A/N: I know! Another update? Well, the good news is I got a head start on some of the later chapters. And there's no bad news...yet. So that's fun. Anyway, enjoy! The action is coming sooooooon :D
Eight: Hidden Talents
"Ooh! We have a mission!" Naruto piped up. "It's about time! I've been going crazy learning how to do all this paperwork stuff. Everyone knows I'm just gonna make Kakashi-sensei do it for me anyway when I'm Hokage. He's better at stuff like that."
Sasuke rolled his eyes, willing to let the subject drop, but Sai had other ideas.
"What makes you think Kakashi would do all your paperwork for you?"
"Well, duh. He's going to be my adviser—no offense to the old guys but I don't really like them."
"They are idiots," Sasuke said. He didn't normally like to get involved in these sort of conversations, but the Hokage's advisers had really pissed him off when he'd come back to the village after the war. If they'd had their way—and if Tsunade had even the tiniest bit of respect that would have allowed her to listen to them—he'd be rotting in a cell right now.
"Yeah, so I don't see why Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke over here can't be my advisers instead."
"Hey wait a minute, loser. No one said anything about me being an adviser. Make Sakura do it."
Naruto frowned. "No way! She'd hit me! And besides, I'm gonna put her in charge of the hospital, assuming that Granny Tsunade actually does run away with Pervy Sage when she retires—oops."
Naruto ducked as a completely red-faced Tsunade threw an empty sake dish at him.
"You weren't supposed to talk about that, idiot," Sasuke said through gritted teeth, watching the blonde Hokage to make sure he wasn't going to be her next victim.
"Yes, I do recall this being one of our 'secrets' that we weren't supposed to tell anyone about," Sai observed.
"Sakura!" Tsunade grumbled. "I thought that girl could keep her mouth shut."
"Wait, Sakura knew! And she didn't tell us! That's not fair! This was sacred. Almost like Kakashi-sensei's face!"
Naruto looked offended at the thought that the pink-haired medic had known about Jiraiya and Tsunade…and not at all like the girl had spilled her guts to them over sake one night at the bar.
"So Sakura didn't tell you?" Tsunade looked surprised.
The three boys shook their heads.
"Well, shit."
Sasuke raised an eyebrow. It was all but confirmed now.
"Anyway, it's not important. Back to the mission." Tsunade was eyeing them warily now. "You know that I sent Kakashi out on a mission to the Land of Silver to investigate rumors of a rebel army there, correct?"
The three shinobi nodded.
"It was at the request of Lord Tanosuke Sasaki that a ninja from Konoha go to that region and see if there was any information on the rebellion. What he didn't initially say in his mission request, however, was that there had been attacks on him and his family."
Sasuke's eyes narrowed. He could see where this was going. "Has Kakashi found something?"
Tsunade shook her head. "Unfortunately he hasn't found their leaders or their headquarters yet, but it's only a matter of time before he picks up a trail. But that's not why I called you three in here. Sasuke, I want you to lead the squad and serve as the Sasakis' protection detail."
"We get to be bodyguards?" Naruto asked excitedly.
"Not exactly. Lord Sasaki is worried that there will be an attack at the facility where one of the noble families is hosting a dinner, and he wants some Leaf ninja there in case it goes south, but he mainly wants to see if we can gather any additional information on the rebels while we're there."
Tsunade rolled her eyes and sighed. Even Sai could tell this Sasaki guy was getting on her nerves.
"I told him we've got one of our best out gathering information, but apparently he's not familiar with the amount of time a recon mission like that can take, especially when we don't even know if there is a real rebel army."
"So that's where we come in, isn't it?" Sasuke asked.
The Hokage nodded. "Yes. He wants you three to pose as performers for the dinner. That way you can talk to people without arousing suspicion and see if anyone's heard anything." She paused, taking in the trio's faces. "Is this going to be a problem? You've posed as a performing group on missions before, haven't you?"
"Yes we have," Sai said, "but Sakura has always done the actual performing part."
Tsunade frowned, forgetting that her pink-haired apprentice was still away on her ANBU training. This threw a wrench in her plans, but she wasn't going to call Sakura back for the sake of this mission. Surely one of the three had some sort of talent. If not, she could always find them a fourth team member from somewhere in the village.
"Well, you leave in three days," Tsunade sighed. "That should give you plenty of time to figure out what to do about Sakura's absence. Dismissed."
"Hey Yamato, can I ask you a question?" Sakura asked the next day when they were cleaning up their camp.
They were making their way back to Konoha at a leisurely pace, since she had almost completed her training. There were just a few more things for him to teach her, but it wasn't like there was any rush. She was still bar far the fastest to complete her ANBU training as far as he knew. He didn't think even Kakashi had finished remotely close to one month.
"Sure," he said, slipping on his pack and starting to walk. There was really no need to hurry, so they might as well wake up a bit before they started tearing through the trees at a breakneck pace.
"Did you ever date anyone or have a serious relationship? You know, when we weren't at war or anything?"
"Why the interest, Sakura?"
She blushed. "It's just…I was just thinking that I never seem to find the time to get out or anything. I mean, I know I could never date a civilian—he wouldn't understand my job and it wouldn't be fair to him if I were gone all the time—but other ninja settle down, don't they?"
"Sure they do. It's nothing like the life you could live if you weren't a shinobi, but there's no rule that says you have to stay alone forever. But to answer your question, no. I've never been in a serious relationship. I was very focused on my ANBU career when I was younger. I was a lot like Kakashi back then—he was my mentor after all—and like him I didn't leave ANBU until I was assigned to take over Team Seven for him."
"So you've never dated either then?"
Yamato shook his head. "Nope. There was this one girl when I was a lot younger, but you know how things get. It never went anywhere."
Sakura sighed. "I know all about that."
"You mind if I ask you a question?"
"Sure. It's only fair."
"How come you've never dated anyone on your team? It's not all that uncommon."
"Well, besides the general drama that that would entail, I guess I just never really considered it, especially after how bad it was when we were genin. I don't know how Kakashi put up with us back then, especially me."
She shuddered just thinking about how love struck she used to be over Sasuke. She was so glad they'd been able to move on and overlook that part of their life. The part where they'd tried to kill each other too. That wasn't exactly a highlight of their friendship.
"But anyway, I'm over Sasuke now, Naruto's like a brother to me after all the two of us have been through, and I love Sai, but he's got the emotional IQ of an overturned rock."
Yamato laughed at her apt description of the dark-haired ex-foundation agent. A rock was very similar as far as expressiveness went.
"He is getting better, though," Sakura added, feeling the need to defend Sai since he wasn't there to defend himself. "He's stopped giving people those awful nicknames."
"Well that's a relief. Those nicknames gave me quite a headache when I first captained your team."
"I think that was us that gave you those headaches," Sakura laughed, nudging him with her elbow.
Yamato smiled and elbowed her back. "Well, I wasn't going to mention it."
"Damn it," Kakashi swore to himself as the trail he'd been following turned out to be another dead end. He was going nowhere quick with this mission, and he knew Lord Sasaki had to be getting impatient.
He'd been out in the Land of Silver for nearly one month now and he had yet to find anything remotely useful about who was behind the rebellion.
The lead he'd been following—backtracking a pair of men who looked like shinobi—had been his most promising so far, but it too had turned up a dead end.
"There has to be something else going on here," he muttered to himself as he dropped out of the tree he'd been hiding in.
That was when he felt it. It wasn't much, but there was something just off with his senses when he'd landed. It was gone as soon as he realized it, but that split second was all the Copy Ninja needed to realize that he'd been tricked.
By a very powerful genjutsu.
"Ah," he said, tilting his head back. "Now this is more like it."
"Aw man, what are we going to do now that Sakura's not gonna be with us on this mission?" Naruto moaned as he followed Sasuke and Sai out of Hokage Tower.
Sasuke shrugged, and Sai was as helpful as ever. Which was to say, not at all.
"Come on," the blonde protested. "One of us has to have some sort of talent, right? What about you, Sai? You're an artist."
Sai fixed Naruto with a stare that looked like it could almost be filled with contempt. If Sasuke had it in him, he would have been proud of the ex-foundation member.
"Just because I paint does not mean that I am any more talented than you or Sasuke in singing or dancing my way across a stage."
"What about just letting people watch you draw then?" Naruto asked.
"That would be boring, idiot," Sasuke said. "No offense Sai."
Sai smiled. "None taken. Besides, I don't like it when people look at my work before it's finished."
"Well, you could always sing while you worked," Naruto grumbled, annoyed that the two dark-haired shinobi were ganging up on him.
"My voice is nowhere near as lovely as Sakura's," Sai said, having finally learned to forgo his usual nickname of 'ugly' after Kakashi had pulled him aside and given him some friendly advice about his choice of adjectives.
To be fair, the reason Kakashi had even brought it up was because Sai hadn't realized that giving Sasuke the nickname of 'former traitor' might not have been the best way to form a bond with the Uchiha. The part about calling Sakura ugly had been more of an afterthought on Kakashi's part.
"Well," Naruto said, breaking the pale ninja out of his thoughts, "it would be hard to beat Sakura's voice anyway. It's beautiful. I think she would have had a career in singing if she hadn't decided to become a kunoichi."
"Hn," Sasuke grunted, not really interested in their conversation. It was true though. Sakura really probably could have made a living off of performing. It wasn't just her voice—which was a rare blend of soprano and alto that made a combination that Sasuke certainly found easy on the ears—it was also her presence. She had a way of commanding your attention that was rare in a performer.
It was unfortunate that they would be without her for their mission. It would have been a lot easier for the boys to snoop around while everyone's attention was on her.
A horrific sound violated his ears, and he looked over in shock, wondering what sort of creature could be attacking the village—only to find that it was Naruto attempting what Sasuke could only assume was singing.
"Stop that!" he snapped, covering his ears much like how Sai was doing. "Do you want to blow out our eardrums?"
Naruto opened his mouth to protest, but Sai's hand came down and clamped it shut.
"Naruto," he said. "Do us a favor and never sing again. We'd really appreciate it, right Sasuke?"
Sasuke nodded. "Just stick to fights from now on, eh loser?"
"Well if I'm not going to do it, then which one of you is going to perform? Huh?"
Sai shrugged, opening his mouth and giving it a shot. They all knew the Uchiha wasn't going to volunteer.
Sasuke grimaced. While Sai was considerably better than Naruto—which only meant that Sasuke didn't want to rip out his ears—Sasuke knew there was still no chance he could ever pass as a performer. They'd be figured out for sure.
Not for the first time, Sasuke wished Sakura were back. Hell, even Kakashi would have done. The man wasn't as good as Sakura, but he'd been a jonin for years and he'd had to do his fair share of infiltration missions requiring him to pose as someone other than himself.
Sasuke knew for a fact too that he'd had to pose as a singer at a nightclub once, and he'd used the Sharingan to try to copy a man's voice. It hadn't completely worked, but he'd still have been a much better option than either of the two idiots standing in front of him. Kakashi could have at least passed as a valid performer.
Sasuke groaned to himself. The things I do for this damn village. Itachi, I hope you're happy.
Then he looked up at his two frowning teammates and said the three words he never thought would come out of his mouth.
"I can sing."