"I don't see any sentries," said Sakura into her radio.
She was crouched in the bushes, deep in the forest, looking across the empty clearing to the wooden palisade that had been erected there overnight. There were no men positioned on the five foot high wall of wooden planks, none at the small gate. The entire area was suspiciously quiet, although she could hear quiet conversation in the distance.
"There has to be some," Sasuke muttered back. He was positioned to the rear, where a second, smaller gate was located. "They can't possibly have left the gates unguarded. Any news from Kieri?"
Sakura looked around, and saw no signs of her companion. "Not back yet," she said quietly.
"Stand by."
Sakura shifted slightly in her hiding place to keep her muscles loose and tried not to worry too much. She knew Kieri would have to be slow and cautious, when she was sent out to spy on the fort, but it had been nearly an hour, and she was worried for her companion.
No sooner did she finish that thought that she left her cat land lightly on her back from the branch above her. Kieri made a very quiet sound, half meow, half purr, and stood in front of Sakura, one paw raised, with a single claw.
"Any sentries," Sakura asked. Kieri etched a rough square in the dirt, and made two small squares to represent the two gates. She tapped twice on each square, once on either side of the square. When Sakura did not reply, the cat drew a second square, divided in two with a line, and tapped once each, on either side of the square, halfway along its length.
Sakura looked at the fort again, then nodded. The gates were double doors, roughly carved, and now that she knew to look for it, she could see the small holes on either side of the gate, peepholes for guards. "Any to the sides," she asked, tapping the sides without gates on the map. Kieri's eyes narrowed, and she drew all four claws and made a slash mark on each of the remaining sides.
"Good girl," Sakura said, and her pride was obvious in her voice and smile. Kieri knew better then to purr while on duty, so she settled for grooming herself contentedly while Sakura relayed that information to Sasuke.
"Copy," said Sasuke after a moment. "I see the holes. Radio when you are prepared to move."
Sakura did not waste time in replying, but immediately started her slow sliding movements to back into the woods. Once she was certain she could not be seen, she moves quietly through the trees until she was aligned with one corner of the fort. Kieri, she knew, would already be on the other corner, ready for her own move. Sakura reached up and clicked her radio once.
Her vantage point was perfect, and she saw the forest to the rear of the fort become illuminated. The plan was simple. Sasuke would nail one of the sentries with his Plasma Lance as a distraction, and in that moment of surprise, Sakura would quietly assault the front. She darted forward, running first to the corner of the palisade, then along the front of it, towards the gate. When she got within a few feet of the peep hole, she turned and ran up the wall itself, her final step launching herself into the air.
She saw, in the center of the fort, a small building, with maybe a dozen rooms at most, and a roof access. She also saw three guards on that roof. Two had turned to the rear, where the gate was being pulled open in spite of the fire eating at it. The third was looking in her direction, as a good guard should, and Sakura pegged him with a kunai before his mouth could open fully. The reached the apex of her leap, and as she began to fall, she saw the two gate guards on her side, also looking back at the building. Bad luck for them, she thought, a feral smile on her lips.
The one immediately below her never had time to react. She landed, full force, her feet landing on his shoulders. She felt his shoulder blades break, and she fell forward in a tumble. She rose, then dropped to all fours as the other guard swung the thin club in his hands at her, the air whistling. His mouth was opening, and Sakura tried to draw a kunai and throw it, but she was still dodging his swing, and her hand missed her leg holster.
Then Kieri arrived, dropping from above just like Sakura had. It landed on the guard's head, back claws digging into the flesh of his neck while the front latched on to the man's eyes and dug in. Sakura winced and the man opened his mouth to scream before he vanished in a puff of smoke.
Sorry for that memory, Naruto, she thought as she turned and ran for the building. She could hear the shouts at the rear gate, saw another flash of light, and even louder shouting. Ahead was the building, with a series of unglazed windows and a single door. Sakura ignored the door by default, assuming it was trapped somehow, and instead jumped through a window.
She tumbled to her feet, a kunai in each hand, and spun quickly. There was only a single doorway leading out of the room, and a quick glance outside showed a short hallway going half the length of the building. She grunted twice, barely hard enough to disturb the air, and left Kieri pass her legs to scout the darker corners. After a few moments, Kieri returned and sat on the right side of the hall. She tapped the right side wall twice, then unsheathed her claws and tapped the wall twice more. Finally, she twitched her tail against the wall. Sakura translated the code in her head. Two doors down, two targets, and the objective. Kieri had shown no skill in vocal code, so they had settled for one based off movement, and while it relied on sight, it was quiet.
Sakura nodded, then raised her hand, palm reversed, and closed her hand into a fist. Kirei's eyes narrowed, but she obliged Sakura and jumped back out the window. The rules said that Kirei was fair game in combat, and Sakura did not want to risk the small cat's body more then she had to for a training exercise. She took a deep breath, and started to run.
She turned into the third room to the right, arm already cocked for the throw, and saw them. Two copies of Naruto were standing on either side of a chair, in which sat Kakashi, his arms bound with handcuffs, quietly reading that pervert book of his. Each copy of Naruto held a short stick, a stand in for a kunai, and one turned to kill Kakashi with his stick while the other stepped forward to throw his own.
Priorities. Sakura threw her kunai, the one in her right hand, at the clone attacking Kakashi, and was pleased to see the second clone miss his chance to deflect it. The clone with Kakashi vanished, his stick dropping to the ground. The remaining clone threw his stick, which Sakura dodged by dropping to all four, then lunging forward. Naruto drew a second stick from his holster and lashed out, striking downward to hit the crouching kunoichi, but she pushed up with all four limbs, sailing over his strike and landing on the clone. A quick thrust of her kunai, and that clone was gone too.
"I am Haruno Sakura, I am here to rescue you," she said quietly, reciting the phrase intended to replace the difficulty of untying a captive. "Come with me if you want to live." Kakashi nodded silently, then stood and began to follow her.
She lead him out the front door, listening carefully to the sound of the still raging battle to the rear. Sasuke had been charged with distracting the army as long as possible, and the army had been forbidden from using ninja arts, so the fight was excessively one sided, by the sound of it. Kakashi was also required to act as a civilian, and the slow walk he used to cross the distance to the front gate was torturous to Sakura. She kept moving, her eyes shifting rapidly, watching for any possible attack.
When he finally arrived, she blew out a small sigh, and turned to open the gate… then felt a stick tap her in the back. She froze, her face going taught, then she turned, glaring, as Kakashi grinned and tapped her again with the stick. And from the building came a loud shout, Kakashi's voice.
"End exercise!"
The Kakashi in front of her rubbed the back of his head and said, "Sorry, Sakura-chan…"
"You lied." Sakura was not amused, to say the least. She was fuming, and by the look of it, so was Kieri, perched on her shoulder. "You said that the opposing army was not allowed to use jutsu!"
"Mahh, mahh, I said that to you, yes." Kakashi was smiling behind his mask. At times, he really enjoyed his job, and this was one of them. He was finding that there was a great deal of pleasure to be found in teaching those who actually learned. "And then I took the original Naruto aside, and I told him there was one exception. He could have one shinobi in his forces."
"So you made him a decoy," said Sasuke, smirking slightly at Naruto, who was grinning cheerfully.
"Yeah," Naruto said, stretching his arms behind his head. "One of the things I have been working on with Guy-sensei and Kakashi-sensei was how to work with expectations. You guys expected an army, and I knew what you expected. So I worked with it, and gave you what you wanted, one captive, willing to follow you."
Kakashi ruffled the blond's head and smiled. "Why did I change the rules, Sakura, Sasuke?"
Sakura's face was practically glowing with her blush, but she clenched her teeth and bore down on her anger. "I got complacent."
Kakashi nodded. "You got complacent, and you died. Never assume intelligence is correct. Always question where it comes from. And always, always assume that everyone is a shinobi like you."
Sasuke was frowning slightly. "I understand," he said, "but that must make it hard to interact with civilians, on a personal level." He had been reading a lot of books lately, recommended by Kakashi, and many of them involved human interaction. Hardly subtle, sensei, but I can't blame you for hammering me over the head with it. After the first week working with Neji, Sasuke had a great deal more appreciation for his teacher.
"It does," said Kakashi, a touch of sadness in his voice. "You will find, as you get older, it is hard for shinobi to interact with civilians. A fellow shinobi would understand if you got paranoid and fingered a kunai while talking to them in strange circumstances. A civilian would not. There are exceptions to this rule, but in general, shinobi and civilians do not get along, not because of dislike, or even real distrust, but because of our nature. We are trained to assume the worst, and we live in a world where your friend might be a foe under a henge. Most civilians cannot understand this, not to a degree where they can really be allies or friends. This is also why shinobi tend to stick with other shinobi when it comes time to make a family."
Sakura nodded her head, her mind already passing over her memories of home with this new idea. She recalled how her parents reacted when she flinched at a loud noise, how they tried to make light of their daughter walking through the kitchen with a kunai in her hand after a neighbor kid broke a window and she assumed it was someone breaking in. She understood now why her parents had tried to discourage her from the life of a shinobi.
Naruto crossed his arms and grumbled. "You're saying I can't trust Teuchi? Or Ayame?"
Kakashi chuckled lightly at that. "I said there are exceptions. When I first started training you, and found out how often you visited and seeing how well they treated you, I went through the trouble of investigating the place. I was in the middle of their stock room, hanging on the ceiling and looking through their financial records, when Teuchi walked in from the front to get something. He did not so much as jump from my appearance. He greeted me, and warned me not to let Ayame notice or she'd hit me, ninja or not. He then left without a backward glance." After telling me I had best take care of Naruto, and the two of us discussing arrangements for positive reinforcement. Kakashi kept the last part to himself. He needed it less often now, but he still kept an account at Ichiraku's for those times where Naruto needed some brothy encouragement. "Either he was once a shinobi, which I could find no evidence of, or he understands our ways enough to not be offended. You can trust them as much as you can trust a fellow shinobi, I suspect. Just do what you should always do, and keep an eye out, in case an enemy tries to strike at you while wearing their appearance."
Naruto grumbled again, but he nodded. Kakashi turned to Sasuke, ready to continue the debriefing on the fight, then paused and looked at the sky. Above, he could a hawk passing overhead, a brown hawk with a single white dot on each wing. Oh ho, is it that time already?
"You three are dismissed for the day." He pointed. "That is a messenger hawk, and it carries news I have been waiting on for a few weeks, I think. I'll let you know tomorrow if it is." Kakashi made a single sign, then vanished in a swirl of leaves and smoke.
Sakura was about to leap away, Kirei firmly latched on to the back of her shirt (that had been reinforced heavily after a few too many claw marks on her shoulder), when Sasuke raised a hand at her and Naruto.
"We should go get a meal together, the three of us."
Sakura and Naruto had stared in shock, and Sasuke frowned, as if he was going to change his mind. After a moment, however, he managed a small smile. "I hear a lot of teams share meals regularly, and talk. Debriefing was cut short, maybe we can discuss it together."
Sakura had to bite down the urge to squeal in glee. It wasn't a date, not with Naruto there, but it was something, and her interest in the Uchiha had not faded away, even as she worked to keep it hidden. She opened her mouth to react, when Naruto spoke up.
"Who are you, and where is Sasuke?"
Sasuke huffed. "It's me, Dobe. I'm trying to be nice."
"Yeah, yeah," said Naruto, waving his hand, "but when are you that nice? We get along okay now, you're an okay guy, but we've never hung out outside of training and mission time, and that's got me worried you've been replaced by a face stealing spirit or something."
Sakura wanted to defend Sasuke… but Naruto was right. Sasuke had been polite in the past, and even friendly. He'd talked to her when she hit Inari, and when she was upset over her first kill, he'd stood watch outside her tent, a tact offer of companionship when she needed it. But Sasuke was not the sort to seek out companionship, and Naruto had spotted it. As much as it bothered her, Sakura's arm tensed slightly, ready to grab a kunai in case Naruto's hunch was correct. Sitting on her shoulder, Kieri ran her tail along Sakura's back in a coded question, asking if the black haired boy was a threat.
Sasuke sighed, and planted his fists on his hips. "Fine, so I've been… quiet. And I've been distant. It's who I am. But… you know how we've been training separately? I met someone, one of my training partners, who remind me of myself." His eyes grew distant, and he looked to the ground for a moment. "In a bad way. I don't want to be like them. And if that means watching Naruto eat like a pig, it's a small price to pay."
Naruto started shouting, and Sasuke smirked and talked back to him. The argument had carried all the way to Ichiraku's, where it had switched to a fresh argument about real food, which ran all the way until Naruto started to eat at the barbeque they ended up at. Then an argument started about if Sakura won her eating contest with Naruto, as Kieri had eaten some as well. That argument lasted until they reached the centermost part of town. But the three of them had smiled, even as the arguments grew heated, and they all agreed to meet once per week for a meal.
The team had become comfortable for the three of them. They parted, still arguing, with friendly goodbyes intermingled with shouted words, and each went home with a light heart.
Iruka had been present for the final debriefing on Kakashi and Kurenai's joint training, as well as the results so far on Guy's combined training. It was a benefit of being useful to the Hokage in his personal war with the mountains of paperwork he faced each day. You knew things. It hurt, knowing his cute little student, his secretly favorite student, was growing so fast, in a world that required death and suffering as much as the shinobi world did. But he was being well guided on his path.
He raised no objection when Kakashi suggested his team was ready for the exam.
"So, there is going to be an exam, starting next week," Kakashi said, when they met the next morning...
Author's Notes: I did not plan on having another chapter before I hit the exams, but as I started working on it, I felt that the jump from training to exam was a bit too abrupt. I chose to slip this in, instead, to give a little action, a little insight, and a little display of the team in action before we get into the real deal. The first draft was more "Time passes, this is what happened in that time," or as I think of it, boring garbage. Pity, too, I didn't notice till I had a full chapter done. Ahh well.
SirScience: More Anko will probably happen as further Omake chapters, or part of the primary story if my writing happens to turn that way (the original version of this chapter included her to a small degree, but it was cut once I realized it was not essential or relevant detail). I was rather proud of how that chapter came out, and I feel it might make for amusing asides when I need a not-too-vital chapter to take a break.
Thanks as always for your reviews.