Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Inner Sakura talking
Sakura talking to inner or thoughts
Journey to the Land of the Waves
Narutos' and Sasukes' faces when they found Sakura waiting for them with the client and Kakashi were absolutely priceless, especially when Kakashi had calmly looked up from his book to state that the both of them were late and holding them up. They didn't appreciate it very much when Sakura had started laughing at them.
Of course Naruto then just had to end up fighting with Tazuna about him 'showing him no respect' despite the fact that he was the 'number one awsome ninja who was going to be Hokage, believe it'.
Deciding to ignore the squabble for the time being - they would calm down after they had walked for a while, Naruto at least wasn't used to travel - Sakura focused on sensing any chakra in the area just in case. She doubted that there would be anyone, but it was better to be safe...and it turned out that she had been right to do so. There were two signatures about ten metres behind them hidden in the trees. Attempting to be discreet about it Sakura fell behind the others until she was walking beside their sensei.
"Kakashi-sensei." she breathed, barely loud enough for him to hear her. "There are two chakra signatures in the trees behind us."
Barely noticably his reading paused and she knew he was scanning the place she had mentioned.
"Probably rouge nin. " He murmurred back. "No higher than chuunin."
"What should we do?"
"Ignore them for now but keep tabs on them. I want to know who they're after...as well as how the boys react."
"So only get involved if the boys can't handle it?"
"Yup."
A loud voice broke through their conversation. "SHUT UP YOU IDIOT OLD MAN! NO-ONE CAN TELL ME WHAT TO DO! GOT IT?!"
"Naruto," Sakura said irritibly, her nerves now tingling due to the knowledge of the danger "please be quiet."
And to no-ones' surprise, he did.
It was half an hour later when it finally happened. Sakura sensed the two move ahead of them, most likely to set up an ambush. She glanced over at Kakashi and made a slight indication telling him what they had done, he had reponded by twitching his fingers towards the boys as if to remind her to let them try and handle it.
Walking into sight of the puddle where she sensed the nin, inner Sakura decided to make her presense known.
Kura-chan, since it is afterall supposed to be an innocent puddle, and we do of course love water it would be suspicious if we tried to ignore it right.
Hiding a smirk at the evil and oh so lovely suggestion Sakura replied. But of course inner-chan.
As she passed the 'puddle' after Naruto she deliberately, but seemingly accidentaly, stepped right into the middle of it. She was highly satisfied when she felt the chakra fluctuate in a way she knew meant its owner was in pain.
After about five steps the two nins decided to reveal themselves, one of them holding his stomache, sending chains that wrapped around Kakashi 'surprising' him from behind and tearing him apart. Sakura winced. Yes she knew that it was fake and that the real Kakashi was hidden in the bushes a little way a way, but still it looked so real...and so bloody.
"One down." The first said in a chilling voice, or at least what was supposed to be a chilling voice, Sakura had heard much worse and quite honestly his voice just sounded like he was in dire need of a cough drop.
And then the nins went after Naruto. Sakuras' eyes widened and she was about to attack them when Sasuke jumped into the mess, managing to deflect the chains towards the tree with a kunai and shuuriken and hold them there, preventing the nin from moving furthur away since the chains were attached to them. And then the Uchiha landed on the nins heads, using his feet he shoved them backwards into the ground. It probably would have worked had they not at that point gotten rid of the claw each of them had on one of their arms that connected the chains to them, allowing them free movement.
They ran around the two boys and headed straight for Tazuna, either not noticing or not caring about Sakura.
*Smirks* Idiots.
She moved infront of Tazuna, and infused chakra into her fists. The first nin was about to hit, or attempt to hit, them when out of seemingly no-where Kakashi appeared, taking out both ninja seemingly instantly. Sighing slightly Sakura let her chakra go back to normal.
"Why did you do that Kakashi-sensei?" She asked while pouting. "I could have taken care of them."
"Ahhh, I'm sure you could have, but I was hoping to avoid another earthquake." He replied, a rather sheepish tone in his voice. Sakura frowned and crossed her arms, still pouting cutely. Their teacher then turned his attention to the boys. "Naruto, sorry for not helping you right away. I got you injured, I didn't think you'd be able to move. Nice job anyway Sasuke."
Sakura winced as she saw Narutos' reaction to his words, Kakashi really should have phrased that better.
"Hey...you alright, Mr Scaredy Cat?" Sasuke was smirking, and Sakura inwardly cursed her boys competitive nature.
"No fighting." She told them sharply, as it looked as if Naruto was going to lunge at Sasuke. "And Naruto, come over here, I need to fix up your hand."
Grumbling a bit he did as he was told and Sakura examined the cut he had gotten when the two nin had first attacked him. It seemed as though the Kyuubi had already started to heal Naruto, but there was some poison in his blood. Frowning she gathered medical chakra and finished healing the wound. Luckily it was a relatively simple poison and it hadn't spread far so she could easily heal it without the need for an antidote.
"Tazuna-san." Kakashi began, his tone mild yet scary.
"W-what is it!"
"I need to talk to you. These guys are chuunin class ninja from the hidden village in the mist. They're known to keep fighting no matter what." He said in the same tone as he finished tying the two nins to a large tree.
One of them had woken up and grunted slightly. "How did you know we were there?"
Sakura was sure he had a silly smile on under his mask as he replied. "On a sunny day like this where it hasn't rained in days a water puddle shouldn't exist."
"Sensei!"
"...and Sakura told me you were following us shortly after we left Konoha."
"EH! Sakura-chan you knew they were there?! And you didn't tell us!"
She shrugged. "Kakashi-sensei told me not to."
"What was the point of that?!"
"If I had to, I could have killed the two of them instantly, but I needed to find out who they were after. This has become a B-rank mission at least. We were supposed to protect you, Tazuna, until you had finished the bridge. This was supposed to be a simple mission. If it had been known that there were ninja after you it would have been deemed at least a B-rank. I'm sure you had a good reason for this, but it causes problems when you lie about mission details. We are now operating outside of our duties, I guess we should return to our village now..."
At this point Naruto started yelling something about not losing to Sasuke and continuing the mission, but Sakura just tuned out. It was relatively obvious how this was going to end up. Narutos' and Sasukes' stubborness wouldn't allow them to give up on the mission, even if it was dangerous, and it was almost certain that Kakashi would relent and allow them to do so as soon as Tazuna explained the reasoning behind his deception. Not that she couldn't already guess. About six months ago, shortly before they went to Konoha, she along with her mother and Shizune had visited the land of the waves briefly, it had had all three of them working basically non-stop for a fortnight trying to heal any and all medical problems of the community. They had encountered Gatou at one point aswell. Sakura allowed her lips to quirk upwards in a small smile as she recalled her mothers reaction to him telling them they weren't allowed to continue healing people. Gatou had figured out quite quickly that he couldn't forbid them from doing anything.
As she had predicted a short while later they were on a ferry taking them across the straight between the land of the waves and the mainland.
"We'll be there soon." The man steering the boat told them quietly. "Tazuna, it looks like we've avoided detection so far, but just in case we'll take the route with more vegetation. It will make us harder to spot."
"Thanks." The old man said gruffly.
They finally got off the boat at a small deserted peer in the middle of no-where. As they walked Naruto kept throwing kunai or shuuriken at random bushes. Sadly, at least for Naruto, there wasn't anything in the shrubbery and he only acheived making Tazuna annoyed, Kakashi worried about everyones safety around him, Sasuke act superior, and Sakura wonder how she got cursed with having to deal with such unmanageable males.
"THERE!"
Kakashi and Sakura sighed in unison and walked over to the bush to see if Naruto had actually hit anything this time. As well as to collect the shuuriken. As it turned out there was something there. A bunny.
Sakura actually squeeled as she knelt down and picked it up, causing the boys to look at her oddly, so far they hadn't seen her act like this.
"It's so cute!" she exclaimed, cuddling the fluffy white rabbit to her chest. Now may be a good time to mention that no, Sakura did not overlook the fact that no rabbit would have white fur at this time of year unless it was kept in captivity. While picking up the bunny she had done a scan of the area to find two new chakra signatures behind them, but since Kakashi had also noticed that fact, and was ready for an attack, she really didn't need to do anything, in fact, it would be suspicious if she did. Plus it really was a cute bunny.
She didn't need to wait long for the new assasins to reveal themselves.
"Everybody get down!" Kakashi yelled. Instinctively Sasuke and Tazuna both obeyed and Sakura dragged Naruto down beside her, leaning down so she was nearly kissing the ground as she did so...with the bunny still held against her chest. It was just in time aswell, since less than a second afterwards she felt wind against her back, generated by something flying overtop of her.
Cautiously she sat up, arms unclasping to allow the rabbit to hop away as she did so. She heard Naruto whining next to her as he to lifted his head, but her eyes were focussed on the sword that must have been what had almost hit them stuck in the side of a tree. And standing on top of it was a man she had never seen outside of bingo books. Momochi Zabuza.
Theatrical much? I mean seriously, standing above us on the handle of a gigantic sword sticking out of a tree. Not to mention shirtless...although I can't say I mind that very much, look at those muscles!
Inner, not a good time.
But -
INNER.
Fine.
"Well well. If it isn't the missing-nin of the mist, Momochi Zabuza-kun."
Naruto was about to leap at the man but was stopped by Kakashi placing a hand infront of him preventing him from moving forward.
"Eh. Sensei."
"Don't Naruto." Sakuras' voice was soft, but she knew he heard her. "You don't stand a chance against him yet, he's on a completely different level than those two nin from earlier."
"Sakura's right. Everyone get back, this fight is going to be tough...unless I do this." Kakashis' hand pushed up the hitai-ite on his forhead, revealing his other eye. An eye that was red and black.
"You appear to be Sharingan Kakashi. Sorry but, the old man is mine."
"Surround and protect Tazuna. Do not enter the fight."
"Ah. I already get to see the famous Sharingan. I'm honoured." Zabuzas' words were at odds with his tone.
Narutos' patience was used up as he exploded into speech. "Sharingan, sharingan. What the Hell is that?!"
Sakura frowned, honestly can't he see that now was not the time? Nevertheless she could see that on her other side Sasuke also wanted answers so she decided to give them a brief explanation.
"Sharingan is the doujutsu, or eye technique, that is the kekkai genkai of the Uchiha clan. It supposedly can read aswell as defeat any kind of taijutsu, genjutsu or ninjutsu, and it can also copy a technique after only seeing it once although just because the techniques been copied doesn't mean it can be used, that depends on the capabilities of the user. The only thing it is known not to work on is other kekkai genkai. Kakashi-sensei is the only person outside of the Uchiha clan to be able to use it due to...circumstances that happened a long time ago."
Zabuza laughed, and Sakura had to stop a shiver going through her body. She had rarely been in proper combat, when they did encounter bandits or similarly brutal characters while traveling Tsunade and Shizune had always tried to keep her out of the fight entirely or make sure she was faced with the easier opponents. Never before had she faced someone who wanted to kill her, someone who she knew could kill her, since, for all that she was stronger than any normal genin, she couldn't hope to win against a jounin level ninja. That she knew. It didn't help that she had seen his records, and when she compared them to Kakashis' they were on a similar level. This was going to be a hard fight for the two men, and Sakura didn't know who would win. Not only that but there was still one more chakra signature in the trees, and she didn't think it was friendly.
"Your right little girl." That statement however made her more than willing to fight him no matter what the risks, if nothing else she could probably land a good hit at least. Luckily he then turned his attention back to Kakashi. "When I was a member of the hidden mists assasination team I kept a handbook, it included information about you. And this is what it said. ' The man who has copied a thousand jutsus, Copy Ninja Kakashi.' Now, lets end the talking. I need to kill that old man. But, Kakashi, it seems I need to beat you first."
He was a blur of motion, nearly invisable he was so fast, but in an instant Zabuza was on top of the lake, his sword strapped to his back as he released large amounts of chakra for what Sakura assumed was a jutsu of some sort.
She was proved right by his next words. "Ninpou...Hidden Mist no Jutsu."
And with that he disappeared, leaving only a leaf in his place. The mist began to thicken and Sakura searched for his chakra, ignoring Kakashis' explanation to the boys and Tazuna, as well as Zabuza' voice reciting different body parts. It was then that she realised that the mist was infused with his chakra, making the task exponentually harded. On both sides of her the boys were sweating in fear, aswell as shaking at the intensity of the atmosphere, not only the sheer power in the air, but also the intent to kill that infused it.
"Don't worry. I'll protect you guys with my life, I won't let my comrads die." That was Kakashi-sensei, trying to reassure them. Sakura focussed harder and managed to identify where he was only an instant before he attacked, and in that brief moment she ducked beneith the sword that had come between her and Tazuna, ramming into him sending them both crashing down to the ground away from where Kakashi had just stopped the mist-nins strike.
Kakashi drove a kunai into the chest of the other man, who turned out to be nothing but a water clone, from behind Zabuza then swung his sword through Kakashi, who like the other was mearly made of water.
The battle had begun.