3.
Title: Snake Eyes
Character(s): Sakura, Shikamaru, Chouji, Sasuke; slight mentionings: Kakashi, Itachi
Word Count: 429
Summary: Sakura seeks a way to learn of the newly formed Hebi.
A/N: I, personally, like the minimal interaction between Shikamaru and co. Thinking of a prompt to suit Team 10.
Now, she resents that she is only able to keep track of Sasuke's whereabouts by overhearing wisps of fragmented sentences in the form of words, told in a melancholy tone.
She lightly steps every two months on tree branches overhead the same clearing that takes shinobi towards a main passage out of Konohagakure, where the former Team Seven last spent their time together in their childhoods, aiming to sneak those damn bells off of Kakashi-sensei's waist; where Shikamaru reclines and stations himself regularly against a great oak tree that provides him with all the shade needed to activate the epitome of limits of his Kagemane no jutsu, while cautiously watching those whom flicker by.
Chouji would meet him when their mission scheduling permitted, if not for the fact that S-class missions could be finished within a period of a week to two months, for the best fights were said to always ended quicker, surrounded by a slew of satisfied bloodlusty eyes.
He has seen her; she's taken note of it before. His hand would twitch. He'd almost pause in mid-tirade, giving away his discomforature at being appraised from the back, where his eyes couldn't follow. Then Chouji would comment on who was the last disappointing person he was dealt with the task of barreling over and the second would tick by in acceptance.
She told herself that she only lingered to hear any news that she would monopolize herself in extensive detail to make sure that was all that could be said of, before the fifth Hokage would briskly tell her of this the next time they met. She told herself that she neither needed to hear, nor cared of who the Hebi were currently seeking out and invading. She promised herself that she wouldn't torture her shattered hopes with news of what Sasuke's faction was embarking on, for it had been years and she is over this by now.
She did not want to know what else the Mangekyou Sharigan eyes had granted him since he had returned and completed the requirement that his eldest brother and Akatsuki's halcyon reaper, Itachi Uchiha, set as an option for him. She did not need to know what else Naruto's martyring sacrifice had brought as a token of splendorous power for Sasuke to wield.