Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Puppet in Pink

16. Ruin of Reason

There is no wisdom for a man

Without harmony,

And without harmony there is no contemplation.

Without contemplation there cannot be peace,

And without peace can there be joy?

-The Bhagavad Gita

Sakura felt the air shift behind her. The molecules trembled slightly, fell still, then trembled again. She sensed the eyes, too, the invisible eyes that were hidden so well, yet so openly. The aura, though...that pitying, patronizing, over-protective aura... it was familiar.

Kakashi.

The pink-haired girl growled mentally. Why is he following me? Is it that he doesn't trust my work? Or...is it that he thinks I'm just too weak to go off on my own?

The inward frown twisted into a smirk. Nothing wrong with him thinking that...for the time being, at least.

Adding a burst of extra speed, Sakura made a hairpin turn onto a deserted sidestreet and felt her teacher's energy brush past her unknowingly, and grow fainter with distance, until at last it had faded into just another dim flicker among a crowd of a million others.

When Kakashi returned to the team's meeting place, he found that Naruto and Sasuke were already there. Sakura, however...Sakura was nowhere in sight. An unwelcome chill wormed its way through his consciousness. Did this confirm his fears?

Naruto ran up to the silver-haired teacher, prepared to belt a hearty 'You're late!', out of habit. The words died on his tongue when Kakashi held up a hand and shook his head silently. Urgently. In a very un-Kakashi-like way.

Sasuke looked at the instructor, questioningly annoyed. "Well, what is it?" he asked in a gruff tone.

Surprisingly, the answer came without hesitation.

"It's Sakura."

Suddenly Naruto's words found new life. "What happened to my Sakura-chan, Kakashi? If anything happened to her, you can count on kissing your ass good-bye!" The blonde-haired boy was trembling. Whether in fear or in anger, though, was anyone's guess.

"Calm down, Naruto. Just calm down," Kakashi insisted, trying to keep his voice steady by propping it up on stakes of authority. He was counted on to be the leader; the strong one in the group; the expert. Why, then, did he feel so helpless?

"So, what about Sakura?" Sasuke queried impatiently. He was tired, hungry, and sweaty from spending the whole day searching high and low for some spoiled brat.

Well, he'd really only been searching high...and he hadn't really been searching...and he really hadn't spent all day...but who needed to know that? Yes, he was admitting it to himself...but that was only for the sake of the voices.It was bad enough that he had to listen to their stupid so-called 'teacher' gripe about their stupid so-called 'teammate'...he didn't need another useless conversation going on in his head at the same time.

"You see...I was following Sakura. It seemed like she knew where she was going. And then...I lost her. Her aura just vanished."

Naruto gasped almost theatrically. "How can you have let something like that happen to my Sakura-chan?!! Tell me what happened!"

Sasuke groaned. Idiot girl probably just ducked into a beauty salon for her daily facial or whatever it's called...

"Well...I really don't know how, Naruto. All I know is, her aura was there one minute, then it was gone. By the time I was able to stop and look around, I couldn't detect her anymore. Which leads me to believe that whatever gang kidnapped the Otsubo child has also captured Sakura." Kakashi braced himself for another outburst.

"W-why?" Naruto's voice was a whisper, a gasp, warbling like the cry of a sickly bird. "Why our Sakura-chan?"

Kakashi knew the answer to that one all too well.

"They're most likely holding her as 'spare bait'," he said, straining all the emotion from his voice. 'Spare bait'...it killed him to use such an inhuman term. But how else could he put it?

"We've gotta go find her!" Now Naruto's voice had morphed into the roar of a lion. A wounded lion who is being forced to watch his pride die right under his nose. A voice sealed into a heroic, ready-for-anything tone.

How can those kidnappers be so cruel...first, an innocent little child; now, my innocent little Sakura-chan... They had to help her, had to get her out of this mess...

"I don't think so."

Naruto brought his reverie to a grinding halt and turned, as did Kakashi, to face the source of the voice.

Sasuke stared blankly into his teammates' astonished faces.

"What did you say?" Naruto's words sounded like the barest rustle of leaves. He couldn't bring himself to yell.

"I said, I don't think so," the raven-haired boy repeated, accenting his haughty tone with a matching smirk. "I'm tired of our enemies using our weakest link against us."

Kakashi started to say something, but Sasuke brushed the teacher's stammers aside, his words gathering speed.

"Every single mission we go on, she does absolutely nothing. And, what's more, she is absolutely nothing. Nothing but a burden that we all have to bear. Don't say it's not true, Naruto, because you know that it is. Same thing to you, Kakashi-sensei," he sneered, tossing a heap of sarcastic emphasis on 'sensei'. "At any rate, the kidnappers expect that we'll go after our dear, precious, long-lost goddamn teammate. They expect us to take the bait. So that's exactly what we shouldn't do."

Naruto gaped at the Uchiha. All the words he'd ever known fled screaming from his mind.

"You-you're...you're insane..." he finally managed, in a tone that seemed a lost crossbreed of fear, anger, and disbelief.

Sasuke looked at the blonde-haired boy, an unreadable expression on his face. He gave a self-satisfied snort.

"That may be, Naruto. That may very well be."

Longer chapter today—Sasuke finally snaps! I've decided to refrain from putting notes at the beginning of chapters, so that people who don't read Author's Notes won't have to do so much scrolling.

To "deity of death"-sama: Of course you can draw a fan-art for this fic. Thanks for asking, though. (bows)

I know it's kind of hard to think when you have school nipping at your heels (or biting them off, in my case), but, if you can, please review with any comments/suggestions/etc. It really helps!