards he typically-" Hinata continued describing Hiashi's daily schedule in detail but the other girls had already tuned out.
Mr. Hyuuga was starting to make Itachi's hour by hour schedule look less psychotic.
"You wanted to shadow me?" Mr. Yamanaka looked at the four girls.
"Never too early to start!" Ino chirped, nudging the others. Tenten plastered a fake smile on her face.
It had been a process getting to the Amegakure Hospital and she wasn't about to give up now. The bus ride here had made five too many stops, taken an unnecessarily long back road, and to top it off, the four of them had been subjected to the continuous crying of a baby and two guys who had threatened to get into a fist fight. Tenten had jumped off the steps of the bus relieved once they had arrived at their destination, but was starting to feel nauseous as the smell of lemon scented cleaning supplies coupled with food from room trays filled the air around her. The brunette looked at Sakura who was standing next to her, her eyes permanently glued to the far right corner of the lobby.
"We wanted to spend our day off of school doing something productive and job shadowing was the first that came to mind." Hinata replied, her voice slightly wavering. It was clear that lying to authority figures was not her strong suit.
"Plus, we always hear from Ino about the cool work you do and we wanted to see it for ourselves!" Tenten added excitedly.
"I suppose... I could allow that. I really wasn't expecting visitors today but my coworkers shouldn't mind. You're going to have to put this on though." He turned around, punching buttons into a keypad that opened a closet full of blue smocks, professional looking isolation gowns, and shoe covers.
"I'm doing very intensive work on this next patient so unfortunately I'll only be able to let you shadow one at a time." He said, handing each of them a button up jacket. "If you'd like, you can take the elevators up to the third floor and there should be a woman sitting at the front desk named Mei. She's in charge of the radiology department and will be happy to show you around. But if not, you're free to roam around the hospital yourselves, as long as you don't go into any badge restricted areas." He smiled.
"So, who's first?"
They sent Hinata as the first sacrifice.
Ino, Sakura and Tenten rode up the service elevators to the hospital's tenth floor. The blonde kept a finger on the 'close door' button as the elevator continued upwards, pinging every few seconds. The doors paused and opened, and the three of them stepped out. They wandered the blank hallways, hearing faint beeping sounds and a low buzzing.
"Guys I really have to go to the bathroom."
"Sakura! You should've gone while we were still on the first floor." Ino looked at the pink haired girl with disappointment.
"I didn't have to go back then but I drank too much water. You know how paranoid I am about dehydration."
"Okay, okay whatever. There's probably a bathroom around the corner. Tenten and I will be waiting for you on the skybridge over there." Ino replied as the pink haired girl darted down the hall in search of said bathroom.
Curiosity had gotten the better of her.
"So this is where he's been hiding." Sakura grunted, hiding behind a gurney as she watched Sasori plod down the hallway and stop at the second door located at the end of the wing. He knocked twice before turning the doorknob to let himself in. She frowned. He wasn't dressed in any uniform to indicate he was working, or even volunteering at the hospital. What was he doing here?
"Hey!" He cursed and stopped in his tracks, turning around as slowly because the voice was all too familiar.
"Sakura, have you made it your life's mission to follow me everywhere now?"
"Sasori?" A faint voice called from the open door. Sakura looked at him as he shrugged and walked in. She followed him in, completely ignoring the fact that this was probably against patient privacy rules. An old woman was sitting in the hospital bed with a book in hand.
"Did you bring a friend?" Her voice sounded fragile.
"If you could call her that."
Sakura willed herself to keep calm, not wishing to traumatize this elderly lady by choking Sasori.
"Are you some sort of caretaker?" Sakura whispered, still confused as to what he was doing with a patient. He was adjusting the height of her bed and reached for the remote, turning on the TV.
"No. This is my grandma. Grandma, meet Sakura. She goes to my school."
"Hi, nice to meet you." Sakura smiled.
"You can call me Chiyo, dear."
From the skybridge, Tenten and Ino had an excellent view of Amegakure. They weren't sure what exactly they were supposed to be on the lookout for. In the seven minutes that had passed, they had witnessed some irresponsible kid running around with an empty wheelchair which later flew into the busy street and was the cause of a delay in traffic.
"Isn't it common sense to not play with medical equipment like that?" The blonde asked, unimpressed.
"I have high hopes for humanity." Tenten replied sarcastically.
Then, a very familiar figure cloaked in black caught her eye, along with a head full of orange hair.
"Um… Is that Itachi?" Ino tapped on the glass with her nail.
"You took the words right out of my mouth. Aish! Look! He's getting away!" Tenten pointed to the window. Itachi and the Akatsuki leader were walking out the double doors of the hospital's entrance, the red clouds on their hoodies slowly disappearing as they entered the darkness of the parking structure.
"We were too late." She huffed.
"Not if we run." Ino yanked her arm and started hauling Tenten off the skybridge towards the empty staircase.
"Wait! What about Saku and Hinata?"
"Sakura is in the bathroom. We'll be back before she's done. C'mon! They're getting away!"
"What are you doing here anyways, Sakura?" He asked, pressing the button on the vending machine before a bag of chips fell from the racks.
"Huh? Me? Uh… I was here shadowing Ino's dad in neurology. Looking at career options." Came her reply as she took a huge bite out of her cookie and chewed, hoping he wouldn't ask any further questions seeing as she had her mouth full.
"The blonde?"
"Yeah why?" He rolled his eyes.
"I swear she is the only thing Deidara talks about these days."
"They just need to get over themselves and date." She agreed. Then sensing awkward silence, Sakura decided to ask about what happened to his grandma.
"She fell down and hurt her hip."
"Oh."
"Yeah. But nothing life threatening."
"Well that's good news. Is that why you've missed school?"
"Yes and no. She owns the craft shop down the street and I had to take over some shifts."
"Craft store?"
"Yeah. She sells mainly wood puppets and handmade glassware."
Ah. So that's what the wraps on his hands were for. Sakura was glad she had refrained from clonking him on the head earlier. She felt her rage subside slightly. Well, it was still there. Just more like a campfire sized rage instead of a volcano. All of it made sense now, with him suddenly skipping class. Something inside her fluttered.
Who knew this redhead had a heart?
A/N : Chapter 13 done! Thank you for reading!
xo, D. Sparkle