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anerdinallherglory · 5 months

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Approaching Sun (36)

Author’s Note: Hey again! Surprising you all with a new chapter a week apart. I had to cut the last one short and this one short as well, essentially dividing one chapter into three. This doesn’t mean the wordcount is short. This one comes in just under 10,000. But keep your eyes out for the next part. I also wanted to drop my linktree here: linktr.ee/anerdinallherglory so it’s easier to find all my info in one place. Please go and check it out! I am also looking for beta readers for my own personal novel. I’m even considering starting a newsletter or posting it back on Wattpad as a pre-published draft, but haven’t decided on that 100%. I will let you all know as soon as I decide. The tracks I recommend for this chapter: 1) Let Me Touch Your Fire by ARIZONA and 2) Daylight by Crypto/DEIIN. Thanks again for reading!

Pairing: SasuSaku

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35

Chapter 36: Demons

When Sasuke stepped into the brothel disguised as a bathhouse, an empty room greeted him. Not a single soul was in sight, and Sasuke wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting, but the place being deserted was the worst possible outcome. It meant no traces, no answers, and Sasuke dreaded finding Sakura’s trail end in this damned place. It also made his stomach knot at the thought that this might be what the room typically looked like on an average night considering the private and concealed activities that occurred in separate chambers.

Despite the absolute darkness, Sasuke could make out giant undisturbed baths beyond the reception counter, the water a still onyx glass as if the baths were only there to serve as a display, never to be used. And that’s probably exactly what they were: a lie to disguise the truth of what this place actually was. Only Sasuke’s Sharingan could make out the alcove, the inconspicuous hallway in the back that Sasuke crept toward in the shadows.

His visual abilities revealed the outline of the door at the end of it, where someone without visual prowess might find nothing but a wall. Sasuke placed his fingertips against it to push on the barricade, not detecting any sort of seal or rigging to prevent it from opening. Sasuke wasn’t surprised that there wasn’t considering this particular establishment housed regular citizens and not ninja. If ninja did inhabit the space, Sasuke figured that it was for a short, purposeful visit, not long-term residency. The door gave to his pressure and a faint light glowed through the opening as Sasuke silently slid the door until he had had hairline’s width to peer through.

A group of women were the first thing Sasuke noticed, all gathered in the middle of the floor, some holding candles in various states of distress. Muffled, crying sounds reached his ears and Sasuke naturally found the dimly-lit faces where the noises originated, paths of light-reflecting tears striping their painted faces. There were also lavish styled chairs scattered throughout the room, some tipped on their sides and others still erect in rows.

A gruff male voice interrupted the women’s soft, plea-filled weeping and Sasuke’s uncovered Sharingan eye instantly narrowed as he located three supervising figures that towered over the distressed girls. They stood just outside of the candlelight between Sasuke and the group they were terrorizing, their shadows passing in front of the light source which made it very easy for Sasuke to trace their movements, even without his Sharingan. Their mistake, Sasuke thought to himself, as the words became more substantial.

“There must be something else that she said,” hissed one man as he reached forward and fisted one of the older woman’s robes, yanking her forward from the group. The other girls screamed, clutching at the dangling woman and halting her movement forward. One girl was kicked down by the man because she dared to stand before him in an attempt to wrestle the woman from him. “You’re the Mother, aren’t you?!” he spat viscously in her face. “How could you make such a mistake? You let the enemy in, and you will pay for it!”

“We already told the last group of men here,” the woman gasped, tearing at the sleeve of the arm that held her in the air by her throat. “She’s gone to the Land of Fire’s border. That’s all we know. Please let me go.”

“Where?! Where at on the border?”

“We don’t know!” a fair-headed girl pleaded, crawling forward to the man’s feet to look up imploringly into his shadowed face. “That’s all she said after she took the men away.”

“There must be more,” another man spoke, coming forward to respond to the girl and glare up at the hanging woman, too.

Sasuke waited, dampening his eagerness to intervene. A situation such as this one was not typically one to cause any sort of reaction from Sasuke, but as his conscience had come back to him over the years after the Fourth Shinobi World War, these types of intimidation tactics on people who didn’t deserve it were the sort that pissed the Uchiha off in an unforgiving sort of way. But he couldn’t be too rash, considering the information he, too, was receiving from the exchange. Unfortunately, Sasuke was still the sort of person who would let that woman dangle for an eternity if it meant that he would get the answers he needed about Sakura’s actions and whereabouts. But at the same time, Sasuke was desperately hoping she knew nothing.

The woman choked, face purpling. She was beyond being able to speak now, her body no longer receiving the oxygen to use words, so the girls huddled on the floor made implorations on her behalf.

“Stop this! You’re killing her!”

“Give me more information and she we will live!” the man shouted down at them. “Or stay silent and she dies!”

Another minute of silent crying had Sasuke’s hand itching toward the door, not certain how much information there was left to learn. Their tactic worked as intended, however, and Sasuke stilled himself once more when a dark-haired girl shuffled forward on her knees, barely old enough to be considered a mature adult. With beseeching hand movements, she disclosed, “I’ll tell you everything. Just let her go.”

“Talk first!” snarled the offender, shaking the matron for good measure.

“All I know is that she dyed her hair after arriving. She’s in disguise,” she confessed with a shaky voice.

Finally receiving a scrap of intelligence, the man threw the matron toward the group of girls and there was more shrieking as she landed roughly among them, and their hands all scrabbled in unison to catch and break her fall. The matron coughed violently as color began to return to her face.

“And?” the man enticed the young girl to continue, leaning down to fist her dressing gown next.

The young girl returned his gaze with a fire that wasn’t there before. Now that she had replaced the matron’s spot in the face of the zealot, she laced her next words with venom. “And,” she murmured. “She’s going to kill every single one of you bastards.”

There was a loud strike against flesh, but the sound was infinitesimal compared to the crack of lightning that suddenly struck and shook the ceiling above them. Everyone fell to the ground at the sound, covering their ears and crawling toward one another instinctively. Even the three men crouched in surprise, but they were the first to recover, casting their eyes about wildly.

As the three extremists turned to assess the room’s entrance, the door that separated them from the Uchiha was now fully open, the darkness of the hallway consuming all of Sasuke’s person except for his unconcealed blood red eye. When he stepped into the room, the three ninja prepared themselves to face the new threat, which was a mistake, because all three of them locked eyes with red and purple.

Without a second of passing time, the three men fell back to their knees and their screams were positively delicious sounds as they succumbed to the horrors Sasuke had planned for them in his genjutsu. They would suffer and the chakra it cost the Uchiha to do it was worth it based on their screaming alone.

The girls scrambled to collect the candles they had dropped out of fear when the lightning had struck, each of them desperate to claim some light to reveal what monster had just stepped into the room with them. When the youngest girl successfully secured one, she brought it to her face only to reveal Sasuke’s dark outline standing before her. When she looked up into his Sharingan, she dropped the candle once more.

“The devil,” she whispered, speaking the word as if doing so had sealed her fate. “He’s finally come for me.”

Panicked gasps, crying, and prayers fabricated into existence around Sasuke as the other girls beheld the apparition of him for themselves, a phantom of black and red and purple delivering punishment to the three begging men now behind him.

Sasuke crouched before the young, dark-haired girl, the very one who had revealed information about Sakura to the three anti-peace members, all of whom would soon not be able to remember anything but Sasuke’s katana as it penetrated their bodies over and over. How fitting a description, Sasuke thought to himself as he remembered Itachi, whom the genjutsu he now used was modeled after, how devil-like the Uchiha clan became when they were set on protecting something they cared about.

“Not for any of you,” Sasuke responded coldly, wasting no time to reach for her terrified face over the flickering circumference of the discarded candlelight between their bodies. When he clutched her chin between his fingers, her eyes widened in fear, which was positively advantageous for the Uchiha as he peered through them to search her memories.

Sasuke moved through this girl’s memories just like the phantom she imagined him to be, gliding through the very sins she committed tonight until he saw the scene he was looking for: Sakura’s face coming into view as she entered into the dark room in which this girl and a man were coupled on a lounge, both still wet from the bath. They were wrapped in one another’s arms, exchanging sweet whispers to each other in the dark.

Sakura seemed surprised by this fact, as if she hadn’t expected to find them nestling into one another there. Sasuke watched his teammate hesitate for just a moment until a needle sank into the man’s flesh. The girl from whose eyes Sasuke watched his former teammate, gasped at the sudden attack. Untangling himself, the man swung in Sakura’s direction. “You,” he had hissed. “You’re—” he began before falling to the floor lifelessly, incapacitated by the drug that Sakura had injected him with.

Sakura stared down at him for a moment, eyes flashing back toward the girl, before she reached down to flip over the man’s body, so that he could breathe freely.

Sasuke couldn’t focus on anything other than the raven black of Sakura’s tinted hair. A small part of his heart wanted to linger on the scene, imagine a child with Sakura’s features and Sasuke’s hair. He fisted the emotions and shoved them back, resuming the memory.

“Hae, what are you doing!?” screamed the girl, scrambling from the lounge onto the floor beside the man.

“I am sorry, Tabi.” Sakura whispered, biting into her thumb and performing a summoning jutsu that Sasuke was too familiar with. Katsuyu, Sakura and the Fifth Hokage’s summoning familiar, materialized into existence on the spot on the floor where Sakura had pressed her five-fingered seal. To Tabi’s extreme horror, the slug, human-sized, began to encapsulate the man she desperately tried to shield away from the creature. But her hands disappeared into the mucusy flesh of the gastropod, failing to gain any purchase.

“Who are you?! Why are you doing this?” she cried, backing speedily away when the creature began to absorb her hands as well.

“There’s not much time to explain,” Sakura replied, coming to bend down before the girl. Sakura knelt before the girl, revealing a small canvas bundle of small bottles, needles, and medicines. “I’m not really in this business as I made all of you believe. I’m a doctor and I only have a few minutes to help you.”

When Tabi said nothing else, just stared at Sakura in confusion, she asked carefully, “Do you suspect that you’re pregnant?”

Tabi’s mouth fell open at the revelation and her hands moved to her stomach at the mention of pregnancy. The tears that began to fall from her face was confirmation enough for the medic. She asked her next question. “Do you want to keep it?”

“What?” Tabi asked, wondering how the woman before her could have suspected something Tabi only was beginning to experience the symptoms of.

“Do you want this baby? There are ways to—”

“Yes, I want it!” Tabi cried, hugging herself and flinching away from the unrolled canvas parcel of vials as she began to see the collection in a new light. “The baby is mine and—” she protested, turning back to the man who was now completely encased by the slug. “What are you doing to him?!”

Sakura’s eyes flicked over to the man and only Sasuke was able to recognize the regret in them. “He’s one of the members of Zenshin,” Sakura informed the distraught girl. “It’s my mission to eradicate the organization.”

“Please,” Tabi begged, grasping Sakura’s arms with her hands, stilling them over the bag of medical supplies. “You can’t take him. He’s different from the others. We love each other.”

Sasuke saw Sakura chew her lip in thought, rerolling the canvas bag into a tight parcel. He instantly knew Sakura was thinking of him, his face flashing in her mind as she faced Tabi. The confliction there let Sasuke know exactly what she was thinking. Just as Sakura so desperately wanted her own happy ending, she also wanted Tabi to have hers. But her eyes hardened, and she removed her arms from Tabi’s hands. In that very same instant, the slug dematerialized into nothing, taking the man with her to wherever the slug disappeared to.

“If Toka loves you, he will come back to you once I am finished with him,” Sakura divulged, looking pointedly at her stomach. “Does he know?”

Tabi shook her head, more tears streaming down her face. “I was going to tell him once he left them. He was going to do it soon—run away with me.”

Sakura nodded and shoved the canvas bundle into Tabi’s shaking hands. “Give these to the other girls and have them follow the directions inside. I don’t know how well you guys are taking care of yourselves here, but there are medicines in here. To prevent pregnancy— and to protect yourselves from diseases. As a medic, I can’t leave here without doing at least this.”

Sasuke flinched at the scene before him, knowing that Sakura had carried that on her person, probably having prepared it in advance for this very mission in this damn brothel, intended for her own personal use. Sasuke had never been so close to wanting to vomit in his life. He wanted to reach through this memory and grab her arm and force her to explain all of this to him. Why would she take such risks for a mission—abuse herself in this way?

“Where are you going?” Tabi beseeched, focused more on the fact that this parting gift meant Sakura’s immediate intentions to depart along with the man she loved.

“The border of the Land of Fire,” Sakura responded without hesitation as she met Tabi’s gaze with hers. “You can tell that to whoever comes asking questions,” the woman who Tabi had believed was named Hae added. “It’s the truth and it’s not a secret. Let them come.”

Sasuke closed his eyes at the intentional crumb she had left for the enemy. She had probably told every girl who had asked this information the same response. It was obvious that she was luring whoever was left of the organization out of Tanigakure. They had more of a personal vendetta against her now after her actions tonight and would definitely pursue, especially since they believed she was acting alone. It would be perfect for them, to eliminate their Number 1 and get revenge in the same motion. The temptation to chase would be too great.

As Sakura stood and headed back for the door, she turned back to Tabi, who was still kneeling on the ground and clutching the bundle of medications to her stomach, shielding the small flutter of life that had started there.

When Sakura’s eyes met Tabi’s, Sasuke suddenly felt as if Sakura were looking beyond them, into the memory itself until her eyes met Sasuke’s within. “In case you’re watching this, I can handle this alone. I don’t need your help.” Sasuke felt Tabi’s confusion as the girl failed to comprehend Sakura’s last words. Sasuke, however, knew exactly who those words were for: the Uchiha, himself. So, she knew. Sakura had known that he was here in Tanigakure searching for her. She had predicted that he would track her to this place and perform this very jutsu.

When Sakura closed the door behind her, leaving Tabi to sob uncontrollably to herself, Sasuke rewound the memory further, past the indecencies between the girl and the man called Toka, until he was watching the same man spin Sakura in front of a crowd of lust-hungry brutes. Sasuke froze the scene before him, eyes narrowing as he memorized each of their faces. One man came forward and grabbed Sakura, pulling her into his lap. His eyes were tightly bound, and the blind stranger leaned his mouth against Sakura’s ear in the dimly lit room. To Sasuke’s extreme dissatisfaction, Tabi had not heard, and therefore Sasuke could not decipher what the man had whispered in his teammate’s ear. Sasuke was beyond disappointed to miss the very words that he would repeat to the man as the Uchiha eviscerated him. The memory of Sakura ended once more as Toka led Tabi away to their private room.

Thoroughly enraged at what he had just witnessed, Sasuke cursed to himself as he released the young woman’s chin. Tabi gasped when Sasuke retreated viciously from her mind, and she fell back on her wrists away from him. Sasuke’s crimson gaze fell on every girl who clustered in the darkness, gaping openly at him in terror, and he couldn’t help but picture Sakura in all of their faces. They, too, had been feasted upon by the eyes of despicable men, dragged into laps and so much more. In another life and in different set of circumstances, who knows if Sakura might have ended up trying to earn her living doing such a thing, too. He pitied every woman who had no other options. Sasuke would not consider himself a sentimental or feeling person. In fact, he wanted nothing more than to turn on his heel and vanish from the room in the same manner in which he had appeared, letting his fire-style impede the very building in which he stood. But he wavered, glancing down at the tiny swell of Tabi’s malnourished stomach. With his Rinnegan, Sasuke could see the tiny orb of light there. It pulsed like a tiny, throbbing sun.

Leaning fully into the devil character they believed him to be, Sasuke did something very much unlike himself. He took the time to say, “Leave this place and do not come back. Every single one of you.” He turned back down to Tabi once more and said, “Your child deserves a peaceful world. The next generation does not need to suffer for the sins of their parents.”

And then Sasuke, like a demon specter made of shadows, turned and vanished back into the blackness of a hellish night.

The downpour lasted long into the night and Sakura swore at her bad luck. Sakura had quickly snagged a set of clothing from one of the smaller ninja that she had rendered unconscious back at the bathhouse. Even still, the man’s clothes hung loosely on her thinner, angular frame and Sakura had apologized to the palm-sized version of Katsuyu that clung to Sakura’s skin at the slug’s initial repulsion to the smell of the stranger’s attire. Sakura hadn’t had time to find her original set of clothing once her mission had begun; the tight-fitting robes from the bathhouse had been insufficiently insulated, so Sakura had tugged on one of the radical’s dark pants, black jacket, and matching vest in the presence of one of the horrified girls without explanation as the girl watched Katuyu absorb another person and whisk them away. Strategically, Sakura had even adorned her forehead with the five-spiral headband tucked away in the man’s vest just in case it was slightly advantageous to do so. Sakura had only seen the forehead protector twice before, but more recently caught a glimpse of it in the desert when Mako was thrown the identical headband for successfully kidnapping her.

With her shadow-colored hair tucked hurriedly under the jacket’s stiff-fabric hood, Sakura pulled the shirt’s loose-fitting collar up and over her nose so that only her eyes and the headband were visible on her brow. She had hoped such a disguise would at least get her out of Tanigakure unnoticed in the night. Surprisingly enough, Tanigakure’s “peaceful” reputation and open access to travelers made it relatively easy for Sakura to locate a small mountain path that exited the village undetected. The kunoichi also allowed herself a moment of pride, because not being stopped also meant that she had been quick enough with the execution of her plan. She had handled any immediate threats back at the brothel, making it out before any other Zenshin members could discover the cookie crumb she had left behind for them to find.

It was dark, and the rain was merciless as Sakura skirted the side of the mountain, taking refuge from the rain in the dense tree cover that blanketed the landscape. The tree limbs bowed beneath the weight of her hurdles as she bounded from branch to branch, arms thrown behind her as she mercilessly raced toward the border between the Land of Rivers and Land of Fire. Once she had guided her likely pursuers into the Land of Fire, Sakura would be able to handle the rest of them as she pleased, as recklessly as she pleased. She would no longer have to worry about causing any catastrophes in Tanigakure that the Leaf or the Sand might have to take responsibility for.

She had expected a pursuit. Mako had told Sakura that there were Zenshin members all throughout the shinobi world—eventually, they would come for her, too—but the remaining Zenshin members in Tanigakure would be absolutely desperate to prevent her from reaching the border. But what Sakura had not expected was the speed in which some of them had caught up with her.

When Sakura had first picked up on the footfalls that those without the sharpened senses of a ninja wouldn’t be able to distinguish beyond the crashing rain against the canopy above, Sakura had immediately halted her movements in the branches. Tucking her body tightly into the bough of a tree, she contemplated her options as the voices began to near her. Considering that it took Sasuke and Sakura two days of leisure travel to reach Tanigakure from Konoha, Sakura was predicting that it would likely take her a fraction of that time to reach the border—which was located much closer to Tanigakure than the Leaf—at the speed in which she was travelling now. If her estimations were right, it would be essentially six hours, four of which had already transpired since her exit. Could she simply outrun them for another two hours?

Maybe the solution was something simpler, something E-Rank that Sakura hadn’t used since her Genin days. Sakura thought back to her interaction with the second man she had spoken with at the brothel, “the clown” of the group as Rugo had called him. Sakura’s initial target who had asked Sakura questions, investigating if she were “new, new.” Sakura focused on his features as she performed a transformation. The Transformation Jutsu had its flaws, which is why it wasn’t used too often, especially in the presence of experienced shinobi or those who could see chakra with a visual prowess like the Sharingan or Byakugan, or detect chakra signatures like the ninja, Karin. But a confrontation was going to be inevitable regardless of whether or not Sakura could fool them with a jutsu; she would just have to face them head on sooner than she had wanted. If it were the latter, then the jutsu possibly failing was a moot point, so there was no harm in crossing her fingers and going for it. The jutsu wouldn’t have to be flawless to be effective.

She could hardly assess them, the rain a thick sheet between herself and the enemy. There were three of them, all cloaked and protected from the elements. The low number made Sakura suspect that this was one of many search parties and their likelihood of finding her had less to do with their skill at tracking and more to do with fact that at least one group was going to guess her direction of travel correctly and encounter her by chance. She waited until they were practically under her perch to make her choice.

Without a second more of hesitation, Sakura dropped several feet in front of them, shouting in a voice that had thickened into that obnoxiously loud tenor from the brothel. “I think she went this way!” Sakura didn’t wait to hear a response as she darted forward into the night.

“Araki?!” came a woman’s voice as she was the first to recognize the man whom was Sakura’s current disguise. The female immediately followed as she continued to shout after who she believed was her fellow Zenshin member.

“Hurry!” Sakura screamed back in reply but did not slow her pace for them. One of the Transformation Jutsu’s innate failings that made it unfavorable to use, was that it was difficult to converse with others or perform other mental feats because a ninja had to pour a lot of focus into channeling chakra into maintaining the transformation. It’s the very reason why a lot of transformations didn’t last too long; some people were better at executing it than others. It wasn’t overly difficult for Sakura to engage in conversation while transformed, but she didn’t know her enemy very well or their various jutsu and talents, so she decided to take advantage of the chase element of their interaction to avoid super close proximity.

Like shadowed hounds that thought they had found one of their own kind, they pursued after Sakura, barking after her as their feet collided with the ground, thinking they were joining the hunt when in fact they were chasing the very goose they were after.

“How do you know she went this way, Araki?” a male voice called up to her through the thundering rain, and Sakura barely made it out.

“She’s making a run for the Leaf Village, but we have to catch her before she gets too far over the border!” Sakura called back with the same arrogant confidence Araki had spoken to her with at the brothel.

“How did you escape? Weren’t you with the others at the bathhouse? What happened to them?” the woman’s voice called out again, firing questions off faster than the rain could fall from the sky, and maybe Sasuke had started to rub off on Sakura the past couple of months, but the relentless inquiries were beginning to annoy her.

Sakura didn’t know if she should even attempt to respond. She knew very little about this Araki’s personality, other than the fact that he was loud, bold, and talked incessantly as well. But Sakura was not comfortable sustaining an unrehearsed act for long segments, and was unsure exactly what types of ridiculous comments were normal for the man. A little too late, Sakura wondered if Rugo or Toka would have been a better choice to impersonate with their various stoicism in comparison to Ataki; their seriousness would have suited Sakura’s current circumstances better. As a side note to rationalize her choice, Sakura wasn’t too sure about how Rugo’s blindness affected his abilities, and Sakura naturally wanted to steer clear of casting Toka in more of a negative light in case he really was trying to cut ties with Zenshin as Tabi had claimed.

“We have to move faster!” Sakura deflected, pretending not to hear them as she bounded further ahead of them to create a safer distance between them.

Sakura relentlessly pushed them forward, a shadow before them that they could barely distinguish as it was. She was desperately clinging to the transformation even as she strategically considered her next move. Sakura had crossed the river she and Sasuke had camped at on their second night of traveling together hours ago. She was only minutes away from the border now. For the most part, Sakura had chosen to stick to the same remote path she and Sasuke had taken from Konoha because it was the most recent in her memory and it was a small miracle she wasn’t getting the four of them completely lost in this starless monsoon. At some point over the past hour, she dissected from that trail, travelling northwest for the plains she remembered passing through during a mission with Kakashi, Naruto, and Sai.

The forest thinned as Sakura neared the space between forests, the sizeable meadow surrounded by rocky plateaus like the very mountain the Leaf was built up against. Seeing such familiar forested landscape, Sakura could have wept in relief. Her lungs shuttered from the relentlessness of her breathing and her legs practically felt numb and cold from the freezing rain, but the pain was absolutely miniscule in comparison to the absolute thrill she felt in her bones when she took her first step across an imaginary line only a ninja who had crossed it multiple times would remember even in the hours just before sunrise. She stumbled to a stop in the knee-high grass, wading through ankle-deep flood waters, stealing herself for what was to come. As much as she wanted to fall to her knees, tilt her head up to face the rain, and not get back up, she couldn’t quit yet.

The three ninja following her burst from the trees behind, lurching to a halt when they realized their front-runner had finally stopped. “Did you find her!” one called out to her, but Sakura didn’t answer as she turned to face them. Sensing a change, one of the ninja suddenly stopped in his tracks and held his arm out to halt the others.

“Araki?” he asked, preventing his team from moving any further toward her as she stood unmoving and waiting for them. Sakura wasn’t intending to suddenly act so predatory, her shift in nature causing them to hesitate like all prey before a hunter, but she was just so tired of pretending. She let the transformation fall away and the girl in the group gasped. Sakura could still sense their confusion, and their assessments of her outfit and headband that mirrored their own was almost painful to watch.

Deciding that the charade was truly well and over, Sakura relieved them of their nervous bewilderment. “Unfortunately, no,” she called back, talking loudly to reach them through the persistent deluge around them.

“I was wondering why he was being so quiet,” one of the male voices answered, pushing forward to stand in front of his teammates. “It’s her. The Haruno girl. She’s in disguise.” Sakura could hear the girl gasp again before she grabbed onto the man’s arm fearfully to pause his advance.

Sakura pressed against the inner-pocket of her jacket, whispering, “Are you still with me, Lady Katusyu?”

“Yes, Sakura dear,” the small slug replied, slithering out to greet her despite the rain. “I’m here if you need me.”

“Hang on tight, then,” came Sakura’s instructions as she tucked her back away. “I’ll be sending more your way soon.”

A laughter broke out near the tree line and Sakura saw one man shove forward, past his concerned and apprehensive teammates. Sakura could make out his flashy, red cloak for the first time now that he was closer in the downpour. “You’ve given us exactly what we wanted—lead us far away where no one can help you, now! I am going to have so much fun beating you within an inch of your life!”

“What are you waiting for, then?” Sakura goaded, pleasantly surprised when the cloaked man rushed forward despite his teammates’ beseeching council.

The man charged at her, sloshing his way through the muddy field, and Sakura let him come, let his momentum carry him face first into the punch she had waiting for him. He sailed backward, right into his other male companion and they skipped like scattered stone across the flooding pasture. Even in the dark, Sakura could see the mud [SR1] that sprayed up around them, covering their once distinguishable features in total blackness. That felt so good. After days of secrecy, disguising her power and identity, the release of her physical abilities was positively glorious. Sakura didn’t have a ton of chakra left at her disposal after her repetitive use of the Summoning Technique, but she had the adequate amount remaining in order to take care of these three and anyone who decided to show up later.

The girl, who had avoided the collision, came for Sakura next, and as she neared, Sakura was able to finally get a decent look at her. Her hair was white beneath her black cloak’s cowl and her brow was adorned with the anti-peace symbol. Sakura wanted to talk to her, ask her opinions and learn her story, investigating her personal vendetta against the peace they had all fought so hard for during the Fourth Shinobi War. The girl quickly began to form the signs for a fire release and Sakura’s eyes widened as the heavy rain suddenly steamed around her as it hit the girl’s body and hissed into hot air. When the floodwaters pooled at Sakura’s feet began to bubble, Sakura cursed as she jumped back and into the air to avoid the boiling water below. At first, Sakura feared that the girl might have the Boil Release Kekkei Genkai, a transformation of water and fire nature energies, but as Sakura began to descend from her fall, the girl met her in the air, and Sakura soon realized that she had a unique fire release that allowed her to direct heat from pinpoints on her body. Sakura’s shielding kick that made contact with the girl’s stomach was instantly scorched through her boot from having touched her, and Sakura hissed.

“Die!” the ninja screamed, grabbing onto Sakura’s calf muscle with both burning hands and swinging her right into the arms of her knife-wielding companion. But Sakura gripped the man’s arms and simultaneously kicked against the girls’ stomach, deeper into her magma flesh, gritting her teeth at the pain, but directing her immense strength into the blow. The girl went sailing into the trees just as the red-coated man had done seconds before this second confrontation. Using the same momentum, Sakura swung up and over her captor’s shoulders, slipping easily from his grasp.

She landed behind him, a dark-haired, broad-shouldered man with silver pupil-less irises that reminded Sakura of the Kazekage. She saw these eyes clearly despite the darkness and the mud smeared across his face practically made them glow. The ninja turned on his heel to intercept her next blow, his knife catching her cheek just before he also received the brunt force of her physical strength.

Sakura could feel the water around her already tenderized ankle start to boil again, and Sakura swore, locating the girl with her eyes. Sakura had to admit that this girl was quite literally making it impossible to remain standing on her own two feet. Even if Sakura summoned chakra to the soles of her feet to walk on the surface of the five inches of saturation, Sakura knew that the water would quickly melt through her stolen shoes completely, so Sakura came up with another solution. She wouldn’t let this girl scald her from a distance; if this fire-nature ninja wanted to land another injury on Sakura, she was going to have to get up close and personal, just as Sakura liked it.

Sakura exhaled when her uninjured hand collided with the ground at her feet. “SHANNARO!” she screamed as the entire landscape fractured beneath her, spiderwebbing across the plain until all the rainwater succumbed to gravity, falling down the sides of new projectiles of earth, and down into the fissures. Sakura perched on top of one of the new pillars like a bird of night, staring down at her three recovered enemies who stared up at her with a new appreciation.

“You bitch,” the female spat up at Sakura, but Sakura ignored her. She fisted the anti-peace forehead protector on her brow and tossed it down to the three of them. She pulled back her hood and looked up into the sky as it fell on her face, the rain fingering her dyed tresses until streaks of black began to run down her chin along with the blood from her sliced cheek. Keeping it always on her person, Sakura reached into her vest and revealed her own shinobi headband, the red one bearing the Leaf Village symbol she had worn as a chunin. She tied it tightly against her forehead and across the back of her ink-dripping crown and thought how fitting it felt to bear her flag now that she was standing in Land of Fire territory. She saw her enemies’ shocked and exchanged expressions when green regenerative chakra began to glow around her knuckles, her cheek, and the various burns on her leg and ankle, healing the damage in seconds.

“You guys didn’t do a lot of research on your target, did you?” Sakura called down to them. She couldn’t understand it, the surprise. If they were not originally from Tanigakure, who had been neutral, that would mean they had all fought together in the war. So how did they not know every detail about Sakura? Sakura began to collect various pieces of information in her brain and a realization formed. Most of the members of this organization that Sakura had encountered in Tanigakure so far had not been overly remarkable. Aside from the shade she went head-to-head with in the sands surrounding Suna, everyone seemed to know the bare minimum of Sakura’s power. They knew of her, but not what she was capable of. In fact, they seemed content to hang back and relish in the fear created by their superiors, and Sakura suddenly realized why some of them might be interested in a world that created bitter and stronger generations to follow them. They were those ninja who hung back during the war, who let others—the strong and fearless—do all the work because they could not; it’s why they wanted to mimic conditions that would create strength in other ninja for them to hide behind. Huh, Sakura thought privately to herself. She wondered who exactly was taking advantage of ninja like this to kill off others who stood in their way. Who exactly was the leader?

“We know enough to kill you,” the silver-eyed one spoke, and his voice was raspy and menacing. Even his voice reminded her of the Kazekage, along with the sand-weilder’s path to redemption, and Sakura tried not to be distracted as she imagined this dark-haired ninja capable of a future where he could redirect his efforts into a righteous cause. This type of thinking, while keeping her intentions toward others good, would cloud her judgement now.

“We have to get information from her first and then deliver her to the boss,” reminded the red cloaked one, whom Sakura had all but forgotten was there after she sent him flying for his bold move to attack first.

The other two swapped looks of apprehension to one another, as if they weren’t sure they were going to be able to restrain and deliver blows to get her to talk, after all. And Sakura smiled because, she too, knew that wasn’t going to be happening.

Sakura’s finger bled once again when she bit back into it, and now that the rain had washed away most of her ivory face paint, the Hundred Healing’s seal spanned out across her forehead in black stripes. It was still activated since her very first summoning of Katsuyu, and Sakura could feel the steady drain of chakra from her body that it was costing her to maintain the states of all her captives where she had reverse summoned them back to Katsuyu’s home in Shikkotsu forest. Since Sakura wasn’t having to heal her horde of hostages, but rather, keep them all in an unconscious state, cryogenized in the chamber of Katsuyu’s flesh, the chakra being loaned to her familiar was a trickle, but it was still depleting her already diminishing levels.

“Are you alright, Sakura dear?” came Katsuyu’s voice from the inside pocket of her vest, the slug sensing her labored breathing and strain on the chakra connection between them.

Sakura nodded, whispering, “Yes. I have a few more summons in me. If more enemies appear here, I might not be able to hold onto the jutsu. The connection will be severed between us. What happens then?”

Katsuyu’s answer came back as a whisper in the relentless pattering of rain against Sakura’s flesh. “It will take them all some time to come out of comatose. When they do, they will have nowhere to go. The Shikkotsu forest is an endless maze of jungle. They’ll be in the same spot when you come for them.”

“Excellent,” Sakura responded, reaching into her waistband, and withdrawing three vials of sedative. Privately and expertly, Sakura filled three needles with the drug and placed each between her teeth until three needles protruded from her mouth like the fangs of a demon. Next, Sakura palmed her bloody hand into the top of the jagged steeple of earth on which she still stood and cried “Summoning Jutsu!” as clearly as she could manage with a mouthful of liquid sleep.

The three human-sized divisions of Katsuyu’s body slithered down the sides of the post and came to a stop when Sakura’s own feet touched level ground once more, the water no longer coagulating around her ankles.

“Here she comes!” shouted the girl, and Sakura smirked as she sprinted straight towards them through the rain, engaging each one in a pirouette of hand-to-hand combat.

Just as Sakura had once fought Sasori’s countless puppets on the end of Lady Chiyo’s chakra threads, Sakura took control of her own strings now and navigated smoothly between her enemies’ strikes like a leaf darting on the wind. Deflect, block, strike, defend, parry, punch. The actions were faster than Sakura could even think of which move to execute next, and she let her muscles act on memory alone.

She could feel the heat of the white-haired girl’s skin every time one of her open-palmed strikes grazed Sakura’s body. She was aiming for the most incapacitating of areas like the eyes, her hands, legs, or any other placement that might cripple Sakura temporarily. But every time the ninja got close to landing a hit on her, the sound of sizzling rain would alert Sakura’s sharp ears to her nearness and Sakura would dodge just in time. Sakura focused on the mud covered, silver-eyed enemy before her, turning to the side to dodge his kunai stab to her stomach. She fisted his own weapon hand with her own and used his own piercing thrust to direct it into the stomach of the red-cloaked shinobi who had come up behind her and fisted her inky, wet hair. She heard his cry at the same moment that the grip on her hair slackened. When the white-haired kunoichi recovered and came at her again, Sakura was ready. Grabbing the silver-haired ninja by the leg as he fell, Sakura swung him like her own weapon, right into the burning arms of his companion. The two of them collapsed into a tangle together, and Sakura’s knee was in the man’s back as she sank his body deeper into the lava skin of the fire-wielding ninja until he began to scream. Sakura used his screams to motivate the white-haired ninja. She would eventually stop her fire-nature jutsu.

Sakura couldn’t risk incinerating the needle, so she waited patiently, yanking out the syringe of her mouth in the meantime. She saw the girl’s eyes widen at the damage she was inflicting upon her partner, and the melting instantly stopped. Sakura plunged the needle into her neck, followed by a dose for the silver-eyed ninja. [SR2] They both fell unconscious against one another, and two of three Katusyus had already crawled to meet them.

When Sakura pulled the last syringe from her mouth and turned to face the red-cloaked man who had been stabbed, she was surprised to find him already standing before her in the darkness. He knocked the syringe out of her hand and seized Sakura’s throat, slamming her against one of the pillars of earth at Sakura’s back. The very blade that had lacerated his stomach was now pointing into her navel, still bloody and dripping from his own injury. Sakura’s next move was going to be to knee him directly where his wound bloomed the same shade as his cloak in order to create a safe space between them again. Even if he managed to cut her open, Sakura would use her Mitotic Regeneration Jutsu to heal herself before the blood loss rendered her unconscious. However, his next words made her reevaluate her actions at the last moment.

“When Mozai finally has his way with you, I’m going to enjoy every minute of it,” he snarled as he pinned her body with his. The knife in his hand dug into her flesh with every word and Sakura hissed at the sudden pain.

As she reached up to push against his hold on her throat, she choked out, “Who’s Mozai? Is he your boss?” She pretended to weaken at his hold. She needed to keep him talking and feeding her the information she wanted.

“Someone who will do a lot worse to you than I’m about to do.” His knife suddenly pulled away from her and began to snake up Sakura’s clothing, cutting a trail of blood up her bare stomach. She gritted her teeth against the pain, holding back the instinct to break the wrist around her throat. If Sakura could just get him back on the topic of her choice.

“He’s nothing without his henchmen. Didn’t you want to know what happened to the others?” she strained to ask next, spluttering the words, trying to regain his attention.

He laughed, a cruel, wicked laugh that reminded Sakura of the deranged Orochimaru. It was the sort of laugh that alerted her to his madness, the deeper and more dangerous kind of madness that a medic such as herself was easily able to recognize no matter how hard one tried to hide it. “He knows where you’ve run off to, and we will find the others soon enough now that I know your pets have taken them.” He pushed harder against her throat and despite her efforts to remain calm and focus, Sakura’s vision still blackened from the lack of oxygen and her grip on him tightened. In that moment, Sakura barely even felt Kaguya’s small body drop from her clothing. With her squinting eyes, Sakura witnessed the small slug make a dash for the syringe that Sakura had dropped earlier. At the same time, she realized that Katsuyu knew that it was their last dose of sedative and the slug wanted to either protect or retrieve it for Sakura.

The rain was still coming down so hard, a shower soaking every inch of Sakura’s newly exposed stomach. It made the knife he was ghosting her skin with wet and slick as it bounced against her skin, causing knicks and superficial lacerations where it touched. Sakura couldn’t tell if she was only feeling the rain, or the trickling of her own blood. Was it pooling at her feet with the man’s own colors of red?

“But he won’t mind if I have my fun with you first before he gets here,” came his thickened voice as he placed the hilt of his kunai between his teeth and replaced the pressure against her stomach with his fingers. They caressed her abdomen, smearing the blood there. Sakura realized in this moment that the game of holding back for information was over.

But before she could act, break his hold on her, and shove him away from her, Sakura’s stomach dropped as her vision came to focus over the man’s shoulder at the shadow that stood there in the rain, red eye flashing as he unsheathed his katana. The rain rendered him nearly invisible in the dark and Sakura sucked in a breath of alarm.

“You’re going to die if you don’t let go,” came Sakura’s hurried warning to the man still inching his hand up her shirt. The vice on Sakura’s throat instantly slackened when a blade came across the man’s throat, not hesitating to sunder the man’s head from his shoulders. Before the damage was inflicted, Sakura’s hand shot out and grabbed Sasuke’s katana just in time, the bite of the blade sliding against the palm of her hand until she stopped its movement completely with her grip. She fisted the quaking blade, and it was immediately abandoned.

Sakura was powerless to stop what happened next. In the very next second, the man was thrown from her, catapulted near across the field as Sasuke pivoted to ram his fist into the side of the man’s face. Sasuke, too, disappeared as he teleported, switching positions with the bloody kunai the man had possessed. Before the kunai stuck true in the grass at Sakura’s feet, the Uchiha was on top of his victim in a millisecond, and Sakura could hear the man’s screams as she ran toward them in the rain, still clutching Sasuke’s katana in a bloody grip.

“Sasuke, don’t!” she screamed, desperate to reach him in time. Sakura soon realized that the distance the man had been sent wasn’t just a coincidence. It served two purposes: to deliver a harder impact, and to generate enough space from Sakura to give Sasuke the extra second of time to exact whatever revenge he had in mind. The kunoichi spared one minute to find Katsuyu, a bright pinpoint of white in the overwhelming darkness. Beneath the slug, lay the last injection of sedative, and she scooped them both up.

“Follow me,” she instructed the last of the three summonings of Katsuyu’s body.

The screaming was Sakura’s only compass in the storm, guiding her to the source of the brutalization. When she finally neared them, two dark obscurities in the night, Sasuke was fisting both of the man’s hands with his single grasp. The black flames of Amaterasu were already ravishing the bones of his ten fingers.

“You seem awfully fond of these hands of yours,” Sasuke sneered, “let’s begin here, shall we?” The flames spread to the man’s palms and then his wrists, a drawn-out creeping of flickering black that couldn’t be anything other than an intentional deliberateness—to maximize the pain of it. The red-cloaked ninja’s screams were louder than any suffering Sakura had ever heard.

The kunoichi could see the smirk on Sasuke’s face as she finally came around to face him, and her stomach turned to ice. Even his words delivered a blow to her heart in a familiar way. It was like the Chunin Exams: the ferocity, the visible fury rolling off of him in waves, the embracing of inner-darkness. Sakura had only ever seen Sasuke resort to methods of torture a few times in her life, and the sight struck such fear into her heart. Don’t you see? She thought to herself at the terrifying vision of the Uchiha stooped over the scorching man. Don’t you see what the price of his love will be?

“Sasuke! Stop! You can’t kill him!” she shouted over the rain and guttural begging, grabbing onto the Uchiha’s clothing, fisting the wet fabric in her fingers. He didn’t budge, just let the fire spread as he watched and drank the pinned man’s screams, as if hearing them would quench a deeply buried thirst.

When Sakura’s immense strength lifted Sasuke to his feet and pulled him away from the man, Sasuke’s leer twisted into a frown and a different sort of fury filled his eyes. As if Sasuke sensed her impending interference and decided to finish the job before she could convince him to stop, the fire erupted over the man’s chest with a quickening ferocity. At his resolve, Sakura panicked, making Sasuke look at her with two palms to his face.

His dead eyes found her, and he spat a response to her previous demand, “He doesn’t get to live.”

The earsplitting screams intensified, and Sakura physically shook Sasuke, but he just glared down at her as the flames resumed their feast upon the man’s vaporizing flesh. “You’re not going to do this. You can’t kill someone because of me. I won’t let you go back to that!”

The words broke Sasuke’s carefully controlled anger. “I have spared hundreds today in your name! If it weren’t for you, they would all be dead. One of them can die, and it’s going to be him.”

“This isn’t who you are anymore!” Sakura shouted, willing her words into a truthful existence. She would hold on to him, the Sasuke she loved. The Sasuke who could see reason, act on ninja principles, and not let his emotions override his judgment. Not anymore. As a last attempt, she added. “You can be merciful. You don’t have to kill unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

Sasuke scoffed, choosing not to hide his smoldering ire as he broke eye contact with Sakura in order to survey the damage being done to the man who had attacked her. “It’s necessary.”

When he didn’t say anything else, Sakura demanded, “Spare one more. This is my mission and I need him to live.”

After a moment of deliberation, Sasuke snarled, like an animal being forced to give up its kill, and turned his back to her. With the dying of the Amaterasu, the screams turned into painful whimpers as the man spasmed on the ground.

Sakura knelt beside the man, who now looked at her with desperation in his eyes. A begging for mercy that hadn’t been there earlier, now glistened with tears. “Remember that I spared your life,” Sakura told him, penetrating the vein in his collar with the needle of the syringe. “Maybe one day, a future version of you will deserve it.” The man’s eyelids fell, and even in his unconsciousness, Sakura could sense the relief that came with oblivion. The third slug had appeared by her side, and Sakura watched as Lady Katsuyu began channeling Sakura’s chakra in order to heal the man’s injuries. They were deep, penetrating wounds that would require intensive medical treatment. The draw on Sakura’s reserves zapped her, real fatigue coming over her now.

“I can’t hold the summoning,” Sakura relayed to the two Katsuyus, one small and gliding over Sakura’s shoulder, the other encapsulating the injured man as the creature healed his injuries. She was the first to vanish, just like all those summoned before.

“Don’t worry about me,” came Katsuyu’s small reassuring voice. “I can handle the rest until you arrive. Will you be okay?”

Sakura nodded, “Yes. Thank you, Lady Katsuyu.” With the last of the jutsu released, Sakura exhaled a sigh of relief as the drain on her chakra reserves lessened. She caught her breath, sitting in the muddy grass for a moment.

When she turned to Sasuke, he was standing over her, silently brooding with an emotionless mask slipped back into place.

Sakura wanted to yell at him for his recklessness. For interfering when she was more than capable of handling this herself. “You have potentially jeopardized my mission,” she informed him bitterly, rising to stand toe to toe with him.

He didn’t respond, unmoving as he received her rebuke. Even the rain hailed down on them harder if that were even possible. And then the Uchiha was moving, taking her bloody palm, the hand that had come between Sasuke’s killing blow and his victim, between his fingers. She fisted it rebelliously, stiffening her arm, not quite ready to let her anger go.

And so he grabbed her wrist instead, pulling her with him toward the circumference of trees closest to them.

“I can’t leave,” she protested, digging her heals more firmly into the ground. She became immovable. “More of them could be on their way. I need to intercept them.” Sakura didn’t know how many more there would be, or what she was going to do to incapacitate them now that she was no longer able to summon Katsuyu. She would have to dig deep, fight until she couldn’t stand, pummeling them until she knocked them unconscious.

Still not looking at anything but the wrist in which he gripped as if Sakura could be ripped away at any second, Sasuke confessed. “Every person who was headed in this direction in pursuit of you tonight was handled. I shoved each of them into another dimension.”

Sakura’s eyebrows rose as she stared at him speechlessly. For the first time since she observed him, Sakura noticed his heavy breathing. His Rinnegan eye was closed and the Sharingan deactivated, and Sakura recognized the tell of his exhaustion. He had overexerted himself, definitely a sign that he really had transported an unknown number of men through his Rinnegan’s portal tonight.

“At least for now, let’s get out of this rain,” he told her. “There’s a place not far from here.”

Sakura pulled her hand free from his grasp and Sasuke didn’t move to take it again, accepting and mirroring her own frustration. After a moment, he turned, and Sakura followed the coiled back of the Uchiha into the shelter of the trees, allowing him to lead her from the battlefield.

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