Chapter Three: Severed Ties

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Sakura sighed as she glanced around the shitty little motel room. It wasn't the Taj Majal, but it would definitely do. She placed her bag on the floor and sat down on the little twin bed, pulling off her boots and stretching her legs in the process. She laid back for a minute, reveling in the slight relaxation she received from stretching her tired limbs and just laying down in general. She stood back up and stretched before walking to the little door that held what she prayed was a bathroom. She opened the door and couldn't repress the excited squeal that escaped her mouth. It was indeed a bathroom, and not only did it have a shower but it also had a bathtub. And the best part was, it was clean! Sakura hummed a little tune while she went to turn on the tap for the water. The water was clear and smelled clean much to her satisfaction. As the tub filled she walked back into the bedroom and began to undress, slipping her hitai-ate off first.

Sakura paused for a moment, running her fingers over the smooth metal of her forehead protector. She felt sadness grip her insides and try to plunge her under as tears threatened to spill over onto her cheeks. She wondered what everyone was doing at that moment. She wondered if Kakashi had finally gotten used to switching his sharingan on and off like she had taught him to do in their many training sessions. She wondered if Ino had finally caught the attentions of a certain husky shinobi yet. She wondered if Tsunade was sitting in her office, peering through her many stacks of paperwork, finally shoving them aside for a much needed glass of sake. She wondered if Sasuke had any luck falling asleep in a bathtub with a toaster. She wondered if Tenten and Neji were doing okay on their honeymoon, and if they were having fun in Wave Country. She wondered if Shikamaru and Temari were having more arguements and fretting over their newborn son too much. She wondered if Hinata had finally taken her advice and asked Naruto to go to dinner with her.

She prayed that Naruto had made it back into the village safely that night. It had only been about three or four days but to her it seemed like a lifetime, and as she realized that she may never be able to see her friends again, the tears threatened to come again. She looked back down at the Leaf engraved on her hitai-ate and with a sinking heart, withdrew a kunai from her pouch. There was really no going back now, at least not anytime soon. She had to do this, she had to make it known that she was no longer affiliated with The Village Hidden In The Leaves. Her home for her entire twenty-three years of living.

With a strong grip on her kunai, she slashed through the metal plate, a nice even cut through the engraving.

Her hands began to shake as she put the hitai-ate down on the small night stand and continued to get undressed, her head held high. There was no use in being depressed right now, bad feelings like that could get a shinobi killed, especially when they had no village behind them. She wondered if that was what all nukenin felt like when they left their villages, hopeless and distraught.

No she hadn't done the deed, but she had ran away, which made her just as bad as any other traitor. She remembered a time when she was younger and she had told Naruto that she would rather commit sepukku than abandon her village.

How ironic because here she was running now.

She unzipped her vest and slipped it off, unaware that a pair of amber eyes had been watching her the whole time.

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His eyes widened slightly as he watched the girl slip her red shirt off of her shoulders, leaving her in her bindings, skirt and undershorts. He saw what he needed to see, he watched her cut through her forehead protector with his own eyes, and he really needed to get back to the base but...

For some unknown reason he couldn't help but look. He watched as her hands traveled down the sides of her flat stomach and fall on the hem of her skirt, with a little tug it fell to the ground. She followed that up by sliding her black skintight shorts down her legs until they lay in a heap on her floor, atop her skirt. He felt a bit awkward, watching a half naked woman get even more naked and he was at a complete loss as to why he was in the first place, but he just couldn't look away. This wasn't like him at all. Both sides of him were silent, a phenomenon that rarely ever happened. Never once that he could remember had he shown any interest in seeing any kind of female body parts, unless he was eating them of course. He felt a strange current travel in the pit of his stomach, pushing it aside as an urge to eat this girl. He groaned a little as she went to cut her bindings, and just before she laid the kunai on the white fabric, he heard a loud squeal.

"Zetsu-san! Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, Zetsu-san! What are you doing down there? Are you- Omph!" Tobi and Deidara were perched above him on one of Deidara's clay birds, and Tobi nearly falling off when a fist connected with the back of his head.

"Tobi! Shut UP, un! Can't you see Zetsu is spying? God...stupid idiot, yeah."

Deidara folded his arms in front of him, and looked away from Tobi disgustedly. Zetsu grunted and quietly leapt from the edge of the window, landing gracefully on the ground below. He made a signal for Deidara and Tobi to follow him into the woods, and slipped underground.

Once they had landed and Zetsu had come back up, Deidara asked the question on both he and Tobi's mind.

"So...Zetsu..Why are you here, un? And keeping tabs on our mission, hmm? What's up with that? Does Leader not trust us or something?"

He flipped his blonde hair out of the one eye that was supposed to be uncovered, and leaned against a tree. Waiting for the plant man to respond, and he noted, that his large fly-trap thing was missing. He was actually concealing it, something Zetsu hardly ever did.

"It's not that..exactly. It's just that you two are not exactly the most silent of spies, and Leader-sama needed someone perfected in the art of espionage to keep another eye out."

His white, more logical and polite side quietly before his black side chided in rudely, "Plus you guys are pretty stupid."

Deidara scoffed and rolled his visible eye, while Tobi leapt over to Zetsu nearly knocking him over.

"I'm not stupid, am I, Zetsu-san! Am I?" He was practically bouncing about. Making both the explosives artist and the plant man sigh.

"Of course not, Tobi. Stupid would be an understatement. We didn't mean that. You mean, you didn't mean that. I certainly did."

Tobi looked sad for a moment before regaining his annoyingly chipper disposition, and bounced off to chase a bunny or something ridiculously Tobi-esque like that.

Deidara folded his arms in front of him, and gave the plant man a smirk.

"So what, un. I suppose that's your reason for peeping in a girl's window while she's half naked, hmm? Espionage tactics?"

If Zetsu could blush he would have, but he was much too hardened for that. Instead he simply said, uninterestedly, "I assure you not, I just needed to see if she would truly turn her back on her village. She's pretty tasty looking though. We must not eat her though, Leader's orders. Unfortunate isn't it, blondie?"

"You know, Zetsu-san, if I had my way, I would kick your ass because of your black side." Deidara grumbled, unamusedly to which Zetsu sighed.

"It's understandable. I feel the same sometimes. Traitor. Oh do silence yourself. Deidara-san, Leader told me to tell you and Tobi that your mission is over and that I will take over your duties for the time being. You are to return to the base as soon as possible with an update."

But Deidara was long gone as soon as the words 'return to the base' slipped from his lips. Zetsu looked around the area and begrudgingly slipped into the trees to watch the girl from afar. A few more days of watching her and he would either return to the base or proposition her to join the organization as per Leader's command.

All that seemed to float through his mind - on both sides - was the way her flat stomach rippled as she slipped her clothes off. He shook the thoughts violently from his head. Thoughts like that would do him absolutely no good. Afterall, no woman had caught his attention before, why would one silly pink haired medic do that?

Life was awfully confusing.

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Sakura couldn't help the soft sigh of contentment that escaped her lips as she stepped into the bathtub, the deliciously hot water warming her body as she sunk into it slowly.

"Oh... That's good," She whispered to the tiled walls, as if they could talk back to her. She lounged back in the tub, letting the almost too hot water melt away her stresses and undo the many muscle cramps and aches in her body. The liquid heaven embraced her and for a little while she was able to forget all of the problems and issues she was going through. She loved baths and showers because once she was clean and refreshed she felt as if she could get over any obstacle, and get through any tribulation life threw at her. She supposed it was a girl thing but when you were clean and renewed on the outside you felt more renewed on the inside as well. She smiled and seeped further into the water, her long pink locks swimming under the water's surface, causing an ethereal glow in the slightly murky water.

Once during the summer, her mother took Ino and her to the public pool and the two girls stayed in the water the whole day. She remembered fondly coming back to her house and having her mother nurse her and Ino's sunburns before they went to bed, stretching a sheet over the air-conditioning vent and both crawling under it, to soothe away the burn. There hadn't been much time for playing after that, when they had both been assigned to seperate teams and had began the ridiculous rivalry that had started all because of Sasuke. A pang of regret threatened her mood suddenly and she had wished that she knew then what she had known now. Ino had been her first friend and though they had long since smoothed things over it was still troublesome to think of all the years they wasted over a pointless crush. But that just came with being a girl right? It didn't matter now, she thought forlornly, seeing as she wasn't sure she'd see Ino again anyway, or anyone else for that matter.

What if she was doomed to be alone forever? What if she could never go back? What would she do then?

Sakura sniffled and wiped at her eyes. She really missed Ino and hoped that she was doing okay and that Naruto explained the whole situation to her, so that she understood. Desperately trying to regain her bearings once more she grabbed at the sweet pea scented shampoo she brought with her, pouring a generous amount in her hands and lathering up her mid-back length hair. She had decided, after becoming Tsunade's apprentice, to regrow it back out; she always thought it was prettier long though she usually wore it in a high ponytail when on missions or in surgery. Only difference between this look and her former twelve year old look, was that she had let her bangs grow out to a length even with that of her chin. They were still shorter than the back of her hair, but not short enough to be considered forehead fringe. That and the fact that it was subsequently more damaged at the ends, something she tried to continuously rectify but it was hard to worry too much about one's hair when more important things kept popping up.

Such as, oh say, running from hunter-nin and trying to not die.

After lathering up she dunked herself under to rinse out her locks and then came back up, grabbing a bar of soap off of the ledge and a natural sea sponge - both things she always kept in her bag along with her shampoo and conditioner - she sudded up the sponge and after playing around with the soap bubbles, she began to wash up. After rinsing off, she ran her hand down her legs, tsking at the fact that they could use a little hair removal. She sighed distraughtly when she realized that she had nothing even resembling a razor, save for her kunai and she absolutely hated doing that because: A) It rusted the blade up something awful B) it caused the blade to become irritatingly dull and C) She would wind up cutting herself more times than she could count. She sat in the bathwater for a moment, wondering what she could do about her hairy legs and armpits. Then it hit her like an oncoming train and she had to prevent herself from slapping her forehead in a moment of sheer dunce-ness.

Once, during a moment of complete lack of anything to do, Tsunade-shishou had shown her a little trick for quick hair removal using chakra. Tsunade used to show her tons of beauty tricks in their spare time when they weren't swamped in paperwork or training. Sakura gathered some chakra in her fingertips and slowly ran her hand over her legs, pleased when the little hairs singed off. She did this on both legs, her arms, and her underarms and then exhausted from the trip and lack of food and using the chakra from the hair removal, decided to eat something and plan out her next tracks for the oncoming adventure before curling up and going to bed.

She pulled the plug from the drain and stepped out of the tub, wrapping herself in the big, black, fluffy towel she brought along. She stepped out of the small steam filled room, enjoying the way the cool air from the slightly cracked window felt on her damp skin.

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Cracked...window? She had never opened this window. She walked over to it after pulling on her night clothes - tight black shorts and a tanktop - and peered out of the window. Nothing but a woman stumbling on the streets, and a few men talking to her - a prostitute and some johns, Sakura supposed - was out there.

'It was probably cracked open like that the whole time, I just never noticed before.' She reasoned with herself to make herself feel better, or that was until she noticed the small envelope sitting on the dresser.

Sakura walked slowly to it, eyeing it cautiously, her inner self screaming at her not to pick it up because it was probably a very well disguised paper bomb or laced with poison or something. Sakura sent out some chakra first to inspect the envelope, and when finding nothing harmful about it, picked it up and slit it open the flimsy seal with a kunai. Inside of it was a carefully folded letter, on very expensive looking parchment paper. Sakura slid the paper out and opened it.

S.H.

Kurowaki Spring, 2:00 AM, Come alone. No weapons.

"Pssh. Some letter." Who the hell would know her in this town? And why would anyone want to meet her somewhere? A small shiver made it's way down her back. What if...

Well whoever it is, they are stupid enough to actually believe that you wouldn't arm yourself. You think it's an ambush?

'Could be...I don't think I should go...I have a bad feeling about this.'

Well...you could not go, but aren't you the least bit curious?

'Curiosity killed the cat,'

Oh, I am sure we have a few lives left...don't you?

Damn her inner self, always up to something. Okay yes, she was the first to admit that she might be just a teensy bit curious, but...could she really afford to go out into the open to meet someone when she had no idea who it was? This could be anything; ambush, trick, honest meeting, anything. And what kind of self-respecting nukenin would she be if she fell for such an obvious ruse?

'A dead one, obviously.'

Well, so sorry for her mysterious courier but being dead just counteracted with her plans. Plans of actually not dying.

Still, if she didn't go, she knew that the person who sent it would probably come looking for her. They obviously knew where she was if they just gung-ho'd it and came into her room intent on leaving her letters.

Didn't you notice anything out of ordinary? No chakra flares or just some sort of general difference in the air that comes with intruders. For all you know that guy could have pilfered your underwear. Perverts.

She sighed loudly. No, she hadn't noticed anything and she decided that if she was going to live to see next year then she should probably be a bit more diligent. It had just been a while since she had a bath and-

No. It was no excuse, she had to be more actively aware. This wasn't some team mission where she would have her teammates to watch her back and she should be acting like the elite shinobi she was.

And the first step in that was to go to that meeting place and find out what all of this was about. She could deal with the consequences later, after all she knew a buttload of ways to kill a guy using only her chakra. She'd be fine in a place she didn't know with a potential enemy and absolutely no guage on their skill level. Just fine.

Sure...

Sakura flopped onto the bed and sighed contently glancing at the clock on the wall, 11:00 exactly.

She reached over and pulled a tiny alarm clock out of her bag, placing it on the nightstand and curled up in the covers. She reached over set the clock to go off at one AM. At least this way she could get a few hours of much needed rest before going to see what all this was about.

She snuggled into the blanket and upon closing her green eyes, Sakura fell into a surprisingly restful and dreamless sleep.

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He watched as she slipped in through the trees, her graceful steps and masked chakra making her nearly invisible.

Nearly invisible to anyone but him of course.

So it seemed she had decided to come afterall, Leader-sama would certainly be pleased. Not to mention, his own mission would be over soon and he could return with the girl - hopefully - in tow. Hopefully she would accept the offer he was sent to give her.

He would hate to have to eat such a pretty face.

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