Recappy From the Last Chappy: Naruto gave Sasuke an angry look as he closed the cell door behind him. "If anyone‛s the loser, you are! I‛m not the one who ended up in prison, and look at all the stuff I used to do!"
"They just found me worth being confined." Inwardly, Sasuke had to admit that he missed these little arguments between himself and Naruto. It simply was not the same with anyone else. He did not mind so much being babysat by the jonin, either, as there was nowhere for him to run-off to anyway. With Orochimaru dead, he should have been trying to track down Itachi, but even he knew he did not have the strength yet. Staying in Konoha all of a sudden seemed to be a good idea, maybe, if even the dunce had become strong enough to beat Orochimaru. Maybe he could get even stronger than he thought.
Maybe, staying just a little bit wouldn‛t be so bad . . . .
Chapter Seven: Something Worth Fighting For
Just like any other Summer‛s day, that July 23rd eight years ago was a hot and humid one; Konoha experienced some of its warmest temperatures. The newly seven-year-old boy spent the day wondering if he would pass out form having to evade his fangirls the whole time. Unfortunately for him, those girls were persistent . . . and he may have to begin investing in anti-perspirint.
Panting as quietly as he could, Sasuke found a good hiding place in a small thicket of trees. Thankfully, there was plenty of shade and it helped cool him down as the fangirls squabbling dissipated from his hearing. Little Sasuke leaned up against the tree and plopped into the dirt. Finally . . . I lost ‛em.
"Happy birthday, Sasuke-kun!" called a loud and shrill female voice.
Surprised, Sasuke opened his eyes and yelped, searching for the fangirl, but seeing nobody until the same voice urged him to look up. What he saw was Little Krystal dangling upside down from one of the branches above, using her legs to keep her suspended. Quickly, as he heard the "what was that" and "I think someone found Sasuke-kun"s, he jumped to a standing upright position and covered Krystal‛s mouth to quiet her down and stop drawing unwanted attention. With stealth, he peeked around the tree trunk.
"Oh, it seems it was a false alarm . . . ."
"Where do we look now? I think Sasuke-kun left . . . ."
"Maybe he ran back towards the Academy!"
"Yeah!"
He smirked after the retreating figures of the day‛s greatest enemy and felt something wet on his hand. In disgust he realized that Krystal was licking him and quickly retracted his hand while Krystal was in mid-lick. She smiled cheesily with her tongue hanging out as he wiped away her saliva onto his shorts. "Sorry, did I scare you?"
"No way!" Sasuke retorted pridefully. "What‛re you hangin‛ upside down trees for, anyway?"
"Tryin‛ to give you you‛re birthday present! I knew you‛d be runnin‛ from fangirls all day, so I waited somewhere shady," she said and wriggled around a little as she tried to get something out of the pocket of her capris. Amongst her struggles, two red rose pendants produced themselves from under her shirt, hanging on silver chains and dangling in front of her face. He did not remember ever seeing them before.
"Don‛t you think maybe you should get down, Krystal-chan? I‛m‛a laugh when you fall." Sasuke warned.
Krystal puffed her cheeks angrily and glared at him. "Laugh and you won‛t get your present—Oh there it is!" Trying to jump for joy, she conveniently forgot she was hanging upside down, and accidentally released her grip on the branch. The impact of her falling on top of Sasuke left swirling effects in both of their eyes.
"Ow . . . you‛re heavy, Krystal-chan," he said in a strained voice.
"Oh yeah? Well I bet you‛re not so light yourself, neither—Now get off me!"
"Me? You fell on me!"
"Well, er sh-shut up!" Krystal retorted as the blood which had been rushing to her head moments ago only powdered her cheeks. She offered a hand to help Sasuke up once she stood upright, feeling moderately embarrassed. Almost immediately after, her pale and petite hands reached for the nape of her neck, eyes closed as if undoing something. Seconds later, she held out one of the rose necklaces. Sasuke‛s only reaction was to stare blankly.
"Happy birthday, Sasuke-kun!"
"That‛s . . . that‛s a girl‛s necklace!"
"No it‛s not—Well kinda—But guys can wear it too! It‛s a friendship necklace. You wear one and I wear the other, and then we‛ll always have something to connect us! Don‛t you like it . . .?"
"Er . . . ."
Taking that as a rejection, Krystal‛s brow furrowed downwards and she puffed her cheeks again. Drawing her hand in, she growled, "Fine! If you don‛t like it, I‛ll take it back! All ya had to do was tuck it under your shirt for all I cared!" She crossed her arms and turned. "Sakura and Ino woulda killed me for having the same necklace as you anyway, but I guess you‛re just too manly to wear it! I got half-a-mind ta tell ‛em where you‛re hiding!"
"No, wait!" All throughout Krystal‛s accusations and assumptions he had opened his mouth many times to say something as a sweat drop formed on his head but only then had he found the voice. As much as he did not want her to be angry, he ESPECIALLY did not want her to relay his hiding spot to his number one most obsessive fangirls. He sighed in a way that the air blew upwards and upset the way his bangs were settled. "So long as I can hide it," he started with his cheeks becoming hot and Krystal turning slightly to face him." I guess I can wear it . . ."
At that, Krystal formed a new smile that was wide and she turned fully, knowing that, even though he was not very enthusiastic about it, that was the best she would get from him. She handed the necklace to Sasuke and watched with a smile still as he reluctantly pulled it over his head and tucked it under his black turtleneck. "Just promise you aren‛t goin‛ fangirl on me now."
"Haha, don‛t worry Sasuke-kun. I‛m too scared of your other fangirls to be one and—Well, you know I like Itachi-kun!" She reassured him while extending her pinky. "I just want to be best friends forever with you, Sasuke-kun1"
Sasuke linked pinkies with her, a smile curving his lips. "Right! Best friends forever! If you became a fangirl, it‛d suck so bad ‛cause you know all my hiding places!"
"HEY! I FOUND SASUKE-KUN!" came a sudden voice belonging to a fangirl that made Krystal and Sasuke jump nearly eight feet in the air.
"Him and Krystal are making a pinky promise," someone gasped.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Both Sasuke and Krystal exchanged glances, releasing their pinky promise. Sasuke started, "I think—"
Krystal continued with, "we should—"
Then they both chorused, "RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNN!"
.:Xx♥xX:.
Sasuke nearly smiled at this memory with a look of nostalgia as he twirled the same rose necklace from the memory, but on his face it came out as more of a smirk. He looked over Konoha from atop one of its tall buildings for the first time in a long time after letting the first few hours of his new freedom sink what he had been told, the clothes he had worn over the last few years adopting the Sound Village clothing style had become too torn and bloodied to the point in which they could no longer be worn. Now, after paying a visit to the Uchiha estate, he wore a blackshort sleeved turtleneck with a wide collar and the Uchiha symbol on the back over a long sleeved white shirt. His white capris were a little long and baggy, but short enough that the bandages between his black zori and the edge of the pants were visible.
Nearby, squatting on one of the water tanks, was Nara Shikaku, the jonin assigned by Tsunade to babysit Sasuke, and the father of Nara Shikamaru. Like his son, he had almond-colored eyes and a pineapple-shaped head with the exception of it being a little longer and he had a on his face gave him a more rugged look when he would also wear a torn up vest over his chuunin wore a short sleeved shirt out of fishnets under that.
Oh wow, look at this view! Konoha is such a pretty place once you get out of that uber-icky jail! Yang exclaimed from Sasuke‛s shoulder with sparkling eyes.
Yeah . . . I bet it looks even better from the other side of the gates, commented her opposite. When he was given a disapproving look by her, he responded with, Well, it‛s true!And Sasuke can easily get past this jonin—he‛s Shikamaru‛s FATHER for crying out loud!
I still disapprove! What he should be doing with his newfound freedom is go find Krystal-chan! Get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness! Declare his undying love!
It doesn‛t matter how many times or for how long you two argue about this, I am not going to get down on my knees or beg for forgiveness because I didn‛t do anything wrong, Sasuke said silently to the both of them through thought, preferring it that way as Shikaku would then have absolutely no idea what was crossing his mind. After crouching for a long time, he finally stood and stayed put for a second to let blood begin recirculating through his legs.
"Where do you think you‛re going?" asked Shikaku, who had appeared to be sleeping moments ago, as he stood as well.
"It‛s none of your business." Sasuke glowered at the jonin from the corner of his eye. Well, I didn‛t do anything morally wrong, at least. Yin‛s right, though. I‛m sick of being babysat.
"Troublesome as it is, Lady Hokage made it my business."
He was right, as much as Sasuke hated to admit it, but since he planned on giving him the slip, he could not really say as certainly would not be the smartest of moves. Instead, he turned so his glare hit Shikaku with its full intensity and began mentally formulating an escape plan. One that was most likely doomed to fail coming to mind, Sasuke diverted his gaze just to the left of Shikaku‛s face and portrayed a surprised look to an invisible something in the latter‛s blind spot.
Skeptical, he turned to look behind him and automatically made the hand sign for his Kagemane no Jutsu, otherwise known as the Shadow Possession Jutsu, to catch Sasuke a moment after he had begun turned around fully, and because the jutsu would cause Sasuke to mirror his movements, he turned too, thus, they faced each other. Shikaku seemed amused at the attempted escape, while his assignment cursed him mentally.
"Assuming your opponent will fall for a trick that old in the book is a rookie‛s mistake, Uchiha Sasuke," he mused. "To be honest, I expected better."
Sasuke said nothing and Shikaku‛s smile grew.
"Come on, Kid. I can force you, or you can come voluntarily, but I think it‛s about time we left here and went to one of my favorite tea houses." Though if you weren‛t I minor I‛d have preferred the bar . . . .
"I‛m not a kid . . .," the younger of the two shinobi‛s replied in further vexation. Something happened, something so sudden it did not quite register in Shikaku‛s concious, and Sasuke was free of the Kagemane no Jutsu, the carmine color of his sharingan glaring. "And I don‛t plan on being chaperoned by one."
.:Xx♥xX:.
Despite the genin‛s protests, both him and the jonin found themselves in the tea house. The latter drank his tea heartily, enjoying the enka music playing in the background while the former barely touched his. For a majority of the short time they had been there, he had sat with his arms crossed, looking out the window with a glare of such intensity the glass could have melted. To his embarrassment, Shikaku had gotten a hold of him with the Kagemane no Jutsu again and forced him to come.
Shikaku set down his tea. "So . . . . Who‛s the girl?" Shikaku asked after the long stretch of silence.
"Girl?"
"Before I began this assignment I had already analyzed the possibilities of you attempting to make a run for it—Which you did try to do—and I considered why you would want to run. With the death of Orochimaru, there isn‛t anyone for you to run off to for more training; you don‛t have the ninja tools or the stupidity to go after your brother now . . . . A girlfriend is the only one that seems partially logical," he explained as Sasuke‛s face turned red.
"Why is it that everyone links my motives to her . . .?" The confused Uchiha wondered aloud and added, "and she‛s NOT MY GIRLFRIEND, I don‛t think of her like that." She probably doesn‛t think of me at ALL.
Shikaku‛s chagrin hinted that he suspected otherwise of Sasuke‛s afterthought. "Because . . . a woman is often the motive for any man, no matter how much they deny it. Women can be troublesome in that way."
"But . . . why?" The current topic of conversation was a little out of Sasuke‛s comfort zone—embarrassing, actually—but he would not let it show and he had a thirst for wisdom on the subject, especially since Shikaku had guessed correctly that searching for Krystal had been on his agenda.
"It‛s because they‛re something worth fighting for," Shikaku answered once he gave the question some thought. "They can be the roughest and most troublesome, but they definitely are worth it. Yoshino—That‛s my wife‛s name—Yoshino is actually the most troublesome woman I have ever met . . . But I wouldn‛t trade her for another."
The words were left to marinate in Sasuke‛s mind for a few moments as he stared at his tea cup. ". . . her name‛s Hyuuga Krystal. We had a fight before I left."
"‛Hyuuga Krystal‛, huh? I‛ve heard of her . . . . Shikamaru mentioned her once. She‛s a troublesome one . . . . You looking to make up or something?"
Sasuke‛s blush grew and he snapped. "Why should I have to apologize to her, anyway? I didn‛t do anything wrong and she‛s the one acting cold to me! I don‛t understand her . . . ." And I don‛t understand why I‛m talking about this, either!
"Not many men do understand women, that‛s another troublesome trait. Understanding comes with time, but did it ever occur to you that she may still be angry from the fight?"
The possibility had not crossed his mind, not concretely, at least. If she was still angry after three years, then there was no telling just how much that anger had grown. As this came to realization, his eyes grew, and as pride tried to cover it, the fact that he did care about what Krystal thought came to light.
It was a strange feeling he thought had been severed from his heart long ago and wondered why Yang had not used it to her advantage whenever getting on his case about something. She had thrown nearly everything else back into his face, but not this. Whatever this was. He knew and had always felt that the bond between him and Krystal never had and never would be severed; he had not known what to call that, either but it was part of the cause for the rebirth of the feeling. Instead of backgrounding emptiness, something was full. Is this feeling what other people called "guilt" or "remorse"?
Whatever it was, he did not like it very much.
Knowledge of what to do also escaped him. It was uncharted territory; the last time he had felt guilty was not a part of his memory. A single word fluttered in the shadows of his concious, failing to reveal itself and kept eluding him. Some primary concept that should have been drilled into him when he was a child. Something as simple as table manners or first words.
He had to apologize.
No, there was no way he would do that, why did he even consider it? Why did he want for her not to be mad, and why did he have to feel so "guilty" about it? She was just another girl . . . .
As Sasuke silently tried to sort through the conflicts rising within himself, Shikaku analyzed his reaction with interest. It was beyond him how a boy who was so clueless about girls could have so many chasing after him.
"She may be mad, but that doesn‛t mean she‛ll stay mad forever. Even the roughest woman is tender to the man she loves." he pointed out.
"She most likely hates me," Sasuke said distantly until he was grasped with a new determination. If she hated him, then perhaps it was time to rectify that situation, and no lazy jonin was going to stop him! Of course, he had no idea where to look, but that thought was not important to him at the moment. He stood up and said to Shikaku, "I‛m going to the bathroom, and I‛d prefer not to have the unnecessary company."
As he shifted himself up and out of the booth, he heard Shikaku say, "Okay then, but so you‛re not wandering aimlessly after you sneak out the window, her mission is to meet with the son of a British Feudal Lord and help escort him to Sunagakure . . . . I‛m sure Orochimaru taught you tracking skills, right?"
Sasuke froze, wondering how the jonin had figured out his plan and felt a sweat drop forming on his head as he realized he most likely would have wandered around aimlessly until he remembered Kiba mentioning a mission with Krystal. Ino. And Hinata. And that, would have been stupid. Really, really, stupid.
Not taking another moment‛s hesitation, he left the place with a silent nod to answer Shikaku‛s inquiry. Before he left the village towards Suna, he would have to stop by the Uchiha Estate for some ninja tools and his kusanagi. With Krystal‛s group having left already, there was no time to lose.
.:Xx♥xX:.
Meanwhile, as those on the mission stopped for a spell to give the horses a rest from pulling the carriage Maboroshi rode in, Krystal sneezed again and again; she wondered if she had gotten a cold, but there were no other symptoms of such and the sneezes were dry.
"It‛s said that, when you sneeze, someone‛s thinking about you," Hayden pointed out by the fourth or fifth sneeze with a wink.
"I thought that when you sneeze, someone‛s talking about you." Ino raised an eyebrow.
"Ed heard same as Hayden. It‛s your ears that tingle when someone‛s talking about you."
"It tends to vary between cultures," Maboroshi said from behind Krystal. She had been sitting with the group when he had decided to approach her. "That‛s irrelevant, though. Seems that this ‛someone-you-used-to-know‛ is thinking of you as much as you are him," he teased when bending over to say it in a whisper to her ear. "Or maybe it‛s my thoughts that are making you sneeze." And with that he tweaked her nose, smiling gently at the blush flushing her face before leaving to flirt with Hinata, whom nearly fainted from the interaction.
Was it possible that Sasuke was thinking of her? So much that she had sneezed over four times in the last half-hour? It was a possibility, even if a small one, and it brought a light feeling to her head again (until she sneezed, that is.) Maybe she was developing some allergy, instead. It did seem as though there was all of a sudden a strong scent of expensive cologne every time Maboroshi was around, and yet her eyes were not itchy or watery.
Dreamily she looked up in the trees, changing her expression when she momentarily saw a woman in there, but when she looked away and then checked again, no one was there. She simply shrugged it off, thinking it was only a hallucination from her possible cold. No big deal. She sneezed again. At this rate, I‛m gonna sneeze my friggin brains out! Angrily, she wiped her nose, annoyed by it‛s frequent involuntary blowing. Still . . . . If it‛s Uchiha that‛s thinking about me . . . Maybe it‛s not so bad—? "Achoo!"
End of Chapter Seven
Next time on .:Roses are Red:.!Chapter Eight: Prisoner
Illusion Style: Feather Hypnosis Jutsu! The fans multiplied and lowered themselves to surround Krystal, their patterns moving across the plane in a hypnotizing way.
Genjutsu? Automatically, Krystal could feel the jutsu‛s effects. Her mind went blank, her vision grew dark and she could not concentrate long enough to cut off the flow of her chakra, which would normally foil any genjutsu. Within moments, she fainted.
Miss Peacock, as Krystal would have begun calling the woman, ended the technique by raising her right arm and snapping her fingers. The fans converged into a single one above her as she stared at her captive with empty eyes and a slightly painted smirk. She tucked the large fan into the back of her obi. "Hn. And to think, Peacocks only use the effect of their feathers to get laid," she said when crossing the stream to Krystal‛s limp body."Some animals are so ignorant. Oh well," sighed she almost mournfully. "At least I was able to apprehend the girl. Akakana-sama will be pleased."
.:Xx♥xX:.
Aki's Author Corner
Thanks for reading, everyone! -bows- Well, since you guys on fanfiction (edit: and now Wattpad) were kinda deprived of the original .:Roses are Red:. chapters, I'ma start tellin ya where there're some differences and stuffs 8D First, shall be Sasuke's prison-type stuffs
In the original, Sasuke also was released from prison but the idea had come so suddenly when I was writing that I never actually showed it happening or anything. He just sorta showed up randomly during Krystal's mission. I like it this way, better. Also, that whole sneeze-thingy at the end of the chapter was put there as just some sort of filler cuz it didn't feel like le chapter ended... So, yeah.
In the original, the peeps from Britain were also different. Hayden didn't exist at the time, she was added into this one cuz Ace-sensei wanted to be a part of the story and so she was born! I may make a side-story chroniclingher days at the Academy. For some reason, Edward's last name was "Honda" and Henry was known as "Hokuto"... I realized later that that made no sense XD Also, it was Team Gai that Krystal had come on this mission with, not Hinata, Ino, and Kiba. So.. yeah. That's all I can think of, right now! Stick around :D:D:D:D:D! And thanks to those whom read this little afternote thingey-meh-bobber!
Thank you for reading! God bless you!