Hello again guys! Fantastic response! Apologies for the delay! Awards are as follows!

M.A. Reviewer: LanierShazar! (Thanks loads! Hehe!)

L.N. Reviewer Awards:

11. koryandrs

Scene credits at the end! Those awarded, thanks much and please send in your suggestions by PM or review (^_^)!

"Ne, Naruto," Sakura muttered lazily, relishing the feeling of the breeze on her face. Lying in the grass beside her, Naruto grunted in response, too relaxed to so much as open his eyes. "You know how those Genin are always pulling pranks on you?"

Naruto's eyes opened, annoyance evident on his face immediately after hearing the words 'Genin' and 'pranks'.

"So… I was thinking we could prank them back…" Sakura said, ruffling Naruto's blonde hair lovingly and smiling at him. But what Naruto couldn't see was the more devious, dangerous intentions Sakura really had.

"What did you have in mind?"

Ten minutes later, Sakura and Naruto were strolling casually through Konoha, their relaxed attitudes a decoy for the way their eyes were on sharp lookout for the Genin team that had dedicated themselves to annoying Naruto since he decided he had no time for them.

Sensing a shift in the air, Naruto jumped to the side and avoided a water balloon that was launched in his direction. He turned to find the three Genin standing in battle formation behind him, smirks on their faces.

"You shall never escape our determination, Naruto-sama! Yield or we will annoy you for as long as you live!" the leader of the trio declared. He was another Uchiha prodigy on the rise, but as he was from a branch family, the pole up his rear was remarkably shorter than that of those in the main house. He was eager to learn, and since Naruto had quickly become known as the Jutsu Master after his promotion to ANBU, Kotaro had deemed him worthy of admiration. After all, the crafty jinchuuriki had created over one hundred original jutsu between his jounin rank and the day of his ANBU initiation!

"Remember the plan, Naruto," Sakura whispered from the corner of her mouth. Naruto sucked in a deep breath.

"Fine! I yield, but only because you have passed my Determination Test! You have been following me dedicatedly for half a year now, and I have decided to reward you with one jutsu for the benefit of the entire village!" Naruto declared, folding his arms over his chest, deepening his voice, and, Sakura had to admit, looking rather impressive. She could almost see the sparkles emanating from the eyes of the trio, but mainly from the leader, and the team's female healer.

"Naruto-sama! We will not disappoint you!" Kotaro said, standing at full attention.

"My old teammate here will also be bestowing upon your team one of her high level healing jutsu, so Kana," he said, looking intensely at the thirteen-year old girl. "You will be learning two jutsu from us."

Itachi had to admit, if only to himself, that he was looking forward to training. He was looking forward to Sakura. There had been a flurry of missions after their interaction in her bedroom, missions that had been far too serious to allow him the scope to distract her like he wanted to. He'd had to wait.

Then, in the interim periods, she'd been helping out at the Ninja Academy with Naruto, therefore avoiding any interaction with him.

But she couldn't avoid their ANBU training. It was mandatory.

Itachi shunshin-ed to the training grounds, but found only Shisui and Neji there. They bowed their heads respectfully at his approach, but said nothing.

"Where is Sakura?" Itachi asked, feeling the beginnings of impatience niggling at his insides. His team was supposed to be at the training grounds before he was. The sun was almost directly overhead, but there was enough breeze to prevent the ANBU team from feeling too hot.

"She has not yet arrived," Neji offered.

"Sakura is never late to training," Itachi said, frowning.

"I know," Shisui muttered. "I wonder what… or who is keeping her…" he added on, a distant expression on his face. The thought was not one that Itachi had considered, and it bothered him.

"Do we wait on her, or do we begin training?" Neji asked, his stance at ease, but ready to shift at a moment's notice.

"We will wait," Itachi said smoothly. He did not intend to be in the midst of battle when Sakura showed up, and the team deserved to hear why she was late.

She arrived twenty-seven minutes after, face flushed and eyes bright.

"Many apologies for being late," she breathed, the smile on her face almost nullifying the apology completely.

"Please explain your tardiness, Haruno-san," Itachi said sternly. She bit her lower lip, almost distracting him completely.

"I… I was just with Naruto… He was showing the Genin his latest combo, 'Ninja One-Fifty' he calls it… It was amazing and I got caught up… I'm sorry," she said, her eyes excited. Itachi felt a twinge of jealousy niggle at his insides.

"That sounds interesting. What is Ninja Sensei up to now?" Shisui asked, a grin pushing to his face.

"It's incredible! He literally does a sequence of one hundred and fifty jutsu in a row! And it's not only incredibly destructive, but it's distractingly gorgeous as well! I miss working with Naruto-kun," Sakura gushed. Itachi had never heard Sakura speak of him in the same glowing fashion, and it annoyed him immensely. "I literally had to punch the Genin training grounds back to level when he was done with it…" she said, pausing her speech to look at them as if seeing them all for the first time.

"Oh… Kami… did you guys wait for me?" she asked, an expression Itachi had never seen on her before coming to her face.

"For almost half hour," Neji said disapprovingly.

"Oh give it a rest, Neji," Shisui chided good naturedly. "You're just jealous because you never got to see Ninja One-Fifty. I know I am!" He flung his arm over Sakura's shoulder and led her to the sideline of the training ground. "Come on, Sakura. Tell me about this jutsu of Naruto's while Itachi trains with Neji…"

"Are you ready, Buntaichou?" Neji asked, reaching for his katana.

Itachi was ready, and as he fought Neji, he imagined a blonde-haired, blue eyed face grinning tauntingly back at him.

Neji lost.

It had taken three weeks, but Kotaro and his team were finally ready. Naruto had taught them none other than the Shunshin. Since Kotaro had the most aptitude and chakra reserves, Naruto had shown him how to do a basic shadow clone jutsu. Kotaro could now do two shadow clones. Kana, to her credit, had more or less mastered the mid-level jutsu Sakura had been patiently teaching her, and Sakura had to admit that those three jutsu alone had propelled the Genin team leagues ahead of their peers.

Besides, they had kinda earned it because of their 'dedication'.

"Now, as a test of your new skills, this is your mission, sanctioned by the Hokage herself," Naruto said, handing Kotaro a mission scroll. It was ranked at C, and the disappointment showed on Kotaro's face.

"Laundry duty?" he asked, one dark brow rising and irritation. Naruto leaned closer to him.

"Always finish reading the mission scroll before you judge the mission," he said, sounding wise and all-knowing. Kotaro looked again, and then his eyes widened.

"So you see, Kotaro, that this mission might not be as easy as it looks! We were preparing you for this, which is why we taught you the Shunshin!" Sakura declared solemnly, placing her hands on her hips. "If you fail…" she said, leaving the sentence open ended.

"Do not let us down," Naruto said, staring down at the Genin trio.

Itachi wrung the water out of his wet hair and stepped out of the shower. He reached blindly for the towel… only to reach air. Cracking an eyelid open, he deadpanned when he realized that no towel was on the rack.

Oh, right. It was laundry day.

Itachi stepped out of the bath and stalked into his bedroom. He looked in the cupboard for another towel, but it was completely empty.

As were his chests of drawers.

There were no garments in his house.

And Itachi did not have to be a prodigy to know that something was definitely wrong with that.

Then, to make matters worse, there was a knock at the door… when he was stark naked and wet from his shower.

But then the situation was not nearly as bad as he'd presumed.

Since it was Sakura that was outside.

Sakura wasn't sure what she expected. Part of her was convinced that the Genin team had not taken up all the clothes and Itachi would come out fully dressed. Another part of her argued that the team had come back with a humongous pile of clothing and towels, and maybe Itachi would be too embarrassed to come to the door without clothing. Yet another part of her surmised that …

Well, it never finished surmising, since the door opened.

And Itachi stood in the doorway.

Completely.

Naked.

And wet.

Enter Sakura's jaw dropping.

He was positively the most magnificent masculine specimen she'd ever seen, and as the top medic (aside from Tsunade-sama, of course) in possibly the world, Sakura had seen a lot of men completely disrobed.

Itachi was of athletic build, with ripped abs and prominent pecs and… oh she couldn't even describe his manhood… but his legs were powerful and long and her face was completely red and it was getting incredibly hard to think.

"Are you going to stand there all day, Sakura?" he asked, his eyelids lowered to half mast and his voice incredibly smooth and low and… "... or are you going to come in?"

Come in?

He wanted her to… to come in?

She already knew there were no clothes or towels in his house, so for the duration of her stay he would be completely naked and wet.

She opened her mouth even though she knew that no sound would come out.

He smirked and reached forward, hooking his index finger in the neck of her tunic before pulling her inside his foyer and locking the front door.

"So, what did you need, Sakura?" he asked, turning and heading into his kitchen.

Kami, his back and butt. How did he survive being so…? Her adjusted perception of him had been spot on.

He was way too hot for an ice pole to survive up that perfect ass, and now she was sounding like INO!

Suffice to say, Sakura couldn't remember what her name was, much less what her excuse for turning up at his house was. He turned slightly to look at her.

"Please, do not be embarrassed by my lack of clothing, Sakura, as it is laundry day, and I seem to be without clothing or towels. Besides, as the team medic seeing such things should surely not affect you. Correct?" he said, reaching into his refrigerator for an apple, which he bit into.

Eating fruit had never seemed so… so intriguing before.

At her lack of response, Itachi continued speaking.

"Since you are here and I am already undressed, do you think this would be an appropriate time for my physical examination? I can assure you we will not be disturbed," he said, taking another bite of the apple.

"I… I don't think…" Sakura stammered. "I don't have my medical bag…" He rounded the kitchen counter, and Sakura could not help watching all of him approach.

"As the top medic in the world, Sakura, I don't think you'd have to use anything in you medic bag to examine me," he said smoothly, stopping roughly two feet in front of her.

Itachi was pleased with the overall result.

She was completely in awe of his physicality. He watched her eyes darken with unadulterated feminine appreciation as they darted from point to point on his bare body. He watched her puny attempts to pull herself together and smirked inwardly.

And outwardly.

She was far too distracted to notice.

"I… I have to go," Sakura managed after a while, blinking furiously. "I have to meet N-Naruto, at the Ninja Academy. We'll have to save the physical for another… more appropriate time…" she said.

And then in a flash of pink petals, she was gone.

She'd teleported away.

To meet Naruto.

Itachi clenched his teeth and scowled. Blast it all, but he had nothing to cover himself with, and was therefore incapable of catching up to her and finding a way to change her mind about whose company she kept.

Four days after seeing her Buntaichou completely unclothed in all his manly glory had done nothing to erase the image from her memory. And though Sakura knew the technique she could use to erase the memory completely as she did to her patients suffering from extreme PTSD, she couldn't bring herself to.

And now she had to go training with him.

One on one, he'd said, since Neji and Shisui were off on a co-op mission in Kiri.

He was at it again, doing inexplicable things.

Why had he deemed it necessary to show himself completely unclothed in that fashion to her? There was only one logical conclusion, and that was that he wanted to get a reaction out of her.

He was on to her, and she should have known that he wouldn't be kept in the dark for long.

Well, if she was going to fight fire, she'd might as well use fire, because she'd seen how useless water was on an Uchiha Katon!

And that was why Sakura carried the scroll with her after reading it one last time.

When she arrived at the usual ANBU training grounds, she found Itachi waiting there for her, dressed in the Uchiha's traditional navy blue shirt and ANBU-style trousers. He was looking in her direction as she approached, obviously recognizing her chakra before even seeing her.

"Sakura," he said simply in greeting. The breeze teased his hair, which was pulled away from his face in a low ponytail.

"Buntaichou," Sakura said respectfully. She was determined to challenge him as much as she could, because then no one could say Haruno Sakura gave in without a fight.

She'd gotten the scroll! Who knew? Maybe she could actually beat Uchiha-Buntaichou at his own game.

But perhaps that was wishful thinking.

Was it?

The loaded question! Hehe you guys are amazing! Once again, I had to leave off some of the ideas I was planning to put here, and they're been deferred to another chappie.

See below for credits!

withloveagain - Itachi catching on to Sakura, and having a plan of his own.

Kyuubi's Angel of Darkness - Sakura stealing his clothes

Teenage Crisis - Naruto's involvement in the theft!

Rawr - Sakura seeing Itachi in all his glory

Please stay tuned, guys! You never know when I might use your suggestions! This story may sometimes slip over slightly into crack, so please don't kill me for that if or when it happens!

Review desu!