Or, 'In Which I Express My Fondest Wish For Naruto'. To have Sakura kick. Sasuke's. ASS! What can I say, it's a favourite fantasy of mine.
Well, enjoy the randomness.
Disclaimer: If I owned the darn thing, do you really think Sasuke would still be able to walk after I had Sakura beat the living daylights outta him?
It'd happened quite randomly, with little or no evidence that it even would happen, postponed as long as it was. So it came as a total shock to most, herself included, that it even happened. When asked later about it, she would undoubtedly reply that she had no inkling of where it came from, as it was completely unexpected.
That would be a lie.
The truth was she had been waiting on it for a long time. Longer than anyone who'd ever hypothesized that it may happen. With her being exactly who she was, and having no desire to change that, she supposed that it was, after all, inevitable.
It'd started out normally enough. A regular mission, just the three of them, Naruto bounding out ahead, blue eyes blazing, Sai beside, making some lewd comment that she'd ignored, and her, the little flower of the team (Gai's nicknames were starting to rub off. She'd have to regulate the amount of time the blond spent with Lee), glowing in the aftermath of their unparalleled success.
And then, just like magic (they were ninja, so it might very well have been.) he was there, in all his dark, brooding glory.
She hadn't recognize the three lounging off to the side behind him, two boys and the girl with the weird hair-do that was cooing after Sasuke not unlike she herself used to. She'd squinted, looking at the sword strapped to the back of one of the boys, because she'd thought it looked familiar. Something about mist and metal and cracked masks…
But she'd shoved the thought aside when the sound of metal clashing harshly with metal met her ears. She'd whipped around to see Naruto holding Sasuke's sword back from his tanned neck with just a kunai. Fear and admiration had spilled into her veins.
And then, just like always, she sat in the background, and watched the two fight, just as she once had on the rooftop of a hospital, what felt like a lifetime ago.
It wasn't until Sasuke jumped back, vicious triumph in his eyes, and Naruto's left arm ran red with blood, that it happened.
OoO
It started out a prick at the back of her mind, jumping at the edges of her brain, trying to get her to notice it. It gradually became a twinge, and a twitch when the edge of Sasuke's sword caught Naruto across the chest. It furrowed and dug on persistently until it was an impulse, thundering around in her head so loudly that she couldn't ignore it anymore. It pushed and pulled at her restraints, built up after years and years of trying to control her volatile temper. It clawed its way passed her defenses and fanned at the tiny spark that was all that remained of Inner Sakura. It fanned and blew and coaxed and promised until the tiny spark burst into the wicked, furious flame of the apparition that had forced Ino from her mind years before. Inner Sakura crowed in almost sickening glory at her rebirth, and turned her sadistic attentions to the matter at hand.
And Sakura got angry.
OoO
He'd left her on a bench.
She'd confessed her undying love to him, and he'd left her on a bench!
The injustice of the world and most particularly the men inhabiting it made Sakura's hackle rise. After all the kindness she'd shown him, after every painstakingly home-cooked lunch, every carefully wrapped bandage on his recklessly gained scars, had she even once heard a thank you?! A nice job?! A single acknowledgement that yes, she'd helped him, no she wasn't just thin air, yes, he did appreciate his team?!
No, not once, ever.
And it sent her blood a-smoldering.
She'd been mad at Naruto before, mad enough to nearly take his head off with one good punch.
She'd been irritated with Kakashi-sensei quite a bit, enough to start lecturing him on some of his less than up standing habits.
She'd been upset with Ino from time to time, even after their preliminary fight, when the girl called her 'Forehead-Girl'. Enough so to start a screaming match.
But this was different.
This wasn't the half serious banter between friendly rivals. This wasn't the annoyance of ones brother figure doing something stupid or perverted. This wasn't even the ticked off feeling of having to wait hours on end for a man who may just choose not to show up.
This was beyond those and more.
Because Sakura wasn't mad, irritated, or upset.
She was pissed.
Enough so to do something very rash.
So when Naruto managed to land a bruising fist into Sasuke's gut in exchange for the sword through his own, Sakura's eyes narrowed into pinpricks of rage and she leaped, heedlessly, into the fray.
OoO
The blow to his gut stunned him with its considerable pain.
The blow to his face just plain knocked him senseless.
Had he been anyone but Sasuke, he'd have let out a pained yelp, probably followed by a long string of curses at the top of his lungs.
Seeing as he was Sasuke, he merely let out the long string of curses, and they were under his breathe.
He'd just been minding his own business, trying to kill Naruto partly because he wanted the Mangekyou, and partly because the blond had told his outfit made his look like a whore, and had speculated about what really went on in Otogakure, and then BAM.
A freight train had hit him in the face.
Rubbing his sore cheek and cursing the rocky arena he'd chosen, he looked up to see where Naruto was, toying with the idea that the blond had either used Sasuke's distraction to escape or to sneak up on him.
It was neither.
When he finally did find Naruto, the boy was paler than death, his blue eyes impossibly wide and his entire body shaking with suppressed fear. Sasuke couldn't fathom what could make Naruto, usually so confident, turn it a puddle of absolute terror like that. The only time he'd ever seen his rival that frightened was when he'd been less than tactful to…
Sasuke's own eyes widen and darted back to the settling dust where he'd been punched.
Standing, silhouetted against the blazing sun overhead, her pink hair shifting slightly in the breeze and her green eyes hard as diamonds, was Haruno Sakura.
" Sasuke-kun." She said silkily, stepping forward. " Were you just trying to kill Naruto?"
Part of him screamed: 'It's just Sakura! What are you afraid of?!', but another part was desperately trying to point out that she'd practically dislocated his jaw with that last punch, so did he really want to push her any farther when she was looking at him like that?
Like a lion about to pounce on its prey? ( That fact had him in a rather...uncomfortable place, somewhere in between fear and arousal. Something about a furious, powerful Sakura eying him in that manner was just plain hot.)
He felt himself nod, and watched as her eyes narrowed down into emerald slits.
'Oh shit.' He thought, immediately recognizing the look she'd get right before she sent Naruto into the clouds. And try as he might to convince himself that it was 'just Sakura', the deeply ingrained male part of his subconscious whimpered in fear of the woman scorned presented before him.
" Since you were once part of Team 7, I think I'll be nice to you." Sakura said casually, cracking her knuckles in a way that had Sasuke in a cold sweat. Distantly, he heard Suigetsu make some comment about 'Sasuke's cute ex-girlfriend', and would normally have been offended by it (ex indeed!), if he weren't terrified out of his mind.
Because Sakura had just made a fist and tilted her head to the side in a way that could only mean doom for the boy she was approaching.
" I'm going to give you three seconds to give me one reason to not smash your pretty boy face in, got it?" She grinned ferally. " And it had better be fan-freakin'-tastic."
OoO
" Wow." Suigetsu whistled as the pretty girl with pink hair bashed Sasuke in the nose. (The boy flew backwards with a sickening crack.) He grinned, ignoring Karin's sputtering statements that there was no way anyone that plain could be 'Sasuke-kun's ex-girlfriend!'.
"Wonder how Sasuke ever got anyone as cute as her interested in him."
Really, I have no idea where that last line came from, but from what I've read, I can see Suigetsu checking Sakura out as she beats Sasuke to a pulp. In fact, I'm planning on working that into an up coming fic project.
Until later,
MoS