Disclaimer: Oh for goodness sake, why would I write fanfiction if I owned Naruto? Are ye all daft?

Authoress' Note: Oh my gosh! This chapter is my longest yet! I really can write a lot when I put my mind to it. I'd like to point out that I was too lazy to go over the battle of Sasori and Sakura in the Shippuuden anime, so any jutsu that either person may or may not have used in that will not be included in this chapter. Frankly, I would suck at trying to recall ALL the jutsu. I can barely remember stuff for my exams coming up on Wednesday! Also, this is my first true ninja battle so it might seem a little rushed, but I felt the need to write it like it is because my mind is almost dead from the lateness of the hour, lack of eating, and the fact that I spent a good few hours writing in vampire roleplays. Thank goodness I have no lessons today, or tomorrow in American perspective. Please note I won't be updating this until my exams are over or I feel less stressed out. Should be by Sunday then heheh... Thankies to all those who read the last chapter, and a collossal thank you to my reviewers! I seriously love you all! You guys and girls are amazing!

Chapter 9

Sakura and Sasori followed the Darkness ninja's path through the forest, which was easy due to the sounds of the ninja ahead and the newly acquired light that they had all created. Sasori's best guess was that they would emerge from the forest in about an hour, which gave them both only an hour to remove as many enemy ninja as possible. Sasori still didn't believe that this idea would work, but he so desperately wanted to cause damage to the ones who had imprisoned him. Protecting the Wind Country was not his priority at all, even though the one-tailed demon container lived there. It was just something that would happen in the process of eliminating the Darkness ninja.

If he was being perfectly honest with himself, Sasori wanted to help the girl as well. He truly did, yet he couldn't work out why he did. It was just something…something that felt right. After this whole mess was over with though, he'd forget it happened and continue with his life like before. No more big green eyes that shine with emotions. No more perfectly smiling face. No more…What the heck was he thinking?? Sasori slapped his forehead in annoyance, causing Sakura to glance at him with confusion written across her face and in her green eyes that shine…

"Shut up! What is wrong with me?!"

Sakura stopped running and gave Sasori a look that clearly said 'He's crazy.' She cautiously walked towards the puppet master, even as the Darkness army marched on ahead of them gaining more and more distance. Sasori was cursing at himself and smacking his forehead for no reason that Sakura could see. Maybe he was only a machine and now he was broken? Sakura didn't believe that such an expressive being could truly be a machine or a puppet, but she still knew he couldn't be normal.

"Erm…Sasori, are you okay?"

He didn't respond to her question at all, just repeated over and over, "I don't care!"

Sakura took that as her cue to do something before they lost anymore ground. She stepped closer to Sasori, raised her right hand back, and slapped him across the face. She didn't even use chakra, but his head still moved from the impact. She gasped when she saw it go the whole way around before swivelling slowly back to face forwards once more. The girl took a step back from the boy and tripped over a protruding tree root, landing gracelessly on her behind. Even though the impact hurt slightly, Sakura still couldn't tear her eyes away from the person in front of her who had just rotated his head all the way around!

Eventually she stuttered out, "S-Sasori..?"

His dark eyes slid to her, but all insanity seemed to have vanished from his eyes and face. He looked almost…embarrassed? Sakura didn't know quite how to describe the small piece of emotion that passed through Sasori's eyes, but at least she knew then that he was not a monster because he could feel. She relaxed slightly at that thought, but she was still worried about why his head had rotated so much.

After a very awkward silence, Sasori graced Sakura with a response, "Pretend that you didn't see that. Nobody has ever done that to me before, and I'd prefer it if you never brought it up, ever."

"But why did…?"

"Why did my head rotate 360-degrees?" Sakura nodded. The puppet master continued, "The answer is simple: I'm a puppet, sort of."

Sakura fainted.

15 minutes later

Sasori poked the pink-haired girl in the side for the eighth time in the last few minutes, growing bored with having to wait for her to wake up. He did very much hate to wait, but for some reason he wasn't so angry while he waited for Sakura. She almost calmed him while she lay peacefully on the forest floor and he sat next to her and watched her sleep. He reached out to touch her cheek, but immediately stopped himself.

"What am I thinking? What am I even doing?! This girl means nothing to me. I don't even know her, so why am I acting like this? I should have killed her the moment I was freed, but I had to listen to some stupid voice in my head telling me not to. I should not be acting like some love-struck teenager!"

In his anger, Sasori's voice had risen which cause Sakura to wake up at last. She heard the last sentence in his tirade and was momentarily stunned by his words. She didn't understand why he was so angry, but apparently part of his anger was stemming from being 'love-struck'. She didn't know who he could be infatuated with, but she could guess it was probably her. Sakura wasn't confident in her ability to attract guys, not by a long shot, but she suspected that she had trapped one guy because she was the only female within miles and he hadn't started acting so strange until quite recently.

Sakura giggled when the puppet master began to tear up grass in his rage, probably imagining Sakura as the grass. When Sasori heard her laughter, he turned his head – normally – and glared at the girl who was now sat up and quite close to his own body, "Stop laughing girl or I'll remove your tongue. Let's go already so I can hurt something…"

He stood up and offered his hand for her to take, but withdrew it before Sakura could reach out to it. He cursed some more and hit his forehead once again, but the Leaf girl knew that this was nothing to worry about anymore; Sasori was just being Sasori. So, she rose to her feet on her own and took off running after their enemies, Sasori lagging behind due to his constant cursing.

The young teen couldn't understand why Sasori would be so upset and angry with simple feelings, but she also didn't understand Sasori in general anyways. He was too much of a puzzle that she desperately wanted to solve, but she was afraid of the results she would get at the end. Would he turn out to be a monster, or a man? She couldn't be entirely sure. He could feel and he was helping her, but she didn't know for how long this would remain as fact. Sakura didn't trust Sasori enough with her life as a ninja should when on a mission with a team mate. The simple truth was that they were not from the same team or the same village. Sakura doubted that Sasori was even a legitimate ninja. He could well be a rogue ninja or a criminal, but she had to work with him all the same.

"Sakura, focus or they'll see you!" called Sasori from behind her. The young girl looked ahead and noticed that the Darkness ninja were only a few feet away from them both, so she slowed her pace and moved to her companion's side.

"Do you have a plan for attacking these guys, since you're so well-informed?" Sakura asked casually, even though Sasori also caught a tinge of anger in her question. He didn't know what she was getting angry for, but he honestly couldn't deal with her stupid problems and issues for the moment. He had to think of a plan and fast.

Like a light-bulb switching on, a rather brilliant idea entered the puppet master's mind, "Here's the plan: you stay behind me and provide any support I need; I'll summon my puppets and take out their own ones and the ninja. Do you have a problem at all?"

Sakura shook her head, no, and moved a little further behind Sasori so he could perform the seals to release his puppet army. He raised both of his arms and unbuttoned his cloak. It slipped from his small form easily enough, exposing his puppet body for Sakura to see exactly what his comment had meant before. She had never seen anything quite like Sasori and yet she wasn't as horrified as she thought she'd be. He wasn't disfigured, just built differently from how a normal person would look. His stomach had what appeared to be a metal chord coiled inside it and in his chest was a strange shaped box where his heart would be. On his back were scrolls which Sakura assumed contained his puppets.

With a fluency that Sakura envied, Sasori removed a couple of the scrolls and held them in front of him. He moved his right hand to his chest and opened a compartment up, which seemed to be storing some of his chakra. He then made the necessary seals and both he and Sakura watched as his puppets emerged from the scrolls in quick succession. Sakura lost count at how many there were, but she estimated at well over 100. All of them carried deadly looking weapons and some form of poison dripped from the blades onto the forest floor. There were chakra strings connecting each puppet to their master, who stood with his back still to Sakura in an almost defensive manner. The girl doubted very much that it was his intent though.

The Darkness ninja who were nearer to the rear of the army turned about face and began to charge the masses of puppets that Sasori had summoned. Unfortunately for them, all the ninja who charged met an unseemly end on the tips of the puppets' weaponry. The screams and cries of pain disturbed Sakura greatly, but she managed to remind herself that Sasori was helping to remove a threat to the entire world, so it was necessary. The girl didn't want to imagine what would happen if she too were to face Sasori one day. A large part of her was afraid of that idea, but a very small part of her recoiled at the thought of hurting someone who was actually helping her live regardless of his methods.

Naturally, when all the ninja who had attacked from the rear were eliminated, the ones who had heard their cries also charged towards Sasori's puppets. Soon enough, Sasori and Sakura had the entire Darkness ninja armada heading for their doom against the puppet barricade. Some times the Darkness ninja go passed a puppet and sent kunai or shuriken at Sasori, but Sakura always moved in front and deflected the attacks away from her ally. The puppets themselves were wearing thin though, for Sakura noticed that more and more enemy ninja were slipping past Sasori's defences. It wouldn't be long before this plan would be a dud and both she and Sasori would need to fight and flee to survive.

When one particular kunai knife nearly hit Sakura on her skull, she felt it wise to voice her concerns, "Sasori, we can't last like this forever, can we? They're getting through the puppets!"

He glanced at Sakura for a moment and made eye contact with her, then he looked away and his gaze focused on the battle once more, "At this rate they'll destroy all my hard earned puppets. We aren't going to die though Sakura. I told you that if things got too rough I'd pull out, so I will. Most of the Darkness ninja are dead now anyway, so I'm sure someone else can handle this problem."

"What about me? Are you just going to leave me here to fight by myself?"

"No…" Sasori quickly grabbed Sakura before a ninja could slash at her back with his own, crudely made, puppet, "I'll take you with me, stupid girl. Why would I bother going through so much trouble just to let you die?"

Sakura smiled at Sasori slightly, relieved that he wasn't turning out to be the monster she imagined he would be. Yes, he was brutal in his ways and often angry, but he seemed to be concerned for her safety and that proved he was human too.

Sakura watched as Sasori's puppets continued to drop like flies against the enemy, hitting foe after foe each time one tried to harm her or Sasori. He was doing fine on his own though, having begun to use another scroll from his back which contained a flamethrower for each of his hands. Fire in a forest was possibly one of the worst things that the puppet master could choose to unleash, but so far the tactic was working because the Darkness ninja were kept on their toes all the time. Sakura believed that they all had some kind of fire phobia, what with the way they moved to avoid being burnt.

She socked a particularly annoying ninja in the jaw, sending him flying into a large tree, and checked over Sasori's own progress once again. All she had to do was follow the flames, which she did, and there he was fending off eight ninja at once. Sakura was a little worried for his safety, since eight on one were not good odds at all, but she remembered that Sasori was fully capable of handling small numbers like that with ease. So it came as a shock when a ninja appeared from behind Sasori, hidden entirely in shadows that he seemed to create on his own, and stabbed the puppet master in the back.

"Sasori!" Sakura called out in alarm as she beat her way to where her companion stood with the sword in his gut.

The ninja who had stabbed him was laughing about his 'victory' over Sasori, right up until the point where the puppet master swivelled his head around and glared with hate at the man, "That wasn't very clever."

Sasori focused on one of his remaining puppets and made it move behind the petrified Darkness ninja. The man was wearing a typical outfit that all Kage's wore: robes and a hat with the village symbol on it. The robes were black with white stripes on them. He didn't look too old, but Sasori could tell instantly that this man was the Yamikage. If he were to die, then surely the other ninja would stop their attacks and flee? With that positive thought in mind, the Akatsuki member manoeuvred his puppet and commanded it to impale the man from behind - a rather fitting end.

However, the puppet would not obey Sasori's commands. Sasori looked at the puppet and narrowed his eyes when he saw poorly constructed chakra strings attached to it from another person. He used his mind to tug at the puppet, causing the foreign strings to snap away from the puppet and giving full control back to the puppet master.

"Die!" yelled Sasori at the man, just as the puppet's scythe impaled the man straight through his centre, leaving a huge hole and causing the man to topple to the forest floor dead. Sasori turned his head back the right way round and tugged the offending sword from his back, dropping it to the ground. Sasori looked up just as Sakura charged at the last Darkness ninja that had still surrounded him, creating a clear path to run through.

"Sa…sori…" she huffed, exhausted from the over use of her small chakra reserves, "I thought…you…were…dead…"

The puppet master poked the mark in his gut where the man had stabbed him, "That won't kill me Sakura, so you don't need to worry about me. Now let's get out of here before they decide to nominate a new leader."

Sakura nodded, not needing to be told twice, and scanned the ground for Sasori's discarded cloak. She couldn't have him travelling around like that after all, people might question things. It was the least she could do anyways. She spotted it a few feet away and jogged towards the cloak to retrieve it. Sakura picked the worn thing up and draped it over her arm gently, then returned to Sasori, who was currently returning the 50 puppets that had survived back into their scrolls. The girl felt sorry for Sasori, since he had lost so many of his treasure puppets while she had not lost anything at all.

"Here's your cloak Sasori. I thought you might want it back." She smiled and handed it carefully to the Akatsuki member, who was stunned that the girl had even bothered.

"….Thank you." It was perhaps the first time he had said that in years and meant it. He truly meant those words. Nobody had been as thoughtful to him as Sakura was being. He couldn't help it….he was starting to like the pink-haired girl from the Leaf village called Sakura.