VitaminWater Fact Number 3: Shake your VitaminWater for more flavor if you let it sit too long.

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x. by ANGELforSHOW

Chapter Two: Defense.
Purpose: More immunity.

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"Aughhh!" Sakura beat her head into a pillow as she lay across her bed in hopes of finishing an English paper. It was midnight already, but at least her first lecture wasn't until 10:15 the next morning.

Unfortunately for her, said class was the British Literature lecture in which her latest assignment was due. Ergo, she was up typing up a silly review on Great Expectations instead of partying it up with Ino. While Ino was in her cute little party dress, Sakura was in black sweatpants and a white cami, with an unzipped burgundy Victorian-patterned zip-up over top.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a timeless classic in which the young orphan Pip grows from a sheltered, poor, common boy in the marshes to a real gentleman in the chic city of London. In this book, Dickens demonstrates many qualities of good literature – character development, detailed descriptions, and –

Sakura bashed her head into her pillow once more before she started to furiously press the "delete" button on her MacBook. ANYONE could tell that she was obviously lying through her teeth when praising Great Expectations.

She had read the heinous book once for 10th grade Honors English. Who knew that she'd be reading it again for Brit. Lit. 101 in college?

Rolling off her bed, she made her way over to her minifridge, fully intending on drinking VitaminWater until dawn. She'd need an Energy, she decided, and a 32-ouncer at that. Reaching towards the large bottle with yellow liquid, she stopped when she heard a knock at her door.

Getting up, she took a quick glance through the peephole, recognizing the familiar mop of blue-black hair, stuck out like a chicken's butt.

"Hey Sasuke," she said tiredly with a small smile. "Fancy seeing you here at midnight. What's up?" she asked, opening the door wider. "Come in or something." She looked at him. As dressed down as he was, he still looked amazing. Sakura cursed inwardly. She wished she could pull off plaid shorts and plain black tee-shirts as well as he could.

Sasuke stepped carefully into her single dorm. "Um, I never got a chance to finish that partner analysis with you."

Sakura laughed. "So you're coming to me at midnight to finish it?" she asked with a grin.

Sasuke faltered. "I can leave if you want…?" he offered, backing away slowly.

"No, no, it's okay. I have to finish a Brit. Lit. paper anyway," Sakura told him, "It's on Great Expectations, so we literally have all night."

Sasuke nodded, "I did that about an hour ago," he answered, looking around for somewhere to sit. He opted for the foot of her bed. Sakura was sitting up against the headboard, laptop situated on her lap.

"You can ask questions, I'm listening," Sakura told Sasuke while resuming her typing.

"Right. Well, how was your childhood overall?" Sasuke asked, beginning to write in his chart.

Sakura laughed slightly. "Well, it really sucked at one point in time. Kids always made fun of me because of my forehead – it was kind of big for me, I grew into it though – and I never knew how to stick up for myself." She rolled her eyes at the memory, unconsciously brushing hair away from her forehead.

"Aa." Sasuke answered quietly, scribbling down 'Forehead, teasing, unhappy.' "Go on."

The pink-haired girl laughed. "Then I met Ino in kindergarten," she said, beaming. "She taught me how to defend myself, and how to be proud of who I was. I became kind of an egoist from then until 8th grade, when I just mellowed out."

Sasuke nodded, still writing.

"High school was fun. I met some friends, chopped off my hair – dyed it black at one point in time – and learned how to do my makeup correctly," Sakura continued typing while she spoke. "But I met him too."

"Him?" Sasuke questioned softly, glancing up at her for a second.

"Sai. He was great at first – we made a good couple, I guess. But right after we were voted for homecoming king and queen, he turned to me and confessed. He was gay, and he'd been cheating on me the entire time with another guy," Sakura sighed, chewing on her lower lip as she thought some more. "Right after he told me, I punched his lights out," she added thoughtfully. "It was pretty fulfilling."

Sasuke winced. Despite how thin she was, he had the feeling Sakura could pack a pretty powerful punch. "How was your family?" he asked, drawing a line across his table and adding a new subtopic.

Sakura winced. "My mother walked out on us when I was 7 years old. We try not to talk about her," she laughed mechanically. "My dad raised me by himself. Which is probably why I'm not that girly," she said, looking down at her sweatpants.

Sasuke nodded in affirmation. Thank God for that too. He had seen Ino on his way here. She had been slightly buzzed, and in an outfit ten times trashier than the dumpster outside in the back parking lot.

Sucking in a soft breath, Sakura resumed typing ferociously. She just wanted to finish the stupid review at this point in time. Hitting Apple-S, she saved her paper, and gently pushed her laptop lid shut. Crawling off her bed, she reached towards her minifridge.

"Sasuke, you wanna VitaminWater?" she asked, pulling open the door.

Sasuke glanced at her impressively stocked fridge. "I'll have a Formula 50," he told her. She threw the drink at him casually. Of course, being the seemingly flawless Uchiha prodigy he was, he caught it with one fluid, lazy swipe at the air. "Thanks," he muttered, unscrewing the cap and taking a long swallow. "So, was there anything else special about your childhood…?" he asked.

Sakura chewed thoughtfully on the rim of her bottle, inhaling the delicious scent of XXX – acai-blueberry-pomegranate mix – and dug way back into her mind. "Well, I've always wanted to become a doctor, because of my dad. He was a surgeon, and then he retired to be a pediatrician after his eyesight started getting worse," she told him, taking a sip of her drink.

They kept on volleying questions and answers, Sasuke silently writing while Sakura chattered on about her life before college. "I started this VitaminWater addiction thing last year when I had to start applying for colleges. I needed something to keep me up, I drank my first Energy, and…well, it just branched out to me basically drinking it everyday," she giggled slightly before taking a swig of XXX.

"Aa," Sasuke nodded, writing down more notes. "I think that's good," he told her. "I'll see you tomorrow, I guess," he ended awkwardly, "…so, thanks."

Sakura nodded, smiling tiredly. "No problem." She watched as Sasuke gathered up his pen, notebook, and VitaminWater. She held the door open for him and ushered him out the door. "See you later Sasuke."

"Sasuke, you got back late last night," Naruto remarked at lunch the next day. "What were you doing teme?" he asked, wiggling his blond eyebrows suggestively.

Sasuke calmly took a sip of his Rescue VitaminWater, green tea flavored. "I was working on homework," he told Naruto nonchalantly. "Unlike you two," he added, glancing at Ino and Naruto. Ino glanced up from her compact mirror, in the middle of fixing her hair, while Naruto momentarily stopped inhaling his ramen.

Ino shrugged. "It's college. Live it up," she told Sakura and Sasuke matter-of-factly. "These are supposed to be the best years of our lives, so why waste it studying 24/7?" She smiled cheekily before continuing to fix her hair in her tiny compact mirror. "Besides, it's not like we really got smashed…just buzzed a little."

"The best years of our lives were supposed to be high school, Pig," Sakura correctly dully. "And we all know that stereotype certainly wasn't true," she rolled her eyes before continuing to tuck into her veggie wrap.

Ino let out a strained laugh. Sakura was still touchy when it came to Sai, and high school in general. "Yeah, right."

"Um…"

Four heads at the table snapped up to the latest addition to their conversation, a particularly leggy blonde that gave Ino a run for her money.

"Yes?" Ino asked. "What's up, uh, Cho?" the girl was in her biology class.

"Hey Ino," Cho smiled sweetly. "Just wanted to see how you were doing," she answered, not even looking at Ino. Instead, her eyes were busy wandered up Sasuke's body. She met his deadpan look with coy amber eyes. "So…who's your friend?" she asked, turning her back to Sasuke so he could get a look of her long, slender legs, sticking out from her miniskirt nicely.

"That's Uchiha Sasuke," Ino said with a scowl. "And that's Uzumaki Naruto next to him, and this is my best friend, Haruno Sakura," she said, pointing at each of them in turn.

Cho bent over, resting her forearms on the table in front of Sasuke. She was only wearing a thin, lacy cami, showing ample cleavage – enough to get Naruto drooling anyway. "Sasuke," she whispered to the Uchiha, "Let's get together sometime," she cooed to him.

Ino and Sakura sighed inwardly. Cho was one of those girls who always won over their prey. Naruto gaped openly, a thin line of saliva trickling down his chin, his cerulean eyes wide with testosterone.

A small crowd had started gathering around their quiet little lunch table – Cho's friends, no doubt, here to cheer her on.

Sakura rolled her eyes as she rested her chin in her palm, her elbow propped up on the table. She took her phone out, flipping it open, and beginning to type up a text to her father asking him whether or not he could maybe find her old notebook from high school with all of its doodles and creative elegance?

She glanced up, seafoam green peeking out from underneath bubble gum pink. Sasuke's new fangirls still weren't gone. She shrugged. Why did it even matter if they asked him out on a date, one by one? No guy was able to resist girls like Cho – pretty, relatively smart, popular, and straightforward.

Cho stood up and scooted over more, resting her chin on Sasuke's shoulder. "C'mon Sasuke, what do you say?" she asked, her honey blonde hair draping over him. "Let's get together sometime…?"

Sasuke snapped a bored gaze at her, then, slowly looked at everyone else, his gaze stopping at Sakura, who was busy texting someone on her silver EnV phone.

"How about not," he said, shaking Cho off not-too-gently and picking up his messenger bag and lunch tray. "Sakura," he said when he passed her. "Come on."

Sakura clamped her phone shut and gathered her belongings. "Okay?" she dumped her tray, snatching her VitaminWater from it just in time before it started to go into the trash.

--

"Lunch was fun," Sakura commented to Sasuke dryly as they made their way to the psychology lecture hall. She sipped a bit of her Defense VitaminWater, raspberry-apple flavored.

Sasuke rolled his eyes and ran a hand through his blue-black locks. "Sure it was," he agreed sarcastically, "If you like trash."

Burn.

I tried to find an out-of-the-box-ish-not-really way to portray Sasuke's immunity. It kind of worked.

Review. (: