Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto

Chapter 7

The center area was crowded with the citizens of the Leaf Village.

"Can't say I'll be sad to see him go" Shikamaru said

"I'll be glad to see him get taken out of here" Kiba said with Akamaru yipping in agreement.

"And to think I use to like that jerk" Ino said

The rookie 12 were there for the same reason as everyone else

Today was the day that Sasuke was going to be moved outside the village and taken to the capitol where he would later face trial in front of the Daimyo himself.

There was a specially designed carriage for carrying prisoners that was made to keep ninja criminals in. all around the area were ANBU along with three Jounin who would be going along, Kakashi, Asuma and Genma.

"By the way" Ten Ten said looking around "Where's Naruto and Sakura?"

On a nearby rooftop where they still had a good view of the square was the two young teens.

"Part of me still can't believe that this is how our team has ended up, how did Sasuke fall this much Sakura?" Naruto asked as he sat on a chair that they had brought up with them.

"Sasuke always had darkness in him, we were just blinded to it, me most of all" Sakura said

Naruto put a hand on her shoulder "Don't blame yourself, Sakura you only wanted to see the best in him and I think he was our friend for a bit there but Sasuke just chose a different path."

"Yeah, I guess" Sakura said although she didn't sound too convinced. But before Naruto could say anything they heard a notable rise in the mutterings and whisperings from the crowd which meant only one thing.

Sasuke had arrived

It wasn't long after that they saw him with ANBU leading him as he was chained to the point where he couldn't move his arms. There were also visible seals on his body preventing chakra usage.

He looked up at the building where Naruto and Sakura was and for a moment it felt like he met both their eyes even at that distance.

Finally one of the ANBU captains said something and they opened the door to the prison carriage and moved Sasuke inside and two ANBU went in along with him obviously to watch him.

Within a few minutes later the prison carriage, the three jounin and two dozen ANBU headed out of the village with almost everyone watching until the party was out of sight.

Naruto and Sakura sat in silence until Sakura spoke up.

"Why don't we go and get some ramen?"

Needless to say Naruto smiled happily.

On a dirt road

Kakashi turned his single eye from right to left, his headband pulled up so if he needed his sharingan then all he would need to do was open it.

Orochimaru was going to attack them, he was certain of it, Orochimaru would stop at nothing to get the sharingan for himself.

Out of reflex he turned and looked at everyone they brought and he knew that they most likely wouldn't be able to stop Orochimaru.

But from Jiraiya's spy network they were told that Orochimaru had been forced into a weaker body than he required when Sasuke failed to go to him in time. So there was the possibility that the Snake Sannin would be weakened.

Still, a weak Orochimaru was still more dangerous than most jounin.

Due to his enhanced sense of smell Kakashi had been placed at the head of the guard while Asuma and Genma took up both sides of the rear in case anything happened. In all honesty he would have liked to have brought more people but the three jounin and two ANBU squads had been all that the leaf could spare after the attack on the village.

He glanced back to the prison carriage where Sasuke was being held. He couldn't help but feel partially responsible for what had happened to Sasuke and his students. Sasuke was a criminal by the laws of the Land of Fire and would possibly face life in prison or execution if they could get him safely to the capitol, Sakura had now lost the love she felt towards Sasuke and now felt anger instead, she would probably never trust Sasuke even if her life depended on it, Naruto was recovering quicly from his physical injuries even though he would never recover completely and had scars from the burns and chidori, and even with the passage of the last few months they hadn't had the chance to see how he was mentally and emotionally.

He remembered how Sakura had told him about the way Naruto had reacted to the sight of electricity while they were out, how it had scared him. This fear was understandable and Naruto had possibly also gained a fear of fire from where Sasuke had set him on fire. What worried him the most however, was Naruto's trust in people. Naruto was one of those people who always tried to see the good in people and offer a degree of trust. But now Sasuke, one of the people he had trusted most, had tried to kill him, it worried Kakashi that Naruto would find it hard to trust people he didn't consider good friends.

Knowing that they had been traveling for a while he held up his hand signaling the ANBU to stop

"Ok everyone, rest up!"

The ANBU that had been carrying Sasuke's portable jail cell eagerly set it down, stretching and rubbing their arms.

Asuma and Genma walked up to Kakashi

"You sure you wanna stop here Kakashi?" Genma asked

"We need to rest and we're going to be traveling this road for a few days, so we'll be open targets anywhere we are" Kakashi said

"Agreed, and the more rested we are the more we'll be prepared to defend against attackers" Asuma said

Any further conversation was halted as the three jounin and most ANBU tensed instinctively from the feeling of someone watching them

In the ninja world when you felt someone watching you it wasn't something you could ignore, and it usually wasn't anything that was good for you.

"How many?" Asuma asked Kakashi

"At least 4x what we have"

And then the battle started

First the enemy came from the tree's and the ANBU quickly cut them down.

Then more came from the ground, then the air.

For the most part the sound ninja were no threat to the leaf ninja. But the trouble came from the large number of them and the special weapons they carried, no doubt Orochimaru's creations.

Kakashi had just cut a sound ninja's melody arm off with a lightning enhanced kunai when he heard two ANBU make pained yell and the smell of blood from where Sasuke was being kept. He used the Body Flicker to teleport over the distance. He quickly ran to the prison carriage.

"Kakashi, their retreating!" Kakashi heard Asuma say behind him

"Yes because they got what they came for" he said

Inside the carriage lay the bodies of the two ANBU who had been in there with Sasuke, they had their weapons drawn but it had done them little good judging by the blood splatter. Kakashi could tell just from looking that the blade that had done this had been the Kusanagi, Orochimaru's weapon of choice.

"How many did we lose?" he asked Asuma

"Barely anyone, these sound nin were incapable of battaling on our level, they were cannon fodder. Meant to distract us with their sheer numbers while the real threat came in and grabbed the Uchiha"

Kakashi clenched his fists

'Those who break the rules are trash! But those who abandon their comrades are even worse than trash!' He could hear Obito saying in his head.

Orochimaru hadn't just abandoned his comrades; he sent them to be killed.

And perhaps even worse was that Sasuke was free and Kakashi knew that this wasn't the last they'd hear from him.

Back in the Leaf Village

Naruto had finally gotten his first taste of ramen in months since he had gotten injured.

Ramen had never tasted so good.

Not only was he finally getting to eat his favorite food but all of his friends were eating with him as well, even Iruka had managed to make it out.

At times like these Naruto didn't have to think about all the things that were troubling him.

He looked over at Sakura while they laughed at a story that Lee was telling with wild charades with Neji throwing in things Lee forgot or exaggerated.

If only things could stay this way.

They were at Ichiraku's for hours until the sun had gone down and as Naruto and Sakura left there was a silence between the two.

Suddenly Sakura realized that Naruto was no longer walking beside her and she turned around to see him standing up the street a ways, looking up at the sky.

"Naruto?" she asked

"You feel it too right Sakura?" he said

She understood what he meant, she'd had this bad feeling in her heart for a while now. Like someone had pointed a freezing kunai right at it.

"Sasuke's escaped" Naruto said

Sakura didn't say anything, Kakashi had said that Orochimaru would likely try to free Sasuke, but she was scared that if she said that she believed he had aloud then it would happen in real life and all she really wanted was to see Sasuke locked up in the deepest darkest hole in the Land of Fire and the key melted and thrown away. She still had nightmares of Sasuke killing Naruto.

She would do whatever she could to keep that from happening.

"We should go home Naruto, I have training in the morning with Lady Hokage and you have to finish those seals before Master Jiraiya gets back" Sakura said

Naruto winced a little

"But Sakuraaa! Those seals are hard, how does he expect me to understand them just from reading about them!"

"He helps you when he's here Naruto"

And they continued back and forth the rest of the way home.

The future held many challenges for them, but it also held limitless hope as well.

Okay everyone that is a chapter done for now!

I never liked how they treated Orochimaru through most of Shippuden as they made him out to be this big threat and then he became a B list bad guy.

In this chapter I mainly wanted to see Sasuke be freed and that he will be a future threat to the heroes of the story

Now for Reviews:

TimothyB: I actually plan on letting him use a staff as it is one of my favorite weapons. Hope you liked the chapter.

Aevrum: Nobody knew that Kushina was royalty, not even the Daimyo, so he wouldn't of had a better childhood since no one knew and I was unsure about doing the royal thing too, however I have a plan where it will play a part in a future part of the story, but other than that it won't have a large impact on the story in general, so don't worry about it too much. I'm a big NaruSaku fan and I appreciate you speaking up for it and I would probably have been more ok with NH if they had actually developed it more, so while I wish Hinata would have been more developed as a character, I'll forever be a NaruSaku fan as I have been since I saw the bench scene in the anime years ago.

Thedarkpokemaster: Actually I plan on making Naruto afraid of both fire and lightning as he was set on fire and I think anyone would be afraid after that. Sakura and his friends halping him with all of this is a large part of the story and one of the things I didn't like about the Naruto series was that Naruto repeatedly talked about how you need the streangth of others to help you with the things you face, but at the end it was Naruto and Sasuke getting so powerful that they didn't need any help from anyone and the rest of the characters kinda became pointless.

Guest: The only reason Haku could do one handed seals was because he had a bloodline which he hadn't mastered, if he had mastered it then he wouldn't have needed to use and signs at all, as Naruto does not have a bloodline like Haku the handsigns wouldn't work for him. Kakashi actually mentioned the single hand signs in the fight with Haku. I appreciate you understanding what I'm trying to do with some characters.

Wubbzy: Glad you liked the story, hope you continue to enjoy it!

Boban: I don't hate Hinata as she hasn't really done anything for me to hate her character, to me she was this character who played no important role in the story even though she could have, and I'm not really trying to bash her character but I'm trying to make her character less 'perfect' and more human, her and Sakura will not get along well and I have a plan for her in the future of this story as she will play a larger role.

Well that's all for now

Please review and thank you for reading

Have a nice day!