81So yeah…I'm back again. I'm sorry for leaving you off with a cliffy! I was just on a role and I ended up putting that up before I even thought about it. I'm really sorry. BUT! I have this new chapter up now! And you get to find out who was in Sakura's room! So really I hope you're happy!
Disclaimer: AGAIN with the evil lawyers of doom! What is up with that? You guys already know that I don't own Naruto! I haven't owned it for the last five chapters and I don't own it now! So HAH!
On with the story! ^.^
Recap:
Taking a deep breath, she sensed something coming her way, and froze. Eyes wide and body shaking, the pinkette got up and ran upstairs. This couldn't be happening. Not now. Oh Kami please not now! Why did this have to happen now?! She was going to handle this later! She would be ready later!
Jumping through her still open door, she just barely managed to catch the figure from jumping out of her window.
"Oh no you don't!" was all that was heard before she launched herself at the person in her room.
XxX
Having already tackled him, she realized that he wasn't struggling. She risked a glance up at him. He wasn't using his jutsu against her. She slowly rose from where she was pinning him down.
"Uchiha Itachi."
He stood with her and let her hold him in her rough manner. Sakura, knowing he wasn't going to try anything against her, loosened her grip just to have her father start yelling.
"Sakura! Get away from him!"
Looking over in the direction of the brown-haired man, Itachi said, "I know it's hard to believe this coming from me, but I mean no harm. I merely wish to talk with your time traveling daughter."
Sighing, Sakura let go of the known S-class criminal and closed her window then led the ex-ANBU member past her parents (whom were in a jutsu Sakura cast explaining everything that was happening) to the office room. There, she secured the house with a small genjutsu and turned to the man she had come to know of on almost a personal level.
"This probably would have been better if Tsunade-shishou was here, but I guess your circumstances wouldn't allow it. Go ahead Itachi-san; talk before my dad figures out a way to get past my genjutsu."
Nodding at the pinkette before him, he started talking, "Obviously you know that I somehow got caught in your time traveling jutsu and I know about everything. I am here to warn you that after you eliminate the threat of Orochimaru, you must work with your mentor and the other Sanin to keep akatsuki from reaching here. Kyuubi will be their main focus sooner than later and then Madara will come after the village itself. His main weakness is the body of his original self. After I get more information on the location of it I'll send it to you or your Sanin mentor."
After hearing him pause for so long, the aged yet young girl said, "Thank you for telling me this. I'll be sure to relay it back to my mentor when she arrives. Is there anything else you wish to say?"
The Haruno couldn't see the smirk from behind the high color of the cloak he was wearing as he told her, "My foolish little brother needs to realize when he has good things right in front of him. If you don't mind, help him see what he has before he loses it."
Slightly taken aback by the randomness of the comment, she nodded anyway and said, "I understand. Again, thank you for telling me all of this. It would probably be best if you left now. My dad can keep to himself but there is only so much that he can keep away from his Hokage. He won't be able to hold back if you're still here when he gets out of that jutsu."
Nodding in understanding he said, "Good bye Sakura-san."
"Good bye Itachi-san."
With that the man left in a blink of an eye and Sakura prepared herself for her parents.
3
2
1
"HARUNO SAKURA! GET OVER HERE RIGHT THIS INSTANT!" could be heard in stereo from her parents. She went out and calmed down her parents as she explained everything from Itachi to the Hokage to Tsunade coming sooner than she expected.
Soon Sakura was worn out and weary. Off to training she went. Kakashi had better be smart and arrive sooner than he usually does.
XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX
"TEME!"
"Tch. Dobe."
In a tired voice, Sakura said, "Please guys, please, just this once, would you not argue like you always do?"
Taken aback by the lack of screaming and the tired look in Sakura's eyes, the two boys actually listened to her for once. Of course that came with a price. Naruto started to pester her.
"Ne Sakura-chan, what's wrong? Why do you look so tired?"
She sighed again and said, "I'm fine Naruto. I'm just really tired of you two pointlessly bickering over nothing!" Naruto was cut off before he could even interrupt, "I don't care who it is that starts them, I don't care whose fault it is, I don't care what you think of each other, I care about the fact that I'm always the one left to break you two up since Kakashi-sensei is always late!"
"Did someone say my name?" was heard from behind the pinkette.
Whipping around to see her sensei, Sakura literally growled at him and said, "What is it with you and always being late? And I don't want some bogus excuse either!"
Blinking at the irate girl before him he realized that the pinkette in front of him was ready to kill for more than just him being late. Deciding that it would be smarter for him to tell the truth for once he said, "I was getting the information for our first mission as a team. We'll be doing about three of them today."
Naruto shouted with joy and started attacking his sensei with questions and the blonde's two teammates suppressed groans of distain. Sasuke because he didn't want to deal with his supposedly ex-fangirl and the knucklehead for three long missions and Sakura because she knew that it was going to be three very annoyingly trivial things that she would grow tired of quickly.
4 HOURS LATER
"Well, that's it. That was the last mission for today. Tomorrow we'll do some training and then the next day we'll be back on missions then after that back to training. That will be our schedule from now on."
Sighing with relief, Sakura watched as her sensei left in his usual fashion. Knowing that her best friend was waiting, she bid her two teammates good-bye and ran off to go find Ino.
She got to the training grounds just in time to see Asuma telling them good-bye. She decided to be sneaky and went up a tree. Just as Asuma was turning to leave, she jumped down from the branch she was on and said in a falsely energetic voice, "Oh hello there Asuma-sensei! I hope I'm not interrupting."
Blinking at the pink-haired girl before him, the smoking shinobi said, "Hello Haruno-san. You weren't interrupting. I was just leaving. You and Ino can both go off and shop or whatever it is you will be doing."
Nodding at him and thanking him, the two rivals went off. "Pig-chan, you still owe me lunch."
"Oh yeah…I was hoping you'd forget about that…guess not…"
"Nope! Now come on, we're going to this really nice tea house!"
Laughing at her crazy friend, Ino followed her and tried to convince her friend that she should pay for her own meal and they would just be even. Poor girl, she couldn't even convince her to pay for just the tip.
In the end, Sakura was nice and paid for the tip and had a relatively cheap meal. Of course she did let Ino sweat it out a little bit before she decided to be nice.
As the day went on, Ino and Sakura were just hanging out, being girls, but eventually Sakura challenged Ino to a little competition that they had no idea would end up like it would.
"Ino, if I hit more targets than you, you pay for my lunch at an expensive restaurant. If you win, I pay for your lunch."
Smirking in confidence because her last few training sessions had been on weapon training, Ino accepted the offer and just as they were about to start up their sparing match, they were interrupted by a voice.
"Oh, hey Sakura-chan, what are you up to?"
Looking over, the two light haired girls saw another girl with chocolate brown eyes smiling and waving at them. Sakura, being her energetic self, beamed at the new girl and ran over to hug her. Animatedly she introduced the brunette to her blue-eyed best friend and explained the competition. Tenten decided to join the deal and as they were about to start, they were interrupted again, this time by a certain Hyuuga heiress. Sakura convinced the shy girl to join the competition.
Now it was all the girls versus each other. This was going to be fun.
Half an hour later
Panting and gasping, the four girls looked at each other and smiled. It was fun. Tiring, exhausting, challenging even, but fun nonetheless. Sakura looked about herself at her friends and laughed. They had just gotten into an entire war with each other over a small little challenge that started with just her and Ino. Ino, knowing what her best friend was laughing about started laughing, and soon all of them were laughing. After a while they calmed down and decided that Hinata would go through and count who hit the most targets since she was the only one that they all could trust enough not to cheat.
In the end it was a tie between Sakura and Tenten for first and Hinata got the next best leaving Ino to pay for everyone's lunch. Off they went to a nice restaurant called Ishikawa and nearly gave Ino a heart attack just seeing cheapest meal prices. Eventually the others pitched in and completely emptied their money savings.
They had a good time. And when Sakura was leaving to go home she found herself in a really good mood. That was, until she realized that she had only 2 days left before Tsunade would show up. Knowing this, she went home in a hurry and started to think of everything that she could warn her parents about so that they would stay one the wild-tempered woman's good side.
(A/N: okay. I know I shouldn't really do this, but I'm just going to time skip straight to Tsunade arriving because I honestly can't think of anything that would work to fill in the two days without it being very boring and pointless. Sorry if you're disappointed.)
2 DAYS LATER AT THE VILLAGE GATES:
With permission from Kakashi, Sakura skipped out on the missions for that day and restlessly waited for Tsunade to show up with Shizune. She wasn't sure if Jiraiya was going to be there as well, but she didn't really care all that much for the perverted man. She was set on making sure her mentor was kept in a tolerant mood. She didn't really care about much else.
That was the reason to Sakura being jumpy at every single sound of approach. She kept on thinking that Tsunade was going to be irate after having to travel so much back to a village she had seen the destruction of. Kotetsu and Izumo kept on messing with her while watching the front gates with her. They were alerted to the arrival of a very powerful and important person and were curious about the person that this girl was waiting for.
Izumo finally cracked and decided to be nice and said, "So…You said your name was Sakura right?"
Nodding at the man she sighed and said, "Yes. I'm Haruno Sakura. Yeah, my dad is an ANBU."
Kotetsu, still being persistent at discovering the person the girl was waiting for, continued on, "I see. Do you have any relatives or family friends coming in for your dad maybe?"
Sakura smirked, "Oh no. It's not a person for my dad. My dad does hold high respect for this person though. They've never actually met. They aren't coming for my mom either. It's all for me."
Confused even more, the two men persisted and eventually they changed tactics and tried figuring out who the person was by figuring out what kind of person this pinkette is. By association they could try figuring it out.
In the end they started talking and getting to know each other. The two finally gave up on figuring out who the mystery person was and just waited with the green eyed girl for whoever it was.
2 HOURS LATER
"And that's why I am never going to have curry ever again in my life!" Kotetsu finished his tale and the two others laughed with him.
After catching her breath, Sakura sensed two very familiar presences coming their way. Quickly, she composed herself and made sure she seemed presentable for her mentor. The two males caught on to her change in demeanor and became serious. Focusing on the road outside the gates, the three shinobi waited in suppressed excitement. Within minutes Sakura had a wide grin flash across her features as Tsunade and Shizune appeared on the path.
Kotetsu and Izumo had only one idea of who this woman could be, and they didn't think that it fit their mental picture of who she should have been.
Keeping their silences until they were with good conversational distance of each other, Tsunade started smiling as she neared her daughter-like student.
Finally being within a good distance, Sakura could hold herself no longer. "Tsunade-sama, it's good to see you."
With false formality between them, Sakura tried to act the part of the good, well-behaved student she should be acting like when she so desperately wanted to run up to her mentor and hug her in joy of knowing that finally things in making the future play out better than what had unfolded before.
After formal introductions were done between Sakura and Shizune, the three walked off towards the Hokage tower, but not before Sakura discretely winked and stuck her tongue out at the two stunned guards.
After being a good distance from the gates and not quite at the heart of the village, Tsunade and Sakura got a chance to have an actual conversation.
"I hope you traveled well. I know how irritating it can be."
"Oh it was decent. The fact that I was kept from blowing all of my money for once didn't really help. But that's not my fault." Tsunade pointedly looked at Shizune.
Shizune immediately started to act defensive and a little nervous trying to say that Tsunade shouldn't put such a bad reputation up and put herself in so much debt and Sakura had a fit of nostalgia at that. She started to giggle.
The two older women looked at the rosette questioningly which just made the emerald-eyed girl laugh even more. Soon thinking about it, Tsunade caught on and started to laugh as well.
Poor Shizune was left out of the loop. She knew that the two before her had a past with each other that she wouldn't come to truly understand that bond until she saw it in action. She now knew why that was.
The three of them kept up a good conversation as they made their way to the Hokage tower. Shizune, knowing how to read people's personalities found herself liking the young girl before her. She could hardly believe that she was as old in spirit as she was. She looked so innocent and kind. The mere thought of this girl going through as much as the dark haired woman was told she went through was unbelievable.
It made Shizune think about how angelic faces could mask the darkest of pasts and the deepest of scars.
As they got closer to the Hokage tower it was official that all of Konaha knew of Tsunade the Kunoichi of Legend was back in Konaha along with her assistant Shizune and their pig Tonton. Unfortunately, few people cared to remember the two latter travelers.
Soon there was an entire crowd of people surrounding the front of the Hokage Tower to see the legendary Slug Princess. Knowing this was going to happen, Kakashi had made sure to have his two students walking towards the Hokage tower to report their missions as completed for that day, even without the third student.
Sakura, knowing that this was going to happen, stepped up in front of Tsunade with an exasperated sigh and started to make her way through. The poor crowd didn't know what was coming.
"GET OUT OF OUR WAY! TSUNADE NEEDS TO SEE THE HOKAGE AND YOU'RE BLOCKING UP THE WAY TO HIM! MOVE IT!"
Quite a few people that knew Sakura as the innocent quiet little girl that used to tail her parents around in the market were so shocked by the outburst that they immediately complied without much fuss. The others went along with it knowing that they would get a chance to see the big-busted woman as she went into the building. Just as they got to the door Kakashi showed up behind the group and said,
"Long time no see Tsunade-sama. Good to see you. I trust my student hasn't given you any problems in bringing you here."
Kakashi, Naruto, and Sasuke followed the blonde and her apprentices into the building. As soon as the doors were shut and they got past the reception area on the first floor Tsunade got going, "Oh Sakura was good. Don't act like you sent her to get me though. You won't get credit for what you don't deserve."
Sakura decided not to get involved and turned to her teammates. "So what did you guys do while I was gone?"
Naruto got animated and said in a rush, "Oh we went on some missions. We had to catch this demonic cat! I swear that thing was possessed! Teme here kept being loud and scaring it off, but in the end I got it under control with my awesome ninja skills! Then we had to take care of this lady's yard and it was crazy! Those weeds were alive! They almost caught Teme on the leg and I had to go take care of him. They were some pretty lame missions but I still ended up being a hero. Even though saving Teme's stupid butt doesn't really count since he's so weak."
Sasuke, being the Uchiha that he was with his pride, said, "Tch, Dobe; the cat was tiny, I saved you each of those times. Dead last."
Sakura interrupted before they could even really get going, "Don't even start that up! We are in the presence of the world's greatest kunoichi who is world renowned for her skills in battle and her medical abilities. You will not embarrass me in front of her."
Naruto, not catching the hint that Sakura would deck him if he didn't listen, decided to say, "Huh? That lady? No way. She can't be all that great if I haven't heard of her. But then, I'm so great that I guess anyone lower than me isn't really worth recognition."
Sakura, ready to kill, turned to her mentor and said, "Please ignore this idiot. And ignore what I'm about to do."
Before hearing the woman's reply of "whatever", sakura turned and punched Naruto so hard he went flying down the stairs they were climbing and was going to be stuck down there for a few minutes before he could come back up and join them for the mission report.
Sasuke and Kakashi both made mental notes to never tick the pinkette on their team ever again. Especially when they were on stairs.
Walking into the office of the Hokage, Iruka, who was there for the mission reports with the Sandaime Hokage, nearly died from the shock of seeing the legendary Sanin walk in with his three former students.
"Ah! Tsunade! Good to see you again. You as well Shizune, Tonton," was said in greeting from the pipe smoker in the room.
Tsunade smiled at her mentor and greeted him formally. Bowing she spared a glance at Sakura who was currently glaring a hole through Naruto's head. Straightening up she silently commanded Sakura to behave. Giving him one last glance she turned to her mentor.
"Uh, Tsunade-shishou, uh, maybe they should go first…ya know for the sake of time consumption." She stared at Kakashi in a silent, 'Get the hell out of here' and glared at Naruto.
Sweatdropping, Kakashi scratched the back of his head sheepishly.
"Uh, yeah we kinda finished our mission¸ so…we'll just leave you alone, to ya know catch up. Bye!" With a poof of smoke he was gone, leaving Naruto and Sasuke to stare at his empty spot in anger.
"Yo, KAKASHI-SENSAI YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO TREAT ME TO RAMEN!" Naruto ran out of the room screaming something about not wanting to die at Sakura's hands. Sasuke, who had been ignored throughout that whole time, just walked out without a word.
Sarutobi dismissed Iruka and the room was left with just the two time travelers, the Hokage, Shizune, and Tonton.
"Okay! Now that the nuisances are gone! We can move on to more important things. Like the fact that I spoke with Itachi Uchiha two days ago and couldn't tell you guys until now!" Sakura said with a fake happy bubbly eager voice.
Raising an eye brow at the girl's obvious sarcastic voice he took a whiff of his pipe. Trying to figure out why the Uchiha had come to see the pink haired girl before him. He couldn't figure it out.
Tsunade smirked at Sakura and arched a brow.
"Sakura-chan why did you raise your voice at your Hokage?" She asked in an overly sweet voice. Sakura took a step back and Shizune gulped.
Sarutobi laughed, smoke coming out of his mouth.
"Tsunade-chan, you still have that awful but charming temper." Sarutobi said, rolling his eyes. Tsunade shrugged and turned serious. Sakura's head snapped up and Shizune's doe eyes turned rigid.
"So, you spoke to Itachi Uchiha. What did he say? Exactly what he said, I know you like to filter your thoughts Sakura." Tsunade said, patting her head.
Sakura scowled at not being able to sum it up to keep it short, but began to repeat everything that went down from the time he arrived to her home to the time he left. It was going to take a little while.
XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX
Sakura stood there, waiting with slightly bated breath for their reactions. Tsunade looked troubled, Shizune looked confused and Sarutobi looked contemplative.
"I believe that this complicates an already complicated situation," Sarutobi said standing up. He walked to the window and stared at the village. Seeing all the citizens walk around, laughs, hug there loved ones and wait on their children. None of them knew the worst was coming. Not even he knew what was coming.
"I'm glad I decided to arrive sooner than later. I don't understand about this Madara thing though. Madara is dead," Tsunade said.
"No my dear student, he is not dead. He is as alive as we are, even more so. I never thought this would come this far. We really do have a lot on our plates. Madara didn't die during that battle against our first Hokage. He had been weakened from it, to the point that even our best medics at the time could find no trace of him being alive. During the middle of my term as Hokage of our village, Madara made his first move to make it known that he was still out there. He was the one that directed the beginning of the biiju capture and sealing process. It was done through the power of his Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan. I along with two others realized that it was in fact Madara doing this. We still don't know what he is planning. I found out that the attack of the nine-tailed fox was controlled by Madara. All of what happened that night was planned by him."
Taking another puff from his pipe and letting it out in a puff of smoke to let them register this information, he continued, "Knowing this, we can now prepare for all of what's going on."
The four of them sat there in silence for a few moments. Then Shizune spoke up, "So Madara, one of the village's most dangerous threats of all time, is not only still alive, he's planning something that's obviously not good, and we need to stop him."
"We also can't forget all of what's going on with Orochimaru. He was the original threat that made Sakura and I come back in time in the first place," Tsunade interjected.
Sakura went off from there, "Itachi even said that only after we deal with Orochimaru we should deal with Madara."
"That's another thing to take into account. Itachi was not supposed to be part of the time travel jutsu. How do we know that he was the only one to have been part of this?" the pipe smoker asked.
That sent another round of silence throughout the group. No one had thought of that.
With a quiet voice Sakura gave the answer that everyone had running through their mind, "We don't know."
"We need to find a way to figure it out," Tsunade said. "We went through with making the decision to come back Sakura, we need to make sure that anything like what happened with Itachi didn't happen with others."
Nodding in agreement with a serious look on her face, Sakura let her mind race for a while. 'Who else might know? What will they do? Why didn't we think of this before? Why didn't I think of this when Itachi showed up? What the hell am I going to do?'
Looking at her mentor with that same unnaturally aged look in her emerald eyes, Sakura said something she had feared ever since the jutsu, "We might have bitten off more than we can chew Tsunade-shishou."
"We might have, but we're going to have to work our way through it, we can't change what we've already done. We're here to change what can't happen," the honey-eyed sanin said with conviction.
The people in that room had no idea what the future had in store for them. None what so ever. They would soon find out.
"Well, for the time being, we have all of our problems out on the table. We know that nothing that was discussed in this room is to be leaked to anyone. Not even Kakashi or Daisuke or any other person you might trust. I'm sorry Sakura; I know it will be hard to keep this from the people around you. You can let them know that Itachi is in fact on our side and that he's here to help us. You're going to have to keep the information about Madara from them, but I will allow you to inform them of anything that goes on with our efforts against Orochimaru."
All of them nodded in understanding.
"Well, in order for us to part on better terms than these problems, I'm going to chose now as a time to inform all of you that, Tsunade, you Shizune, and Tonton will be staying at Sakura's house for a week. That's what it came down to with my searches for you to get an apartment to stay in. next week you will be able to move out, but for right now, you three will be very close with Sakura and her parents. Tsunade, try not to kill them, they are very good people. Your temper may be something that Sakura can manage to handle, but her parents aren't as experienced as she and Shizune are."
This caused the two apprentices to laugh at the truth in that. Sakura especially found the comedy in the truth of it. She had been trying desperately to prepare her parents for her mentor's temper and now was the time to put her efforts to the test. This would be interesting.
XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX
Sakura smiled as she led the blonde woman along with her dark eyed assistant and the pig Tonton to her house. She no longer had any worries showing on her face.
She had plenty of things on her mind, but she pushed them aside. They had left the Hokage building with slightly lighter moods than they had entered, and Sakura decided to let that mood carry her for a while.
As they walked to the door Shizune stopped them before walking in.
"Okay, I have to do this, Sakura-san, are you sure your parents are ready for Tsunade?"
Pausing a moment to go over the things she'd done to prepare her parents as well as herself, the rosette was sure of her answer, "Yeah, they're ready for her. If not it'll only be a week. If I can handle my first month of training with Tsunade they can handle having her in the same house for a little while."
Tsunade, tired of hearing the talk, interrupted, "Will you two stop talking like I'm not standing right here?"
In unison you could hear the two girls go off, "Gomenasai Tsunade (-shishou)! We didn't mean to be so rude!"
All three of them looked at each other and laughed. Shizune knew she was going to be very close with Sakura. She was just one of those kinds of girls.
With the bright mood going between all of them, they walked in the door and the young kunoichi said, "Mom! Dad! I'm home! We have company!"
Within seconds the two parents were in the living room as the kunoichi were taking off their shoes in the hall.
Introductions were made and Sakura had to assure her mom that Tonton wasn't going to be a problem in her clean house. The Haruno patriarch had tried to be formal like he always felt he would be, but it just didn't work with how quickly all the females around him got the natural double 'x' chromosome reactions with each other.
Soon there were jokes flying, laughs, and an all around comfortable atmosphere around them. Nothing was forced and nothing was that hard. The next week wasn't going to be that hard for them.
Things were finally truly kicking off to a brighter future. Yeah, there were going to be problems, and there were complications, but they could handle it. They had to. Lives depended on it.
XxX
A/N: It's up! Finally! I am truly sorry for the wait you all had. I just couldn't update though. There's been a lot going on for a while and it was all just a bunch of bad timing. At least I didn't leave you guys off on a cliffy like I usually do! I hope that makes up for some of it!
Really though, it started off with a busy schedule with a concert I had at school for band, then writer's block, and then even more with me leaving for a while with my family. For a while after that I had writer's block again.
The latest thing that's been keeping me away though was a death of a friend, and I'm not going to apologize for that. I honestly couldn't bring myself to do much with her dying and it's a stretch that I even got this much done since then. I'm picking up my feet and it's all a work in process so just bear with me please.
So moving on to the review replies!
mouse123: I'm sorry you've had to wait for so long. Everything piling up hasn't been good to me. :P I'm glad you liked the story and the past chapters. I hope you liked this chapter too! ^.^ I'm happy I didn't leave it off on another cliffy….again. I'm really sorry for everything. Oh and Tsunade's temper loves to flair at everything. Sakura likes to be paranoid. Haha! Thank you for your reviews!
BlackBaccaraRose: I'm glad you liked it! I'm sorry for the wait for everything. Life hates me. :/ anyway I hope you liked this chapter and I'm going to try my best to update again soon. I really am sorry. I don't have any promises for when I'll update. Sorry. Thank you for your review!
Felonyisacrime: I LOVE YOU! YOUR REVIEWS ARE EPIC! I'm glad you thought the chapter was good! I hope you thought this one was good too! :D anyway I really do hope you liked this. I have no guarantees for when I'll update again, but I'll try. Thank you for your review!
LadyMartel4000: I'm glad you could forgive me. But now I must beg for your forgiveness again! I really didn't mean to take so long to update. Life piles the worst up on me at the worst times. I hope you liked it and lol! I never pictured it that way until you pointed it out like that! XD gross! Not like that! Thank you for your review!
sakuraxgaara2233: I'm sorry I didn't write sooner. I hope you liked it though. I truly did mean to write sooner. I am sorry. I hope you weren't disappointed with this chapter or anything. I tried to keep it from being long and boring. Thank you for your review!
IshimaruTsubaki: I feel accomplished to know that people couldn't guess what was going to happen! Thing is for a while there I didn't know who it was either. O.o weird I know but still. I hope you still like it even after the long wait. Thank you for your review!
Because We All Knew: Woohoo! I love you! I'm glad you liked the story! =^.^= it's always good to know that people like my stories! And as far as your friend from Japan goes: yay! Go SasuSaku! It is a pity with Karin though. She was a good character. Thank you for your review!
VampireHuntress72095: I really enjoyed your review. I'm glad you liked the idea of the inners and Sasuke's inner crush! ^.~ I'm glad you liked the cliffhanger. I try hard to make my cliffhangers decent enough to the point where people can hate me for the cliffy but at least like the cliffy for the effect. Because even when we are tortured to death by something like that we have to at least appreciate that it was done right. Thank you for understanding that there was reason behind my delays. Only a few people do understand that there's circumstances before actually hearing them. I hope you liked this chapter. I hope that since I didn't leave it off on a cliffhanger for once it was a good ending where people won't mind as much of a wait since there probably will be one. Anyway I'm glad you like this story and I hope you liked this chapter. =^.^=
~I hope you guys aren't all mad at me for the horribly long wait! I really didn't mean to take this long! Please don't be mad at me! I tried!
~~I hope this chapter was up to the standards I apparently set for everyone!
~~~LoVe YoU aLl
~~~~Your favorite authoress! (You know it!)
~CrazyGreyWolfGirl