Chapter 82: CH 82
Sakura had been confused at first after Team 7 had been for all intents and purposes disbanded following Naruto's promotion and downright distraught following Sasuke's defection to Orochimaru so it gave her somewhat of a pickup when she was told that she was to be the first selected to train in the new medic-nin program set up by Tsunade. This meant that she was trained and overseen directly by the legendary slug sannin herself.
A small smile came to her face as she recalled asking why she had been chosen, let alone the first chosen, to be in the program. She remembered the smirking face of her master telling her to credit it to Naruto. "Hey pinky!"
Sakura broke her concentration to look over at the Oto kunoichi that was captured by Naruto during the retrieval mission, Tayuya she was told her name was, "What do you want?" Sakura stated in a cold tone. She knew that the girl was under direct protection of Tsunade due to the copious amounts of information she handed out after being caught during the retrieval mission, and also that Tsunade told her that any attempts to cause physical harm to the girl would end with Naruto breaking his foot off in her ass, she had finally come to terms with the fact that Naruto was one-hundred percent willing and sure as hell able to go through with such a thing on his 'Sakura-chan'. Not that he had even called her that since after the invasion. However she also somewhat blamed her for getting Sasuke out of the country and into Orochimaru's hands. It was a useless grudge right then anyway; even if Naruto wasn't around to beat her ass for harming Tayuya she wasn't too sure she could pull it off herself anyway. Instead she treated the girl with cold indifference, which suited Tayuya just fine anyway, if you didn't like her she wasn't going to fall all over herself to change your mind.
Tayuya shrugged off her tone, "Tsunade sent me to tell you to rest for now. It's time for you to knock off for the day."
Sakura frowned and nodded, "Why do you call me pinky and yet call Tsunade-shishou by her name."
Tayuya smirked, "I may be pretty vulgar and everything, but I know well enough to not piss off people that can kill me, and that Tsunade lady sure as hell can. The only reason I don't call shithead by his real name is because he let me call him shithead and get away with it."
Sakura sweat-dropped as she heard Tayuya's name for Naruto, although calling him a baka as if it were his given name for roughly four years and trying to wail on him didn't really seem better. Kami, why didn't he ever kill her with his bare hands again?
XxX
Elsewhere in Konoha, Team Gai was still hard at work training their skills, even during the waning light of sundown. Tenten and Neji were seated off to the side as the brown-eyed kunoichi was starting to lose her patience, "Lee! Gai-sensei! Can we please go home now? Maybe you two can train until you can't even see your nose in front of your face, but both me and Neji have things to do back home!"
Gai halted the ongoing spar between him and his clone-like pupil, "My dear student Tenten, our flames of youth will light the darkness of the night! I am simply instructing Lee on how to defeat his eternal rival, a struggle that I myself can understand and respect!"
Neji rolled his pupil-less eyes, "Yes, I understand he wants to beat me, but do I really have to be here to witness him training to do so?"