Title: Limitless

Summary: An escort mission with an eccentric was the last thing Sakura thought would cement her resolve.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Prompt: Indestructible

Warnings: Lots of talking. OTL please bear with me!

Comments: So I hate the ending, but this is about a week overdue, and I don't know what else to write for this prompt. My OC is inspired by FMA: Brotherhood. Aasdjfoisdfj go watch it. I just finished, and my heart hasn't recovered yet.

Wakahisa Maiko was possibly the most famous woman after Tsunade and Sakura in the shinobi world. Though not a kunoichi, she was a weapons designer—one of the best there was. She was known for busting out of a prison camp with nothing but her bed sheets, an earring, and a hammer. (Since then, Tsunade had kept her within Konoha walls at all times.)

She was also known for wearing very little clothing when she was fine tuning her creations and though she was no beauty, being a mechanic leant itself to well defined musculature, leading men to gape openly as she poured over her instruments in a strapless bra and capris.

But above all, Wakahisa Maiko was famous for being eccentric. She never left her workshop without a hammer, and she could pull a prank rivaling Naruto's in grandeur and completely dwarfing his in cunning. The last time Tsunade tried to cut her funding, the Hokage tower mysteriously found itself in a real estate magazine, described as having "a spectacular view of the city, with plenty of space for you, your kids, and all your distant relatives! Even those you don't even know!" (The price just so happened to be the same amount to be cut from Wakahisa's funding.) That day, the employees of the tower were perplexed and bemused to see tour groups walking through the building while a tour guide who looked suspiciously like Wakahisa led them around.

Thus, Team Seven was a little surprised, a little wary, and a little excited when they saw her standing next to Tsunade as they reported for a mission.

"Maiko-san is getting married," Tsunade said briskly. "Her fiancé is a shinobi posted in one of the outskirt villages in the Fire nation, and they've decided to get married there. You are to act as her bodyguards. This is an A ranked mission. I expect all of you to take this seriously. The last time she left this village, she was kidnapped. Make sure that doesn't happen this time."

"Hai!"

"Maiko-san, please hurry this way," Sakura said, urging the woman forward.

"You guys are no fun," Maiko complained, stretching her arms. Sakura was glad that the engineer had at least put on more clothes. She wore loose cargo pants, a tank top, and of course, her iconic black bandana over her messy brown hair. "Can't I be allowed to enjoy the fresh air for a moment? I've been stuck in that stuffy village for ten years! Who would've thought getting married would finally allow me to be free!"

"Ano sa, ano sa! Maiko-san, how did you manage to put the Hokage Tower up for sale?" Naruto asked eagerly. He cackled evilly to himself. "Cuz that would be the perfect blackmailing tool for next time Hiashi-sama says no—"

"Sorry pipsqueak," Maiko cut him off with finality, "trade secret. I can't have everyone copying me, now can I? Then it wouldn't be so effective."

Naruto wilted. "But it's so perfect, ya know."

In the front, Sasuke snorted. "That's the point, dobe."

"Shut up, Sasuke!" Naruto shot back immediately. "Why're you butting in on our conversation?"

"With that loud mouth of yours, you're practically inviting anyone within earshot to participate."

"Well, you're always welcome to scout out of earshot, ya know!"

"That defeats the purpose of a team, dobe."

Sakura coughed, embarrassed. "You'll have to excuse them," she said apologetically. "They really are quite powerful, but the banter helps them release some of the tension from the mission."

Maiko, who'd been observing the two boys with a glint in her eye, only smirked lightly. "Indeed."

Naruto stirred, hand slipping easily to his weapons pouch, at the shuffle of footsteps. When only Maiko emerged from the shadows, he relaxed. She settled herself next to him, tilting her head against the tree to look at the stars.

"I love nights like this," she commented. "It's so calm and the stars are winking down at us…"

"Maiko-san, you should go to sleep," Naruto said quietly. "We have a long day ahead of us."

"I'm fine," Maiko said, waving his concern off. "I pull all-nighters all the time. You get used to it. Besides, tonight is far too beautiful… Nights like these remind me of my fiancé."

"What's he like?" he asked, curious.

Maiko barked a laugh. "The most infuriating man alive. If I had the skill to kill him, I would."

Naruto cringed at how sincere she sounded. "Then why are you marrying him?"

"Because we've been through hell together," she said quietly. That got Naruto's attention. He waited for her to continue. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them loosely, all the while looking up at the sky. "We were best friends as kids. We did everything together. We even enrolled under the same engineer as apprentices. As a team, we shot up the ranks, designing bigger, better machinery at impossible rates. In our final stage, we were set to design an indestructible piece of armor. We spent years designing, testing, redesigning, retesting until we had it almost perfect.

"At that point, Kai wanted to call it done. There was only a few glitches to the armor, and he argued that none of the situations that might exploit those weaknesses would ever arise. I disagreed, and we got into a huge argument. So, without my argument or approval, he presented our work to our sensei, claiming all the credit for it. I was disgraced for "riding on the ability of another," while he rocketed to fame.

"The armor did its job for a long time. Our death tolls dropped drastically, and the government mass ordered it for all its shinobi. But all it took, was for one enemy to find the chink, and everything went to pieces as it was bound to. And once that happened, we started losing badly. Kai was stripped of all recognition and sentenced to prison for ten years."

"That's…wow. That's really terrible," Naruto murmured.

"Yeah. When he finally got out, I refused to have anything to do with him. He had indirectly brought about the death of so many of our countrymen, some of our friends too, but most of all, I couldn't forgive him for betraying me," she said sadly.

"And yet you're marrying him?"

"The one lesson I took away from that project was this: nothing is indestructible. I've returned to that design again and again, pouring over our designs, tweaking it here or there. But I've found that when I solve one problem, another crops up. That's when I realized that indestructibility is just a dream. Humans are always progressing forward, and what may be novel today will easily be surpassed tomorrow. My philosophy when I design now is centered around this idea. I don't believe in just building the best weapons, equipment, and whatever you need. I always want to build better than the best. And I think, that same philosophy applies to relationships.

"Our friendship was completely, utterly destroyed after what happened. It took years and years for me to trust him again. He constantly needed to reprove his sincerity. But what we built from there—it is so much better than what we had before. And I guess… I guess that's why I'm marrying him."

"I don't know about that last part," Naruto disagreed. "The three of us have been through some pretty hard times too, and we managed to pull through just fine!"

"That's not even true," Maiko scoffed. "Just think of your two teammates. Your relationship with the two of them individually might not have changed very much, but those two—well, even I have heard the rumors about them: the slowest couple to ever form, the two blind idiots, and whatever other dumb shit people come up with. People don't realize that those two aren't continuing from where they left off. They're starting over again, and how they decide to proceed will shape your relationship with them. Just keep that in mind."

Naruto had no response to that, so the two of them sat in silence, watching the night sky.

When Naruto went to wake up Sasuke for his watch, he paused once he was near enough to see in the darkness; although a respectful distance away from one another, each had a hand stretched out across the void, just shy of touching.