Sakura scrunched her nose in frustration as she pulled the spring back again, freeing her hand only to return it quickly to the small red knobs on either side of the machine.

"SAKKURRAA!" I complained, leaning against the side of the pinball machine lazily. Her eyes didn't leave the little chrome ball but she replied anyways.

"Seriously, I'm 200 points away from beating the high score. Just give me like, 4 seconds," she bargained, smashing her small finger into the button and cursing under her breathe. How is it she has to concentrate this hard? I mean, it is pinball, right?

"It's been four seconds," I quipped, grinning cockily. She narrowed her eyes, but they still followed the game.

I glanced down at my large blue shoes for a moment during the silence, momentarily contemplating if I should get different colored laces. White's so boring, you know? I mean, orange would be cool, and it would match my coat. Not that I really care if it matches, but maybe it would clash…what does that even mean? When colors 'clash'? Like, do they start fist-fighting each other or something? Or is it more like a car crash, where they just like slam into each other? I feel like it's more deliberate than that, though. If orange were a car, what type of car would it even be…?

Sakura's loud yell ripped my previously derailed train of thought completely off its tracks. I jumped at her sudden outburst.

"I beeeaaaat it, I-I beeeaaaat it, oh, I beeaat it," She began to sing, dancing as she did so. She spun in a circle and starting humming some random beat before twirling her outstretched pointer fingers around whilst pointing at the high score screen of the game.

"In yo face, US," she grinned as the old high score, made by 'US', moved down to number 2, "Guess what? You're not standin' for American pride no more! Aww yeah, I said that." She was still dancing, so I just pushed off the machine and twirled the keys around.

"Can we go now?" I whined, glancing at the machine and the flashing "NEW HIGHSCORE: SMH". It just now occurred to me that I've never really found out Sakura's middle name. Probably something super American, considering her first and last name are sorta Asian. I mean, mine are too, but my mom was half Asian, so, I have a reason. Ha.

"I suppose," Sakura finally responded, grabbing her water bottle off the floor and taking a swig from it. She sighed in satisfaction.

"What a productive last day of winter break." She was still smiling as the cold air rushed around us upon our exit. She hastily pulled her ski-hat down further before stuffing her hands into her hoodie's pockets.

"Sakura, all we did was play arcade games. All. Day," I said, zipping up my large orange coat. She was still smiling, despite my jab.

"So. You still had fun."

"Nyeeehh," was all I responded. It's not that I didn't, it's that after Sakura and I had run down all the tokens on DDR and Air Hocket, she decided she wanted to, and these are her words, not mine, 'rekindle her love affair with pinball'. Clearly, their love was reunited.

"So, I lied," Sakura said, throwing her hands out of her pockets, then quickly back in, "pinball and I's love never really died down. I've always loved it, and always will," she decided, looking up at the sky as she said so. I chuckled and unlocked my car.

Ah, my car. I love this thing. First of all, I bought it with my very own money, first thing ever I didn't have to dip into my parent's copious amounts of money to buy. I figured, anyone who has a superficial opinion of me-that is, thinks I'm a dishrag who rides off my dad's money and influence to buy AWESOMETASTIC blue shoes-will think I'm doing this to convince people I'm not. Which is exactly why I am doing it. Ironic, I know. (At least I think that's irony. I don't know, English is my doodling class...)

Also, it's a white Toyota Selica. Granted, it's 10 years old, but it runs fine and still looks super hot ;].

Yeah, so, anyway, I love it. My eyes flicked over to Sakura for a moment, then back on the road. She was staring out the window, thinking about something. She does that a lot. Not like I don't, but, like, she thinks about stuff that normal people don't way too often. She just goes off into her own little world, staring at her reflection in the window and pondering life. Makes me wonder what she's thinking so thoroughly about.

"Hey, Sakura?" I asked hesitantly, still looking out the front window, "What'cha thinking about?"

She turned her head to face me, her short hair barely moving due to the fact the hat was holding it down. "I don't know. Stuff. Like, I need a car. Seriously."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

I grinned. "You don't want to keep getting rides from me? Besides, do you even have a license? Are you allowed to drive with that sort of temper?" Her eyes widened for a moment, then she crossed her arms.

"I'd punch you, but I'm too proud. You're wits coming along nicely," She said the last bit with an old-man voice. I chuckled as we pulled up to her house.

"Well, here we are," I added un-elegantly. The corners of her mouth quirked upwards again.

"You totally just ruined the epic flow of that conversation."

"Oh, dearest me, I'm sorry," I feigned guilt by putting my hand dramatically on my chest. She nodded.

"Perhaps you should be," Sakura stuck her tongue out at me then smirked and opened the door.

"See ya," I called after her. She was already sprinting to the door in the cold air, but she waved backwards to acknowledge that she had heard me. I shook my head fondly and moved the shift back into 'drive'.

…

-SAKURA-

"No. Shit, no. No! Stop and frickin' listen to me! You need to go back into that hallway because there's another guy in there," I finally managed to get out what I needed to say once Tomat0hn's character had stopped moving. I heard a grunt from my headset.

"Cherry, I'm leading," was all the male voice said, and I scoffed in response.

"Doesn't matter, we're never going to beat this level if you don't get the enemy in the hallway," I tried to explain, muttered under my breath as I pressed down on the controller's buttons and jumped behind a wall.

"Puppet," Tomato addressed 'Puppet-Master', "get the person in the hallway, please, so Cherry will shut up."

"On it," replied a different, still male, voice, as I watched the character with 'Puppet-Master' above its head scurry into the mentioned hallway. I groaned and shifted my position so my elbow could rest on my knee.

"Oh my god, Cherry and Tomato, if you guys stopped fighting for alpha for like 7 seconds we could actually get something done," a new voice called, still with the deeper tone of a male.

"We get plenty done," I defended, ducking behind another wall after a swift movement of my thumbs, "when I'm leading." I could hear Tomato scoff.

"What about yesterday?"

"It's a long level, seriously. There's no way we could've finished it in one day," I shot back, trying to maintain that the level we were currently on, and had been on since yesterday, was not done simply because it was long and not because of a lack of leadership. Because it wasn't, and I'm a perfectly adequate leader. Better than Tomato.

"Well, where were you for all of today?" 'DestinyAwaits' responded, the one who originally chastised Tomato and I.

"Having a life, dickhead," I mumbled, though I'm not sure he heard it. Truthfully, I had just gone to an arcade to play MORE video games, but I beat US's high score at pinball. Heheh.

"Sakura," I heard my mother's voice flow into the living room from the atrium. I uttered a quick "hold on" into my headset before muting and yelling back, "in here, mom." Her heals clicked loudly against the wooden floor as she entered the living room.

"You know, when I got a daughter, I never thought I'd see the day when I had to tell her to 'get off the couch and go take a shower," She scolded, setting her purse down on the couch. I wiggled my finger distractedly at my mom, not moving my eyes from the TV.

"Now mother, don't be sexist. Women can be lazy too," She smacked her forehead as she ruffled through her purse, "besides, I took a shower this morning." I ignored whatever my mom was about to say as I unmuted the headset.

"Destiny, could you please play lookout for me? I'm gonna go into this manhole," I asked, waiting for the familiar faceless voice to respond with a yes. Once I watched the character run up behind mine, I pressed the buttons down in a strategic order and the cartoon manhole's lid flew open, allowing my character to jump into the vacant spot.

"Cherry, you don't need to do that," Puppet noted, and although he couldn't see it, I furrowed my eyebrows and responded with a, "whhhyyy?"

"Because Tomato—oh, shoot. I gotta go. My roommate just got home and he's yelling about exploding things again," he started, then finished, as a line of text appeared on the bottom of the screen saying "Puppet-Master HAS LOGGED OUT." I wasn't really sure what exploding things had to do with leaving the game, but I didn't like to ask about people's personal lives.

During the momentary pause in the conversation, my mom snapped her fingers in my face.

"Sakura!" She said, shaking between her thumb and forefinger, "go get something to eat! I have some work to do."

"But Naruto just went home, Mom, and in case you forgot, I DON'T HAVE CAR!" I reminded her, covering the microphone part of my headset with my hand. She sighed.

"Then c'mon. Let's go pick up some fast food." I sighed and jumped out of the animated manhole, watching as the 'loading' screen flashed across my TV.

"Alright. I have to eat," I said, pausing the game and scrolling to the 'log out' option. I heard a quiet goodbye from Destiny and waited momentarily for some sort of reply from Tomato.

"Now we can actually start," I heard him say. I'm sure he was smirking. I could feel it emanating from the headset.

"Fuck off, Tomato," I ended, ignoring my mom's reprimanding glare. I watched the text "CherryChapstick28 HAS LOGGED OUT" appear at the bottom of the TV before the whole thing faded to black and I leaned across the coffee table to turn the X-box off.

...

-NARUTO-

It was the first day back after Winter Break, which meant everyone was wearing their new clothes and flashing their new shoes everywhere. I sat at a table with Kiba, staring in awe at his new phone.

"You can even like, talk to it and stuff," he bragged, holding his phone up to his chin. He held his finger up to stop me from asking questions.

"Find Naruto's house." The phone changed screens into a map, showing the way from the school to my house.

"How'd it know where my house is?" I asked, more than a little creeped out. I can't be the ONLY Naruto in the world, right? Right?

"Because you're in my contacts, dude," he replied, his fingers moving rapidly across the touch screen. I relaxed.

"This seat taken?" asked an Asain kid, probably a Junior like me. He had jet black hair, spiked up in the back, and his dark eyes revealed no sense of modesty, considering sitting with Kiba Inuzuka, quarterback, and Naruto Uzumaki, Wide-receiver, was practically forbidden. But what do I know of modesty?

Kiba waved at the seat in a distracted way, "No, I don't care. But I'm not gonna talk to you," he mentioned, still engrossed in his phone.

"Hn." Was all the dude replied. Wow. What a bastard.

"You uh, you new?" I offered, trying to find an explanation for this strange Asian nerd randomly sitting at our table.

"Not that it's any of your business, but I'm a transfer student from Kyoto," he explained, his eyes glancing around the cafeteria. Upon seeing my confused face, he added, "that's a city in Japan."

I mouthed an 'ah' after he explained, "I was homeschooled for the first semester. That's how I speak English so well. Idiot." I also chose to ignore that last bit.

A bouncy blond strolled up to the table, her heals clacking as she came, giving her away almost immediately. She sat down next to Kiba.

"Hey babe, so, I'm breaking up with you," She announced, stealing one of Kiba's fries. His eyes scanned her for a moment before he registered what she had said.

"Um, what?"

"It just, wasn't working out," she said quickly, kissing him on the cheek and giving him a symphathetic look, "but you can still come to my party Friday. Spread the word," she added.

Kiba groaned. "Ino...I'm not going to your fucking party to watch you hook up with another guy to get my jealous. Just…go be a whore elsewhere," he said, waving his hand around the cafeteria. She pouted.

"I wouldn't do that, babe, you know that. That's totally against the rules of break-ups."

"Get the fuck away from me, Ino," He said into his hands, groaning again. She frowned and flounced away, but not before winking at the newcomer. He simply raised an eyebrow.

"Who the hell—" he started, almost annoyed. I cut him off before Kiba could.

"That's Ino Yamanaka. Captain of the cheerleading squad, always wears short skirts, and pretty much a bitch. Also, Kiba's on again off again whore—er, I mean girlfriend," I explained deliberately, smirking at Kiba's glare.

"Dude, she's a ten, anyway. Tens are always bitchy, but their worth the points," I tried, trying to snatch his phone. He smacked me. The Asian raised his eyebrows again.

"Unlike Seven's, huh? Dude, Sakura's so not worth it man," he tried again, relapsing back into old Kiba after recovering quickly from the breakup.

"I've told you 1000 times, Sakura's not a bitch, and she's more like a 9. So she's so worth it, or would be, if I'd ever gotten anywhere. She's more than worth it. She shouldn't even be in the point system—" Kiba put his hand out to stop me.

"Chill, dude. I got it. Speaking of which, where is your hotheaded companion today?" He interrupted, still ignoring the newcomer's confused looks. Kiba said he wasn't going to talk to him.

"Eh, she said something about 'Tomato' not being there today for some reason, and then she started grumbling about people being bastards. Whatever that's supposed to mean. I swear dude, she's more obsessed with that X-Box than you—"

"What?" The Asian newcomer spoke up finally, staring at me with wide eyes.

"Sakura's my best friend. She skipped out because she wanted to play a video game. What, skipping class too scary for an Asian?" I asked. So, that was a little mean, but this dude was kind of annoying. Just saying.

He cleared his throat before glaring at me and saying, "Tomato?"

"One of her online friends or something. Ugh, I swear, she's like, in love with him or something because she will not. Stop. Talking about him."

"She keeps calling him a bastard, dude," Kiba put in, furrowing his eyebrows.

"She still talks about him," I grumbled, crossing my arms.

"What uh, What game is she playing?" The newcomer asked. How nosey.

"Hell if I know. Some shooting thing," I said dismissively, picking at my now-cold burger.

"And she has an online 'friend' named Tomato?" he continued. I looked at him, annoyed.

"Yes, dude, are you like retarded or something?"

"Shut up, dobe. And my name's not dude, it's Sasuke."

"Sasuke, you're a bastard, you know that?" There was a long silence, in which he didn't reply, nor really planned to, I presume, because he didn't seem to pay any attention to my snide remark.

"How many usernames do you think say 'Tomato' on them?" he mused, stirring his soup around with a spoon. Kiba shrugged.

"Why do you even care? Probably a good amount," Kiba narrowed his eyes, clearly just as annoyed with the bastard as I was.

"Hn," Sasuke replied. And I that was that.

…