A Little Kindness

Sasuke's Final Stand

   Sasuke looked around his teams third makeshift base of the day. As he doible and triple checked all of the traps he had set to ward off any potential threats that could stumble upon their base. 'We need to do a better job of picking out locations to make bases.' He thought to himself as he made his way back to the center of their camp, which was a giant hollowed out tree, that was large enough for all three members of Team 7 to easily fit into. Ducking into tree Sasuke was welcomed by the sight of Sakura watching over their teammate, worry clearly etched all over her face. "How is he doing?" Sasuke asked as he squatted down next to Sakura. "I dont know honestly. He still has a bad fever, and he keeps shaking and grunting in pain." She said as she replaced the wet cloth on the blonde's head.

   Quickly taking a calming breathe, he turned his attention to Sakura. Who probably looked to be in even worse shape than Naruto. It was obvious to Sasuke that she was running on pure adrenaline at this point, and she looked close to passing out from exhaustion. 'She has to be nearly out of chakra at this point as well. Those last two fights really took a toll on her.' Sasuke thought to himself, as he slowly put a hand on her shoulder. Which had the intended effect of getting her attention. "Sakura why dont you go ahead and take a break and get some rest, I'll watch over Naruto for awhile." He said in what he hoped was a warm and caring tone. "No, I'm fine. I can still go on for awhile." She said while shaking her head. This did nothing to appease the Uchiha though, as she felt the hand on her shoulder tighten slightly. "Sakura it's no use lying to an Uchiha." Sakura heard Sasuke say as she turned and stared into his sharingan. "I can see exactly how exhausted you are, you're almost to the point of collapse. You need to rest. You'll end up doing more harm than good, if you keep this up." Sasuke said as he slowly deactivated his sharingan, as he looked into Sakura's emerald orbs, with his charcoal ones. Hearing this was all Sakura needed, as she immediately passed out. Luckily she fell toward Sasuke who quickly grabbed her, and set her on the ground next to their blonde teammate. 'Damn stubborn woman.' Sasuke thought to himself with a small smile on his face, as he reached down and gently pushed aside the hair that had been stuck to the side of Sakura's face. Before he went back to the enteance of the tree to keep watch.

   A couple of hours had gone by in silence as Sasuke was once again checking the traps to make sure that nothing had disturbed them. As he approached the last one he saw that there was a squirrel caught in it. Moving quickly he freed the squirrel and sent it on it's back to its tree. But not before the squirrel gave him an acorn as a thank you. With the squirrel now gone, he went to work on resetting the trap. Just when he was about to finish, he got blown back into the giant tree with great force, by what he could only assume was a giant gust of wind. Taking a few seconds to regain his bearings, his saw that there were three people standing in the spot where is trap would have been had he finished setting it.

   Looking at the three, he saw that one of them had a sort of gauntlet on his right arm, and bandages wrapped around his face. While the one to his right was male and had medium length spiky hair, where as the last one was a female with long hair that went down below her knees and was tied with a purple ribbon. All three of them were wearing a matching dark gray and black camouflage attire. And all three had on headbands that had a musical note on them. "Who are you, and what do you want?" Sasuke asked as he got into a battle ready stance and activated his sharingan.

   "Who we are is of no concern to you, but if you must know, my name is Dosu." Said the the one in the middle with the bandaged face. "And this is Zaku." he continued as he motioned toward the other male of the group. "And this is Kin." He finished with the female of the group. And as to why we're here, well we've come for the Jinchuriki. So step aside and you won't get hurt." Dosu finished with a threat as the three also entered into a fighting stance. Sasuke's only answer was to throw a volley of shuriken at the newcomers.