Luvs2smooch: Awright, I finally updated. Check it:

The Free and the Hated

Nearly 11:15. Darkness had eclipsed the bridge long ago. Where were they? Late, obviously, but why? Idiots, I thought, the both of them. I was anxious to be gone, probably more so than necessary. After all, I didn't even know where we were going. Sakura had the stupid scroll. So I couldn't do a damn thing until she decided to get her ass in gear and mosey on down to the bridge. Her truancy had freaking crippled me.

At least, that was how it felt.

I had learned a lot of things over those few days. One of the biggest, most influential, was that I couldn't trust my intuition. If it wasn't outright wrong, then it would usually end up pacing me in circles. Thinking back, it was probably the radical mindset I had developed, my obtuse angle of thought that kept me wading through the stilted hatred of my youth. As it ended up, my savior had quickly turned on me, morphing into some beast I never would've guessed had once saved my skin on a regular basis.

Problem was, I really only knew how to deal with people who were trying to kill me. I knew what to do when a boulder was hurtling down at me from a rainy peak, knew how to act when being tailed by countless assassins, all seeking my life to preserve their own. In short, I knew how to keep myself alive. In the obvious sense, anyways. Blatant, outright situations, where all information needed was relatively obvious to an acute eye. I had those down pat. But people…well, that was where I kept tripping over my own feet.

I had no social experience at all, simply because, I had never really had a social life. No real friends, a few people I could trust, but that was it, really. Why learn social skills when there was no chance of ever using them? That was the logic I had followed, and it had come back to bite me in the ass once I had gotten over my own emotional roadblocks. Quite decent of it, really, quite nice. As such, I quickly learned to ignore the majority of my intuition. Because it followed that logic, too.

It had survived alongside me, so it went by the same silly rules I always did. To be blunt, and I suppose rather metaphoric, I had educated my own enemy. The epitome of irony, wouldn't you say?

oo00oo

They arrived around 4 minutes later. First Sasuke, then Sakura. Oddly enough, I noted, Sasuke seemed…well, he seemed about as close to out of breath as he ever had. He had just arrived in a plume of white smoke when I began to spy Sakura in the fogged distance. She had waltzed on calmly, nonchalant. Perhaps uncaring. Her eyes, I could see, were looking off into nothingness. She was thinking, thinking hard, in a totally different place. Neither said a word. We stood for minutes on end before I realized we were waiting for Kakashi, waiting on a messenger that would not be arriving. The habit had forced a silent vigil upon us. I decided to break the silence.

"Sakura." She didn't look up. I said it again, with more force. Still, she didn't even flinch. I pursed my lips and tapped her on the shoulder. At that little burst of contact, she jerked up and gave me a look of perplexed surprise. Odd. For her, I mean. She had never before shown even a hint of what clouded her face now.

"The scroll?" Out of nowhere, she walloped me an uppercut. I crashed up and back, and hit the ground, hard. Relatively used to this, I brushed it off and saw that she had the damned scroll out. It was open, and she was poring over it. I leaped up. Ran over. She turned suddenly to hide it from my vision, before snapping it shut briskly a moment later. I frowned at her. Then decided that pursuing it would just delay the matter at hand. So I just shrugged and asked the question.

"Well, if you must know," She said, as though it were her personal business, "We are to head towards the Mist village…" She cut off, frowning off into the dark, thinking again.

"Well, let's go then!" I couldn't have been more eager if I tried. I hauled my pack higher on my back and started walking, hoping that they would follow suit. They didn't. Sasuke just stood, still panting, while Sakura stared on at whatever it was I couldn't see.

"Come on…let's—" Neither of them were looking at me. "SASUKE! SAKURA! LET'S MOVE IT! COME!" I gripped his wrist. Yanked. He moved an inch before stumbling and stared at me, incredulous.

"Can we please—"

"Naruto's right, Sasuke-kun—let's get going!" She ran off in the wrong direction, sandals slapping the old boards. I reached after her and nearly called, then heard her rubber soles squeaking. She corrected herself, but managed to run smack into me anyways.

"Naruto," She said, dragging out the last few syllables as she always did when she was angered, still clutching her forehead, "What in god's name are you doing?" She didn't seem to notice that I had been stationary, that she had provided all the movement. But I let it be. At least she was still enthusiastic.

I dusted myself off, saying "Let's just get going, okay?" Sasuke finally seemed to come back to Earth, but he still did nothing but stare at me. Like he was thinking, pondering some important decision that somehow…someway…involved me. I began to stare back at him, straight into his deep onyx eyes. He took far longer than I expected to realize I was looking right back at him, and quickly diverted his gaze. That told me that whatever it was, was real big, real tough, and real vital.

I doubted that I would like the outcome either way.

oo00oo

We three made haste into the forest, to the Village of the Mist, following a trail we had known by heart since the early days of our partnership. It snaked about, leaving us trees to leap between and rivers to ford. We reeled in each scene that lay before us, night after night, only to reveal a new horizon void of anything. We saw nothing at all for quite a time, sleeping by day and traveling whenever the darkness afforded it. The utter silence of the humid nights left us without the will to speak, leading us to complement the natural lack of noise with our own. While noisy, the days were much warmer than the nights and allowed the sleep to come with ease.

And so we traveled on, repeating the cycle of our inversed nights and days until we reached an odd little checkpoint of sorts. The scroll detailed quite clearly that we were to remain at the rendezvous point-- a small clearing rife with rocky outcroppings—until we were met by an ambassador. According to Sakura. She would allow neither Sasuke nor I near it. 'You'll just rip it!' she would always say, a nagging, broken record. We just contributed it to a lack of sleep.

In any case, we made camp. We shortly had a fire going, and huddled around it. I'd like to think that we were hunched around the fire so late into the night because we were anxious to meet whoever was coming, but I had a sneaking suspicion that Sasuke (who's eyes I could still feel drilling holes in my head) and Sakura (who's still glanced off into the black around us now and then) didn't care much. I sighed and poked the fire again. How dull. My thoughts took no leave in wandering; I contemplated the plan, slowly falling into place back at Konoha, thought of the odd ambassador who was to instate connections at this very opening, and pondered the odd behavior of my partners; they were totally out of focus and never seemed on-task.

I poked the fire deeper, then dropped my rapidly burning stick and shuddered. I felt something. A freezing shock of pre-cognition shot across my spine. It replaced the previous warmth of the fire with stunning speed. Something was coming…I tensed up, hoping that my two partners weren't too numb to notice. I waited, listening, slowly forming a hand symbol, hoping my nameless foe would make the first strike.

I was duly rewarded.

Cue cheap cliffy! Don't worry, I'm gonna update it again soon. I have most of the next chap wirtten already.