They don't know what the day, month or even the year is anymore. They've long forgotten, since the sun stopped rising they've seen little point in trying to keep track. They count the time in the wrinkles on their faces, and the scars on their bodies.
They also countdown the number of survivors. Once a group of thirty had become twenty seven, twenty one, seventeen…twelve…ten…
Now, all that was left was four. Shikamaru had been the last to perish; he had pushed Shoko Hyuuga out of the way of one of those strange sickening living branches that had struck through the back of his skull and out of his mouth.
His sacrifice could not be in vain. None of them could.
"Are we ready?" Sakura asked a patch over the sharingan she had been gifted by her sensei upon his own death.
She was decades away from mastering it, but it did enough to keep them going.
"We've followed all of Shikamaru's instructions," Gaara said, losing an arm had hardly stopped him being a destructive force "we just have to do it as quickly as we can before we are discovered."
It had been a nightmare to prepare, given they barely got an hour and half to stop and rest at any given time. Partially that had been Shikamaru's downfall. He was exhausted, when they stopped moving he had to keep going and figure out what to do next and the last few however many weeks he had been transcribing a jujtsu they had found in the ruins of something that once was a home.
It wasn't until he transcribed he that they realised they must have been on the Hyuuga compound, it was an ancient Hyuuga scroll.
Supposedly, it rewrote history.
They were desperate, so it would have to do.
Sumie was the last of the four to have made it so far. Her ability to track chakra was what had kept her alive.
Shoko watched, her Byakugan permanently active, she no longer felt her chakra drain the way it had once before because thanks to Naruto's final sacrifice their chakra limits were almost immeasurable. They would be safe a while longer, she couldn't see any coming threats and none of their traps had been set off. Not that they always were.
You just never knew when death was right behind you.
They moved to sit around the scroll, Sakura took the lead, reading the words and creating the symbols. They each cut their palms, and placed them flat onto the scroll. Shoko felt something burn, a deep coiling feeling inside her.
She frowned, a deep pit of fear opened up and she looked, wide eyed at Sakura.
"It has to be you," Sakura told her, knowing exactly what she thought "it has to be a Hyuuga, that's why, that's why Shikamaru saved you."
No, it was supposed to be Sakura they'd agreed. She was closest to them; she was the one that would have the most influence.
The world was melting away; Sumie, Gaara and Sakura were fading. Sakura smiled, it made her look youthful.
"We're relying on you."
The world exploded into pain, and a voice from a thousand years ago cackling into her very soul.
And so it begins!