A/N: I may have been playing too much Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 when I thought of this piece (just 9 more achievements to go!). If you've never played and/or seen that game, this won't make much sense. Also: this is a parody and pokes fun at game mechanics, so don't take it too seriously. Enjoy!

'Event log', wrote Sakura before she stopped. She chewed on her pencil for a few seconds before she erased the words and wrote 'stuff team 7 does'.

As she wrote down the words she read them out loud to verify their sentence structure. She once again eras the words and wrote:

"Stuff we do, by Haruno Sakura."

She didn't even have to think what her first sentence would be. She had no fear for the white paper, tarnished only by the title. The first thought was the loudest, and it demanded to be written down.

"Today I realized Naruto is an idiot."

"It all began innocently enough. Naruto came back from his training with Jiraiya and he looked normal. He'd grown up (a teeny-tiny bit) and seemed to settle back into the routine well enough. Until the remains of team 7 went outside Konoha's gates for the first time…"

Naruto's fingernails were black and his fingers looked raw. Sakura knew his digits were going to get infected, but he refused to listen to her pleas and threats, nor did he respond to any sort of punches she threw. He simply went back to his previous activity.

"Naruto," said Kakashi gently, "stop digging up the plants."

"Your fingers are going to fall off if you keep doing that," warned Sakura. She had her ointment at the ready to start healing him. Again. But Naruto didn't even pay attention to them. He made them wait around while he rooted through the dirt. They already knew the signs.

Some weird-colored plant which looked off would catch his attention, and he'd run over. Every time he dove into the bushes with as much enthusiasm as before, and Sakura saw him pocket something from the plant.

"They're not even herbs!" complained Sakura. "They're just… mushrooms and feathers and (bark), nothing valuable."

But Naruto just smiled his eternal smile and that aggravated Sakura even more. After she'd punched him into tomorrow she felt better, but she still left in a huff.

"It's not just Naruto who's become more idiotic. The shopkeepers seem in on it too. They actually accept whatever ragtag items (like empty nuts) Naruto drags in and they buy it off him! I've never seen anything like it, and it's pissing me off that Naruto's turning a profit. He still wanders off every time we leave Konoha and every time I want to deck him."

"No wonder Konoha is in a crisis – every available shinobi is just standing in the street, reading or scuffing the ground. It looks like we're the only ones getting any work done around here."

"Hey Naruto!" came a voice from down the street. Sakura and Naruto looked over their shoulders at the same time to determine who would be worthy of their attention this time. It turned out to be Shikamaru, slowly walking towards them, hands in his pockets.

"Yo, Shikamaru, what's up?" greeted Naruto happily.

"Not much," answered Shikamaru. "Did you know that there's some old guy promoting a ninja fight on the bridge?"

He looked at them expectantly and Sakura opened her mouth to reply that no thanks, they were busy actually doing missions when Naruto flipped open the notebook he carried around nowadays. He busily wrote down the information and flipped the black notebook closed.

"Thanks Shikamaru," said Naruto. Sakura groaned and resisted the urge to bury her head in her hands. Another thing added to the growing to-do list, another day wasted on pointless side-quests.

Naruto got that glint in his eyes again and before Sakura could stop him he wandered off, probably to root around in some clay pots.

Taking advantage of the moment Sakura pulled Shikamaru aside.

"Is it me, or has Naruto become an idiot since he left the village?"

Shikamaru raised one eyebrow, and Sakura amended: "more of an idiot?"

The always-says-troublesome-even-if-it's-not-relevant-shinobi devoted his high IQ to the question for a few seconds, but then to Sakura's disappointment he shook his head.

"I don't think so, no. He's grown, but I don't see any difference from the Naruto we knew."

Sakura sighed and thanked him. Any moment now Naruto would come back from his scavenging hunt and show her the spoils of his search. Usually an old kunai or an empty bottle. But Naruto kept all these worthless things. She shuddered to think what his apartment looked like by now.

"I like cats. I like kittens. I like furry little animals who produce cute sounds. What I don't like, is what happened today…"

Sakura swung her legs from side to side as she looked out over the sprawling city of Suna. Amazing that such a city could exist in the driest part of the desert. She sat on the edge of the roof of the Kazekage tower, trying to find a fata morgana. It was certainly more interesting than what was happening on the roof behind her.

It was as if one of Zeno's paradoxes had come to life and decided to possess Naruto. Specifically the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise.

"Mew!" cried the kitten, and it moved away a few steps.

"Here kitty kitty," said Naruto soothingly as he stretched out his arms to grab the black kitten. But every time the kitten escaped his grasp, despite the fact that Naruto was a trained shinobi. He'd caught cats when he was a genin, so now that he was … still a genin, technically, but a whole lot stronger, he had trouble with a small black kitten on the roof of the Kazekage tower. Brilliant.

"Leave the cat alone and let's go already!" tried Sakura again, but that only got her a "ssh, Sakura, you'll scare the kitty."

And then Naruto continued chasing the cat around the roof. Sakura took a deep breath and hung her head. This had gone on for thirty minutes now, and she felt her light skin burning in the desert sun. She wanted to get back inside, get on with the mission. It was of vital importance to the shinobi world, but here was the hero of the story, otherwise occupied.

"They've got Gaara, you know. The Akatsuki have Gaara and here you are, chasing a kitten!" Sakura punctuated her speech by hurling a kunai at the kitten, but despite her being reasonably good with kunai it missed the animal by inches.

"But it's so cute!" replied Naruto.

Sakura was going to kill him, she truly was.

"And then there were other … incidents."

"Stop jumping around like a deranged frog!"

"Don't scare the pigeons away from their food!"

"Not every toad carries toad-oil, numbnut. You don't have to check every toad-like thing you come across, alright?"

"The whole 'check every plant'-thing might be contagious. I may have to look into that. Is the stupid spreading?"

Shikamaru felt the inevitable desire to check that bush over there, right now. Calmly he walked over and rooted through it. He pocketed the fruits that fell off and wandered back to the road. His team stared at him long and hard, but Shikamaru only shrugged.

"What?"

Sakura's heart pound in her chest. It beat a familiar tune. Sa-su-ke, Sa-su-ke. He could be as close as down the next corridor, through the next hallway, right around the corner...

And Naruto felt it was appropriate to check every conceivable room and clay pot they came across. He even rooted through some desks and produced some new kunai from it, but Sakura could no longer hold back.

"You are coming with me, believe it! Great, now I'm saying it."

Sakura used her considerable strength to grab Naruto by his hair and she marched him all the way down to a giant hallway, where she finally laid eyes on her lost teammate, the love of her life, the aloof and serious Sasuke. She drank in the sight of him, his voice, his hair, his mannerisms. She couldn't help but notice the dirt-stained nails he sported.

No, not him too! Had the whole world around her gone mad for agriculture?

Their reunion would be short, however, because Naruto and Sasuke battled it out in a downright epic battle, but before Sakura knew it Sasuke disappeared and left a devastated team 7 behind.

"As if the plants and clay pot - thing wasn't bad enough, now Naruto's taken to a new hobby. And of course he chooses to practice that hobby at the worst of times."

Rubble lay all around them, the remains of their once proud village. Sakura still couldn't understand why it had happened – how it had happened, and what they were going to do about it. She heard faint cries underneath some rubble, but she knew that she'd be too late to help. Thousands of people had been injured by the blast, hundreds killed. And it all came from that one Akatsuki guy.

Sakura couldn't wrap her head around it. Someone with equal power had to fight him, someone she trusted, someone who could pull a victory out of their ass when there was not a ray of sunshine left.

And the one guy who could do it stood in front of her.

"Naruto," she breathed. She'd never been so glad to lay eyes on her teammate. For once she forgot the weird antics he'd been up to lately, the dirt-digging and the kitten-chasing and everything. He was their hope, their- her rescue.

"Come on, Pain is over there," she said, and pointed at a point beyond the rubble. Naruto didn't say a word, he merely followed her lead as she began to run. Together they jumped across the remains of houses, injured shinobi and civilians alike, all huddled together in an attempt to ward off death. Sakura grimly started a mental tally of how much dead, how much injured she'd seen. Her healer hands itched at the destruction of life all around her, but for now she had to lead Naruto to Pain. The two would duke it out, and Naruto had to beat Pain, simple as that. There was no way to survive otherwise.

In the distance Sakura could make out a figure clad in a black cloak. The guy had ludicrous orange hair, but he radiated such a killing intent she didn't think anyone had every called him a carrot-face. She looked back at Naruto to point his enemy out to him.

"That's Pain! Hurry, you have to- WHY THE HELL ARE YOU TRYING TO CATCH THAT BIRD?"

"In the end, it turned out alright. Naruto beat pain and somehow managed to revive everybody. I'm working my hands raw in the hospital to take care of the injured people, and it'll be a while before Konoha is rebuilt, but we stand a chance now."

Sakura came across Naruto right when she carried too much boxes for comfort. Like the gentleman he sometimes could be he offered to carry some of her boxes, and she gladly accepted. Her chakra was drained from all the healing she'd performed at the hospital, making her sway on her feet.

Together they walked back to the tent she currently resided in, bantering about what the new Hokage tower should look like. Naruto felt he should have his likeliness painted on it, since he basically saved the village.

"I don't think everybody wants to look at your face all the time," said a familiar voice behind them.

"Kakashi-sensei!" cried Naruto happily. "Here, you carry this, so I can take some more of Sakura's boxes."

Before their sensei could protest Naruto had shoved his load into Kakashi's arms and was in the process of taking more boxes from Sakura's pile. She was secretly thankful for that, because her arms were starting to feel heavy.

Kakashi blew out a sigh but kept pace next to them. Somehow he managed to lift the boxes with one hand and continue reading Icha-Icha Paradise with the other, tuning them out.

Sakura smiled at Naruto. After the fight with Pain he'd grown up even more, or so it seemed. He no longer jumped over people's heads, gave all his money away to some stranger on the street, chased after every frog or root through nearby flora. He truly had changed, and it gave her hope for the future. He had been driving her insane with his antics, and she was this close to blowing up at him and smacking him around something fierce, in the hopes that he'd stop checking every shop to see if they had something new to offer in return for some ingredients.

Maybe things would turn out alright after all.

"Naruto nii-chan!" yelled Konohamaru from the small space between two tents. His young face positively glowed with excitement. "Wanna play hide and seek?"

Naruto promptly dropped everything he held and ran towards Konohamaru, not even once looking back at the unrewarding mini-quest he'd embarked on with Sakura.

"Sure!"

Sakura sighed and turned to Kakashi. The baffled sensei turned his attention on her, about to open his mouth until he saw her Look. She too dropped her boxes and looked her sensei in the single eye.

"I quit," she said, and walked away.