It started with a whisper of air caressing my ear, murmuring sweet nothing as disaster inched closer. The gentle slide of teardrops of rain was battered into whips of water, slashing closer and closer to the village. Wind-borne dust raked across my skin, searing my eyes before they could instinctively close. The same dust coated my lungs with each intake of breath, causing both my nerves and my chest to rattle. These frivolous ailments, along with the incessant rustle of leaves and the arrogant roar of the wind, began to steal my focus until an image of terror flashed through my mind.

The image of Konoha, sheared to shreds, toppled over like so many wooden building blocks, decimated like a stamped-out flower garden, plagued my mind. I could not let that happen to my people, personal discomfort be damned. I moved my hitai-ate to cover my mouth, that the dust in my lungs would not multiply enough to impede my work further, and clenched my eyes shut.

I could only assume that the others were already in position, away from any tall structures and lying belly-down on the ground to avoid lightning. I sent out a signal via a pulse of chakra along the ground and received its twin reply of readiness. Knowing I could delay the inevitable no longer, I summoned all the strength I could muster and applied myself to creating a cushion of chakra to insulate Konohagakure from the impending wrath of the storm. As I focused my efforts on my designated area, I felt the energy of others spring up to guard the remainder of the village.

The very soil held its breath as the storm roiled toward the outskirts of the village, and a collective sigh was let out when, after five tense minutes, the shield held.

And then all hell broke loose.

A monolithic crack of thunder sounded to my right and the lightning left a menacing green afterimage behind my eyelids. Mine was not the only area of shielding to sputter in surprise, but all sections quickly renewed their fortification… Except one.

The ninja stationed to my right had been hit by that blast of plasma. Killed, no question about it. We had known our enemy had the power to generate this storm, this furious, delicate balance of forces alien to the Konoha intellect. What we hadn't known was that even after its birth, the creator had the chakra wealth and control to manipulate the movements and expulsions of the storm.

I spread more of my chakra out to compensate for the resultant hole in the shield, shoving my mourning aside for later contemplation. If there was anything Sasuke had forced down my throat, it was the idea that emotions hindered power, and power was what I needed to guard the village against the storm. Power, and a lot of good fortune, which didn't seem to be in abundance at just that moment, as another bolt of lightning struck.

After the second strike, I lost count of how many more ninja fell to the wrath of the elements. I refused to wallow in desperation and spread my energy too thinly over all of the holes in our defenses, feeling other ninja do the same. And when the lightning came for me, I was too exhausted to do more than just roll over a couple of times. At the last moment, I thought to form a seal and transport myself away, but there was no time to think of a sake place, only time to act.

The last thing I saw was the flop of dusty pink hair over my eyes, and then all went black.

"I have to get back there," my voice tried to say, ending up forming an incoherent series of grunts.

I couldn't move the left side of my face, I realized. Or my left arm, left leg, left toes. Crusty black slime littered my eyelashes and, I could imagine, the rest of my body. The extreme heat of the lightning had superheated half of my body and left the other half oozing with burns. I couldn't move, even if I had been able to suck up the excruciating pain long enough to try.

"She's up, she's up!" a pubescent voice cracked from somewhere below me.

I was blind with the black gook obstructing my vision and couldn't see enough to establish where "below me" was. The voice continued to patter on, but I was in too much pain to distinguish one word from the next until soft bass tones replaced the adolescent conglomeration of sound, soothing my ears.

"Shut up," were the simple words uttered to silence the more annoying voice.

My voice struggled to surface, anxiously pushing against the pain of my throat in hope of asking the sensible baritone voice where I was and who I was with and if Konoha was safe and a hundred other questions that were instead muffled by a horrific gargling noise.

The chakra at my command was less than minimal, barely enough to maintain consciousness, so healing myself enough to speak was out of the question, unless I wanted to send myself into a coma. This being said, I was more than shocked to see a dim green glow through the slime in my eyes and I began to panic. I was worried that I'd lost control of my chakra and was going to heal myself to death by draining my remaining energy. I relaxed upon coming to the conclusion that my rescuer was probably a ninja of some sort, one from Konoha sent to heal the survivors. My throat quickly cleared of grit and the scarred tissue knit itself together as I felt a hand remove my hitai-ate from over my mouth.

"Thank you," I managed when the faint green glow had faded from my barely-existent sight. My voice had come out whole, but distant.

I realized that only one of my ears was working and inwardly cringed as I thought about what that had to indicate about the extent of damage I had receiver.

"Where am I?" I asked, fully expecting to be told we were in the outskirts of Konoha, inside a medical pavilion.

"Iwagakure," piped up the younger voice. "You're at my house in Iwagakure. You would've been taken to the hospital, but it's under renovation at the moment in honor of Iwa's longest period of peace in a century. There were only ten patients there, so they were sent to family physicians for temporary care while the government quickly updates the facilities. We've been meaning to fix the place up for a while," the teen added by way of explanation.

"Iwagakure?" I exclaimed and began to breathe very fast. How could I possibly have teleported so far away? Maybe the chakra fueling the lightning blast had mixed with my own and amplified my efforts.

I couldn't control the anxiety and panic flooding through my body, which was already in shock enough from the injuries. How could I heal quickly enough to get back to Konoha and help repair the village? Unless this man was a seriously talented medic, I wouldn't get anywhere for at least a month, and then traveling back on foot would take another week.

My body was to the point of brimming with the stress of all of these thoughts, so it responded in the only way it knew to silence the hassle: shutting down.

As I again slipped into unconsciousness, the baritone voice again drifted into my ears, saying, "I warned you not to overexcite her, Kisame."

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