Disclaimer: My sword doesn't cut rice paper. It also has nothing to do with this story based on characters I do not own.
The brunette daughter of Tazuna was not pleased when the first wave of guests entered her house for the nigt, just as Tazuna had predicted. While she didn't direct the anger at the shinobi, Tsunami did shoot a few warning glances at her father that made it perfectly clear that they should have talked the lodging situation through before making a decision by himself. Inari was well aware of his mother's bad mood, but took advantage of the fact it wasn't directed towards him to escape up the stairs into his room.
The genin couldn't bolt like the builder's grandson, but thankfully Tazuna's daughter was the passive aggressive type. She allowed them to make themselves comfortable while she prepared dinner. The two gave polite bows and didn't bother asking what the meal would be.
Minutes later found Sakura and Sasuke reclined on floor cushions in the living room, just letting their muscles relax and allowing the pleasant aromas of Tsunami's kitchen activities to tickle their noses. Whatever Inari's mother was cooking up contained meat, the two noted within their separate minds. Obviously there had been some significant healing to the economy from the bridge, and now they were going to benefit from it as well.
Sasuke turned to his female teammate, who had hardly so much as batted her eyes in his direction during the entirety of their trip from the site. For what it was worth, she was quite calm for all that had happened to her during the past few weeks; he admired that. However, no amount of admiring would ever leave the boy's interior banter, and the calm would have to be broken soon enough.
"Sakura?" he asked quietly, surprising the kunoichi he addressed. At first, the pink-haired girl just hummed and waited for the Uchiha to speak in his usual short sentences. A few quiet moments indicated that whatever was to be said was to be said to her fully-attentive face.
"Yes, Sasuke-kun?" she answered, turning her head in her teammate's direction at long last. The eyes that could become Sharingan regarded her seriously, stirring a few hormones that the kunoichi had repressed to attempt to reappear through a series of facial blood vessels.
This feeling of Sakura's intensified as he opened his mouth slowly, professionally annunciating every syllable with discretion. "Have you opened your bag yet?"
Sakura nearly blushed, some infantile part of her wishing for a gift from her former love, but she quickly pushed it back and fumbled into her side-pouch. A warm hand enveloped her wrist and hummed a sound of disapproval. She didn't turn to face him; her face was bright red and she didn't need this right now.
"Sakura, I was talking about your back-duffle." the owner of the grasping hand informed her back, which was unusually rigid for more reasons than one. Sasuke's brows furrowed as his fingers were extricated from his supposed fan girl's hand forcibly. The Uchiha was forced to ponder his next step for a little while before he thought of a new way to approach his female comrade.
"You're scared." he said slowly, making sure to make his voice as condescending as possible. It came naturally, though, so it didn't take much to make her feel on the spot. "You're just going to sit there and act weak again, aren't you?"
"You were scared, too!" Sakura whipped her body around to face the now-smirking Uchiha with a pout. The black-haired boy shrugged and shook his head, not bothering to deny or validate her accusation.
"You heard that thing, didn't you?!" she demanded, doubting her own sanity ever so slightly.
"Yah." Sasuke answered easily, curiosity concealed well behind his eyes.
"Sakura-chan," she whispered dryly. "-it called me 'Sakura-chan'." She closed her eyes and reinforced the information that both she and Sasuke knew.
"Just like he did, right?" Naruto's rival commented, undoubtedly referring to the blonde in question. The Uchiha put his hands to his chin.
Sakura turned to her former obsession again with confusion. "What does it mean, Sasuke?" she asked timidly, her old trust in the black-haired boy's abilities rising from within.
Sasuke looked at Sakura intensely for a moment from behind his folded hands. He made a few absent noises and made no movements whatsoever.
"I don't know." the self-appointed avenger admitted,"-but we can probably assume it has something to do with the dobe, right?"
Sakura cut him off. "You don't think that thing IS Naruto, do you?" the girl asked with even more insecurity, her eyes suddenly horrified with the thought.
The Haruno couldn't tell if her friend's reply was to spare her, but Sasuke shook his head slowly. "No, I don't, Sakura, but we might know more if you open your bag."
"Why me?" she asked cautiously. While the Haruno didn't doubt Sasuke, she had some qualms with the mysterious squirrel. Her fellow conversationalist didn't soothe her nerves when he looked at her with the smallest smile ever made in the history of man.
"I try not to make a habit of reading other people's mail, Sakura. Whatever the creature wanted, it was centered on you." Obviously, Sasuke was not above stretching the truth to an extent. He had wanted to open the squirrel's 'delivery', as anyone in his position would have.
Sakura grabbed a clump of her hair with her left hand and tugged on it nervously. With the smell of Tsunami's cooking dinner in the air, the kunoichi approached the doorway of the builder's house. Once there, she knelt down and prepared to lift the flap, her one-man audience giving the action his undivided attention.
"If it seems too dangerous, Sakura, we can wait until Kakashi comes back." he suddenly spurted before the girl's pale hand entered her baggage. Her movement halted for a moment, and Sakura had to take a deep breath before feeling around. After a few seconds, her fingers clasped around an unfamiliar object.
The Haruno gulped and pulled the mysterious item out of the bag, feeling its ridges for anything remotely threatening. Aside from a rough texture, there seemed to be no needles or living creatures within it.
When she felt nothing out of the ordinary, Sakura sighed and looked down at the object that fit neatly in her palm. She was struck by the strange appeal of the color it carried; it was a lustrous dark wood scroll case, encrusted with various carvings resembling trees and branches spanning near the top and bottoms. There was a hint of coniferous perfume to it, too.
Entranced, Sakura transferred the scroll case into her other hand and reached down to pull the parchment out from the inside when the door slip open behind her to reveal Kakashi, Iruka, and an unconscious drunk weirdo on the Hatake's back.
Sakura backed away from the door with the scroll in her hands, but never opened it, to Sasuke's displeasure. It would be safer to examine its contents with the jounin around, but all the same, he didn't want Kakashi to overreact. Then again, it wasn't really Kakashi that he should worry about, he realized. Visions of Iruka's apartment flashed through his brain.
"Who's that?" Sakura asked her drenched teacher, the scroll in her hand twirling in her grasp. Iruka smiled feebly in place of Kakashi, who just began taking off his shoes without so much as a reply.
"That is Jiraiya-one of Konoha's legendary sannin." he introduced with a nervous chuckle. As the teacher had warned his gray-haired companion repeatedly on the road back to the builder's house, the man was going to wake up eventually. When he did, there would be reason to worry; most people didn't appreciate waking up the morning after getting wasted with work they'd never have agreed to do otherwise. After serving a stint of unappreciative, a person often became violently angry. Kakashi knew from the start of his brilliant plan that he had condemned himself to an unpleasant fate, had just made a few mutterings in response. Iruka didn't hear him through the rain, though, and dismissed his utterings as something of little importance.
Kakashi unceremoniously dropped his heavily intoxicated cargo to the ground, when the man continued to sleep soundly despite the rainwater on his skin(and the impact with the floor, for that matter).
Sakura and Sasuke couldn't peel their eyes away from the sleeping figure; he seemed strange, granted, but at first glance you wouldn't label him frightening. Repulsive, maybe, and definitely someone you'd want to keep away from your children, but never an effective killer.
"Before you ask, Sasuke, this isn't a cheap trick," Kakashi yawned, looking around to see his remaining male student staring dubiously while Sakura stood over the newcomer with interest. Iruka quickly pulled her away from her position of standing over Jiraiya's face. Were the man to wake up and see the inside of the girl's skirt, there would be quite a bit of guilt on Iruka's shoulders. He didn't really look at younger girls that way, but you never knew with the toad sannin.
"It was a really expensive trick." Kakashi chuckled weakly, watching Sasuke's reactions retreat behind apathy like they always did.
"You mean to say you got him drunk, sensei?" Sakura asked, though she already knew the answer by the palm covering Iruka's face.
"This was your ERRAND, sensei?" Sasuke addressed his teacher in a restrained growl. The jounin waved into the kitchen during this time, Tsunami having heard the group enter. The woman pretended not to notice the man passed out on her floor, as there wasn't much she could do about it anyway.
"Sensei?!" Sasuke said forcefully, only to find the Hatake looking at him with hawk-like intensity.
"Down, boy." Kakashi ordered seriously. "He's going to help us find our obnoxious little friend, and just needed a little… convincing."
Iruka groaned. "If he doesn't beat the crap out of us and escape first, anyway."
"Dinner's ready!" Inari's mother suddenly called out, breaking the ninja out of their conversation and enticing them into the dining area, where the portions were considerably larger than their last visit.
Sakura pecked at her food nervously, the scroll still in her free hand. While she hadn't brought it up to Kakashi yet, she intended to. Granted, she was going to open the case without his permission before, but she hadn't really felt all that comfortable with it.
"Eat up, girly." Tazuna nudged at her plate with his own chopsticks, and she lifted her own to shovel more in before the ever-observant Inari pointed at her.
"What are you holding, Sakura?" he asked between bites, causing all eyes to focus on the kunoichi in question. Sasuke's eyes flashed from his end. He'd been waiting for this.
"It's.." Sakura stammered, not entirely sure of how she was supposed to explain herself.
"Isn't that the thing the talking squirrel gave you?" Tazuna barked, sounding more stupid than he had intended. Sakura nodded.
"So, it's a 'talking' squirrel now?" Kakashi asked with interest,"-perhaps there's something you want to share with the rest of the class, then?"
Sakura reached across the table and handed the scroll-case to the enigma of a teacher, who inspected it carefully. His visible eyebrow furrowed, and even Iruka cast the thing a sidelong glance that filled with wonder.
After determining the object wasn't an immediate threat, Kakashi started to open it, only to shut it again and look at Sakura in awe. "Would you like to tell me how your afternoon went, then?"
Sasuke groaned, the mystery still tantalizing him. "What is it?" the Uchiha demanded, soon to be joined by Sakura's head in urging Kakashi to answer.
"It's just a summoning contract, but how you came by it is rather important. Genins don't usually get a hold of these."
"A summoning contract?" Sakura asked, vaguely remembering the term from the academy's course curriculum.
Seeing that the girl was struggling to put two and two together, Iruka lent his expertise in the ninja acedemic field and spent the next few minutes explaining what a summoning contract was, citing examples of Jiraiya and Kakashi as users. He then went a step beyond and explained that most contracts were signed in blood, and that a summon had to truly trust a shinobi to offer a partnership, and many of them contained different agreements.
Kakashi handed the scroll back to Sakura, and Sasuke watched in slight envy as the girl unfurled the parchment to read the symbols contained within. She looked at it with wide eyes, taking in nearly every word within seconds. She was relieved to finally be sure that the rodent that had so haunted her hadn't been her teammate.
It was with very small surprise that Sakura learned the parchment was a squirrel summoning contract, but she couldn't help but let out a breathless laugh when she read the most recent condition, which looked like it had been recently scrawled in.
'You cannot attempt to destroy and/or attempt a takeover of the human race while under these binding terms.'
"What is it, Sakura?" Iruka asked when she let loose her small outburst.
"Oh, nothing," she said with a smile.
The kunoichi ended up staying at the table studying the parchment long after the others had gone up to bed, and the next day would find her asleep on the surface, the end of the scroll smeared in a few messy drops of blood that belonged to a wound she had bandaged and taken care of already.
Author's note: That is the last of inaction you guys will read for a while. Starting in chapter 46, Jiraiya awakens! Sasuke whines! Sakura makes deals with squirrels, and Naruto tries to get away in one final climactic attempt? Well, maybe. It all happens on what is FINALLY an exciting episode of Naruto Ball Z!