Hello readers and welcome to another chapter of my story. Now before I start I want to let you know a bit just because I got asked this. So just to make it clear to all this is NOT and will never be a pure smut story. If that is what you are looking for then you won't find it here. This is due to me disliking stories that completely ruin whatever they had for a good story simply because they want to have some smut in every chapter. In this story I don't really plan on having much full sex scenes at all. In fact you probably will be able to count how many are in this entire story with just your fingers (less than 10). Though there will be some fluff or slightly sexual things for comedy and/or other reasons. (ex: heavy flirting, reading a bit of jiraiya's books….ect.) Anyways on to the chapter.

Chapter 44

~ Tokiwa and Shizuka; trip back to village ~

Shizuka was now walking back to her own village with a very small smile on her face. After all not only did she not get stuck with having to marry a complete stranger but she also had some time before she had to commit to said marriage. Which was even better than the best scenario she imagined.

"..Shizuka-san you do realize that even though you may have managed to get away with not taking him home there will still be a lot of problems to deal with when we reach the village." Tokiwa told the girl honestly.

"What do you mean? We did exactly what the village laws required me to do."

"Yes you did…but you were also supposed to bring him back to the which you didn't do; and before you start the argument the 'argument' that your husband has several holes that will have to be dealt with. So, in other words the council will be figuring out the best course of action for this…something that will require you to be present for the entire time." Tokiwa told the girl who grimaced at what she meant.

"So, in other words I am going to have to spend hours listening to the council argue and try and decide stuff for me." She realized with a groan. "Why can't I just get rid of the council?…at least the old council who are WAY too stuck in the old ways of the village." Shizuka complained.

*sigh* "Like I told you last time you asked they simply have too much sway with the village's people. So while technically you could get rid of them due to you being the leader. If you did so they could and more than likely would rally up a good portion of the village to cause a rebellion at worse or chaos at best…so while you may not like them it is better in the long run to just have to face them rather than a section of the village.

*sigh* "Why does politics have to be so complex." She complained but still continued on now determined to get the best plan she could without causing a rebellion. "I may have a LOT of work to do I have a least a decent amount of time to grieve..and to be honest even if there is no way for me to stop the marriage there is FAR worse people to spend my life with." She thought seeing as she was well aware of just how kind and caring her friend is.

~Konoha; Hokage office~

Tsunade was currently looking through a report with a frown firmly stuck to her face.

"Kami damn it. First Jiraiya manages to mess with Naruto and me with something that will surely be a political mess for weeks on end. Now I get this find from a patrol that shows that my other ex-teamate has left me problems as well. Grr, why is it that recently all of my problems have been caused by the two idiots I had to deal with for years on end?" Tsunade thought angrily before slamming the scroll down onto her desk.

"Someone get me Tenzo…and some good sake!" She yelled to seemingly no one; though if someone was to focus closely they would notice a brief blur. A few minutes later Tenzo came into her office carrying a bottle of what oculd only be assumed to be sake.

"You asked for me Lady Tsunade?" He asked her kindly.

"Yes, but first hand me the sake." She ordered while holding her hand out for the bottle. Tenzo quickly gave her the bottle and stood there watching as she took several big gulps of the alcohol.

"I will never be able to imagine just how much sake you have to drink before you can literally drink strong sake like it is water while seemingly not even getting a buzz." Tenzo thought as he watched his leader.

"Ah, I needed that." Tsunade mumbled out after finally finishing her first 'sip' of her drink. "Now I called you here for more than just my booze of course, but first remove your mask." Tsunade ordered and he quickly did just that showing his rather expressionless face. "For this mission you will be a jonin by the name of…Yamato leading a team into one of Orochimaru's bases that was discovered recently. You will be leading Naruto Uzumaki and Sakura Haruna…along with…" Tsunade began before being interrupted.

"Lady Tsunade do you really think it is wise to have those two do anything having to deal with Orochimaru?" Yamato asked concerned about if they would be able to focus.

"Well Yamato to be honest with you I have picked those two not because of my own personal idea but simply because they along with you have the best chance to successfully look through one the snake bastard's bases. You see while it is supposedly empty there still will be traps and other surprises if I know that snake good enough. So, it would be best to have the best medical ninja we can spare to go to be able to provide immediate help to the team; namely Sakura. As for Naruto…well I looked through his records myself and to be quite honest it would be a challenge for ME to create a poison strong enough to not be dealt with by his Uzumaki blood." She told him honestly remembering the time she actually tried to kill a sample of Naruto's blood with common poisons only to watch as it somehow had no effect. "Also, the reason that I am sending you instead of Kakashi is simply due to you having two unique qualities that he doesn't. One you have actually already been in one of the snakes bases and two you are able to help Naruto if he does lose control. She explained added in knowing that would be his next question.

"And while that sounds like a decent plan Lady Tsunade may I make a suggestion for the last member of this team?" a new voice asked politely making them both look behind Yamato to see Danzo standing in the doorway.

"And who would you suggest to go on this mission?" She asked keeping her tone peaceful but everyone could see how much she disliked the man in front of her.

"Well while you have planned everything for if the team gets poisoned how about we add someone who will be able to prevent them from running into them in the first place. So, I recommend a ninja I have personally been training named Sai who specializes in gathering information. After all having him there could very well save the team from being stuck in an ambush or wasting time waiting for the medic to deal with a poison." He told her making complete sense.

"Damn, him…I don't want any help from this bastard who surely is only thinking of ways to help himself but his reasoning is too good for me to think of a way to prevent him from having his ninja come." Tsunade thought angrily as she clenched her fist. "Very well have your ninja be ready in two hours at the northern gate." Tsunade told him getting a small nod before Danzo left the room and began to go do just that; she then turned her attention back to Yamato. "Do not let this ninja he has recommended out of your sight. There is no way that old warhawk would recommend someone if they wouldn't be helping him in some way." She told him and got a nod from the man. "Good now go prepare for the mission. I will send out my Anbu to let the other two know of the mission now." She told him and watched as both he and one of her hidden anbu left the room.

"This mission isn't going to go as smoothly as I hope it will…I just know it." Tsunade thought with a frown.

+ 1 hour 55 minutes later +

Naruto and Sakura were currently standing by the gate waiting on the other two members of their team when all of a sudden, they had to jump out of the way of a massive black beast that pounced on the spot they were standing moments ago.

"What the hell!?" Naruto yelled out in surprise not expecting to be attacked in his own village. He then noticed the beast turn and prepare to attack them again; only for it to be stopped in its tracks by one strong punch from Sakura. Course even she was surprised when she saw the beast explode into black liquid instead of being launched away from them. Due to this she missed the small black snake that came at her from a blind spot and only managed to get out of the way thanks to Naruto shoving her. They both then look around and notice a single man on a nearby rooftop. So, Naruto quickly launched a chain at the figure only for him to jump to another building and sit down. The figure than began to draw and only sopped when he felt the cold steel of a kunai on his neck.

Though instead of being worried about said kunai the man simply looked over to where Naruto was still standing with a chain coming from his hand near Sakura. "A perfectly hidden substitution with a clone…impressive." The man told Naruto who paid no attention to the fact that Sakura jumped up behind him.

"Enough with the compliments. Why the hell did you attack us?" Naruto asked angrily.

"No need to get mad I just read that before you start a mission with new people it is best to get a good idea of what they can do." He told Naruto with a clearly fake smile.

"That doesn't mean you attack your teammates completely out of the blue!" Naruto growled at him. "Listen…."

"Sai"

"..Sai. If you attack us again I will take it as you treating both the mission and our lives and deal with it properly. Is that understood?" Naruto told Sai while releasing a decent amount of Ki after moving his kunai from the teen's neck.

"Understood tiny dick-san." Sai told him with a smile causing Naruto to growl at the insult. "Huh, that's strange. I thought this book said that giving others nicknames was a good way to become closer with people." Sai muttered with a small frown while taking out a book about friendships causing both Naruto and Sakura to look at him in disbelief.

"What the hell is with this guy!" Naruto though still annoyed with his 'nickname'

"Ugh, this weirdo is going to make this mission sooo much worse than it already will be." Sakura thought nearly crying out of annoyance. Lucky for her Yamato came to greet them changing her focus.

"Hello all of you. So, are you all ready for the mission?" He asked cheerfully and got three nods from the group in front of him.

"Ok so as you know we are going to be examining one of Orochimaru's secret bases. Now this will be dangerous due to the fact that traps and who knows what else is more than likely going to be found. So, when we get there we will make sure that we go as safely as possible. So, Sai you will be taking the lead with the ink beasts that Lord Danzo says you are good with. Your job is to try and let us know of as many traps as possible so we won't get blindsided. Then it will be Naruto and my turn to go in for us to hopefully be able to fully deactivate all the traps that we come to. Finally Sakura you will be the last person in due to you being our key player if any one of us gets hurt from something down there. Now is there any questions?" Yamato asks completely serious.

"Yea do we really have to work with this weirdo?" Naruto mentally asked glancing over at the pale teen beside him. Still he shook his head no like all the rest of them.

"Ok then let's head out." Yamato tell them and with that they begin to rush towards where the found base. A trip that was quiet before Sakura decided to try and get to know a bit about her new partner.

"So, Sai what exactly were those creatures you 'tested' us with?"

"Those were my drawings. My jutsu allows me to have anything I draw be able to be used in the real world." Sai told her blandly.

"Huh, so you just have a scroll filled with a bunch of those creatures ready to fight with?" She asks picturing how terrifying an army of black beasts would look to anyone they were fighting.

"Hmm, my last try and making a 'friendship' ended horribly. Maybe this is my chance to create one with Sakura and then I will be able to get on the jinchuriki's good side easier." Sai thought and quickly decided that he would partially break one of Danzo's rules in order to help his mission..he just wouldn't give them enough information that they could use it against him. "No, my jutsu needs me to put my chakra into the ink as I create them. They then siphon off my chakra to stay useable until I give them enough to come to life." He tells her honestly.

"Huh so if you did try and create an army they would basically feed off of you until you had no chakra to actually fight with when it came time to use them…interesting." Sakura admitted partially curious about the new type of jutsu she saw. "Hey Naruto maybe you should take some drawing lessons and use this jutsu as well. Maybe when some of your chakra is siphoned off you will be actually able to control it a bit." She teased.

"Oy, my chakra control is way better than it was thanks to actually needing control for my bloodline." Naruto growled at the girl. "…course I still can't really do a decent genjutsu or any medical jutsu" he whispers out as well annoyed that even with all of the time he spent on chakra control those two types of jutsu were still locked from him. "Meh, even if it is annoying at least I don't really need either of those fields. I mean I can dispel genjutsu decently and for medical…well I have never really stayed hurt in way I could actually do something to myself before I healed anyways. After all most of my fights tend to either be some crazy killing blow that takes me a while to heal while I am down or simply continued until it was over with the Kyuubi's chakra healing me up." He thought. Course Sakura seemed to want to respond with another comment before they all noticed Yamato get more focused all of a sudden.

"Okay we are at the location. Now remember our plan." Yamato told them and they all got focused on the task at hand. So, Sai quickly made dozens of ink mice that rushed into the bases opening. Their group then waited for about twenty minutes before the mice came back to Sai and they watched as they formed back into the paper but somehow seemed to form into words.

"There are at least twenty traps spread throughout the building with a room that was sealed off completely that my mice were unable to squeeze into." Sai told them quietly. Yamato simply nodded and signaled for them to move in. An order that they was immediately followed as Naruto and Yamato took the lead and Sai and Sakura followed them.

The base when they entered didn't look like anything too special. In fact currently all they saw was a straight stone hallway that was big enough for two people to walk through side by side comfortably. Though along this path there were several doors and the path clearly continued on in another direction at the end. They continued their search taking it slow and carefully examining each room that they came to. While they did so they deactivated all the traps that they knew of thanks to Sai's searching. Though they were unable to see if anyone recently came into the base due to the tracks that Sai's mice left ruining any tracks they could have seen. Course that was only a minor annoyance for them instead they focused on the building itself. For each room they entered already seemed to be something that would come out of a true horror film. For event though none of the rooms they were in currently had much of anything in them they each had a good amount of blood and gore that had long since hardened on the cold floor. They also found a room which seemed to keep record of the subjects being taken in as there were several scrolls filled with various names and a small amount of information that wasn't of any use to them.

Though they finally began to see even more of the bases horrors as they turned the corner and saw a medium sized room that had a few tables on the side that had a various weapons though showed signs of being cleared out of a good portion of the tools it originally held. From this room there was two other doors. One that lead to a room that was filled with countless jars holding various organs in various colored fluids. Thankfully the other side seemed to simply be a small living area for about a dozen people.

"Damn this place is awful." Naruto mumbles disgusted with what he already has seen.

"Yes, but sadly this doesn't seem to be one of Orochimaru's main bases…it seems this is just a place he had a few…researchers do their studies. But they had to leave suddenly by the looks of it…I wonder why" Yamato told him as he kept his focus on the last area they had to search. Which was the sealed room that Sai was unable to give them any information on. They looked to be relatively normal doors that you would expect to see in a hospital. Except these swinging doors had a large seal on it that currently seemed to have a small amount of chakra somehow flowing through it if what Yamato sensed was correct. Something that shouldn't be possible due to how long the rest of the base seemed to be abandoned for.

"Huh, why does this door seem to have some chakra flowing through it…it should have burnt out long ago if the dust around here is anything to go off of." Sakura question coming to the same question Yamato had. Course Sai simply walked closer to the door and noticed a small table that had spots where the dust clearly was displaced.

"It seems that someone was here recently." Sai tells the team who tense up and make sure that they were ready to fight.

"…well whoever they were they have to have either charged the door and left or clocked it behind them." Naruto told them before looking at the seal. "This large seal is just a simple lock mechanism that will keep the door shut for as long as it is powered. It also has a storage mark here letting it run for at least a month if given about an A rank jutsu worth of chakra." Naruto explained looking at the seal. "But it seems that there has been something else added as well." He adds in when he notices that the circle of writing seemed to be a bit more cluttered than it needed to be. While he was trying to figure this out though Sai was also looking around the table next to it with a small amount of curiosity. Eventually Sai managed to find a scroll that was mostly covered in papers besides an edge that had "experiment 62-1b" on it. So, due to wanting to find out about the base he picked up the scroll and failed to notice the small blue glow that came from under the papers he ignored. Luckily Naruto managed to see the glow and followed it as it quickly came closer to the main seal. "Shit!" he yelled out before tackling Sai back to where Sakura and Yamato was and quickly put up a chakra shield.

While he did this the chakra reached the doors main seal and made it shine bright blue for just a few seconds before the entire thing exploded leaving a massive hole in the wall where the door use to be.

*cough, cough* "What happened?" Sakura asked as she tried keeping herself from breathing in the dust that was kicked up from the blast.

"The seal had a recent addition to it that connected it to another random seal. I was trying to figure out where the other seal was until Sai managed to set it off. Turns out it was apparently a proximity seal that was connect to another storage of chakra. Said chakra was released from the second seal and flooded the doors seal until it destabilized and this was the result." Naruto explained waving his hand at the hole.

"How did removing a simple scroll manage to cause all of this?" Yamato asked not expecting seals to be so complex.

"Let me see the scroll for a second." Naruto ordered and Sai shrugged and gave it to him. He then quickly looked it over and found a small seal. "Ah, you see this?" he asked them pointing at the small mark. "This is a relatively new seal that the Tsuchinkage's sealers developed. It is a modified storage seal that holds chakra into something. They changed it so that there was what could best be described as a lock to said chakra that can only be opened when a certain part of the seal is removed. In this case that part of the seal was written on a scroll that let the chakra free as soon as it was picked up." Naruto explained remembering when he spent days studying the seal with Jiraiya in one of the man's hideouts.

"Well I guess it is safe to say that someone expected us here; though they may not know that we survived that explosion. So, we will move in silently from here on out and try to figure out if the person that set this trap is still here waiting for us. Stay armed at all times." Yamato ordered grabbing out a kunai and holding it in his off hand. He then watched as Naruto and Sakura did the same and Sai drew his tanto out of its sheath and held it in a reverse grip. He then began to cautiously walk into the room that seemed to have a small amount of sunlight somehow coming from the roof.

(AN: Now I may have forgotten what they are properly called. What Sai's weapon is the small knife he normally carried on his back (I think)…will look into it but for now it isn't super important)

The rest of the group followed Yamato in on for them all to tense up as the room suddenly got brighter as torches around the massive rooms walls lit on fire without cause. What this reviled made Sakura release an involuntary gasp as she saw at least one hundred bodies strewn around the ground in various states of decay.

"Lovely isn't it." They suddenly hear from across the room causing the team to quickly look over and notice that they now were in the presence of Orochimaru himself. "All of these experiments dying off showing just how much of a success Sasuke-kun's training is." Orochimaru told then with a twisted smile.

"Sasuke did all of this." Naruto asked disgusted seeing as most of these bodies clearly showed that they weren't ninja. In fact a good amount of them could have been normal citizens that were forced to fight if the clothes were anything to go off of.

"Hehehe yes. Isn't it wonderful? All of these failed experiments doing their final duty to show that my Sasuke-kun is growing to be just as I wanted him to be." Orochimaru told them still smiling.

"H-how could Sasuke-kun do this?" Sakura asked horrified that he would perform what appeared to be a needless slaughter.

"Oh, don't worry none of the experiments were needed anymore..haha actually if I remember correctly I made them give Sasuke his test by telling the fools that they would be set free if they won…too bad they failed to get close to their hopeless goal." Orochimaru told them chuckling. He then noticed that Naruto was completely tense and was already leaking out a small amount of the Kyuubi's chakra as his rage began to clearly show and KI begin to fill the room slightly.

"Now now Naru-chan as much as I would love to play with you I am too busy at the moment preparing my perfect subject." Orochimaru taunted Naruto with a smile then easily dodged the chain that was launched at his head. "Oh, don't worry Naru-chan I have made sure that you will get to have some fun as well even if I can't fight you. Now have fun clearing out the last of one of my training bases." He told the group before quickly disappearing before anyone of them could think of following him. Then then watched as something seeming clogged the holes in the roof as they saw the light quickly fade while a small amount of dirt and stone feel to the ground.

"What the hell did he mean by that?" Naruto asked now confused and feeling like something bad was coming soon enough.

"I don't know but let's get out of here and try to see if we can get some information about where Orochimaru went to before we finish the mission." Yaato told them and they all turned around and were going to run back out of the whole before they heard some noise coming from behind a door on the other side of the large room.

"What the hell?" Sakura mumbles out trying to figure out what was coming. Needless to say they quickly turned back around and prepared themselves to fight whatever was coming from that door. A door that was soon launched open by the things force showing them all what there were going against. And what they saw truly horrified all of them except for Sai who seemed to only go a bit of a shade paler if possible.

"Grr, Orochimaru you inhumane bastard!" Naruto growled out beyond pissed at what he saw.

And I am sorry but due to me running out of time….Na, I am kidding. This time I actually felt it would be best to leave this as a cliff hanger to keep some of your interest…Though to be fair this is a few hours late seeing as I normally would like my chapter out in the morning but meh it needed the time. Personally I am actually happy with it and I hope that all of you readers are as well….if not then well maybe I just am not improving enough to keep peoples attention. Anyways Ja Ne.