This is the last of the already written chapters. So it will be longer between updates from now on.

Sakura and the Prince of Flowers
By Miss Angel Maxwell

Chapter 5: "But There Really Was a Monster!"

"Have you seen Sakura?" Naruto asked Sasuke nervously. The two teenage boys were standing outside the closed door to the Hokage's office, tautly waiting for her to summon them inside. Three chaotic days had passed since they returned to Konoha, and this was the first opportunity Tsunade had to speak to them. The air surrounding the two friendly rivals was thick.

"Not since last night," Sasuke sighed. "At the hospital. She was sitting next to Lee's bed."

"Still?" questioned Naruto.

The Uchiha nodded. "And still not talking. I can't tell if she's mad at us or if she's just worried about Lee… Either way…" He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and gritted his teeth.

"Do you think Fuzzy Brows will be okay?" his friend asked in a shaky voice. "I mean… he has to be…"

"I don't know, Naruto," Sasuke said sadly. "Tsunade said…"

"I know what Tsunade said!" Naruto barked. "But she's wrong! Fuzzy Brows is gonna be fine! And so is Sakura! So stop looking so depressed, okay!" Naruto didn't seem to notice that his voice had been growing progressively louder as he spoke, or else he simply didn't care. A couple of administrative nin who were passing by shot him odd glances before continuing about their business.

Sasuke just shook his head. What he saw in front of him was his best friend trying so desperately to be optimistic that he had to yell at himself to stay convinced. In this regard, Sasuke was actually jealous of Naruto, because Sasuke knew there was no way he could look at this situation in a positive light. His mind was fixated on Sakura, and how he and Naruto had returned to that field in the middle of the night to find her still sitting, catatonic, in a pool of partially dried blood. Her face had remained an expressionless mask and she hadn't spoken a word since then.

"I really hate it when you act all cool and silent!" Naruto interrupted Sasuke's worrying. "You need to say something so I know that you believe everything will be alright!"

The black-haired boy licked his parched lips and spread them apart to speak, but before he could make a sound the door behind him creaked open and Tsunade's stern face appeared in the yawning entrance. "Come inside, boys," she said solemnly, and they wordlessly followed suit, closing the door behind them. Two chairs were situated in front of the Hokage's desk that seemed specially designated for the two young men. Both of them, as well as Tsunade, took seat in their proper places. A tense minute passed in silence before the Lady Hokage spoke.

"Rock Lee is dead," she stated soberly. "He passed away very early this morning."

The blonde boy's face blanched white as a sheet and his entire body shook in disbelief. "No! He can't be! You said if he was going to die it would be in the first twelve hours. It's been nearly three days!"

"That isn't what I said," Tsunade calmly corrected. "I said he probably wouldn't live longer than twelve hours. And a lesser man would not have. But Lee, though he never regained consciousness, he fought for his life until the end."

As she was speaking, Naruto's hands had curled into tight sweaty fists and he had to chew his lower lip to keep from shouting in outrage. It wasn't fair and it didn't even make sense that a shinobi as determined and resilient as Fuzzy Brows could ever be extinguished. If Rock Lee was really dead, Naruto wasn't sure what kind of faith, if any, he could possibly have left in the strength of the human heart. And what burned most hotly in his chest was that he had done nothing to save his friend. Then there was her to think about.

He was about to ask Tsunade about her but Sasuke beat him to it. "How is Sakura taking it?" he asked, as stoic as he always was.

"Not well," Tsunade sighed heavily. "She didn't cry, didn't speak. She basically hasn't shown any sign of emotion since we brought him in. And that scares me even more than if she was very outwardly upset. Sakura is bottling up all of her feelings inside of her and I'm very worried. I didn't realize that she and Lee were such close friends."

"Yeah, they've been buddies ever since he saved her in the forest when we were all kids," Naruto replied. Then his tense shoulders relaxed and he looked down at his lap forlornly. "But there's more to it than just that."

Tsunade cocked her head curiously to the side. "Oh?"

"Sakura wasn't with us when it happened," Sasuke explained sadly. "And we think… because she wasn't there to help him… Sakura feels somehow responsible for what happened to Rock Lee."

"Now, I have to ask you boys," said Tsunade. "What were you doing out in the wilderness on your own? And without Sakura?"

For a moment, the two boys just stared at their village's leader, as if she had said something uncharacteristically stupid. Naruto wrinkled his nose. "We were out on the mission that you assigned. You know, the top secret one that only our team was supposed to carry out."

"The monster," Sasuke added. "That has been terrorizing the woods to the south."

"Monster?" Tsunade breathed, her voice spiked with trepidation. "What monster? Who delivered this assignment to you?"

"He had longish black hair," Sasuke described the messenger. "About the same height as me. And he had a lot of old battle scars. Why are you asking? Didn't you give him the mission details to deliver to us?"

The Hokage shook her head seriously. "I did not assign this mission. I've never even heard of any monsters existing near Konoha. And the messenger you've described, he doesn't sound like any of the nin I have working for me."

"What are you saying?" Naruto rudely demanded.

Sasuke rolled his eyes contemptuously. "Don't you get it, Naruto? It was a trap. We were tricked… This wasn't even a real mission."

"But… but there really was a monster!" the agitated blonde argued. "We saw it with our own eyes!"

"I'm going to need you to describe this monster you saw to me," said the Hokage. "Spare no detail."

As Naruto described the beast, he illustrated his words with wild hand gestures and outlandish noises. "It walked on four legs sometimes, but also on two, like a man… only bigger. Much bigger! And it was all covered in grayish-brown fur. I didn't see if it had a tail, but its face was really ugly, like a hyena or a really nasty dog… huge snout and lots of gross yellow teeth, really sharp! It made a sound like a lion roaring combined with a person screaming… And the smell!" The young man paused, his nose flaring and his mouth curving into a disgusted grimace as he recalled that rancid assaulting stink, like decomposing carrion left out in the hot sun.

"It smelled like a corpse," Sasuke intoned darkly.

Tsunade remained thoughtfully quiet for a moment as her shrewd brain processed the vivid description. She was dredging up her memory bank for any knowledge of such a revolting beast, but was coming up empty handed. "Could it have been some sort of genjutsu?" she asked.

"It wasn't an illusion!" Naruto sputtered, sounding utterly impatient with the wise, deceptively old woman in front of him. "We saw Fuzzy Brows kill it! There was blood and guts everywhere!"

Naruto's face was turning purple with anger and his breathing was loud and ragged. Tsunade, however, remained calm and calculating as she tried to extract as much information from the two young jounin as she could without inciting any panic from them.

"So, now we come to the real point of this meeting," she said slowly and deliberately. "You two are going to tell me exactly what happened from the moment Rock Lee appeared on the scene. Then maybe I will get some idea of why the young shinobi found it necessary to open all eight of his chakra gates, effectively ending his own life."

"You knew?" Sasuke asked, shocked.

The Hokage got a sly look. "Of course. Are we forgetting that I am a specialist in medical ninjutsu and the Hokage of this entire village? As soon as I saw Lee, I knew exactly what had caused his injuries. That's how I knew his chances of survival were close to none. That's also how I knew you were lying to me with your original story."

Both boys looked down into their laps in shame. "Were sorry," Sasuke exhaled. "We did lie. We weren't trailing just some enemy ninja. We were trailing the monster. We thought you had assigned this mission… and we were trying to get close enough to get some photographs… We were well hidden, but somehow it saw us and then it went berserk. And then… it started heading towards Konoha. Like it knew exactly where it was going…"

"That's when Fuzzy Brows showed up," Naruto took over. "And he wasn't erratic or shouting like we said he was. He was as calm and serious as I'd ever seen him. And then he said… he said…" The words seemed too thick and sticky to leave the poor boys throat so he turned towards Sasuke, hoping he could say what happened next.

"He said, 'it's Sakura that he's after, he's going to kill her.' He told us he was going to destroy that thing so it could never hurt her. And he made us promise not to interfere because…" Uchiha swallowed hard, his voice beginning to quiver with emotion. "Because Sakura needs us both alive… and Naruto and I have to make it back to her in Konoha."

"We wanted to help him," Naruto said sorrowfully. "But he made us seal the perimeter they were fighting in. So no matter how desperate the battle grew… we couldn't go back on our word. But we saw the whole thing… the whole fight. I… I didn't know Fuzzy Brows had it in him…"

"Why would a monster be after Sakura?" Sasuke mused. "And if she was really the monster's target, how would Rock Lee know about it? And does she herself know about any of this?"

"Considering that it was your team specifically that was sought out for this false mission, it is entirely possible that Haruno Sakura was the creature's intended victim." Said Tsunade. "But it is equally possible, and a lot more logical, that it was after one of you two boys. The heir to the Uchiha clan and the boy who carries the legendary Kyuubi spirit inside him. And although I'm afraid I can't answer your other questions, I feel quite confident that Sakura has no idea about any of this."

"Should we tell her?" Naruto asked earnestly.

"I wouldn't," Tsunade said, shaking her head. "At least not yet. Sakura is clearly very upset right now. She's just lost a very close friend and she has enough stress to deal with without adding murderous beasts to the mix. Besides, we still know very little about the monster and we don't want to jump to any conclusions. I'm going to do some deep and thorough research on this mystery creature, and we'll talk again once I know more. In the meantime, don't tell anyone else what you told me here today. The last thing we need is widespread fear and panic. Now, you two are dismissed."

With these words, the Hokage stood up from her seat slowly and Sasuke and Naruto got up to leave, but before they stepped out the door, Naruto turned to Tsunade with one last sober comment. "We just didn't want her to get hurt… In case you were wondering why we didn't include Sakura on this supposed mission. She's the one person in the world that Sasuke and I would never want to see injured or sad. So we tried to keep her out of this one… It was just too dangerous… But now…" Naruto couldn't hide his frustrated tears. This week he had come closer than he ever wanted to a monster that was straight out of every child's nightmares. He had watched helplessly as talented shinobi and kind friend had willingly exerted himself to the point of agonizing death. And the fact that the girl he'd longed for since childhood was caught up in this whole ordeal and was in so much pain was just too much to bear.

Uchiha Sasuke, while better at hiding his emotions outwardly, was feeling just as distraught as his friend was on the inside. "Tsunade," he said softly. "Do you think there might be anything we could do? You know, to get Sakura back to her normal self?"

"Just be kind to her," Tsunade said, with a gentle smile that reminded the boys that her strength ran deeper than mere ninja skills. "Treat her like you always did, before this happened. And the three of you should go out on missions together as soon as you can. That's the best advice I can offer. What Rock Lee said is true, Sakura needs you two. Now more than ever."

"Thank you, Lady Hokage," Sasuke said as he opened the door to her office.

"Yes, thank you," Naruto added. And the two boys slipped out the door, knowing their lives would probably never be quite the same.

"Naruto," Sasuke spoke quietly as the young men retreated down the staircase from the Hokage's quarters. "I'll tell you this now. I'm going to be the one who makes Sakura happy again."

"Not if I beat you to it," Naruto said, with just the slightest hints of a forgotten mischievous grin.

To be continued…