Disclaimer: Naruto, all characters and settings, and anything else you would recognize as pertaining to this cartoon does not belong to me. I do not intend to make any money off the writing of this fan fiction; it is merely for entertainment purposes.
Title: Eleven Inches of Rainfall.
Summary: In the totalitarian dictatorship of Konohagakure, Sakura Haruno, an impoverished medic just trying to get through the day, suffers a chance encounter with a pair of terrorists and becomes an unwilling accomplice to their leaders' plots. Under the red moon, shadows creep in from every angle.
Pairings: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Obito, Haruno Sakura/Sasori.
Chapter I: Infiltration
In the dead of night, Sakura Haruno, passed out on her couch in her starched medic's uniform, was startled from her sleep by an insistent banging on her apartment door. She wiped the drool from her lips and licked them, and, after a moment of grogginess, checked the time.
Random inspections at such an unholy hour weren't unheard of, especially in light of the recent terrorist threats. Steep fines existed for all manner of rule-breaking, such as leaving out food or unclean dishes to draw insects. Her mind went to the unwashed fork in the kitchen sink with a jolt of dread.
Having been exhausted from another all-day shift at Konoha General Hospital, she hadn't the energy to do more than pop her boxed dinner ration into the microwave and rub her aching feet in the five minutes it took to heat the rice and dry chicken. It had the consistency and flavor of sand, and she washed it down by cupping her hands under the faucet and drinking the metal-tinged water that dribbled out. Vaguely, she remembered throwing away her trash and leaving her fork in the sink.
She could never afford a fine.
"Just a second!" she called hoarsely, stumbling toward the kitchen in total darkness and fumbling for the light switch along the way. Yellow light flickered overhead, and, making a mental note to wash it after her unknown visitor left, she shoved the dirty fork back into its appropriate drawer.
The knocking had momentarily ceased, but it picked back up with a vengeance as Sakura hurried back across her living room to unlock the door.
Her reflexive apology clung to the tip of her tongue when she opened her apartment to the silhouettes crowding her doormat. She caught only a glimpse of the image of a bold red cloud circumscribed by white before she was shoved back hard enough to send her careening across the carpet. With a hiss between clenched teeth, she gripped the resulting burn on her arm and looked up at the intruders.
Two figures had forced their way into her home and slammed the door shut behind them, locking it with an ominous click. Straw hats and black cloaks consumed their forms, effectively erasing any trace of their identities.
"What a dump," uttered the shorter of the two. His masculine voice carried soft and unaffected despite the harsh words, and he tilted his head slightly, seemingly considering the space around him.
In stark contrast, the taller of the two threw his gloved hands into the air and cheerily proclaimed, "At least we have somewhere to hide. And—oh, look, this apartment comes with a pretty girl! Aren't we lucky, Sasori?"
Sakura, struck silent with fear, nearly jumped out of her skin as the taller one stabbed a long finger in her direction. Her eyes darted between them as she discreetly inched her way backward. She pictured the knife in her utensil drawer.
"Tobi, restrain her before she tries something," the shorter one, Sasori, ordered in a tone that oozed boredom. "I'm going to investigate the other rooms."
A short cry tore from Sakura's throat as the taller one, Tobi, took a few threatening steps toward her, and she scrambled to her feet. Before she could take more than two steps, the weight of a grown man, laughing gleefully, tackled her and sent her to the floor once again. Squashed on her front, Sakura dug her nails into the carpet and tried to drag herself the rest of the way, but the man lying on top of her reached out to collect her wrists in one tight-fisted grip and pinned her body down with his.
"Let go of me!" Sakura managed to scream before a cloth-covered forearm was shoved in her mouth. She gnashed her teeth, soaking the fabric with her saliva, but it quickly became clear that his flesh was protected by some kind of body armor.
Meanwhile, Sasori delicately stepped around their flailing limbs and disappeared through the doorway to her unlit bedroom.
She savagely writhed and bucked beneath Tobi, whose laughter quickly grew stifled. In the scuffle, his straw hat was tossed from his head, and it rolled until it collided with the refrigerator. He lowered his face, and what felt like the edge of an unsanded wooden mask painfully ground into Sakura's cheek.
"I recommend that Pretty Girl stop struggling so much," he breathed, sickly sweet, in her ear. "Tobi is having way more fun than he should be."
It took her a few more seconds of fighting against his unyielding form before she realized what he was referencing: a formidable erection nestled between the line of their bodies. She let out a muffled shriek of protest at the discovery.
"Sorry," he whispered, decidedly unapologetic. Through the haze of terror, she noticed that his childishly high-pitched voice had deepened significantly. He knocked her teeth through her cheek with the mask when he swung his head. "I warned you."
"She's the only one here," Sasori reported as he returned to the living room, "but that doesn't necessarily mean she lives alone. Girl, do you live with anyone else?"
Sakura craned her neck to look up at him. With a mouthful of forearm, she made to shake her head in a truthful negative—but stopped just in time. She nodded eagerly instead.
"Pretty Girl is lying! She's a liar!" Tobi sang loudly into her ear, once again in that grating way. She was beginning to sweat from the sheer amount of body heat radiating from him, and the musty smell of her carpet nauseated her. "Sakura Haruno: age twenty-two, medic at Konoha General, single. District two-five-five-seven-zer-oh, class one, apartment twelve. No living family members."
What…? Sakura thought in a panic, writhing for her freedom, to no avail. How does—
"So, this wasn't a random pick like you led me to believe," Sasori pointed out, knocking Tobi's hat aside as he opened the refrigerator. Inside was a half-empty carton of low-fat milk, a lopsided carton of eggs, and a few packages of vanilla yogurt, the latter being her snack during work. "Pitiful selection. Is there anything worth eating in this place?"
"Well, her rations consist of single-person types A and D, sooo…"
"That means nothing to me."
Who were these men? Why were they targeting her? Sakura was too stupefied by the night's events—and still hyper-aware of the appendage digging into her backside. Clearly, something about the situation excited Tobi. Every time the man on top of her shifted his weight, it was brought back to her immediate attention.
With a noise of disinterest, Sasori finally closed the refrigerator and turned to them. "I guess we'll be staying here for a while. Security is going to be too tight to slip through until Leader makes the next move to divert their attention. I'll try to contact him in the morning. Do you want the bed or couch?"
Tobi considered the question before chirping, "Bed, please."
"All right, couch is all yours. I'll leave the girl to you. Night." With that, Sasori turned a corner, leaving her at the mercy of his companion.
"Sasori will always pick the opposite of what Tobi says," he told her conspiratorially, dragging her with him as he stood. He retrieved cloth and a length of rope from the depths of his cloak, and he gagged her and fastened the cloth with a knot at the back of her head. Her wrists were tied together at the small of her back. "I actually wanted the couch. Tobi is a clever boy."
He was far too tall for the couch, but that didn't stop him from flopping down and bringing her with him, complete with exaggerated, "Wheee!"
What's going on?! Sakura's mind cried.
Lying on the chest of a man she didn't know, in his arms, bound and gagged, and doused in sickly yellow light, she endured the most miserable, bewildering, and sleepless night of her life.
Sakura's apartment, like every other apartment in her district, contained only the essentials: a kitchen-and-living-room combination, bathroom, and bedroom. Furnishings were sparse; housing regulations didn't allow "wall mutilations" such as hanging pictures or anything else that required a nail through the drywall, so she kept a small stack of photographs and sentimental objects in a drawer beside the refrigerator.
Other than the bare-bones appliances she needed to store and cook her food and a rolling island counter, she was allocated a single radio to listen to mandatory broadcasts, a digital clock, a spindly legged stool, a personal fold-out stand for eating on, and a ragged brown couch with two holes in the cushion.
A cubicle shower, toilet, and sink completed her bathroom, and a simple rectangular closet and twin-sized mattress filled out her tiny bedroom. The sandpaper carpet, stained from previous occupants, was the color of squashed raspberries, with the walls an unobtrusive and pale gray.
It wasn't much, but it was home, appointed to her based on her hourly wage, marital status, and family size. Fifty credits an hour, single, one female adult: These are only a few of the designations that determined her quality of living and social standing in the totalitarian dictatorship of Konohagakure.
Comparatively, she lived on the lower end of the spectrum, housed far away from the wealthy districts belonging to the politicians, judges, and chief executive officers—people who could be bribed to spin their cogs a certain way. Sakura, a diligent medic, vowed to save as many lives as possible no matter how much they paid her, and, in her opinion, that was nothing to feel shame over.
She didn't have many belongings. She didn't eat delicious food. She didn't have very much space. There were no parties on her schedule, no galas or mixers. From seven in the morning to seven at night, she spent her time at the rundown hospital and tended to patients to the best of her ability with rudimentary tools and medicine. She showered in the morning, efficiently washing her dirty laundry and body at the same time, ate breakfast, and walked the thirty-minute distance to the hospital. At the end of every shift, she walked straight back to her apartment, ate dinner, and slept.
Anyway, it was difficult to miss something that she never had; her childhood district, designated to low-wage families of three, was only a few blocks away and only a slight upgrade to what she currently had. She possessed the essentials for living and ate a diet heavy in iron, lean proteins, and fiber.
Sakura was breathing. Her organs were functioning as intended. She was a productive member of society—and that was the most anyone like her could ask for.
Her obnoxious neighbor, Naruto Uzumaki, didn't quite agree with this sentiment.
Naruto, like her, held an hourly wage of fifty credits, was single, and lived by himself. Since he worked the graveyard shift at Mitsuki Limited, they never encountered each other except on weekends, especially Sundays, when they left to collect their weekly ration allotment from their local civic center.
(Mitsuki Limited was hired to deal with product issues so the companies who created and distributed them didn't have to. "Moldy rations? Call Mitsuki Limited. Bug spray doesn't work on that army of super cockroaches breeding in your bathtub? Call Mitsuki Limited. Broken condom? Yeah, you know the drill," Naruto had succinctly explained when Sakura first bumped into him four years ago.)
He often spoke of days far before their time, when Konohagakure was a simple, peaceful village overseen by a compassionate leader and a council of elders. Citizens sought jobs based on what they wanted to do, not what they were good at, and could buy and rent their own homes and apartments based on what pleased them. The gates served as protection from the dangerous forests rather than prison bars. Good food was abundant and affordable. Back then, life had been about more than just surviving and working, about being more than a human machine.
"Hobbies," Naruto had enthused. "Sleeping in. Free time to do whatever the hell you want. Say and think whatever the hell you want. Can you imagine it, Sakura?"
She couldn't.
Out of all of their neighbors, Sakura was the only one who sat through the blond man's speeches anymore. As Naruto was infamous for picking fights with their patrolling officer, nobody wanted to be associated with him.
Associating with a free-thinker was dangerous.
A six o'clock mandatory broadcast brought few answers and a lot more questions.
Sakura, having just managed to nod off when she discreetly wiggled her way into a more comfortable position wedged against the back of her couch, experienced her second rude awakening when her radio lit up, blaring the militaristic cadence of the national anthem of Konohagakure at 5:45 a.m. Jerking back to awareness, she peeled her bleary eyes apart and was greeted with the orange lollipop-shaped mask that she spent half the morning studying.
Tobi groaned in protest, yanking his arm out from under her and stretching his long limbs. With an impressive yawn, he snuck a hand beneath his mask to, presumably, scratch at his face.
He had no right looking so comfortable intruding in her apartment. Sakura glowered at him and tossed her unruly hair out of her face. Her dry mouth felt like cotton around the stiff gag. Muffled, she demanded, "Take this out of my mouth already!"
"Morning to you, too," he replied with a sleep-roughened voice that set her hair on end. He threaded his other hand through her pale-pink locks in a mock-affectionate gesture. "Sleep well? I know I did."
She growled lowly and pinched a nerve in her neck trying to dislodge him.
With a dark chuckle, he bucked her off, sending her crashing to the floor just as the national anthem played its last few notes. Unperturbed by the incomprehensible string of insults she fired off through her gag, he pushed himself upright and combed his spiky black hair with his fingers.
As Sakura squirmed around in earnest to loosen her bindings, a pair of booted feet came to a stop inches away from her nose. She rolled away so she could look up at red-haired Sasori, who had apparently deemed her no threat and left his straw hat behind. Apathetic honey-brown eyes framed with long lashes briefly acknowledged her.
"What's this noise?" Sasori asked, bored. He leaned back against the living room wall and crossed his arms.
Tobi picked up the radio beside the couch and examined it at length, arbitrarily toying with the dials and buttons. After a long moment, he said, "Tobi thinks it's an HL859 with strict permission modifications. It can't be turned off and has one available frequency and preset volume."
"What's the frequency?"
"FM 101.8."
"We tried that one," Sasori mused, wandering the length of the living room. "They must have some kind of RF shielding in the city walls, but I think I know where we can break in undetected. Can you reverse the modifications?"
By way of a response, Tobi retrieved a small toolkit from the arsenal apparently hiding under his cloak and crossed his legs. He started taking the radio apart with no small amount of enthusiasm.
While the two men were occupied, Sakura wormed across the carpet to her kitchen. Her cheek touched cool linoleum, and she angled herself so that her knees were underneath her. With some effort, she managed to push herself onto her feet but remained crouched as she neared her utensil drawer. Raising her chin, she hooked it over the handle and eased the drawer open until it was ajar enough for her to access the contents.
Flexing her burning shins and popping her knees in the process, she slowly straightened up and lowered her face toward the waiting knife handle.
Almost there!
The drawer slammed shut a hair's breadth from Sakura's lips, and she choked on her cry. A hand grasped her upper arm and yanked her upright, bringing her face-to-face with Sasori's pale countenance. With lidded eyes and a cruel half-smile plastered across his strangely angelic features, he made for a frightening sight. The fact that they were the same height didn't even register.
"You're irritating," he told her, as-a-matter-of-fact. "Why can't you behave?"
"Tobi thinks she wants her gag taken out!" Tobi called helpfully from the couch. "Pretty Girl is probably thirsty!"
"Is that right?"
Sakura defiantly met Sasori's eyes and, after a beat of hesitation, nodded. He shoved her back against the kitchen sink, snagging a fistful of her uniform, and she tensed in fear, holding her breath as he crowded her space.
"Do you know the punishment for harboring terrorists in Konoha?" Sasori simply asked.
"Interrogation, torture!" Tobi said, terrifyingly sing-song, brandishing a tiny hex-head screwdriver in her direction. "Public dismemberment, execution!"
"In case it wasn't obvious, we belong to a terrorist organization," the red-haired man continued, boring holes into her with the intensity of his stare. "If you alert anyone about us, I can promise you—you'll only be hurting yourself. We'll be gone long before the police arrive, and your government will place you on a very special list. Got it?"
Sakura furrowed her brow and nodded again, and Sasori leaned in closer, bringing the subtle scent of pine. He found the knot behind her head and deftly unraveled it, pulling the gag from her mouth. She immediately licked her cracked lips to find relief, but it did very little to soothe the pain without moisture.
He reached down, brushing across her tense outer thigh, and yanked the utensil drawer open. The coveted knife was withdrawn and held aloft. "Let's make something clear, Haruno: You will not overpower us. If you hit us, we'll hit back. I don't care if you're a woman. Tobi doesn't care if you're a woman. If we tell you to do something, you do it that very instant."
Sakura warily flicked her eyes from the sharp blade to his serene face.
"Follow this simple instruction, and, when it's all over, you'll be given a prize: your pointlessly fleeting life. Understand?"
"I understand," she croaked. With that, she was spun around and shoved forward. Sasori grabbed her arm, wedged the knife between her wrists, and sawed the rope apart. The instant her hands were released, she turned the sink on and downed handfuls of the metallic water until she choked on it.
Just as Tobi finished rewiring the radio and screwing the front back on, a rusty voice crackled from the speakers:
"Greetings, citizens of glorious Konohagakure, on this Tuesday morning. First of all, there is reason to believe our city has been breached by the 'Akatsuki,' a negligible band of terrorists. This is not a cause for panic—I repeat: This is not a cause for panic. If you see or hear something suspicious, every citizen is advised to do their duty and report it to the nearest civic center or officer. Otherwise, it's business as usual."
"Don't panic!" Tobi set the radio aside and danced through the living room in the direction of the bedroom, performing a flawless pirouette that flared his cloak out around him just before ducking out of sight.
"In other news…" the radio droned on.
"Haruno, who's speaking right now?" Sasori demanded, helping himself to one of her vanilla yogurts after finding a spoon. He did well to ignore both his partner's absurd antics and the fierce glare she sent his way.
"Um, it sounds like Takahiro Nakagawa, Chief of Security," Sakura mumbled. "He's been doing most of the broadcasts lately."
"Hm. I wonder why." He cocked his head at her and offered a mean smile when she bristled at him. Popping a spoonful of yogurt in his mouth, he took a seat on the nearby stool and spun around once.
"Anyway, I need to get ready for work," she said, cautiously heading toward the other half of her apartment and keeping an eye on him as she did. He didn't even twitch in her direction, seemingly too preoccupied with gorging himself on her snack.
"Sounds like you'll have to wait for Tobi to finish up, then." Sasori's words were punctuated by the distinctive sound of running water.
"Hey!" An outraged Sakura flew across the bedroom to pound on the bathroom door. "Excuse me, I have very limited hot water! You can't just—"
Tobi poked his head out, releasing a cloud of steam and affording a minute glance of pale skin stretched over defined musculature. He had taken off his mask, and the right half of his face was concealed by the door. An onyx-black eye under shaggy dark hair stared her down. Slowly, his mouth twisted into a smile. "Do you want to share?"
Rumpled, unshowered, exhausted, paranoid, and furious—Sakura began the thirty-minute trek to Konoha General Hospital.