Author's Note: This is an experiment. No real point, no real genre, just a point of view. A drabble, I suppose, though it is far too long to be a real one.

They were the Sound Four. This has never made much sense to Sakon, because no matter how you counted them, four was not the number you ended up with. Sure, most of the time Kabuto wasn't around, and for whatever reason everyone seemed to count he and Ukon as the same person half the time, and Kimimaro was snotty enough to insist that he was above the rest of them, but still. Sakon may have been only eight years old, but he had learned to count years ago, and seven did not equal four, no matter how much you argued about it. Even Orochimaru-sama couldn't make Sakon believe that.

Kabuto had tried to explain it to him once. Kabuto was the eldest of them, three years older than Sakon and a full two years over Kimimaro, the next oldest, and he was smart, so Sakon was more inclined to listen to him than any of the others. It had something to do with underestimation, making enemies believe that there were less of them then there actually were. Sakon wasn't exactly sure why they had to confuse their enemies when they didn't have any yet, and it still sounded kind of dumb for all seven of them to come when Orochimaru-sama called for the Sound Four.

Not that he was going to alleviate this problem by not going when summoned, of course. Six didn't equal four any more than seven did, even if he and Ukon were only one, which they weren't, and even if Kabuto wasn't one of them, which he was, and even if Kimimaro insisted he was better than the rest of them, which he wasn't, even if he did win all the time. Kabuto was still the best fighter (even if he lied and said he wasn't, Sakon wasn't stupid), and Kidoumaru was still the best strategist (even if he couldn't take a battle seriously to save his life), and Tayuya the most skilled at genjutsu (even if she hated using it), and Jiroubou the strongest (no problems there), et cetera. Sakon wasn't the best at anything in particular, but he took losing the worst, which in the end translated to extremely stubbornness. This wasn't exactly endurance, but it was close enough. After every spar, Ukonwould rollhis eyes at him and point to this as evidence why older brothers inherently had more sense, but even if Ukon was the elder (they were pretty sure on this point, but their mother was dead so certainty was long in coming), Sakon didn't have to listen to him all the time. Some things he had to find out on his own.