Dinner!
Age: Almost 13
"Dinner!"
"Good afternoon, Mikoto-san!" Sakura greets as she slides open the front door, carefully setting her shoes down in a presentable manner—Mikoto-san always did hate it whenever she just threw her shoes anywhere, as she was wont to do since Kakashi never minded.—before walking into the house.
"Good afternoon to you too, Sakura-chan! Come, I'm in the kitchen. Have you eaten lunch yet?" Mikoto replies. Her voice cheerful and bright as always; it made Sakura feel welcomed, even all those years ago when she lived with the Uchiha's.
"Ah, yes, I ate with my team after practice. I just came by to return a scroll that Itachi lent me, is he home?" The pinkette asked, her wide eyes looking around the parts of the house visible to her, her ear straining to hear any other sound from within the house. She heard none.
"Ahh, he went out for a mission earlier this morning, he most likely won't be back until a couple of days; why don't you just set it down on his desk?" Replies Mikoto, confirming what her senses already told her.
"Hai!"
Sakura used to find it weird that she was allowed to just fleet through the boy's rooms in the Uchiha household when she found out from Ino that it wasn't normal to be able to do so. She's always been welcome to do it even when she was smaller, so Sakura just shrugged it off, but now that she was of age, should she start refraining from doing so?
Kurenai, who before becoming her jounin sensei, had taken up the mantle of being Sakura's teacher when it comes to manners and formality, had said that it wasn't proper for young ladies to enter a man's room…but Sasuke and Naruto weren't men, right? But then again maybe Itachi is considered a man? How does one even identify if another is a "man"?
Sakura eventually gives up on her train of thought and just finishes her task. Sakura then enters the kitchen and sees Mikoto preparing copious amounts of food. She raises an eyebrow; why was Mikoto-san preparing so much for breakfast?
"Ano ne, Mikoto-san, what's the feast for?" Sakura asks, gesturing towards the plethora of prepared ingredients.
"It's for tonight's dinner. I had Sasuke ask his new team over for dinner; it's better to get to know them now than later, ne?" Mikoto mentions, tucking a stray raven lock behind her ear before turning and smiling at the pinkette.
"Ehh, maybe I should do the same thing…But 'Kashi's been out a lot lately, he even told me that he wasn't going to be home for dinner tonight…" Sakura trails off, looking to the side with a look of concentration, her eyebrows curling into each other, her eyes getting a suspicious glint to them.
"Ara? Did Hatake-kun not tell you? He's going to be eating dinner here tonight; he's Sasuke's jounin sensei."
"EHHH?!"
"So in the end, Mikoto-san invited my team and I as well. I hope you do not mind, Fugaku-san?" Asked Sakura, eating her dinner in the same sedate pace as the stoic man, carefully and obviously ignoring Kakashi's presence at the dinner table. Something that everyone present was painfully aware of; it was going to be a tense dinner indeed.
"No, it is fine. This dinner will allow me to asses both yours and Sasuke's team at the same time; this turn of events is favorable." Replies the strict man, his words eliciting different reactions from each attendee.
While the rest are a bit unsettled at the stoic Uchiha's straightforward reveal of his ulterior motive for the dinner, Kakashi's eye smile tightened and his hands balled into a fist underneath the table; he'd always hated how the Uchiha head acted as if he were Sakura's guardian rather than himself. He started raising Sakura by himself at the age of fourteen, damn it!
Sakura just shakes her head and laughs a little, as if the stoic patriarch of the Uchiha household had told a particularly funny joke. Sakura was the only one, aside from Mikoto, who found Fugaku to be charming or endearing; no one else ever did get his sense of humor. Others frequently think that maybe the two females were just blind and deaf?
Sasuke went rigid at his father's words but relaxes once he heard Sakura laugh; if she can laugh at such a situation then he could most certainly soldier on. He returns to eating once again, minding his own business and letting his and Sakura's teammates get interrogated throughout dinner.
"If Sakura were to be captured by an enemy-nin, and the nin demands you to choose between her life or your mission; what do you do?" Fugaku asked, his gaze intimidating the two boys of Team 8.
"Hey now, let's not get too carried away…" Kakashi says, chuckling while ruffling his hair casually. Although his thoughts were anything but. Who does he think he is? That's my line!
While Sakura, Naruto and Sasuke recalled how Kakashi did that exact scenario; he even held a kunai to Sakura's neck! He clearly wasn't one to talk!
"Of course we would save Sakura!"
"Wrong!"
"What? You'd rather have Sakura-san be killed for the sake of the mission?"
"Those who abandon the mission are scum but those who abandon comrades are worse than scu—"
"P-please don't f-fight…"
"Of course, If it were me, Sakura-chan wouldn't even get taken in the first place!"
"Oi, you brats, don't interrupt—"
"Tch, it's simple. Just take Sakura back and finish the mission."
"Feh, you can't protect Sakura even if you wanted to; you're not even in the same team!"
"Wait a minute? Why do you guys even think I need protecting? I can take care of myself just fine!"
"That is ENOUGH."
The scariest person in the room, one that people have neglected to be careful of, has blown up. The room fell into total silence, all previous arguments silenced in the face of an angry Mikoto Uchiha.
"Now, we will finish dinner and be civil till desert is finished and all guests are out of the compound. Is that understood?" Asked Mikoto, smiling her usual pleasant smile, which was scarier than any glare at this current situation. Everyone meekly finished their meal, with little glares thrown here and there, and thanked the angered matriarch.
Suffice to say, the dinner at the Uchiha's was a complete and utter disaster. Fugaku doesn't think he even learned anything of value about Sasuke and Sakura's new teams.
Sakura continued to give Kakashi the cold shoulder for a little over a week.
"So...what are we doing, having dinner over at the Hyuuga estate, again?"
"M-my father wanted to invite y-you all t-to welcome the new g-gennin a-and establish a-a f-favorable r-relationship..."
So, in other words; the Hyuuga Clan heard about the dinner at the Uchiha's and they got jealous?
Everybody sweatdrops at the thought- they had a feeling it was going to be an even more tense dinner than the Uchiha's.