Naruto Fanfic of which I HAVE NO MEMORY

One.

The most awkward moment of Sasuke’s life is not when he tripped into the kitchen table and knocked a bowl of hot soup into a visiting Hyuuga representative’s lap, nor when Kiba thought it would be funny to take his clothes while he was in the shower and he was forced to walk across the gym to Iruka’s office in nothing but a towel. It is not even the time when some idiot pushed Naruto into his face and then– well. Some might call it a kiss, but it most certainly was not a kiss and don’t you dare hint that is was, cretin. (And he most certainly did not enjoy it, no no.) No, the most awkward moment of Sasuke’s life is sitting down for tea with Orochimaru and his henchman Kabuto for the first time.

He has been here for about a week, gotten lost twice (why does every room look exactly the same?), and coolly explained his way out of admitting to being lost twice. He has met a wide variety of freaks, and learned a total of three new jutsu, all of which are useless.

Everyday at about 2:00, Orochimaru had given him an hour break from training and disappeared for said hour. Apparently, it was teatime.

“This is quite an honor for you,” Kabuto says to him as he pours three cups of tea. “Not many are allowed to Orochimaru-sama’s teatimes.”

“Hn,” says Sasuke. It is secret code for “I am not quite sure how to respond to this.” Having tea is not strange. The floral saucers and matching cups, along with the cucumber sandwiches and mini-hot dogs, however, are quite strange indeed.

“I’ve been quite pleased with you so far, Sasuke,” says the Sannin. “But I fear you have a long way to go to beating Itachi.” Sasuke’s eyes narrow.

“Hn.” This is secret code for “Don’t bring up touchy topics at teatime.”

“I hope you will continue to work as hard as you have this past week. After all, we can’t have you slacking off.” Orochimaru smirks before taking a sip of tea from his rose-encrusted cup. “Oh, minty.”

“I hope it’s not too strong,” says Kabuto anxiously. “I noticed I let the Earl Grey sit a bit too long yesterday and you only managed to finish one cup.”

Orochimaru waves dismissively. “I never really cared Earl Grey anyway. What brand is this?”

The two converse about tea for a good fifteen minutes as Sasuke glares at his own drink. He refuses to touch such a girly cup¬– it would lose him too many man-points.

Man-points are very important to Sasuke. Ever since that conversation he overheard between Ino and Sakura about how he’d look good in a certain dress, he’s been keeping tabs on his man-points. He got man-points for going head-to-head against Kakashi during the bell test. He got even more man-points for becoming a human pincushion during the whole wave country thing. And he THOUGHT he’d get major man-points for going up against Gaara during the Chunin exams, but that… that didn’t work so well.

“Sasuke!”

Our brooding shinobi abruptly looks up from his tea upon hearing his name.

“What?”

Orochimaru’s brow furrows slightly. “You should pay more attention, Sasuke-kun.”

“Hn.” This is secret code for “Shut the hell up.”

“You’ll need to be most attentive for your mission next week.”

“Mission?” Sasuke very carefully controls his face. He didn’t come here to do Snakeman’s chores.

“Yes,” replies said Snakeman. “You’ll need to practice in a practical setting after all.”

“Hn,” says Sasuke, which is secret code for “Tch.”

The Snake Bellyache Curing Jutsu, the Fuzzy Slippers Jutsu and the Fang Shining Jutsu hardly needed practical application to perfect. In fact, Sasuke doubted he would ever use them. Ever. He would much rather learn something he could use to maul a certain brother of his–

“Oh, and I’d like you to join me for tea from now on. So we can… get to know each other.”

¬–but getting out for a while seemed like a good idea.

-

“Hey Sakura, what do you call a fish with no eyes?”

Naruto grins at her across an empty bowl that once contained ramen. She smiles weakly back at him, looking up from her own untouched bowl.

“Only you would be telling stupid jokes at a time like this,” she says.

“’Time like this’? Sakura, cheer up! I’ll only be gone a few years.”

Sakura snorts. “You’re right; you’ll only be gone three years. It’s not like that’s a long time or anything. It’s not like that’s over a hundred and fifty weeks or a thousand days or anything.”

Naruto frowns slightly, then brightens up again, “You calculated that fast.”

This produces a small laugh from Sakura, “Only fast for you, Naruto.”

“What! I’m not that bad, you’re just– are you going to eat that?” It dawns on Naruto that his bowl is empty and hers is full.

“Naruto!” Sakura whines. “I’m all depressed and too upset to eat, and you’re telling fish jokes and trying to take my food.”

“No!” Naruto puts on an exaggerated face of horror. “I’m asking you if you’re going to eat that because you should and I’m concerned for your health.” He pauses. “But if you’re REALLY upset and on the verge of tears and all that, I could totally give you a nice, comforting hug. And then I could totally help you finish that ramen because, you know, you’re too depressed to eat and it’d be a waste to let it get cold and stuff.”

Sakura glares at him, grabs her chopsticks, and shoves as many noodles as she can into her mouth. “Nod on yewr life, Nalutow.”

Naruto grins again. “What was that, Sakura?”

Sakura takes a moment to chew the massive starchy blob and swallow. “This ramen is MINE, Uzumaki Naruto.” She skillfully maneuvers a piece of pork into her mouth and chews it defiantly at him.

He snorts. “Are you SURE Ino’s the pig, Sakura?” She sneers playfully at him in response.

Naruto’s final dinner at Ichiraku and in Konoha– at least for a few years– continues in a similar manner. He and Sakura tease each other, carefully avoiding the topic of his absence in the coming year and a certain Uchiha Sasuke. He even follows Sakura back to her parent’s house, not because she needs to be walked home, but because this is the last time he’ll see her face to face for a long, long while.

“You’ll write to us?” Sakura asks as they stand awkwardly in front of her door.

“Yeah. Definitely.”

Silence. They’re only twelve and have no idea how to say a proper good bye. So Naruto improvises.

“Sakura, what do you call a fish with no eyes?”

She rolls her own eyes in response. “Not that again.”

“Please?” Naruto does his best impression of a puppy face.

“Ew, creepy! Now you’re going to give me nightmares.”

“Ah, Sakura, you’re so mean.”

She beams at him, reaching behind her for the doorknob. “I know.” She opens the door and looks back at him, unsure what to say. “Um.”

He smiles sheepishly back at her. “Good bye?”

“Yeah, good bye.”

Sakura enters her parents’ house and closes the door behind her. Naruto turns from her house and walks casually back the way they came– his apartment is on the other side of town.

In the morning while Saukra is washing her face, he meets Jiraiya at the Konoha gates. As she’s double-checking that the scrolls she had being studying with Tsunade the day before are still in her bag, he takes one final look over his shoulder at his village.

-

Sasuke’s mission turns out to be some dumb assassination thing. Some guy ran off with the results of some experiment and Orochimaru wants him dead and the data back. No details except the necessary profile of the soon-to-be-dead man are provided, which irritates Sasuke. Almost as much as his teammates irritate him.

“If you’re so good at finding things, then why couldn’t you find a brush this morning? Or some breath mints?”

“Wow, Suigetsu knows what breath mints are! My eyes are opened!”

“Screw you, Karin.”

Sasuke discreetly turns from them and rubs his temples. He’d met with them at a smaller training ground than usual to work on “teamwork.” The group of three Sound-nin they should be beating to a bloody pulp (for practice, of course. It’s not like Sasuke ENJOYS such things) are staring at them, bewildered.

It had started off alright. They had introduced themselves, glared at the practice team some, then started the spar. Karin had fluttered her eyelashes at him a few too many times, but Sakura had done worse. Then Suigetsu had cracked an inappropriate joke about Karin’s short shorts and she replied with a snide remark about his teeth and it had all gone downhill from there.

“My haircut is very stylish and sexy, thank you very much, unlike THIS thing.” Karin reaches out and grabs Suigetsu’s hair, yanking it toward her. He grabs the offending hand with his left hand and tries for her neck with the other. She ducks, her spare hand flying for her kunai pouch.

Someone clever on the opposing team takes this moment to send an Earth jutsu their way, and the two suddenly find themselves up to their waists in dirt. They stare down at themselves in horror for a moment, but then Suigetsu remembers Karin’s hand is still in his hair and he punches her squarely in the shoulder.

“You can’t hit a girl!” Karin screeches in anger.

“Women’s lib, stupid.”

Sasuke smacks his forehead. He’s definitely lost some man-points.

-

“Ero Sennin! What do you call a fish with no eyes?”

“Really bad porn.”

“…I am never going near anything you write EVER.”

It is these delightful words that start off Naruto’s three-year journey of training fun. Incidentally, by the end of it Naruto will be completely immune to the horrors of fish porn. And even though the idea scares whatever bajeebies are out of him, his morning of marching down the dirt road with Jiraiya goes much better than Sakura’s.

-

Sakura walks into Tsunade’s office, hangs her bag on a hook by the door and turns to smile at her shishou, only to have a fist collide with her mouth at top speed. It has enough force to send her through the still open door and across the hallway.

Sakura lies on the tiled floor, stunned. Too stunned to notice the pain in her now bleeding lip and too stunned to even consider getting back up.

A shadow falls over her, and she leans her head to stare up at Tsunade’s scowling face.
What the HELL crazy woman what does she think she’s–

“You just died,” the hokage announces, “And now no one’s left to heal your dying teammate.”

Oh.

Sakura sits up and nods dumbly back. “Understood.”

“Did you reread those scrolls we went over?”

Tsunade extends a hand and pulls Sakura to her feet, her expression still hard. Sakura watches her wearily, afraid of another surprise punch to the face.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Can you recite them by heart?”

“Forwards and backwards.”

“Good.” A small smile. Tsunade returns to her desk and Sakura follows to stand awkwardly before her. She’s only been training under Tsunade a few days and she’s still quite intimidated by her title as Hokage and reputation as a Sannin.

“Go find Shizune have her fix up your face. Then go do your usual exercises– add fifteen laps.” Tsunade then gives her an almost pathetic look. “Then come back and help me do paper work for a few hours.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Sakura’s outward expression is determined. Inwardly, she wants to cry from the torture of physical work she is about to endure. Not only will it freaking HURT, but by the end of it she will have most definitely lost several sexy-points, not including the ones she just lost of getting randomly punched in the face by the Hokage. Ino would so be in the led by the end of the week. Or day. Or hour.

And on top of that, Tsunade expects her to do paperwork afterwards. While this is more sexy than running fifteen laps, it is an offense to her apprenticeship. And her lip hurts. Her entire face hurts, actually.

Sakura grits her teeth as she marches down the hall to Shizune’s tiny office and reminds herself why she is doing this. She is going to become an awesome shinobi, she is going to get Sasuke back and dammit, she is NOT going to lose to Ino in sexy-points.

“SHANNARO!”

Shizune opens her office door in time to watch Sakura punch the air and scream SHANNARO for no apparent reason like some sort of crazy person who would punch the air and scream SHANNARO for no apparent reason.

“Can I help you?” Shizune is bemused. Sakura is embarrassed.

And that’s how the morning started.

Two.

It takes four days for Sasuke’s “team” to develop some semblance of unity. As long as he stands in between Karin and Suigetsu, the two annoyances don’t try to kill each other. And if they do, Sasuke chucks shuriken at both of them. Incidentally, Kabuto ends up sewing Suigetsu’s ear back to his head.

“What were you telling me about a ‘semblance of unity’ this morning?” The medic-nin asks as he leans over the stretcher containing Suigetsu and his bleeding ear.

“They weren’t listening to me,” Sasuke explains.

Kabuto smirks as he pokes Suigetsu’s ear with a needle and an unnecessary amount of force. “You really weren’t meant to be a Konoha shinobi.”

This bothers Sasuke for some reason and he hns. This is secret code for “Don’t talk about touchy subjects while sewing ears back to heads.”

“I didn’t come here to have my ears cut off,” Suigetsu whines at Kabuto. “And why is prissy-boy in charge? He’s been here like two weeks.”

“Sasuke is… special to Orochimaru-sama.”

Sasuke finds this statement very creepy and excuses himself to let Karin out of the closet he had locked her in after she had tried to run off with Suigetsu’s severed ear. Because Karin’s the type of person who’d take a severed ear if it got attention from Sasuke and infuriated screams from Suigetsu.

The three of them leave tomorrow to find run-away-research-man and babysitting these two was severely straining Sasuke’s man-points (although talking off Suigetsu’s ear in a rage filled shower of shuriken had won him a few). He is not going to enjoy this mission. He knews it.

Sulkily, he opens the closet he had pushed Karin into after he and Suigetsu had wrestled the ear away from her.

Karin explodes from behind the door, throwing herself at him. There are straws from a broom in her red hair.

“Sasukeeeee,” she shrieks. “I’m afraid of the dark!”

As a trained ninja, Karin is by no means bothered by the dark. In fact, she is rather skilled at maneuvering herself about in the dark without being detected. Or getting straw from a broom in her red hair.

“Save meeee, Sasukeeeeeee,” she whines into his ear.

She has officially out creepy’d Sakura and, grabbing her wrists, Sasuke throws her back toward the closet and slams the door shut. He braces his shoulder against to prevent her from opening it has he fumbles with the lock. Her creepiness is getting to him.

“Why are you so mean, Sasuke?” the redhead croons through the keyhole.

“Hn,” Sasuke grunts. This is secret code for “Oh my god please someone make her go away.”

He finally hears the click of the lock and bolts down the hallway. It’s 2:00 and teatime with Orochimaru suddenly seems more fun than training.

-

The first stop on Naruto and Jiraiya’s journey is a brothel. Typical, thinks Naruto. He ends up sitting in a backroom with an off-duty prostitute. It is a position no twelve year old should ever be in and wonders if he could sue Jiraiya for child abuse.

“Probably,” says the off-duty prostitute when he voices this question. Then she offers him a cigarette. “Smoke?”

Naruto stares at it disgustedly. “No thanks.”

“Whatever.” She places the cigarette she had offered him in her own mouth and leans in toward one of the candles on the low table to light it. Her thin hair comes dangerously close to the flame and Naruto winces. She straightens up, takes a drag, and blows smoke across the table at him. Naruto winces some more.

“So, um…” Naruto squirms as she stares at him with a look of utter boredom on her face. “Why aren’t you… uh… working?”

She takes a long drag on her cigarette. “Herpes flarin’ up again.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Naruto isn’t really sorry; he’s just confused about what you say to a whore with herpes.

-

HOW DO I NOT REMEMBER THIS
HOOOOOW