"Hey, Hedgehog!" Sakura called, sitting in the chair across from the New Kid, dumping 'the evolution of textiles in South-East Earth Country' on the table in front of her and drawing a slightly (very, very, slightly) incredulous look from him.
The stuff was interesting, not to mention surprisingly useful during infiltration missions.
"Sakura-san." He said blandly and she eyed the books about interpersonal relationships before grinning and cracking open her own.
"Oh! That reminds me, Naruto and I are going to visit Kakashi-sensei at the hospital. Did you want to come too?"
"Kakashi-sensei." He murmured.
"You are in Team Kakashi. It's only fair you be included in seeing sensei in hospital after every Team Seven mission."
"He is Hatake Kakashi?"
"He's extremely good at what he does, it's just there's a cloud of bad luck that hangs over our team like a virus."
New Kid did not yet understand.
"Naruto!" Sakura called. Uzumaki turned to her and groaned.
"What the… what is Sai doing here?"
"I ran into him at the library. He is team Kakashi."
"Jeez, and I was planning for us two to go on a walk, almost like a da-!"
"No."
"Ahh, but Sakura-chaaaan."
"Na-Naruto. Sakura." New Kid interjected. "Would you mind if I joined the conversation as well?" He was blushing, light dustings of rose over his cheek bones and ear tips. "Ahh! Er! I read in the book about people getting to know people and stuff…" He was blushing even harder, but somehow it wasn't getting redder, the light pink colour was just spreading. It was oddly fascinating. "It said that I should drop suffixes or use nicknames and such, by doing so it creates feelings of closeness, allowing people to become friends quickly."
"Hey, Sai, I didn't think you actually cared about that stuff."
"But while I thought about it for a bit, I couldn't think about good nicknames for you two, so for now I just drop the suffixes and…"
"Nicknames aren't something you think about, they just happen naturally."
"Not necessarily, I call Sai Hedgehog after I thought about it for a while during our first meeting." Sakura said. "If you're going to make a nickname then you usually use someone's characteristics or just something you associate with them. Like Naruto would be 'orange boy' or maybe 'clone man'?"
"Hmmm." Uzumaki said and rubbed his chin. "Too boring."
"Thanks I think I got the hang of it…" New Kid said with a small smile. "Pink shorty."
Sakura wilted. A devastated expression crossed her face.
Her lone weakness.
Somehow she found herself shuffled into Hatake's room in the midst of her despondency and directed to stand next to the bed. She drew herself back to the present with an almost inaudible sigh, shaking her head at Hatake's questioning eyebrow raise. His eye narrowed, displeased, but she just pouted slightly and slumped further. He relented the line of questioning with a blink, flicking has gaze over to the boys.
They stood at the end of the bed, eyeing the stuffed animals at the end of Hatake's bed warily. New Kid broke from his shock for a moment to shoot a concerned and slightly guilty look. Well Sakura could read the guilt, the micro expression was so micro it was barely existent so she doubted anyone else could.
"Why do you have all these stuffed toys, sensei?" Uzumaki asked.
"Maa, apparently flowers are boring."
"Who's visiting you so much? Is it a-"
"Ah, so this is our new teammate?" Hatake interrupted the orange teen. Sakura's brows furrowed. Did Uzumaki not visit Hatake? Was this less 'let's go as a team and talk about our mission and future together' and more 'let's go visit sensei for the first time' for him?
She resolved to bring more cookies for the man next time he ended up in hospital.
"Sai, was it? Nice to meet you." Hatake drawled, his tone icy under the laziness and a little too much of his chakra seeping into his aura, leaving the air thick with tension to anyone even passably trained as a shinobi.
Apparently he'd been able to read the guilt.
"Thank you." New Kid said, face and voice impassive even as a film of sweat formed on his brow.
There was only one real explanation for this level of terror, considering she'd seen him come face to face with Orochimaru with barely a tensing of his expression. Sakura knew first hand the kind of hero worship there was for Hatake in the ANBU, but apparently that extended to ROOT as well. She side-eyed the man. Had he ever been in ROOT? It would explain his reaction to finding out about New Kid.
"Umm." Naruto started, apparently entirely oblivious to his surroundings. "Kakashi-sensei. About our last mission, it-"
"I've already heard everything from Yamato. He told me about Sasuke as well." Hatake interrupted, his chakra pulled back into himself and the pressure in the air lessening.
"We don't have any time left. At this rate, just a bit longer, he'll…"
"Where we're at we could collectively defeat Sasuke, but we couldn't get him away from Orochimaru. Not to mention the growing threat Akatsuki is posing." Sakura said. "Our enemies are multiplying at the same rate they're getting stronger."
"It that case, you only need to become stronger than them, right?" Hatake said, still not taking his eyes away from the porn. "You don't just think I've been sleeping here without thinking, have you? I was thinking the whole time.
"Still this particular method is best suited for someone like Naruto. Or rather. I should say that this training is only really something only he's capable of doing. With this training Naruto, you might even surpass me, in a way of speaking."
"Surpass you?"
"That's right. I'll be by your side through all of this training. And… it's completely different from any training you've done before."
"Wha-what will we be doing?"
"Making you an ultimate ninjutsu. That is to say making you a ninjutsu that is even more powerful than the rasengan. But, to get power like that requires a massive amount of time and work. You won't get super strong in a few days like out of a book and it's not a jutsu like you've learned before. Like the rasengan. Where you were steered through every step slowly so you could get to it."
"You say that we need a massive amount of time and energy, but we don't have that! Sasuke's about to be-"
"I've come up with a way to minimise time."
"H-how?"
"Well…"
"How are you doing Kakashi?!" Sarutobi cried, strolling through the door.
"Hi!" Said the Akimichi.
"Asuma-sensei, at least knock!" The Yamanaka yelled.
The Sarutobi's eyes ran over the bed, landed on the hedgehog plushy and lit up in delight, his face stretching into a grin as he pointed at it. "Another one!" He said. "Are you going to tell us where they keep appearing from?"
In the background the Nara was experiencing war flashbacks at the New Kid.
"Maa, who knows." Hatake drawled.
"Eh, why's everyone so interested in the plushies?" Uzumaki asked, as if the first thing he'd done upon walking into the room wasn't comment on the plushies.
"This is the mystery of the stuffed animal admirer!" The jōnin boomed with an appropriate sense of drama. "It started ever since he was in a coma after the chūnin exams," He described to the rapt audience of chūnin, Sakura raised an eyebrow at Hatake where she knew it wouldn't be seen by the others. He didn't look at her directly but raised the Icha Icha a centimetre higher in response. "Where every few days a mysterious plushy in the exact shape and outfit of one of his ninken would appear. Then, ever since, every time Kakashi has ended up in the hospital at least one weirdly specific plushy will appear at the foot of his bed. No one knows who's bringing them because Kakashi refuses to tell anyone, and Gai probably knows but bursts into tears any time it's brought up." He trailed off mysteriously.
"But why wouldn't Kakashi-sensei want people to know?" Sakura asked, eyes widened innocently and her voice pitched just right to make herself seem younger but not obnoxious.
"Ah, well we're pretty sure whoever's giving them is an embarrassing lover of some kind." Asuma said and her eyes widened in shock. He got that particular 'these genin don't even know what it feels like to stab someone' expression on his face when he looked at her and Sakura internally cheered. The man had effectively completely forgotten that she was the same military rank as the man and the massive amount of rumours about her making and thriving in ANBU. She discretely shifted her weight so that her pastel green dress hung to cover the arm with the giant fuck-off bite scar.
Also this jōnin really needed to get better gossip, Hatake clearly just wanted to fuck with people and kept digging himself in deeper and deeper until his only option was grabbing a shovel and continue digging desperately even as he was buried in the sweet, mouldy earth.
"This set is clearly team Kakashi." The Nara said.
"How did you figure that out?" Sakura asked, all innocent and sweet like. Nara shot her a dirty look.
"The colours, for one." He said and most of the gathered chūnin nodded. Sakura made a little surprised 'o' with her face. Out of the corner of her eye Hatake was slowly sinking beneath the covers.
Dig, Hatake, dig.
"And Naruto is obviously the toad and Kakashi is the wolf, but I don't know what the others mean."
"Well, that's a cuckoo." Sakura pointed to the bird. "Which is my summons. But the only people who know that are either in this room or Yamato-taicho."
"And Hedgehog is my nickname." New Kid added.
"Yeah and the only other person who knows that about Sai is Yamato-taicho!" Uzumaki added (extremely) helpfully.
"Come to think of it, the only person not included in the plushies is Yamato-taicho." Sakura said.
"It would be weird to get one for yourself." Uzumaki squinted down at the pile.
"Asuma-san," Sakura asked, drawing the man away from poking the hedgehog plushie to look at her. "Is sensei in an, um, embarrassing l-love affair with Yamato-taicho?" Her cheeks blushed with careful warming circles of chakra beneath her skin.
The Sarutobi scratched his beard thoughtfully and narrowed his eyes at the small tuft of silver hair peaking out of the covers, mostly covered by an Icha Icha. "It's possible.
"You guys go ahead to Yakiniku Q. Team Kakashi, you go with them." Sarutobi said to a round of cheers. "I've got something to talk to Kakashi about, so the Yakiniku's on me."
The figure under the sheets visibly shuddered. Sakura leaned over and poked a shoulder. "See ya, sensei!" She couldn't quite keep the humour out of her voice.
The trip to barbecue was mostly detached conversations, the Akimichi and Nara having a serious looking conversation with New Kid, and Uzumaki babbling about the training he'd seemed to have forgotten Hatake hadn't actually told him anything about.
The Yamanaka fell into step beside her as they walked the streets. A surprise considering the chūnin on Team Asuma usually made an effort not to be alone with her, something about Nara's insistence Sakura would murder them all in their sleep, and Yamanaka typically showed nothing but outright disdain towards her.
"So, who's the cute new guy?" Yamanaka asked with a mischievous smile on her lips.
…Was this girl talk? Was that why Yamanaka had singled her out? Or had she just been decided a better information source than Uzumaki?
Sakura was about to warn her off New Kid when she paused and actually considered it. He could use someone as well versed in psychology and as incessant as Yamanaka on his side.
"I think you'd actually get on really well." Sakura said and the Yamanaka looked skeptically at her. "His name is Sai but I call him hedgehog because his core is squishy goodness but it's surrounded by a layer of spiky… well you'll figure it out. He is, in essence, a challenge." The Yamanaka looked conflicted. "Plus, the very tips of his ears go this soft pink colour when he blushes."
She was sold. Sakura knew that would work because the Uchiha did it once during their academy days and the Yamanaka had cried about it for weeks.
They arrived at the barbecue and Sakura took the end seat, noticing the empty one in front of her.
"Where's Shikamaru?"
"He went home cause he had to help his dad get some antlers to use for medicines." The Akimichi said.
"He never has any problems showing up for mission briefings. It's really weird." The Yamanaka said.
"Who even cares about that lazy idiot?" Uzumaki whined.
"Hmph, well anyway we should introduce ourselves to Sai-kun first."
"Please do." The New Kid had put on his worst fake smile, the one that meant he was trying way too hard, and Sakura felt a burst of unholy glee in anticipation.
"Um, I'm Akimichi Choji. Nice to meet ya Sai."
"Nice to meet you too, um…" Sakura leaned forward in eager anticipation as he paused. "Tub-" The Uzumaki's hand slapped over his mouth.
"Don't say 'tubby' in front of Choji ever! Got it?" He hissed through his teeth. New Kid looked extremely confused and most definitely had not 'got it' but nodded anyway.
"I'm Yamanaka Ino from Yamanaka flower shop!" The blonde greeted, smiling bashfully at the oblivious boy.
"Nice to meet you… um... pretty lady." He said and the Yamanaka sparkled.
Poor, innocent New Kid had no idea what kind of iron maiden he'd just strapped himself into.
"So, since Kakashi-san is still in the hospital-" Tiger started. Uzumaki was eyeing him with a complicated expression. The rumours about Tiger and Hatake's illicit love affair were, of course, still making their way around the village shinobi and were getting progressively more insane by the day.
Yesterday, she heard a chūnin whispering about how they had tried to get married, only to discover they were secretly long-lost brothers and had ever since been continuing their relationship in secret, doing everything possible to hide their shame from their fellow Konoha shinobi.
"Why is Kakashi-sensei still in the hospital?" Sakura asked. She hadn't been able to get a straight answer out of the man.
"Apparently there was some unrecommended Sharingan use that set him back." Tiger answered and she nodded. "I'll be acting as team leader for this mission…"
Sakura was thrown into a basement unceremoniously, her hands and feet tied and a gag in her mouth. The restrictive kimono she was wearing prevented her from landing smoothly and she earned a bruise on her left knee.
She got a quick glance at a room full of similarly bound girls ranging from terrified to completely hysterical before the trapdoor slammed shut and the room fell into total darkness.
She slipped out of the ropes binding her hands, untied the binds around her feet, and pulled the gag down to her neck. She stretched to standing and formed a ring of dripping blue goo around her hand, lighting up the space as her eyes examined it.
Aside from the lone trapdoor about two metres above her head, the room just looked like a concrete box. She paced from one side to the other, double checking there weren't any hidden entry ways.
Sakura sighed.
She strode towards the girls, they all shied backwards at her approach. Of the eight, one was the most gaunt looking and seemed less terrified and more resigned.
Bingo.
She strode over, ignoring the stench of piss and shit, and ripped down the girl's gag.
"How long have you been here?"
"F-four days." The girl rasped.
"Has anyone been taken out in that time?"
"Three girls."
"How?"
She lifted shaking, bound hands to the trapdoor and pointing. "There's a platform and a pulley system."
"Fucking hell." Sakura swore, pushing back to standing as she unpicked the sleeve hem of her kimono with her teeth.
"Are you here to save us?" The weak voice of the girl asked from behind her. Sakura turned and shoved the gag back in place.
"I'm being paid to capture the bad guys." Sakura said, voice toneless. "I really don't give two shits about all of you, but you might be saved in the process."
She pulled the hidden razor from the fabric and worked on tearing slices from the dress, cutting off the sleeves where they started to flare, shortening the hem to mid thigh, and ditching the obi, instead tying the top in place with a strip from the abandoned sleeves.
All in all it covered the important, secret parts of her body (literally just the ANBU tattoo, shinobi don't have time to worry about modesty) and would keep her clothed enough to not freak out the teenage boys on her team, whilst giving her something she could properly fight in.
She reabsorbed the storm chakra, climbed up the wall and activated full stealth once she felt her hand brush the trapdoor. Her eyes closed and she stopped breathing, stretching her hearing as far as she could.
There was the sounds of two sets of breathing, shifting wood, and playing cards just outside. Footsteps, complaining, breathing, a loud banging noise further out. Everything muddled by the overlying layer of whimpering and breathing from the girls.
Sakura sighed. She had been hoping she would be able to sneak out and look through the gang's stuff to pass the time. She could shunshin out, but she couldn't hold the transparency jutsu through the movement and it was frankly too great of a risk.
She would have to wait. She settled against the ceiling, sticking close to the trapdoor.
Maybe the guards would dump another girl down here and she could sneak out then.
She had no such luck. Instead, Sakura waited for a very boring three hours before shouting and the general noises of the Uzumaki being loud and distracting caught her ears. She waited until the footsteps above had passed the trapdoor before she punched it open.
The two men above her were staring at the exploded wood in terror, blades drawn and slack jawed. Sakura, basically invisible, simply walked behind them and smashed their head together. The pair crumbled. She hogtied them with strips from a convenient pile of rope- she assumed it was for use to tie the girls or whatever the 'pulley system' was- slinging the rest of the rope over her body.
She stole one of their swords on her way out. She swung it experimentally once, twice and grimaced. It was little more than a lopsided metal stick.
She missed her chokutō. She missed Kusanagi. She'd only been able to risk taking the razor for this infiltration, the risk of the kidnappers discovering even a cavity scroll before she was taken to the main hideout too high. She looked down at the sword.
She wasn't allowed to kill any of the members anyway.
Sakura positioned her thumbs against the edge of the handle, as if to snap off the metal, and pulsed a vertical release of chakra as she pushed, cleanly breaking off the blade. The handle was nothing more than a chunk of wood in her hand, but it will be of more use than the terrible metal.
She stalked through the compound, flitting from room to room silently and almost entirely invisibly.
The people she came across were knocked out and hogtied, the large majority of them non-fighters that had hidden or tried to escape in place of holding back the attackers, and soon she was standing behind the enemy lines of the fight.
There were about fifteen enemy shinobi- missing-nins who'd joined the gang, and the reason such a heavy hitting team had been required- and twenty or so non-shinobi fighters left on the battlefield. Across from them, Tiger had trapped them in with an earth wall and was using mokuton to try and capture them, but was being hampered by their numbers and a particularly skilled fire user. New Kid was creating ink monsters that were battling the groups of enemies, trying to drive them into Tiger's awaiting traps, and Uzumaki was using groups of clones to try and take them down.
It was a stalemate. The enemies were surprisingly capable at working together, small teams of three moving together seamlessly to defend the warehouse, and in particular the fire user was extremely skilled, sending walls of flames at just the right times to pop a large number of clones or burn a large amount of wood. Tiger could use a water release to combat him, but their abilities were hampered by not being allowed to kill any of the enemies. There were no surrounding rivers or lakes, and using a large amount of chakra to create a water release that wouldn't be allowed to kill the enemy would just be giving any enemies with a water affinity free material to use with very little chakra drain, whilst also fucking up Tiger's own stores.
They had too little information to progress more aggressively, and the enemy was too skilled to allow them to make it any further whilst being as careful as they were.
Sakura sighed. This would be much easier if she could simply cut her way through, but for now she needed to take out the fire user. She dumped the leftover rope. It would be too unwieldy for her attack.
She crept through the enemy ranks, dodging attacks, slipping through gaps between their people and at one point being forced to slide under a man's grip on another's shoulder, just barely making it through without touching anything. She couldn't risk jumping or running, both would create too much air movement and potentially give away her presence, and she was having to lower and raise her body temperature repeatedly, causing her limbs and face to burn.
In Tristan's world this kind of abuse to the body would have killed him. In her world her chakra allowed her body to take it, but not without painful repercussions.
By the time she reached the fire user- standing as he was in an elevated chunk of rocks in the centre of the group- she couldn't feel much of her skin and her lungs were burning painfully. She wouldn't be able to fight much after this. She would have to trust her team would be able to handle the rest.
Perched just below the rock he was standing on, she went through a series of hand signs and gathered chakra in her chest, just in case. She didn't breathe as she climbed. Her temperature lowered the closer she got.
Just as she made it onto the top of the platform the man twisted suddenly and sent a wave of fire at her. She released her own spew of water from her mouth and darted forward, swearing and stopping her transparency jutsu to instead slap a palm on the mans head and channel a short burst of lightning through it.
He must have been using his chakra to sense his immediate surroundings.
He collapsed and she panted, dropping to one knee as a head rush hit her.
Sakura did not have much chakra left. Producing that much fucking water was enough to wipe out two thirds of her tiny reserves in a single move. She cycled it to heat her body and focused on breathing. By the sounds of the battle and the mokuton that had sprouted to hold down the man before her, her team had taken the upper hand, so she didn't feel her reemergence on the battle field was an immediate necessity, at the very least.
Some feeling was just returning to her limbs when she heard the clattering of a stone behind her. She whipped around and channeled her storm release over a fist, slamming it towards the arm reaching towards her.
But it was slower than it should have been. The movement clumsy with the numbness in her limbs and the pain in her body.
The shinobi dodged, grabbed her wrist and his chakra began to cover her own.
Her eyes widened and she tried to rip his hold away as she leapt to smash a hand into his chest but a chunk of metal was already hitting her temple and her chakra- the little that was left minuscule in comparison to the man's own reserves- was being held down as they shunshined.
Her world went black.
Sakura woke up bound with ninja wire and with itchiness of dried ink on her forehead. Any attempts to move more than the wire allowed would threaten to end in slices down to her bone and any attempts to reach her chakra found nothing but a foggy feeling. A chakra suppressing seal then. Impressive for a gang lackey to produce in the field, but not unthinkable.
Her training meant she'd made no indication she was awake and she focused on her hearing. There was the crackling of fire, the soft sounds of breathing- relaxed but not sleeping- and beyond that only the natural sounds of the forest.
Her clothes were in place and there weren't any strange substances on her body so it looked like she hadn't been raped, which was nice, but also meant she wasn't entirely sure why she was still alive. If she'd been used as a hostage to make an escape, she would have been killed and dumped the moment her kidnapper had made it out of range of her team. If she'd been connected with her persona as the Null-Storm and they were looking for her bounty they would have simply taken her head and been done with it.
She would have to investigate. Sakura opened her eyes. A man was sitting next to a fire before her, holding a fish on a stick in the flames.
"You know, it's generally considered unseemly to kidnap little girls." She said and he turned to look at her, a shock of blue hair and a greedy look in brown eyes.
"Up until a few hours ago I was working for an organisation that made most of its money selling little girls like you." He replied, looking over the binds on her and turning back to his fish once he was satisfied.
"Aah, good point, good point." Sakura said, nodding sagely. "But there's a big difference between delivering little girls to creeps for money and lugging one of your own through the woods." He looked back over at her and she battered her eyelashes. "Are you going to have you way with me? Feel like a big man fucking the pink haired girl in the dirt?"
He laughed, a booming, throaty noise. "You think that's why I took you?" He asked. Sakura heard the faint trace of footsteps at the edge of her hearing range.
"It's the only reasonable explanation I could come up with, yes." She said.
"That was really the only one?" His voice was incredulous.
"The only option that would leave me alive, at least." She shrugged the few centimetres that the wire allowed her.
"Fuck, Konoha's intelligence must be really dogshit these days." He grumbled, the complaint strangely with a lot of emotion behind it for someone who was a missing-nin. One hand was shuffling through the pack beside him and he pulled out a ball of paper, pressing it smooth against his knee and holding it up for inspection.
She felt a frown build on her face. It was a drawing of her in her jōnin uniform, height and weight listed underneath. It did not include her storm chakra or kenjutsu use. It didn't even include her signature facial scars.
'The Boiler. WANTED by Akatsuki: 50 million ryos ALIVE and UNHARMED'
Nothing that could be considered related to the Null-Storm. Perhaps Sakura should be relieved that Orochimaru hadn't tipped the world and Akatsuki off about that little tidbit but instead it just felt like a threat. A snippet of blackmail to hang over her head.
"It was a real stroke of luck when you appeared." The guy said, smile full of teeth as he crumpled to paper back up and shoved it into his pack. "Been wanting to get out of that dogshit gang for years."
"And why does Akastuki want me?" She asked, putting as much incredulousness into her tone as possible.
"Not certain, but last time one of these was put out the guy in the picture ended up being recruited." He looked her over with a dismissive expression on his face. "Dunno why they'd bother with you though."
The footsteps were coming closer. A trio of them. Sakura kept the guy talking.
"I did kill two of them." She smiled sweetly. "Maybe they need replacements." Her voice was a croon.
He laughed, high pitched and cackling. "I like you, girly, maybe I'll take my time getting to the drop off point."
"And that would be?" She asked. He just smiled toothily in response. "You're not worried about my team coming to get me?"
"Nah, I'm pretty good at throwing off trails and you didn't have nothing on you." He replied dismissively, going back to the fish on the stick. She didn't mention the seed in her stomach.
There were sounds coming from all around them now, soft and unheard by the man as Sakura worked on keeping his attention.
"I would really rather not join those assholes, you know?" She said making her voice a little louder with desperation. "I've never suited black. It just washes out my skin tone, but I suppose someone with a fashion sense like that just wouldn't understand."
A slither of offence wormed onto his face.
"I mean really? Blue and red? You look like a fucking clown." She cackled and an annoyed expression crossed his face. "Ugly peice of shit."
He looked at her and snarled. "Oi! I might not be touching yah but that's not because I wo-" wood burst through the ground under him, pinning him in place and wrapping around his neck tightly. Cutting off his airflow.
"Don't kill him!" Sakura called. "He has information on Akatsuki."
"Understood." Tiger muttered, walking towards the bound man and undoing the pressure once he fell unconscious. She noted the ring of rapidly purpling bruises around his neck with a surge of satisfaction. Uzumaki ran to her side and started cutting through the wire binding her. New Kid hovered over them worriedly, his eyes pinched just a fraction.
"Are you alright, Sakura?" The Uzumaki asked, his voice was angry. "We tried to get the bastard but he disappeared whilst we were distracted dealing with the other's. We didn't even realise you'd been taken until the battle was over and you were nowhere to be found."
"I'm perfectly fine, thank you Naruto." She replied, stretching the stiff muscles from being held in one position for so long. "Thank you, all of you for saving me."
"What was he after?" Tiger asked, the wood-bound, unconscious man over one shoulder and his pack in a hand. "We only heard the back end of the conversation." He was eyeing the dried ink on her forehead.
"Apparently Akatsuki is running a recruitment drive." As she spoke Tiger's eyebrows rose into his forehead. She pointed to the pack and he held it out for her. She opened it to pull out the paper and handed it to the Uzumaki.
"Those bastards!" He hissed, oozing a low level of the Kyuubi's chakra.
Tiger and New Kid read over the paper. "That is troubling, indeed." New Kid said, Tiger had a complicated expression on his face.
"There's some kind of drop off point he wouldn't tell me about." Sakura pointed at the captured man. "But T&I should be able to get it out of him."
"You're going to need to be carried back, I don't have the expertise to be confident removing that seal." Tiger said, nodding to her forehead.
"I'll do it." Uzumaki offered, shifting to pick her up with a light flush on his face. Sakura valiantly withheld a grimace.
"Actually it would be better if I flew us there." New Kid offered, already painting what looked like birds onto a scroll, and the Uzumaki paused.
"You can do that?" He asked excitedly and New Kid nodded.
"It is highly conspicuous and uses a moderate amount of chakra, but it would be much simpler and faster than walking with multiple burdens." His tone was flat, Tiger nodded.
"Sounds like a plan. I don't want to leave that seal on for any longer than absolutely necessary."
Five giant birds formed from the scroll as New Kid performed a hand sign.
Sakura's smile was gleeful as she climbed onto one and her laugh was delighted as it took off. "This is brilliant, Hedgehog!"
The other two echoed her sentiments and the very tips of New Kid's ears went pink.
She'd expected the Uzumaki to be more combative about the decision, but apparently he and the New Kid had had a heart to heart that involved New Kid finishing his porn stash and now they were besties. Despite having been a teenage boy, once upon a time, Sakura really didn't understand teenage boys.