I do not own Naruto. There may be OCness, and please take my ambiguity and imagine to your heart's content.

White Lies

Anbu try-outs were Itachi's favorite time of the year. Being the head and lead tactician Itachi was given free reign over all ANBU 'trainees' as he liked to call them. But, Itachi believed and enforced that the process should include even the veterans; which meant Itachi had free reign over all ANBU.

He was almost smiling at the files, of all the poor souls that were trying to become or return to the second to top rank, the top being hokage. He had a different initiation planned for each person and if there was one thing Itachi loved it was being creative and not in the pastel sense of the word. But thinking of pastel, Itachi had something extra special planned for the newest applying field medic.

He had been withheld from his ANBU duties due to her lie. Tsunade believed her student was the most dutiful angel the world had ever seen and had backhanded him across several training fields into the Forest of Death when he tried to explain that it was not the case. For an old woman she still had a lot of speed, which was probably due to the fact of having a pervert for a colleague.

Of course, for disrupting the peace of the third hokage, for Tsunade was rather loud and obnoxious when she was drunk in a hospital bed, he was taken off ANBU charter for two weeks and docked pay. The pay he would have gotten was used to re-landscape the Forest of Death after massive, multiple fires, sections of uprooted trees and crumpled earth had left the place annihilated.

The two weeks had left him at home. With his mother.

So-because of 'one little, white lie' (as the girl had called it)-he had been forced into two weeks of constant motherly attention, which he hadn't had since he was four, nor did he ever plan to have again. For as much as he loved the woman, there was only so much he could take of her puppy eyes, guilt trips and manipulating ways. She had him cleaning floors, cooking dinner, shopping, exchanging roof tiles and emptying bed pans of the elders, because one day he'd 'have to put up with them without her' unless he got a wife.

Wife.

That had been another area (not including: training, tactical assignments, poisons, clan politics, food, tea, spices, bath water, spas, neighbors and clothing) where she deemed it necessary to give both her opinion and advice.

Meanwhile, Tsunade had been taken off the hospital's charter for four weeks without pay and as punishment she took her apprentice out to a spa in the far reaches of Mist Country in search of the best masseuse in the world, because the so called "Angel" of the Hidden Leaf Village was looking a bit stressed.

Yes, he had been planning Sakura Haruno's initiation into ANBU for a year now.

She was going to pay.

/ Originally, this was written for CSE's storyline (over seven months ago) but because of a small plot change it no longer fit.

Sorry for no updates on my other stories.

I hoped you enjoyed. Thank you to those that have reviewed, I appreciate them.

Z.z