The mission had seemed simple enough, go to a town that was reputed at having the most vile, lowlifes in the history of the world, convince one such vile lowlife to spill some information while he was being watched by team Kakashi, then book it out of there with none the wiser.

Well, it had been a relatively easy mission until the point where the man had spilled the beans, because as soon as he said the words team Kakashi had been waiting for that whole entire week, the idiot realized he was being set up and panicked, which in turn caused other patrons of the shady little club, to panic. Resulting in many vile criminals and their hired rouge ninja friends and hired muscle to give chase to team Kakashi.

Which brings us to the current predicament that the four original members of team Kakashi where in.

In hindsight, Kakashi realized, it was a bad idea to put Sasuke and Naruto together, while they made a dynamic team, Naruto had not quite gotten over the fact that Sasuke had left the village to begin with he was having even more trouble excepting that Sasuke had barely saved himself from the death sentence, so being a little bitter at the thought of years down the drain, he might not have covered Sasuke to the best of his abilities.

And Sasuke, oh boy, what to say about Sasuke, he was just eager for the damn mission, so ignoring Naruto (which should have been a good thing) ended up leaving Naruto open for attacks during the skirmish they where in.

Ah, and what about him? Well, maybe he shouldn’t have taken on the biggest, scariest ninja there was, maybe, in hindsight of course, he should have let Sakura take the big guy, since with her strength, she probably would have crippled him.

Ah, yes, then there was Sakura, sweet, forgiving Sakura, too damn forgiving sometimes, she was just annoyed with both Naruto and Sasuke, but naturally wanting to protect them she tried to get them to behave nicely towards each other.

This, in some cases, puts her in very compromising positions, like the time on the roof at the hospital, or right now.

Yes, like right now, and he was powerless to stop it, mostly because he should have let Sakura have the strong freak that had him pinned right now, and because he shouldn’t have had Naruto and Sasuke pair up when the idiots where three seconds from a pissing contest.

This fact, is key here, because had they not been leaving obvious openings so the other would have more work, the missing-nin wouldn’t have gotten between them with every intention of a killing blow.

And then it wouldn’t have been necessary for Sakura to use a boost of chakra to get between Naruto and Sasuke’s turned backs and take down the ninja.

This brings us back to real time.

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Wanted

You have no idea.

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Clashing kunai echoed across the small clearing where the forest trees hadn’t allowed anything to grow around its roofs.

Hatake Kakashi felt his ribs groan and some even crack at the impact of the large ugly nin slamming his fist into his gut, he would have dodged had he not been slightly distracted with the way his team was handling the situation turned horribly, horribly wrong.

Naruto was so brutally pissed at Sasuke that he never saw the ninja behind him until it was much, much too late, as was Sasuke so busy ignoring Naruto being pissed that it was no surprise that even with the sharingan Sasuke missed the ninja.

Sakura had been engaged in battle with three missing-nin herself, none of them could have been more than Chunnin level in skill, which made her wonder how they became missing-nin to begin with, so taking them out with a few well aimed chakra enhanced fists it made her curious as to how her teammates where doing.

And they where not doing how she was expecting them to be doing, Kakashi had been fairing well until .5 seconds ago, about the same time Sakura noticed what Naruto and Sasuke where apparently completely blind to.

She was barely aware she moved, or that she had yelled out, but when she was suddenly standing before the missing-nin and the serrated blade he was three seconds from running through Sasuke and coincidently Naruto, she had a vision of the chunnin exams a long time ago when both Naruto and Sasuke had been out cold.

So it only barely registered in her mind when she slammed her chakra infused knee into the guys gut, knowing there was no way she could dodge the blade completely.

At the very least she pushed him back far enough and at such an awkward angle that when his blade came down it missed piercing her heart and only sliced her shoulder thinly before ripping down and beneath her arm, cutting straight to the bone of her rib cage.

It really was no surprise to her then that she fell to the ground in a disoriented heap for all of three seconds.

A chirping filled the air, followed by words and yells and screams that had Sakura blinking her eyes and forcing her self off the ground, it took her only a moment for the pain to hit home and blur her vision, it also took her only a moment to take a blood clotting capsule from her holster and pop it while she gained her bearings.

Ouch, life threatening and ouch.

Sound returned to the now quiet clearing after the initial shocked response from her teammates and the death of the first wave of shinobi to come.

“Sakura-chan!” Sakura flinched as she pushed her self up off the ground, keeping her arm to her side to squelch the blood flow, at the very least it would clot fast, if wasn’t too deep.

Scratch that.

Kakashi stepped foreword, flinching for a moment as he glanced behind him at the clearing and irritated his ribs, “How bad is it?”

Sakura took stock of herself and frowned, “Five minutes.”

Three heads turned, Naruto, who was himself unharmed, frowned, “Five minutes to fix it?” You could tell the poor guy was still trying to figure out what had happened, “No,” Sakura said holding her shoulder, “Five minutes until I bleed out to the point I can’t walk straight.”

POW!

Naruto looked like he had been hit in the face with one of Sakura’s super charged chakra enhanced fists. Kakashi’s jaw set as he calculated the sped of the second group of ninja, Sasuke seemed to be doing what Kakashi was doing, “There’s probably only ten minutes between us and the larger group following us,” Kakashi glanced at Sakura and for the first time noticed the darkening color of her shirt, “Can you heal up in five?”

Sakura knew she didn’t have much of a choice, and by the concerned look Kakashi was giving her and the way Sasuke was now staring at her shirt she knew she wasn’t looking too hot.

“Naruto, give me a hand.”

The poor blonde kyuubi container walked foreword, and Kakashi watched for signs of the enemy and watched to make sure Sakura didn’t fall over. Sasuke turned and activated his sharingan and faced the woods.

Kakashi was fairly sure this was Sasuke’s way of admitting he screwed up, that and Sakura had Naruto helping her pull her good arm from her shirt and was in the process of removing it completely without aggravating her injury, and within the next ten seconds made him stand behind her and slice off her bindings.

He wasn’t sure if it was to reserve her modesty or because she didn’t want to have to waste energy hitting Naruto.

But neither seemed to be the case when she instructed Naruto to grab a bottle from her bag.

“The stingy stuff? I hate the stingy stuff!”

Sakura, back still facing them lifted up her arm and flinched as she did it, as it opened the wound causing fresh blood to ooze down her side, “I’d rather not die from blood loss or infection so just hand it to me!” She ground out, obviously not enjoying having to stretch the wound to clean it, or be topless to do so.

Naruto, quite chastened scrambled to hand her the bottle that she promptly uncapped with her teeth before splashing the alcohol mix on her wounds.

Naruto flinched and promptly turned back around even though Sakura’s back was facing him, Kakashi heard the lid of the bottle crack from half way across the clearing and Sasuke seemed more vigilant in his search for signs of the enemy.

Sakura spit out the broken lid and dropped the bottle on the ground with a cruse, “Dammit,” Naruto turned around, “What’s wrong?”

Emerald eyes shown heavy weariness as the owner probed her wound with a chakra infused hand, “Damn.”

“Sakura?” Kakashi called questionably, Sasuke had noticed too, the ninja where at the most five minutes from them, “That better be a curse of, darn that was easy.”

Sakura brought her arm down for a moment, her chakra infused palm pumping visible green chakra into the wound, “Give me a hand with my shirt Naruto, the bottle doesn’t matter-“ she cut Naruto’s scramble in half by meeting him half way and ducking into her shirt, cutting off his concerns about the bottle being evidence, “The alcohol kills scent and any DNA, they can’t track us with it, just leave it.”

Well that was nice, “Are your ribs okay Kakashi?”

It always amazed him the extent of her selflessness, even when she had to hurriedly put her good arm through her sleeve only to bring her hand back to its original position to stop the blood from flowing from her wound and continue healing herself utilizing the hole that had been cut in the shirt from said wound, “I’ll live, we have to go, can you travel?”

“Yes.”

--------

Maybe, Sakura thought, still pumping her wound full of chakra to get it to a point where it would no longer be an immediate danger, she shouldn’t have so blatantly lied to Kakashi when he asked if she could travel, well…

It wasn’t a lie she supposed, and jumping from tree branch to tree branch and expanding even more chakra to speed up the escape, she should have mentioned that if she did move with this kind of wound there was a 50/50 chance her heart would completely stop, which had her expanding even more chakra.

Sakura estimated she had all of enough chakra left to either continue on running or heal her wound so it was only a centimeter deep instead of almost the half an inch it was now.

If she got it to the centimeter mark she could safely put stitches in and expect it to heal without complications, if she stopped now and put stitches in her chances of infection shot through the roof.

And with the wound as close to her heart as it was and major arteries, not to mention the limitations it would put on her arm movements not healing it to a safer point was like asking for a horrible death rendering infection.

Oh boy, now this was bad.

It was time to micro manage, she could speed up the healing process in her body by uping her chakra receptors in the area around the wound, but she’d still have to put stitches in her arm, while in the long run this would leave her feeling horrible and exhausted, it would be better then running her self into a tree because she exhausted herself completely healing her dumb arm and running the chance of chakra depletion.

“Kakashi, I have to put stitches in.”

Kakashi glanced behind him, the enemies had fallen behind, but they still didn’t have much time, but Sakura wouldn’t stop them unless it was absolutely necessary.

So when they did stop and Sakura told Naruto exactly where the needle was and made Sasuke sterilize it by blowing fire and Naruto string it, it was kind of shocking to watch Sakura slip out her sleeve and pull down her shirt just enough to reveal the wound completely without exposing her breast and jab a needle into her skin.

It was even more disturbing that she could speed sew her own wound without flinching or blinking.

Especially since Naruto was looking queasy, especially when he realized he had to cut the remainder of the surgical thread.

It was also kind of shocking to watch Sakura grab a white roll of bandages and for just a second flash them all while she held the tip under her arm, but it really only was a second because Sakura, in a flash, was wrapping with one hand, moving fast enough that she could let go of the roll and catch it again around her wound and arm without loosening the bandage.

It was also rather impressive and that as she pulled back on her sleeve that was still intact that she only took one minute exactly to dress a wound.

“Let’s go already.”

Kakashi had to remember to get her next time he was sent to the hospital for an extended stay, maybe she’d only keep him a few hours.

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“Kuchiyose no jutsu” it had been worth the splurge if just to hide and sleep in a real bed that night, Sakura had disappeared in the bathroom with her bag, not bothering to address them as she was starting to show signs of Chakra depletion, which had Kakashi wandering just how bad that wound actually was.

The shower was running the bathroom and Kakashi had a moment of silence before Sasuke and Naruto walked into the room, he almost laughed, he had forced the two to get the room in the first place, now the old woman who ran the hotel thought the two where ‘together.’

Naruto had hendged himself into a female and gotten the room to throw anyone questioning for them off the trail.

But by doing so they had only been able to get a single, which meant the boys where sleeping on the floor. It was unspoken that Sakura was getting the bed since they just happened to be semi-at-fault and mostly in dept to her, it just so happened Kakashi got to share the bed with Sakura because Sakura insisted that he was injured and should be comfortable until she could heal him.

It worked for him.

It really would be a pain to sleep on the ground with cracked ribs.

Naruto plopped down on the ground with a sigh, “Man, this sucks.”

Sasuke gave him a dark look for complaining, “Dobe.”

Immediately the blonde sparked to life, “Teme! We wouldn’t have had to run if you hadn’t been so obvious-“

Sasuke glared at Naruto, “Me? Obvious, have you looked in a mirror?”

Kakashi sighed from his spot on the bed, leaning against the headboard reading his book, “Children, children, don’t you think you’re arguing has caused enough trouble for one day?”

Kakashi glanced at the open windows where his nin-dogs where searching the area, maybe he should have just sent out Naruto and Sasuke in opposite directions.

“At least I wasn’t getting sick over a little blood.” Sasuke snorted disgustedly at Naruto, Naruto’s face flushed, “Teme! That wasn’t a little blood! It was Sakura’s blood! And it was a lot!”

Sasuke didn’t seem impressed, Kakashi sighed and shut his book, the shower had turned off some time ago and Sakura would be coming out soon, it wouldn’t be good to come out to a death match between her boys.

“Alright, its really time to st-“

“Well its your fault the ninja got behind us in the first place! You purposely let yourself get-“

“I got sloppy? Watch it Dobe.”

“You watch it teme! Sakura should have let that guy kill your sorry-“

“I did not need her to interfere, you however should be thanking-“

“Enough.”

Naruto and Sasuke’s head snapped to Kakashi, in all the six years that the two had known Kakashi they had never once heard him raise his voice or had his anger directed at them. But know, Hatake Kakashi was pissed.

He was glaring at the two of them, his slouch gone, along with his little orange book, “You two will shut up, and work together for the rest of this mission in peace. Wasn’t it enough that you almost got a teammate butchered for your petty fighting?”

Kakashi semi-regretted saying that when the look of pure pain and regret crossed Naruto’s features, he knew the blonde boy had carried feelings for Sakura for a long time, he also knew that those feelings had allowed him to view his team as his family, and to lose that family would tear Naruto apart.

Sasuke glanced away, not willing to met Kakashi’s gaze or admit that he was wrong.

Kakashi made a mental note to work on teamwork in the most annoyingly hellish fashion he could come up with when they all returned to Konoha, which, was looking rather dangerous at the moment.

Until he talked with Sakura he had no idea of their medics position or condition, and until the heat around the area cooled down he and she would be stuck trusting Naruto and Sasuke to keep the suspicion off them.

Ugh, that hindsight thing was coming back.

They all three glanced behind them when the door to the bathroom opened, at the very least they where expecting Sakura to glare at them for making a ruckus at the hotel, but it didn’t take a genius to see that something was very off about Sakura.

She barely made it to the bed before collapsing face first onto it, Naruto who had been standing from his yell at Sasuke jumped foreword, “Sakura?!” Kakashi kneeled on the bed and leaned over to check her vitals.

He was instantly shocked by her temperature, her heart was pumping like she was running and by the way she was having a hard time breathing he could tell something was wrong with not only her heart but her muscles.

Damn.

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OMG NARUTO SHIPPUDEN THE MOVIE 2 IS COMING OUT SOON! dies The first movie is coming out on DVD the same time this airs :D fangirls out OMG!