Look! I'm updating! Not for my previously existing story, but still! Behold! Ain't she a beauty?
Sakura was fairly sure this was a dream. There were several reasons, but the most important was that she was sitting with Naruto in a nice restaurant (the kind he could never get into), laughing and having a good time. She knew she shouldn't like it. After all, she loved Sasuke, right? But it just felt so comfortable and natural to be with Naruto like this. The whole thing just felt like- dare she think it- a date.
But aside from the fact that she was on a date with Naruto, and they were in her favorite restaurant, and she was enjoying herself, she knew it was a dream because they were talking about Sasuke. And hoping the council wouldn't go too easy or too hard on the Uchiha. Because they had succeeded in bringing him home. And that couldn't be true.
But, since she was in the dream and couldn't get herself out of it, she figured she may as well enjoy it. She and Naruto talked about those stupid little things that only matter when you're with your best friend. It came as a shock to her when she realized that dream or no dream, Naruto was a close second to Ino when it came to friendship. After dinner, she realized something she hadn't noticed in the restaurant but definitely noticed now that she was leaving. She was married to the crazy blonde helping her up. And she was pregnant. And not just a little, she was full-blown blue whale pregnant. What started out as a relatively pleasant, albeit strange, date had quickly turned into a married couple's night out. And Sakura was freaked. But not because of what was happening, but because she really didn't mind the images this scene had painted in her mind… especially the ones involving how she got the condition she was in. What was wrong with her? Did she not constantly say that she loved Sasuke? That she wanted to marry him? That she didn't care that he abandoned her, knocked her out, and hurt the ones closest to him on more than one occasion? Whatever happened to that? She needed to wake up, and fast!
Finally, after a few more… strange… hours in dreamland, she finally woke up. It was then that she started hoping she hadn't been talking in her sleep like she did on the rare occasion. She was on her way home from yet another failed mission to try to bring Sasuke home. It was her, Naruto, Tsunade, Jiraiya and Kakashi. If any of them heard, she'd never hear the end of the teasing. Tsunade probably wouldn't do it when she was sober, but if she got her hands on some sake, as she was wont to do when bored, she'd be as merciless as the boys. They all seemed to be asleep, but she wasn't so sure. After all, one of them had to be awake and on guard so they didn't get killed in their sleep, right? Then again, it was Tsunade's turn to guard again, and the poor woman never got enough sleep and probably fell asleep on guard duty. Which would explain her being in a tree while the rest all slept on the ground.
They still had a few hours before they had to get up and get moving, so Sakura decided to wake Tsunade- after all, if they were going to get a few more hours of sleep, she could take Tsunade's post and she could sleep properly in a sleeping bag. "Tsunade-sama? Tsunade-sama…" Sakura said, shaking her awake.
"Ah! Sakura! Don't sneak up on me when I'm on guard duty! What if I attack you or something?" Sakura couldn't help but roll her eyes. Leave it to Tsunade to fall asleep on the job and not even realize it.
"You were asleep. And I can't sleep. So I figured I could take the job off your hands and you could save your back-sleeping in a tree like that isn't good no matter how young you are." Tsunade shot her an odd look and then hopped out of the tree.
Sakura sat back and contemplated her dream. What was wrong with her that she didn't mind it? Why was the idea of being married to Naruto not making her scream? This new development would take a lot of thought and concentration. Which really wasn't that bad, because really- who was going to attack them? They weren't in enemy territory, they weren't on a mission that would harm another village, and what were the odds of rogue ninja being hired to kill one of the group?
All of a sudden, she felt sleepy again. But not a normal sleepy, but more like a genjutsu. She tried to dispel it, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't. All of a sudden, her vision was blurred as she felt a hand swiftly hit her in the back of the neck, effectively knocking her out. Now what? She promised she'd guard the group, and now look at her! She was lying on the ground below the tree she was on, her vision blurred, and letting her friends get hurt! Kami, what was wrong with her? All of a sudden, her surroundings went black, and she fell into the soothing abyss.
Sakura wasn't sure if she wanted to be awake right now. Because if she was, she was pretty sure she and her team would be dead soon, and that if they made it out of this alive, they'd kill her for getting them into this. She wanted to try to work out what the hell had happened in her newest dream, but the more pressing issue was dealing with the ninja who were currently holding them captive. Trying to assess her surroundings, she found herself to be in what appeared to be a small clearing of trees. Of course, that small clearing was going to be difficult to get out of, since it was obviously something thrown together inside of a building, seeing as how you could see the walls on two sides. She wasn't sure what the goal of the ninjas was, but if it was trying to make the team think they were still where they were last night, the plan was absolutely terrible, because nothing was the same except that there were trees. Hell, they weren't even in the same place in relation to the 'tent'.
Deciding that criticizing their captors wasn't going to do any good, she decided to try and figure out how many people were nearby without drawing much attention to herself. From what she could sense, there weren't any along the sides with the wall, but there were a few in the area in front of her. Sakura wasn't quite sure how to handle this situation, but being a sitting duck didn't sound good, and screaming and making a scene that she knew she was kidnapped and that there were ninja would probably only speed up the whole killing everyone thing, so… yeah. The best choice would be to wake up Tsunade, the brilliant strategist that she was. But the decision for who to wake up to talk to was taken from her when the last person she would have wanted to be alone with her woke up. Naruto. Someone up there had to hate her for a return trip to go this wrong.
Naruto woke with a groan and a yawn. "Oh… good morning Sakura-chan! What are you doing awake so early? And why are you so worried?"
"shhhh!" Sakura whispered. "Look around you, baka- this isn't where we fell asleep last night! Don't make a scene, you'll only draw attention to us and get us killed faster. Last night I had a weird dream and couldn't fall back asleep." Sakura told him about what she knew about what had happened the night before. "I'm sorry I got us into this mess, really I am, Naruto."
"Sakura-chan, don't worry about it! A sleeping Tsunade isn't any better than you not being able to break an advanced genjutsu! Now if you ask me, the best plan of action is to pretend we don't know about it and see what they're gonna do. But first, let's see what weapons we've still got." And with that, the two inconspicuously went about checking for any weapons they might still have. They found a total of ten kunai, five shuriken and what appeared to be all their senbon.
"Why would they leave us all our senbon?" Sakura asked.
"Maybe because they're almost never lethal." Naruto supplied. "They probably don't think we could do any damage with them. Or maybe they just didn't notice them. They were in an odd place in the tent, so that's always possible."
"Well I say we wake up the rest of the team."
"But won't it be too obvious if we wake them up? We should just let them wake up on their-" But Naruto didn't have to finish his argument, as Tsunade woke up.
"Tsunade-sama!" Sakura whispered, "I'm sorry, but after I took your post, someone used a strong genjutsu, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't break it, and then while I was distracted by that, someone knocked me out, and now we're here. What should we do?"
"Well, I would suggest getting everyone up, we all need to be on the same page if we want to get out safely." Tsunade replied. Sakura stuck her tongue out at Naruto, not caring how immature she looked.
"Told you so…" she muttered. After getting everyone up, and filling them in on the situation, Sakura was getting tired of saying the same story so many times. "So? What's the plan?"
"Well, if we've got enough for two kunai, ten senbon and a shuriken each, I say we just split it evenly and split up. Tsunade and I can go as one group, and then Kakashi, Sakura and Naruto can go as another group." Jiraiya said. And with that, they took their weapons and broke off. Sakura's team was fairly concerned for Jiraiya. Leaving him alone with Tsunade was never a good idea. But this was the best team arrangement, so they went off in search of answers.
After two hours of searching, Tsunade and Jiraiya had found out little to nothing. They caught one ninja, but all he knew was that the five of them weren't to leave. Team Kakashi, however, had caught three ninjas, and had learned not only that the ninjas they caught were idiots (which didn't do much for their self esteem) but also that they had been kidnapped because of the kyuubi, which made Naruto feel incredibly guilty. When they met back up at their 'camp' they shared what they knew.
"So now what do we do?" Asked Sakura.
"Well my guess is that we should get out of here…" said Kakashi, and surprisingly, he wasn't reading his Icha Icha.
"Well… I think that was fairly obvious, sensei…." Sakura couldn't help but roll her eyes at her sensei.
"Alright, let me rephrase: we don't know how many there are, but we do know that there are ninja watching us right now, trying to make sure we don't escape. Which means that we're going to need to stick together and fight as a unit. Or, we could just have Jiraiya or Naruto summon a big ass toad to just crush them." Kakashi retorted.
"Fight! Fight! Fight!" Naruto cheered. Sakura wanted to punch him and scream, but that would probably be a bad idea.
"Shut your trap and think like a mature adult for five seconds, Naruto. Why fight unnecessarily when we could just send out a toad or a slug to handle it? We don't really have the upper hand or an understanding of what we're up against, baka. Something giant and powerful that could crush everything with one strike is much safer." Sakura scolded.
"Aww, but I really wanna fight, Sakura-chaaaaaaan!"
"Stop your bickering gakis, we've got to plan this out carefully. While Sakura does make a good point about the summoning, if it weren't enough, we wouldn't be at full strength to fight off the rest." Tsunade scolded.
"Then make Naruto do it. He's got the most chakra out of all of us, so if he does it, it'll have the least affect on him," Sakura suggested, "And then if it's not enough to take care of everything, the rest of us will be good to go for fighting, and if Naruto runs out of his own chakra, he can always use some of Kyuubi's." Sakura suggested.
"Alright then, let's do this. Naruto, go!" Jiraiya exclaimed. And with that, Gamabunta was summoned and crushed the fake trees.
"What the hell is this?" Grumbled the toad.
"Uhh… we got kidnapped and we figured it'd be safer if you just crushed everyone and maybe broke a hole through the wall for us to leave through. Please?"
"You're lucky I like you and Jiraiya, gaki, or else I would just leave now. Whatever." And with that the toad went around the building they were in and then came back only to bust through the wall near them and then leave.
Hooray for being totally anticlimactic! Maybe next time I'll go into what Sakura dreamed about! Or maybe I'll make the dream dirty and just will mention it in passing. Or maybe I'll forget this exists (like I did for like a month before finally finishing it and posting it here) and this won't get updated in a really long time! Of course, the more reviews I get, the more likely I am to remember this, so… yeah. Later!