A/N: Everyone, thanks to Mordacious Moratorium, you have new fanart to enjoy—because I can't make the links work on my profile page, you'll have to do a tiny bit of work yourself. The art was commissioned from MariousDamakotto over on deviant and they are titled "Sakura" and "Tatsuo Hyuga". Please be sure to go and admire!

.com (/) art (/) Tatsuo (-) Hyuga (-) 626826339

.com (/) art (/) Sakura (-) 628442497

Kill Your Heroes

-Chapter Forty-Six-

Acerophobia (Part III)

"You can try begging," Kakashi-senpai went on pleasantly, "but you should know that Sakura is into that sort of thing."

Dinner is letting you off too lightly, Sakura thought darkly. You're going to owe me concert tickets or something. "Don't say that, senpai. This one belongs to Orochimaru—he might like it and then you'd never get him to talk."

Kakashi-senpai made a thoughtful noise. "That might be true. Well, we'll just have to give it our best effort. Don't you think, Kabuto-kun?" Senpai's sarcasm was all sharp, cutting edges and she could see the nervous tension in the lines of Kabuto's back. While she couldn't be certain how he felt about her at his back, it was clear that he aware of the very real threat standing in front of him.

"Now, now, let's not be too hasty," a too-familiar voice said, causing a tremor of fear to slide up her spine, prickling across her scalp, and threatening to cause her hands to tremble. "If you don't give him time to talk, he won't be able to issue the invitation."

"Invitation?" Kakashi-senpai replied harshly, all the teasing leeched from his voice.

"That's right," Orochimaru confirmed. "When I heard that someone had finally discovered the limits of Sasori's art, I knew that there was a chance that Konohagakure might send someone to intercept his spy. I just didn't think Tsunade would be so reckless as to send the people the message was intended to reach. Such a shame, really—I was going to have to be clever and she went and made it easy. Ah, before I forget," and it was Sakura's turn to stiffen as he circled around so that he could see her, "there is something here that deserves recognition. I think this settles the argument between Sasori and I quite neatly—his "eternity" proved to be too brief to qualify."

Sakura had lived all her life in a ninja village—she'd seen people with all sorts of eyes, from the eerie Hyūga to the various animal-partnered clans and she'd recently had the opportunity to stare into the crimson depths of two different Mangekyo forms, but she'd never seen eyes so inhuman before.

"I'm glad I could be of service," she managed, voice only slightly shaky, but her hands still rock-solid.

Orochimaru chuckled. "Since I doubt that Jiraiya managed to pass on qualities like patience or restraint onto his disciple, I presume you won't have to travel very far to collect the last member of this little reunion."

"What exactly are you planning?" Kakashi-senpai asked suspiciously.

He earned a smile for his suspicion. "You're here to see Sasuke, aren't you? I have no objection to that, but you don't really think I'm just going to let you trample through my house while you're at it."

Letting us see Sasuke? Why? Unless…

"This is a test for Sasuke," Sakura pronounced with a veneer of calm. "You want to see what he'll do if Naruto—if we—confront him."

Those eerie yellow eyes focused on her. "Just so. Tomorrow I'll take Sasuke out on a training exercise—it will certainly be instructive. For everyone. You have a map?"

Sakura hesitated until senpai ordered her roughly, "Go ahead, Sakura."

Sheathing her knives, she retrieved the topographic map she'd brought of the area around the Tenshi bridge from her sealing scroll and proffered it to Orochimaru. The paleness of his hands was doubly emphasized against the paper of the map; not even Sai's skin was that shade and he looked like he'd been raised in a cave like some kind of mushroom.

"You'll have to come closer, if you want to be able to read the map as well," Orochimaru pointed out and Sakura gingerly came to stand at his elbow, trying to focus on her breathing rather than on how vulnerable this made her feel. He'd always sort of loomed in her memories and she discovered that it wasn't just fear that had shaped her perceptions—he really was tall.

I wonder if that's a criterion for the bodies he borrows, some cynical part of her brain wondered even through her trepidation.

"By midmorning, we'll be here," he told her, pointing out a location not as far from their present one as expected.

If he wasn't such a powerful ninja, that might actually be useful information for locating the area he's using as a base. The hair at the back of her neck prickled as Orochimaru leaned close and spoke in a low voice, that long-fingered hand closing over her shoulder. "You should act surprised to see him tomorrow—we wouldn't want him to think we're collaborating against him, would we? See you then."

And with that he turned and strode back across the bridge toward the forest.

"Ah, Hatake-san, if you could let go of my shoulder…?"

Wordlessly, Kakashi-senpai released his captive and Kabuto followed obediently in the direction that Orochimaru had taken, nervously readjusted his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"Well," senpai said when both enemy shinobi had vanished from their senses, "that didn't go precisely as planned."

"It's Orochimaru. Does anything?" Sakura asked sourly, full of knowledge that she couldn't share. Even Akatsuki couldn't predict or control the movements of this member of the Legendary Three.

Kakashi-senpai made a thoughtful noise of concession, then sighed. "So…."

"…we walk into a trap and hope it's for Sasuke," Sakura agreed. "And that Naruto is hiding some emotional maturity under that tracksuit in the likely event that Sasuke doesn't want to be returned to village." She knew even as she said it that it was both true and a little unfair to Naruto to say so. Naruto was also their best chance at completing their mission; though neither of them had said so, Sakura knew that the moment Orochimaru had involved himself, getting Sasuke back to the village through use of force had ceased to be an option.

"Not, 'doesn't want to go home'?"

Sakura hesitated. She knew from conversation from Itachi that he still considered the village home; in their own ways she suspected that all three of the Sannin felt the same. But Sasuke? It wasn't so much that she couldn't contemplate thinking of him as someone who still felt Konohagakure was more than just a place where one lived, but rather that the well of generosity in her heart was in a drought stage—she didn't want to welcome him back to her village.

He'd followed after a man who'd invaded their village. Maybe Sasuke hadn't seen it, but she'd been there in those stands as his forces slaughtered sleeping ninja on a day that was as much about inter-village cooperation and display for the civilians as it had been about anyone's promotions. Had he even read the final tallies for civilian casualties? The shinobi ones? Or had it not mattered to Sasuke that he wasn't even bothering to defect to a proper village, just joining what amounted to a highly organized, highly militant cult?

It was a strange thing. She feared Orochimaru, for the invasion and for the Forest, and the perspective offered by time and experience made her respect his abilities, but when it came to anger or hate, she felt far more strongly about Sasuke than Orochimaru. Fear doused the heat of her anger when it came to Orochimaru, but she feared Sasuke just enough to give her anger bite. Besides, it wasn't personal. Not like Sasuke was.

Maybe it was because learning to accept the alliances shifted and changed was part of being an adult ninja—Suna had participated in the invasion, after all, and they were supposed to let go of those grudges.

"Sakura…?" Kakashi-senpai prompted, pulling her out of her thoughts.

"Home…I think it's a lot more fragile than people think," Sakura replied softly. "And that once you've broken it, it's a lot harder to put back together than simply coming back."

"…so you're a cynical divorcée before the age of eighteen."

"Senpai," Sakura scowled.

Kakashi-sempai reached out and patted her hair, his hand coming to rest atop her head. "I think that home is something more resilient than all that," he said. "Well, shall we go back and inform Naruto that we have a lead?"

[Kill Your Heroes]

"You're not as excited about tomorrow as your teammate," Sai observed.

"That's not exactly an achievement," Sakura muttered into her bedroll.

One of her first acquisitions after finally purchasing the much longed for sealing scroll had been some bedding that was a step up from a blanket spread over unforgiving ground. She hardly ever slept deeply, so she didn't see the point of sleeping badly and waking up stiff. It was a fine, warm night so they hadn't bothered to pitch tents, which had left Sai free to essentially invade her personal space. She eyed him in her peripheral vision, noting the way he was sitting, like he was attending some kind of outdoor lecture.

Weirdo.

"I want to understand," Sai pressed. "Naruto said you also value your team and teamwork highly, yet you display a marked lack of enthusiasm for confronting Uchiha Sasuke."

Sakura sighed and shifted so that she was facing Sai. "Naruto is an extroverted optimist. He will always care, he will always care deeply, and he will be the first to tell you that he cares. I'm also pretty certain that he thinks that people are fundamentally good and it's only that circumstances get in their way."

"And you do not think this way?"

"No. Which is why I'm not expecting anything from Sasuke. Maybe it's because Team Seven is the only team Naruto has ever had, so he doesn't have anything to compare it to, but I've been on other teams. Team Seven—we really should have been sent back to the Academy. We passed Kakashi-senpai's bell test, but none of us really got teamwork. It didn't help that our skill levels were all over the place, we were all obnoxious little brats, and senpai was…well, himself, which didn't exactly help smooth out our rough edges."

Sakura paused thoughtfully, trying to judge Sai's reaction, but all she was rewarded with was that same blankly inquisitive look. "The point being that we judge the bond we had with Sasuke through the lens of our own bias. Naruto treasures his precious people by believing in them with as much force and conviction as he wants them to believe in him—he's here because of his bond with Sasuke. I'm here for Naruto and senpai and because it was Tsunade-sama's order."

"…what if the Hokage hadn't ordered you to be here?"

"I still would have come. I wouldn't have enjoyed it, but I wouldn't have let Naruto do it on his own."

"Even though your way of thinking—discarding a bond when it is no longer useful or when the other person decides to sever it—is the most logical one?"

"And therefore the correct one?" Sakura said with some amusement. "I'm sure the world would be a more orderly place if it worked like that, but we're talking about how people feel, not how they think. Sometimes I'm pretty sure they're only vaguely related. It's not even like I don't have a bond with Sasuke any longer. But I'm not Naruto. Relationships based on that kind of hope and loyalty—I don't think they're really healthy for anyone involved." She grimaced as she remembered her own days of blind devotion to Sasuke. "So when Sasuke chose to leave, I chose not to chase after him. That doesn't mean I could just cleanly cut away what I feel about him like taking scissors to paper. Especially since that idiot can't give up on him. That's not how bonds work."

"It's like…take senpai," she said, waving her hand vaguely in his direction. "If someone asked me if I wanted to meet a man who feels absolutely no shame about reading porn in public, avoids obligations he finds annoying, is habitually late and makes stupid excuses about it, and who makes a hobby out of antagonizing people, I'd say no, right? But then one day, you wake up and realize that you find all those things sort of endearing, not on their own merits, but because of who those traits belong to. That even though they're sometimes annoying and embarrassing and you sometimes wish they'd turn in a respectable adult, you also realize you'd somehow miss those things because they make them who they are."

Sai blinked at her. "Is this a love confession?" he asked. "Because I understood they were usually made to the person in question."

"Is this a—what? For Kakashi-senpai?" Sakura responded incredulously. "That's not even close to where I was going with that."

"Developing romantic intentions toward a mentor is a commonly depicted theme in novels and movies. The age difference seems to be a key element in giving it a "forbidden" aspect, making it more—."

"Woah, stop. You were listening to my description, right? Senpai would make a terrible boyfriend, even if I thought of him like that. He's more like…a very quirky, but strangely reliable older brother. Don't you have someone like that? A bond that's not about orders or convenience. One you'd do things you don't enjoy to protect."

Sai contemplated this quietly for so long that she almost abandoned the conversation, but he finally said, "Someone like a brother…I think I had one once."

"You think?"

"I don't remember it very well," he said, then shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

"It does," Sakura insisted. "Your body can go on existing without friendship or affection as long as you feed it, but…what's the point?"

"Point?" Sai asked blankly.

"Why do you bother getting up in the morning? Why put yourself at risk? In danger? I mean, I guess you could just take pleasure in the mastery over your body or the excitement of battle," she conceded doubtfully. She did enjoy the first now that she had actual skills, but Sakura doubted she would ever understand the latter. There was nothing enjoyable about the sharp, choking adrenaline of real battle.

Sai studied her face carefully, like he expected to be quizzed on it. "Is it normal, to consider one's motivations for getting out of bed?"

"Not all of us are born with conviction," Sakura replied, canting her head in Naruto's direction significantly. "Some of us have to find it."

"I will consider it. My motivation," Sai said abruptly.

"That's good. But first, sleep."

[Kill Your Heroes]

Advice wasn't automatically bad even if it came from a dubious source—they'd told Naruto that they had a lead on a nearby base where Sasuke was likely staying, not that Orochimaru was confident enough in his shaping of Sasuke's character to test him against his old team. It wasn't that they didn't trust Naruto, precisely, but more that there was a mutual acknowledgement that Naruto attempting to take Sasuke back by way of taking Orochimaru down would be a Bad Thing for all involved.

Maybe a raging jinchuriki would be enough to take down the most devious of the Three. Or maybe the rest of them ended up dead and that smirking white snake was at best amused by the whole thing and more than happy to pick up whatever was left of Naruto.

She felt jittery, almost sick with anxiety and anticipation, but she carefully kept all of it tamped down beneath an impassive expression. The last thing that her blond teammate needed in this moment was encouragement. His eyes kept shading toward red, taking on that feral quality that she'd learned was indicative of the bijū rising on the tide of his temper.

Then they were there, on that spot that had looked so wholly unremarkable on the map in comparison to those dangerous, spidery fingers that had pointed it out, and there Sasuke was and her heart seemed to have migrated up into her throat. It was wholly possible it had been pushed ahead by her stomach, which was threatening to revolt.

Orochimaru had chosen the staging ground for this farce well—their team had emerged from dense forest into what appeared to be something like a natural amphitheater. Nature or perhaps some shinobi battle of the far past had left a flattened area faced with steep walls of rock interrupted only by a few tenacious rhododendrons. Orochimaru stood atop the wall almost perfectly opposite them, Kabuto almost as close as his shadow.

"Well, well," Orochimaru drawled. "Look who it is, Sasuke. Your friends have come to visit."

Sasuke's expression twisted into a sneer, his eyes sweeping over all of them like someone who'd seen a cockroach scurry across the floor.

"Perhaps it might be best if we adults stayed out the way of this reunion, eh, Kakashi? And guest member. How delightful that they'd send you," he said to Yamato in a way that made the ANBU's already unreadable expression harden until it could have been carved from stone.

"Sas—!" Naruto's attention was all for their former teammate, his desperate plea emerging as a shout that was strangled as Sakura yanked him aside.

And Sasuke was here, close enough for her to count his eyelashes and the bizarre thought that filled her head was I will live and make it to my own party. Stupid, stupid thing to think when Sasuke was in front of her, but the promise of Genma who'd bothered and Raido who'd agreed to attend and Ino who'd absolutely be there—it was more than enough to make her think desperately, I want to go home.

But she was here, firmly rooted to this reality, in which Sasuke's eyes were cold and assessing, the tilt of his mouth slightly cruel. "I'm not allowed to say hello?" he asked coldly. She'd thought that attractive once, but now the bitter irony saturating his voice left an equally bitter taste in her mouth.

"Hello, Sasuke," she told him tightly.

"Sakura." He said it the same way Soudai did when he was at his most irritating, like he was deigning to notice her existence and she ought to apologize for troubling him.

It was much less endearing on this boy, whose eyes slid over to Naruto. "You," he said, "here to try and convince me to return to the village?"

"We're here to take you back," Naruto retorted, his tone more even than she'd expected. "After all, what kind of Hokage would I be if I couldn't even drag my own teammate home when he's too stupid to find his own way back?"

"You think that'll work out any better than it did last time? Idiot," Sasuke's hand slid to the hilt of the sword sheathed at his waist. "I spared you last time on a whim. Haven't you heard that you shouldn't tempt fate?"

"Fate?" Naruto quipped. "You've learned some big words, Sasuke. Maybe you should try to learn some more of them. Like friendship. Or maybe loyalty. Maybe those kinds of things are too difficult for someone like you. Which is why we'll keep on coming to drag you home until it finally sinks in. Don't you get it, bastard? If you don't come back, Orochimaru is going to wear you like a sock puppet."

"Don't lump me in with someone like you. I cut our bonds because I had only one bond worth protecting and it was one of hatred. And to finally fulfil the promise of that bond, I'd do much worse things than just give up my body."

Sakura had been freely channeling chakra into her eyes from the moment she'd caught sight of Orochimaru. She saw the moment when Sasuke started to shift, the curve of his back changing as he went to draw the chokuto from its scabbard. Her own hands were just as quick, just as sure, and due to the placement of her own knife rig and the length of her blades, her black knife was the first to clear its sheathe.

Naruto had also caught on to the imminent violence, but it was like watching someone wade through deep water—without the Kyūbi enhancing his senses, he couldn't match Sasuke's sheer speed. Jiraiya had been busy teaching him to live and laugh and love in a world where no one knew he was a jinchūriki; she imagined Orochimaru hadn't bothered to waste time on Sasuke's already anemic social skills. Sakura herself was caught somewhere in between—she'd hadn't a formal teacher since the dissolution of Team Seven, but she'd trained with Hatake Kakashi as a partner he respected.

The flat of her black knife caught the edge of Sasuke's sword and it was only paranoid habit and a bit of vanity that had caused her to shove earth-natured chakra into the blade. She'd paid a truly appalling amount of money to have the thing forged, so the idea of someone marring it had begun the habit; she'd justified it with the fact that it made for excellent practice and had since refined it until it was second nature.

Now it kept her blade from parting beneath the onslaught of Sasuke's own special blade—she could feel his chakra lashing at her own.

"Annoying," he murmured, his free hand suddenly wreathed in lightning as he struck at her from the other side.

Sakura let her body drop beneath his strike, her empty hand slapping against the earth and sending her feet-first into the air just above the flashing blade of his sword. Her skin seemed to quiver beneath her clothes and the oddest sensation stole over her as ink slithered over her skin, up the channel between her breasts, flowing along her collarbones and bursting from her arms in a tangled knot of dragons.

Sasuke spat fire up at her, incinerating the densest knot of dragons and twisting his body to avoid the others that impaled themselves into the ground like spears thrown from heaven. He might have caught Sakura too, but there was already an eagle tearing itself from her flesh and bearing her aloft out of harm's way. As soon as the flames faded, the eagle changed, shifted, became like feathered shadows streaming from her arms.

She landed lightly on her feet even as Naruto made to sprint forward and take advantage of Sasuke's preoccupation, his eyes blazing red and that ominous chakra she'd finally understood to be the Kyūbi boiling up off his skin like steam from a kettle. Sasuke only glanced at him, but Naruto stumbled to such an abrupt halt that Sakura knew something had gone wrong in the same instant that she felt the none-too-subtle dissonance of a genjutsu that was all raw power.

What is he…? The thought formed even as her hand dipped into her equipment pouch for kunai and she found her answer when that aggressive chakra vanished and Naruto's knees buckled. If Sai hadn't caught at the back of his jacket, Naruto wouldn't have even had the wherewithal to catch himself. He's manipulating the Kyūbi?! Sharingan could do that?

Sasuke had to move to avoid her kunai, but from the strange, heavy aura that radiated oppressively from him, she'd say the damage was already done. Naruto was breathing raggedly now, his body hunched over and his hands clutching at his temples. He…somehow he shoved the bijū's chakra back down. Doing it without using a seal—if we're lucky, he didn't sear Naruto's chakra channels. That's not even stabbing Naruto in the back, that's twisting the knife. The rusty, poisoned knife.

Alongside her personal outrage, because just about the only person on this battlefield who deserved a "fair" fight without the Uchiha's damnable doujutsu coming into play was Naruto, was a chilling premonition of just what kind of destruction Sasuke would be capable of wrecking in that worst-case-scenario future where Itachi was finished with his grand martyrdom and Kakashi was the only one standing between her former teammate and a reprise of the Kyūbi attack that had devastated the village.

Sai was hesitating at Naruto's side and Sasuke was turning back toward her now, all that awful chakra poised like a gathering storm about to break and sweep everything away. There was satisfaction in his expression and something dark and unyielding in his eyes, but nothing like regret as he turned his sword against her.

She'd show Itachi.

Not just Sasuke's lack of hesitation in attacking his former teammates, not just the way he used his Sharingan so ruthlessly. She didn't know Itachi that well yet; perhaps to him these might seem like praiseworthy things. Sakura had been spending her days in the gentle care of Gozen-san and the motley assortment of retired ANBU that surrounded her—she'd been the person tested like a sword fresh from the forging. People were at their truest when at their lowest, freshly shattered so that you could see what lived inside the shell they showed to the world.

She'd show Itachi just what kind of monster he'd raised.

The lines she'd thought she'd never cross, the ones she'd thought chiseled into stone or steel or something even harder or more enduring? They'd been drawn in the damp sand at the edge of the beach and the tide had turned and washed them all away.

The world ended not with a bang, but a whimper.

"Sa..suke," she gasped as the sword rammed deep in her belly. Her hands curled instinctively around it, almost cradling it as red bubbled and bled along her front.

Sakura ran a hand through Mikoto's long black hair, gone slightly dry with middle age and a lack of time for primping that came with two growing boys about the house, leaving it to slip forward over her shoulder as Sakura herself stepped up next to her.

Sasuke wore all his weaknesses proudly, like a flag, a banner, a target that begged for satisfaction. It didn't take any great measure of cleverness or insight to know how to hurt someone like that. Just the ability and the desire—and in this moment, Sakura had enough of both to take his heart in her hands and squeeze.

Sasuke was so still she didn't know if he was still breathing, his eyes wide, mouth slightly open. Some part of her mind wondered whether he would shatter if she touched him just now; another, crueler part demanded she try, just to see what might happen.

"Turning traitor to the village, doing whatever to whomever in pursuit of power—you're growing up just like your older brother. She must be so proud," Sakura cooed cruelly. "Not every mother manages to raise two such sons. What did you tell her when you were little? I want to…"

Mikoto's mouth worked and she wheezed when she spoke. "I want to…grow up to…be just like Itachi."

"Isn't that great, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura said enthusiastically, pitching her voice to hit the extra-girlish tones she'd always used when speaking to the boy in front of her. "You grew up to be just as much of a bastard as you always promised her you would be."

A painful smile twisted the elder Uchiha's face as she echoed Sakura's earlier words. "…so proud…"

Perhaps the most complex expression she'd ever seen crossed Sasuke's face just then, so brief she wouldn't have seen it if her eyes hadn't been primed for shunshin. Pain, regret, and grief all tangled up and subsumed entirely by anger as he snarled wordlessly at her, the tomoe in his eyes spinning and for an awful moment she thought that she might have shoved him far enough to trigger the Mangekyo state and wouldn't that have been a nightmare, but no, she'd only thrust him into a state of terrible rage.

The ground seemed to come alive with lightning, but common sense told her that he must have been channeling it through the air just above the ground rather than through the ground itself. It would take a pointlessly immense amount of chakra to overcome the natural grounding properties of earth.

She thought this, of course, from the much safer vantage point of the cliff rim as she slipped on her combat glasses and tugged up her shemaugh. She pointedly did not look to see if Sai had gotten Naruto safely away; if he hadn't, it wouldn't matter and would only split her focus.

"You've gotten better at running away," Sasuke called up to her. "But," and he appeared suddenly at her shoulder, "you're not going to be fast enough to outrun me."

He tried to catch her in a genjutsu, but he was depending on his doujutsu rather than real skill. Sakura shrugged it off and slipped out her second knife as she whirled out of the way of another strike, her foot slamming sideways into the ground and sending a spear of earth whistling toward Sasuke. He cleared it easily, but she gained a second's reprieve to fish a container from her pouch. Tossing it lightly in the air in front of her, she shoved wind-natured chakra into her black blade, slicing through it easily and coating the blade in a milky, slightly viscous liquid. Her discolored knife received the same treatment before the container even started to fall.

She lunged forward, leaping over Sasuke's forward thrust and landing neatly on his extended blade. It dipped only slightly beneath the burden of her weight, which was a testament to both his stance and his training, but she hadn't expected anything less. He didn't even require handsigns to cause lighting to shriek along its length, Sakura launching herself toward him even as she received a nasty jolt where the energy arced up from the metal.

A normal person wouldn't have had a chance, with Sakura within their guard like this, but all she managed was a long, narrow scratch beneath one eye. That strike led to a brief, terrible dance where Sakura learned just how sharp Sasuke's sword was as it slid right through the fabric of her flak jacket and opened up a long score in her side. But by that time, the muscles on the upper left side of Sasuke's face had started to droop, his eyelid sliding shut of its own accord. "Paralytic?" he demanded darkly of her. "I'd hoped to finish this without resorting to my cruder methods, but it only seems like as good as you deserve."

Sakura's grip tightened on her knives, but she never discovered what Sasuke's "crude" method would have been. Orochimaru was suddenly there, his hand coming down on Sasuke's shoulder in the same instant that Kakashi-senpai appeared at her back. She risked glancing back at him.

"Don't worry," he assured her in a low voice, "Yamato is taking care of things down below."

Sakura took that to mean that he was making certain that Sasuke hadn't permanently damaged Naruto by forcefully stuffing the fox back down into its box.

"What's the meaning of this?" Sasuke demanded.

"Oh? She's certainly got you in a snit. I wonder—a genjutsu that didn't appear to have any particular trigger…just what have you been teaching your student, Kakashi? Though I understand she isn't your student any longer. Congratulations on your promotion, Sakura-chan. How does it feel to have made jounin already?"

"What?!" Sasuke demanded sharply, eyes darting over to Orochimaru before cutting sharply back to Sakura. She stifled the urge to shift under his scrutiny.

Orochimaru chuckled at his surprise. "You shouldn't be that surprised. You got a clear glimpse of her strength down there, didn't you?"

"Scowl" no longer conveyed the depth of emotion expressed in Sasuke's face. He was committing murder with his eyes—or at least his one visible eye—which apparently wasn't a function of the Sharingan's first state.

Orochimaru's hand tightened on his shoulder. "You should be thankful to her, Sasuke."

Like hell, his expression clearly said, but he didn't voice the thought.

"They've already taken down one member of the Akatsuki. I suspect their path will lead them into conflict with others and every distraction they remove clears your path to Itachi. You don't throw useful tools away, even when they try your temper."

Sasuke sneered at the advice and beneath the concealing shield her shemaugh, Sakura returned the gesture.

"Hn," Sasuke grunted at last. "Don't worry, Sakura. I'll definitely pay you back and show you just how grateful I am. For all of it."