At the sound of someone knocking on the door, he jumped, grabbing a kunai before opening it a crack to see who could possibly be calling at this hour when he just got home. Seeing the pink hair, he quickly put the kunai away and opened the door further. "Sakura, what are you doing here?"
"I heard your conversation with Sasuke, he's not ashamed of you, you know. He talks about how disappointed your parents are in what happened, but he's always been proud of you, proud of your memory. He knew that there was more to the stories he heard about you than what was being told to him. I'm glad you're back, he talked more this evening than he had for the past two weeks. But it seems that you're much the same way. So go figure. But I just thought you might like to know that. I didn't mean to step in where I'm not wanted, especailly when it comes to family matters."
Itachi's draw dropped, he had hardly heard her say more than two sentences all night and Sasuke was quiet! This is not how he had expected to spend his first evening back. "Thank you, for all of that, would you like to come in for some tea or something?"
"No, I have to be going, but I thought you would like to know that about Sasuke. The three of us are close, makes dating for me hell, but Iwouldn't trade them. They're the brothers I wasn't given at birth, and we've grown to love eachother, in spite of what you might have heard tonight. Have a good evening, Itachi-kun, sorry, I can't just call you 'Itachi' my mother would skin me alive if I ever did that to my elder." With that said, she was gone. 'Damn, she was fast, might be able to keep up with me,' Itachi thought.
Closing the door to the outside and the thoughts of tonight, he was now emotionally wiped out. He walked back to the masterbed room in his new apartment and got undressed, then slipped into bed to sleep a heavy sleep full of dreams of his brother and team.
/Next Scene/
Sakura slowly walked back to her apartment. She couldn't believe that she had followed Itachi to his apartment, much less not been noticed. She was almost ashamed that she had over heard Itachi and Sasuke talking . . . almost. Not knowing what had overcome her senses, she decided to take a run around Kohona to clear her mind and tire her body so she could sleep. Finally being able to rest her body and block out her mind, Sakura returned to her apartment, having moved out of her parents house a few years ago, and took a long hot shower. The day had been a good one, long but good. And now she was ready for bed, turning off the water, she climbed out of the tub and grabbed a towel to dry herself off. After wrapping another towel around her wet hair, she crawled into bed and quickly fell into a deep slumber.
/Next Scene/
Sakura was the first one to arrive at the bridge the next morning. It was barely dawn, but she had been up for over an hour already, running on her own. She enjoyed her early morning exercises, they always helped to clear her mind. After about twenty minutes of listening to the birds and meditating, she sense a charkra signature coming closer. She could tell that it was Sasuke, always arived to train before Naruto did. For some reason, Naruto had started to honor Kakashi time, go figure. "Sasuke, you're early." Going back to her mediation, Sakura ignored Sasuke's presence. Sasuke began to think on this, this had become thier morning ritual for a over a year now. Sakura had stopped chasing him, and half of the time ignored him. He didn't really mind, they understood eachother, they were like siblings, the sister he never had. Now only if the loud mouth would hurry up they could get started with handicapped sparring (two-on-one). Appearing as if on thought, Naruto finally arrived.
"Finally, you dobe, we can get started. We'll take you first." With that, both Sakura and Sasuke lept into the trees to start stragies. Sakura was almost as good as Shikumaru at them. "Sakura, what do you think we should do today?"
Before she could think up of a good idea to take him down, Itachi appeared beside them. "I think you should send out a Kage Bushin and attempt to take him underground, Sasuke, then Sakura suprise him by taking him on one-on-one with your chakura strength, it would help build up your stamina." With that, he jumped back and hid in the trees.
"He, um, he actually had a good idea, Sakura, you need to work on stamina, and it'll give me time to come up with something to attack him with while you're busy."
"Whatever, works for me." With that Sasuke was gone and Sakura waited for her cue to jump into the fight.
Itachi sat on a branch on the other side of the fight, watching the three, he knew Sakura's stamina wasn't as good as what it could be, so he wanted to help her build it up before he taught them anything complex. Sasuske and Naruto had the stamina, but not the kind of chakura control that Sakura had. An interesting trade off. She had gotten better, much better in fact, but there was still more potiential for her. After watching the three of them battle eachother, he saw how much they had learned the seven years he was gone. He was beginning to see why they worked so well together, throughout the whole morning, trading off the handicap, no one got a real advantage off of eachother. The three as a team would be close to unstopable. It looked as if they could almost predict eachother's thoughts and attacks before they could be launched.
At lunch the three of them stopped and Itachi came out of the trees to talk to go to lunch with them. "Wow, you guys are good, unbelieveable. I have never seen a team like this. No wonder Tsunade-sama did not want to break you guys up. Just a few comments, Sakura your chakura control is amazing, it is very obvious that you learned alot from Tsunade-sama, but you need to work on stamina, it's improved,but it could be better. Naruto, you're to eager for close range fighting, we'll work on your long range fighting. Sasuke, the exact opposite, and both of you will work on chakura control. Granted not to the extent of Sakura, but you need to learn how to focus it more, conserve it better. Well, that's it, how about lunch? Then we'll get to work with building up your skills."
Sakura was impressed, no one, not even Tsunade could get those two to listen like they just did. "It's Itachi-kun's treat for lunch today, and there's a new restaurant I want to try, Naruto that look isn't going to work on me."
The restuarant, much to Naruto's and Sasuke's humor and Itachi's dismay, was a really nice italian restuarant. After sitting down and placing their orders, Sakura sat back to enjoy the fight that she knew was forthcoming with Naruto and Sasuke, they always argued or something close to when they all had lunch together, which was just about every day. As the disagreement on when to use kage bushins ensued, Itachi just sat there, not sure what to do. Sakura just grinned, knowing this would last all of lunch. They loved to do this especially in front of other people as it kept embarrassing moments from happening too often. It was a pattern that they had all become confortable with.
After lunch, the four of them made their way back to the clearing. Itachi then started in on what he wanted each of them to do. "Naruto and Sasuke, for now, I want you to create threads of chakura, like this. "At this point Itachi demonstrated what he wanted them to do. Create a thread of chakura that could be attached to anything. Also a very useful technique in battle. After the two started working, Itachi left them with instructions to create chakura threads as long as the field and then to weave them, all of them being perfect or they would have to start over again.
Walking past to were Sakura stood patiently waiting and watching her teammates, Itachi told her to follow him and continued to walk to the stream that was near the meadow. Walking to the center of the stream, Itachi finally stopped and turned to look at Sakura. Sakura followed him out onto the middle of the water, using Chakura to stay on top of the water. Not really having to think about the shifts she need to make to stay afloat. "Good, you don't have to think to stay on top. That's good, you're going to need that to do these excercises. First, I want 500 push-ups, 500 situps, and 500 laps, laps are going to be 50 kilometers down stream, and back, a total of 100 kilometers. All on the water, it will help build your muscles as well as your chakura reserves."
Knowing that this was going to make her tired and sore. She decided to go ahead and not try and argue the point that she would probably collapse during these exercises, she responded with "hai." And dropped down to start on the 500 required push-ups. Thirty minutes later and already starting to feel tired, she started on her sit-ups. Itachi just standing there watching and counting, making sure she did everyone of them. An hour later, she finished the sit-ups and went ahead and started on the laps that she had to do. Itachi had left once to make sure that they guys where doin the threads right, she knew how to do those. It was part of training Tsuande had made her go through. And judging by the shouts coming from the area right before Itachi came back, they had done them wrong and were being made to redo them. They probably made them too thick to be invisible, which was the goal. Smirking at the thought that should could actually out do them on chakura control, she continued her laps, 10 down, only 490 left to go, oh, goodie.
She was starting to get really tired, her steps were getting slower and slower, finally a couple of hours later, Itachi called a halt to her training. Slowly walking to the shore, she asked "Itachi-kun, why are you stopping me? I still have 250 more laps to do."
"You are extremely low on chakura, your goal for the next week will be to work up to 500 laps, seven days. You've done well, better than I expected. So you should be able to build it up, just make sure you relax after you finished, and that you stretch, but you know both of those things. Come one, want to see something funny. They can't get the threads small enough, if you really wanted to, you know you could show them up." Itachi just had a grin on his face, knowing that her showing her teammates up would really irk the two of them, and thinking it might be fun, she agreed. She slowly meandered over to where Sasuke and Naruto were trying to make nearly invisible strings made of chakura and watched them for a little while. Deciding that she was tired of waiting, she carefully molded the chakura into thin threads that were too hard to see. She then went around the clearing and set traps that she knew the would walk in to. After she finished, she walked to the center and waited for Itachi to tell them that they were done for the day.
After giving Sakura time to set up the traps and move to the center of the field, Itachi walked to the center and called out for their attention. When Naruto and Sasuke came to the middle of the field, Itachi said "ok, we're done here for the day, you two still have a LONG way to go until your control is refined as Sakura's. So let's call it a night, I'll see you tomorrow, here, at 10 a.m. Get some rest, you're going to need it, you will do this until you get it right. So see you tomorrow."
Sasuke and Naruto both turned to go in their respective directions for their homes. Sakura and Itachi just stood there, waiting. After a few minutes they heard both of the boys yelling into the evening and cursing Sakura for being so damn good and sneaky on top of it. Sakura just started to laugh and headed for her apartment that was on the other side of town. She wanted to be alone to think for a while.
Itachi just watched her leave, something about her fascinated him, he wasn't sure why, but she did. He just wished that he knew what he could do about it. Maybe after helping them, they could talk about this, and maybe, just maybe, she could develop something for him, something he could work off of.