A Game of Cat and Ferret

Against all expectations, finding the ferret turned out to be the easy part. Given the vastness of the Land of Fire, Sakura would have thought it would take Team 7 at least a week to comb the country's backwaters, but the ferret had turned up just a few kilometres away from the village where they were supposed to deliver it.

"All right!" Naruto cheered, as he watched Sasuke's summoned cat chase the ferret into a bush. "Mission complete!"

"When did you find the time to contract a summoned beast, Sasuke?" said Sakura with a hint of envy in her voice. "Now I'm the only one who doesn't have one…"

Sasuke was feeling pretty smug right now— it was all thanks to his Ninneko's keen sense of smell and information networks that they had found the missing pet ferret so quickly. Naruto's stupid toads had nothing on his cats!

A plaintive yowl sounded from the rustling bush, accompanied by high-pitched screeching— evidently, a fierce battle was being fought in the confines of the leafy arena.

Naruto charged in fearlessly, cage in hand…

…only to receive a flying cat to the head, knocking him flat onto his butt.

"I'm sorry, young master!" the ninja cat said pitifully, as it slipped off Naruto's face. "This ferret isn't normal— I'm going to have to retreat, nya!"

And with that pitiful display, the Ninneko disappeared in a puff of white smoke, much to Sasuke's dismay. Seeing that Sasuke and Naruto wouldn't be of much help, Sakura got down on her knees in front of the bush and opened a bag of cat food.

"Here, little ferret!" Sakura called out, shaking the bag tantalisingly. "We've got your favourite snacks~♪,"

The ferret shot out of its hiding place like a yellow streak of lightning and dived into Sakura's defenceless boob window, completely ignoring the bag of delicious treats held in her hands. Caught by surprise, Sakura automatically dropped the bag and squashed her breasts together with her hands, trapping the ferret inside her cleavage.

"I've got it!" Sakura exclaimed, turning to Sasuke and thrusting her chest out. "Quickly, the cage!"

Sasuke quickly snapped out of his depression and snatched the bamboo tube out of Naruto's hands, but just as he was about to reach into Sakura's cleavage to fish out the animal, he suddenly stopped.

For a few seconds, his hand just hovered there, as if he were trying to select a biscuit out of a tin. Should he, or shouldn't he? He really wanted to, but cool and aloof guys like him didn't grab women by the bits that jutted out of them…

"Never mind," said Sakura, looking down into her cleavage. "I think Mr Ferret would rather stay in here than go into that stuffy cage, anyway."

The ferret poked its head out and gazed at Sakura with its ruby eyes.

"Oi, you perverted furball!" Naruto shouted angrily. "Get out of there!"

It should've been me, not him! It's not fair! .jpeg

Naruto tried to reach for it, but the ferret stood its ground, biting his index with its pointy teeth.

"@#%@$#!"

Naruto swore and tried to shake off the ferret, but it held on to his finger with its dying will. After much running around and much swearing, all attempts to prise it off failing, Sasuke finally managed to make it let go with a newly learned Sharingan Genjutsu.

Of course, this led to another argument between the two boys, which Sakura naturally was forced to mediate— and it was only once they were satisfied that they had wasted enough time shouting at each other that they reluctantly settled their differences and began the journey to the delivery point.

'This isn't even filler,' said Inner Sakura sarcastically. 'This is a filler episode's filler— no way they really showed this on TV…'

In a way, Inner Sakura was correct, because the seemingly innocuous ferret capture mission was only a prologue to something much bigger— and speaking of which, onto our feature presentation…

(The camera pans out from the trio, displaying a bird's-eye view of the Land of Fire's lush greenery as the title card drops: Sakura the Movie: Legend of the Stone of Gelel!)

And so, Team 7 began wending their way through the mountains, the forests, the valleys, the rice paddies— unaware of the dangers awaiting them, for Sakura had never bothered to go to the cinema to watch the Naruto films. Their destination, a small village in the southernmost reaches of the Land of Fire, was drawing near…

"Something's off," said Sasuke darkly, as they were crossing a rickety wooden suspension bridge. "The village is just up ahead, but nobody's working in the fields."

Now that Sasuke was mentioning it, the rice paddies did seem awfully empty for this time of day. With the level of technology available to the peasants of the shinobi continent, farming could not yet be automatised, which meant that these fields ought to be filled with people knee-deep in muddy water, harvesting rice…

"Maybe they're taking a break," Naruto suggested. "Or maybe they've gone on vacation, ya know?"

That seemed unlikely— the Land of Fire's climate was similar to central Japan's, and with November just around the corner, it was the peak of the harvest season…

"I suppose we might as well take a look," said Sakura worriedly. "I hope nothing bad's happened…"

In this era, serfs had next to no rights— if the peasants refused to farm, there was a good chance the Land of Fire would send in Konoha shinobi to bust their unions or force them to go back to work.

If Sakura had to be perfectly honest, she would rather fight Madara than to be forced to threaten starving civilians for some fat nobles… though she would probably just run away screaming if he somehow appeared in front of her right now.

"We'll have a better view of the situation from up there," Sasuke suggested, pointing at a mountain peak towering over them. "I'll go have a look, while you two go check out the fields."

For once, Naruto wasn't inclined to argue— more time with Sakura-chan for him!