Hi there guys.
It's been a while, sorry.
If anyone's interested to know why it's been so long- I've been in the middle of a little shift in countries, have finally settled in properly now.
Don't worry, the updates from all three stories should come in more regularly now. I don't intend to leave any of them unfinished.
Enjoy!
Ps- check out my other Sasusaku story that's out there right now. And if you're into a different kind of NaruHina, you can check out Serial Killler too. Both to be found on my profile.
~Raven
26th April, 2032, Hyuga Mansion, San Francisco, Time- 07:13am
"When in God's name did you develop a fashion sense?!" was the line that greeted Sakura when she walked out of the shower that morning, only to find a certain annoying blonde sprawled over her bed, next to the now opened dress box that Sasuke had given her the previous night.
Bathrobe wrapped tightly around her, hair swept up in a wrapped towel turban, she scowled at the blonde who was in the process of leaping to her feet and stalking over to Sakura's wardrobe, rifling through the closet to pull out items of clothing she deemed 'work appropriate'.
"What are you doing Ino?" Sakura said, pinching the bridge of her nose as the peaceful aftermath of her morning shower fast crumbled.
Taking out a flashy red one shouldered top, Ino tossed it to the rosette in suggestion, saying, "Why, admiring your new dress of course. I didn't think you'd have had time to go shopping- who's the lucky date? Finally snagged the Uchiha?"
"Ino. Those are waay too flashy for the office put them down." Sakura said, as the blonde tried to hand her a pair of silvery strapped stilettos. She tossed the red top back into her wardrobe in a decisive 'no' and concluded with, "And I didn't go shopping."
"What, the dress is a gift? Details!" Ino said, frowning at the discarded red top before pulling out a sequinned black halter top and a soft prussian blue jacket to pair with it.
Sighing as she agreed to the top and jacket- a far more sober look at the least, Sakura said, "There's no details to it. I'm escorting Sasuke to a dinner he has to attend tonight- apparently he doesnt want an entire security detail following him around the restaurant."
Finishing Sakura's attire with light blue cord trousers, and dark, leather boots, Ino said, "He asked you out?! I didn't think he'd have it in him! Not after all the shit he's pulled!" she laughed, going on to say, "And he got you a dress?! For a first date? That's either entirely patronizing or completely adorable!" she gushed.
"I'll go with patronising." Sakura grumbled as she walked back into the bathroom to dress herself.
Ino's voice carried through the door as she said, "I'd go with adorable! And look at this dress! Sheesh, he's got taste!"
The dress itself was a simple black cocktail dress which touched the tops of her knees, a wide, comfortable neckline and a body hugging cinch at the waste. The prettiest part however, which Ino was so animatedly referring to, was the delicate black floral lace which replaced much of the fabric over the long sleeves, neck and shoulders, continuing down her back as it tapered to a point above her hips.
"It's far too expensive, I couldn't possibly accept it. I'll probably give it back tonight." Sakura said, coming out of the bathroom once again, this time fully dressed, as she sat down at the vanity to pull out a hairdryer.
"I'll say, it's worth more than the contents of your entire wardrobe! Except for the stuff I buy you, of course."
"Almost everything in my wardrobe is from you." She deadpanned, plugging the hairdryer in, "Except for the stuff I actually wear."
"You absolutely cannot return this dress. I forbid it." she commanded. "I can't believe you've finally got yourself a date! You need to be here six hours beforehand so I can do hair and makeup!"
"Absolutely not."
"Absolutely yes. You'll look amazing."
She turned on the hairdryer to drown out Ino's incessant babbling about what kind of colours she'd want to use on her face. After four minutes, she turned it off, running her fingers through her hair to check if she had dried it completely.
"You'll spend most of that time layering on makeup and then wiping it all off again and again until you decide you're just going to go with a simple, minimalistic design. Same goes for hair." Sakura said, turning around to face her as she once again turned on the appliance to dry the ends of her hair at the back.
"Thats!...not true." Ino defended, once the hairdryer had again turned off.
"You can't deny it."
"The point isss!" She started, rushing over to snatch the brush from Sakura's hands, and choosing to brush the rosette's hair herself, "You have finally gotten yourself a date for the first time in atleast five years, and you're going in that drop dead gorgeous dress with your drop-dead gorgeous self, and we're going to make him drooool." she finished, giggling to herself.
26th April, 2032, Sweet Maple Cafe, Sutter Street, San Francisco, Time- 1:34
"So are you planning on telling me what had Neji's pants in a twist yesterday evening? Or who's car I saw pulling out of our driveway when I came back to the mansion?" Tenten asked, leaning forward as she propped her elbows on the table that sat between them, raising her eyebrows and brimming with curiosity.
Having both finished their lunch at a favourite cafe of theirs, the two women were in the middle of a much needed rendezvous- a one on one they hadn't had the chance to do between news of the brunette's engagement and the hectic nature of Sakura's work, currently waiting for their coffee to arrive.
Sighing, Sakura scowled as she exasperatedly said, "I suppose he's just being his usual overprotective self. Poking his nose where it's not needed. Jumping to conclusions and being an asshole in general."
The last sentence betrayed her true opinion with regards to how annoyed she was at the older Hyuga's antics.
"Overprotective? Of you? Against who?" she asked, a smile creeping up to her face as she pried further.
"Sasuke Uchiha." she deadpanned reluctantly.
"Corporate eyecandy, how'd you end up with that?" Tenten asked, her smirk playfully mischievous.
A light rose coloured blush dusting her cheeks as a memory of Tsunade's laboratory and hard, toned abs crossed her memory, Sakura said, "Its not like that... we're not together or anything."
"Then what is it like?"
"There were a few trust issues. And he was a suspect on our for quite a while, this after I'd finally began to trust him. And he's infuriatingly quiet... brooding, stoic..ugh. Annoying. And then there's Neji who comes in and says he's still a potential suspect, and that he's not to be trusted, and part of me thinks he's right and admitting that makes it all the worse." she said, sounding conflicted.
"Sounds to me like you've really got the hots for him." Tenten said, taking hold of the cup of coffee which a waitress had just placed infront of her.
"I do not!" Sakura said, her blush deepening as she realised she was blatantly lying.
"That's a lie and you know it." Tenten said, "And apparently Neji knows it too."
"Doesn't mean he has to come in and tell me who to and not to date." Sakura said, scowling once again.
"So when's he going to ask you out?" she pressed- sometimes she could be just as eager for gossip as Ino was.
"Well, he sort of has already." Sakura murmured reluctantly.
"What was that? Didn't hear you..." she said, her smirk being replaced by a large grin.
"He already has!" Sakura said, irked by her teasing.
"And you never told me..." she said with mock disappointment, "When? Does Ino know? You'll never hear the end of this..."
"Ino knows. She found out this morning. It's not a date date, he just asked me to act as escort for a business meeting of his... half because we've assigned him a police detail to act as guard until the so called threat to his life is brought under arrest." Sakura said, regretting having mentioned it to begin with.
"Sounds pretty much like a date to me, when?" she asked eagerly.
"...tonight."
The look of gleeful surprise on Tenten's face was enough to make Sakura wish she could melt into her seat.
Desperate to change the topic, Sakura asked, "So how've you been? Enjoying your time off work? We'd have spent so much more time with you if we hadn't landed with this whole...mess."
"You've been really stressed as of late... why not talk about it a little?" Tenten probed, eager to help relieve the rosette of much of her mental burden.
"We're getting there. With this case, that is. Just the thought of so many children, under the kind of cruel experimentation which leaves them dead, no less, is troubling. I was so sure that the information we got from Kabuto was reliable- he wasn't lying that's for sure. And when the raid turned up blank... Three of our best members are off the team, because the intel I obtained turned out to be a false lead. And the looming threat of what happens to the children the longer we take to wrap this up." She said, her worry seeping into her words as she spoke.
Afterall, even when Arisa's conversation with Tayuya the previous night pointed in the same place for the children being held, that didn't make it any less true that Arisa, Neji and Kiba were barred from entering the FBI headquarters, because of her own slip. Added to whatever funny business Danzo was pulling behind the scenes... How was she supposed to put up with that?
Tenten nodded, patiently listening. Her own missions hadn't been as on field as Sakura's in a long time- being posted in remote towns and villages of Russia isn't exactly what she'd imagined doing as a CIA agent. But she was still sympathetic to what Sakura must have been feeling at the time.
"What makes it worse that we know the culprit, thanks to Jiraya. Apparently he's a man called Orochimaru- but we have no way of linking the crime to him yet." she added.
Tenten's expression flickered between vague recognition and surprise as she heard Sakura finish.
"I must confess, Sakura..." Tenten started, setting her half empty mug of coffee on the table in front of her and pulling an envelope out of her bag as she said, "I think I can help you here."
"You can help- What?!" she asked, surprised.
"I'm not actually on leave right now." she said, matter-of-factually. "Turns out the biggest part of my current assignment wasn't digging around in Russia, or even looking for people in Arabia, its right home in San Francisco."
Sakura looked on curiously, only half shocked by what she was hearing, as the brunette opened the envelope and spread out several pictures of some rather familiar faces.
A man with blue eyes and long blonde hair, a woman with violet coloured hair tied in a bun, with amber eyes, a tall beast of a man with an almost blueish skin complexion, silvery grey hair and violet eyes - The members of the Akatsuki who Sakura'd been introduced to not so long ago stared back at her from the multiple pictures Tenten had just spread out in front of her.
"Their cover is a rock music band with growing popularity, some members even en route to making it big in Hollywood. The Akatsuki, my latest assignment." Tenten said.
"The Akatsuki- what?- Tenten, they're musicians. You're making no sense!" Sakura said, increasingly surprised, in shocked disbelief of the turn of events.
"It's a long term thing my mentor was working on for the longest of time before he retired. I furthered his investigation. A serious of unsolved and pretty serious crimes ranging from explosions in the Russian parliament to assassinations in Brussels- their perpetrators supposedly unknown to the authorities. But out intel says otherwise." Tenten explained, deliberating how much she could tell Sakura without putting her own assignment in danger.
"They all point to members of this group. And they have an anonymous, powerful benefactor- someone who's kept them out of trouble all this time." she continued, tapping one of the pictures in front of her before pulling out a few more reports from the envelope, one of which Sakura reached out to grasp and skim through- a report of victims from an explosion in St Petersburg.
"But the catch is, none of them were ever accused or convicted of these crimes. And, they came together as a group much later, once investigations had all but ceased completely. Now, I'm trying to link the crimes and find out why."
"But aren't these Neji and Arisa's friends? Do they know? Isn't Itachi the manager, does he know?" Sakura asked- the only thing keeping her from blatantly laughing at what she was being told was the fact that it was Tenten she was talking to. As ridiculous as it all sounded, she had no other choice but to believe it.
"Neji and Arisa...I really don't know how much they know. None, I hope, but I can't be sure. As for Itachi...I have no idea. As you know, I've only been here for a few days. Only time can tell." Tenten said, sighing with frustration.
"How does this tie into what I said about Orochimaru?" Sakura asked, still trying to analyze this new information, finding its relevance to her own current case.
"After a lot of background checks on the targets and victims, we started to find a pattern of sorts. Common associates, transactions, that sort of stuff. But more importantly, eventually we began to find one thing they all had in common- their association with Hebi laboratories."
"Hebi Laboratories?"
"Located near one of the Universities on the southern side of town, sponsored by various organisations and in part by the host university itself, and run by a Professor Orochimaru."
Sakura's eyes widened in surprise, and understanding.
Tenten pulled out another picture, accompanied with a file. "This is all the information I've gathered on Hebi Laboratories. You can keep it for a while and see if it helps. It seems if Orochimaru is brought into FBI custody it makes my own job alot easier, so I've nothing to lose with you having this- That's the logo on the picture on top." she added, pointing out the picture of a printed serpentile insignia, which likened itself to the letter 'S'.
"You think this is connected? To the experiments we're trying to uncover?" Sakura asked.
"I think whatever it is your team is after, it's part of something much bigger. I'd almost say you're in over your heads. You have enemies in your own workplace- your superior. But you can't let them win. And this? Hebi Laboratories? It's definitely worth a shot."
She nodded in agreement, a lingering hesitation in her eyes. If they slipped up again, then it would only give Danzo more reason to shut down the case entirely. Was it truly worth that result?
Tenten shook her head in exasperation, but gave Sakura a reassuring smile, reaching out to grasp the pinkette's hand comfortingly. "Go back to the house. Have another look. Dont make it a full on raid- the house is as good as empty now afterall. Things will turn out fine- you don't need to worry."
Sakura sighed, nodding in agreement as she accepted the brunette's logic. "You're right."
"I always am." she said, playfully.
"I wouldn't go that far...But seriously, thank you Tenten. For everything."
26th April, 2032, Hyuga Mansion, San Francisco, Time- 07:34pm
She looked stunning.
Her black, silky dress hugging her curves like a glove, the floral lace tantalizingly teasing the milky, supple skin of her smooth back, and sculpted collarbones, not to mention her long, toned arms.
Her legs long and bare, smooth and long enough to have gone on forever if it weren't for the black, close toed stilettos which cupped her feet.
Her hair swept over one shoulder, and her lone visible ear home to a thin, silver, wing shaped earring, reminiscent of an angel's wing glittering on a moonlit night.
Beautiful as always, her eyes almond shaped, a viridian green which seemed to bore into him, as she looked up at him through the shadowed doorway- her expression, which he usually found so easily readable, frustratingly unintelligible.
Her lips a light red, their natural colour, plump and ...delicious. The adjective supplied itself inadvertently at his last memory of them together.
Put simply, stunning.
She laughed lightly, finding herself growing increasingly embarrassed by his lingering gaze on her. "Are you going to stop staring at my lips and take me to your car, maybe? Which is it today, the Aston Martin or the Rolls Royce?" she said sarcastically, a comment on her part which had the back of his neck heating up in hidden embarrassment, as she turned around to pick up a dark red coat, a complement to the cold night outside.
What was wrong with him? He'd somehow managed to do an even better job than Naruto at making a fool of himself.
"Who says I'd stick with a car?" he said, his statement deceptively implicative as her eyes widened in surprise.
"You don't expect me to-"
"Relax, it's only a limo." he said, reassuringly.
"A limo?" she said, laughing slightly as she bit her lip in exasperation.
"Any problem with it?" he asked, his arm wrapping possessively around her waist as he led her out of the mansion's porch.
"Not necessarily...I hadn't taken you for a limo type of person." she said, smirking as they walked down the stairs to the porch, feet crunching on the gravel of the driveway as they walked to the mansion's front gate, where his vehicle was stationed.
"I hadn't taken you to be a stiletto type of woman. Impressions can be wrong." he countered.
Her smirk turned into a frown of annoyance as she said, "I swear, I'm going to murder Ino. I never wanted to wear them in the first place."
"Murder is a bit strong don't you think. Isn't she the one who set this up in the first place?" he asked, 'this' referring to their more personal association, knowing his defence of her friend would further rile her up. Something about seeing her so vexed he found incredibly attractive.
"Like that's a good thing..." she trailed off nonchallantly as they reached his limo.
"You think it's not?" he said, the humorous tone in his voice all but gone as he turned her to face him, slowly closing the distance between them, her back to the sleek black vehicle.
Her eyes, until now trained on his face, darted away quickly, suddenly finding an incredibly interesting branch off the nearest bush, reluctant to meet his eyes as she gave him a hurried answer of, "It's not like I can name many good situations arisen out of that meeting..."
His face was now inches away from hers; he could feel her shallow, shaky breaths more than he could hear them- and she could no doubt feel the warmth radiating off his body in the cool night air.
"I can." he said, as his hand moved to hold her chin, turning her till her eyes met his, trying to express his sincerity with his normally emotionless eyes.
Her hands hesitantly moved from behind her back, one resting on his chest as the other moved around to cup his neck and pull his face even closer to hers, till her breath tickled him with her next words, "And what would that be?"
Her touch electrifying against his skin, his breathless reply was, "This."
He pulled away, smirking at the smouldering look in her eyes as he took a few steps back, and extended a hand towards her in a gesture for her to take it.
Rolling her eyes, she muttered, "Tease." as she reached out to take his outstretched hand, her small, feminine hand enveloped in his far larger one. He led her to the other side of the car, where he pulled open the door, chivalrously holding it open with one hand as his other guided her into the vehicle.
As she slipped behind the sleek black door, his hand pulled away, suddenly, as though it had been burned.
He stood, transfixed on spot, unmoving as he held the car's door wide open, the chilly night air pouring into the warmer interior.
His fingers still felt the cool, silver tingling of the wristlet he'd felt under his fingers. His eyes moving towards the same wrist his fingers had just released, he was greeted by the old, silvery engravings of a cherry blossom bracelet secured around her arm.
Looking up at him in confusion, she said, "Sasuke? What's wrong?" concern laced her voice.
Memories of his latest dream surfaced to his mind, which quickly spiralled into a nagging sense of familiarity deeper in the whirlwind of memories and thoughts which assaulted him in that moment.
He forced himself away from his thoughts as he turned to look into her worried, perplexed green eyes.
"It's nothing. Just thought I'd forgotten something." he supplied in answer to her questioning gaze.