We must evacuate at once—! If the Fire Country is to arise once more, we—
Run? For eight long years I have been running, cowering in the shadows of Tsunade-shishou. How much longer must I hide from this?
Is this the Will of Fire Jiraiya-sama talked about?
'Fire will burn where the leaves dance.'
(Sandaime, Chapter 136)
PREFACE: Blooming
Let them hate her, she thought. Let them run to the mountains. She would live on in all of them.
So she marched, one kunoichi striding out over the grass, an outline, a blur, and then a silhouette emerging from the smog, her patched cloak billowing out sideward and her hair streaming on the breeze. Before her the three armies fell still:
"The s-second age of the Sannin… S-Sa—"
Standing as one against thousands, Haruno Sakura dreamt once more: of a Konoha wherein all her friends and families were acquainted with a truer happiness, where all was civilised if not necessarily easy, and none found peace in the pain of others: the Konoha she had yearned for since its predecessor fell.
If she were to rewind through to the beginning, would she change the path she had taken? Could she choose to live a life without New Konoha? No—! After all, no—! That which had condemned her from its creation had given her purpose - and without purpose, could she have remained human at all?
Those she had once despised had granted her their heart and she stood there then with the resonances of their courage, their strength, and their utter conviction in the Will of Fire. In her possession, swelling within her chest, drummed the hearts of four: the Shodai, the Nidaime, the Yondaime, and… the Sandaime.
He whom she had once hated with a fervent, unrelenting sadness hummed beneath her skin.
She could sacrifice herself for the sake of her friends, comrades and students, because her heart beat as theirs – overpowering: with a strength that was all too unbearable and all too wholesome, and with a hope that she recalled from a time long passed, burning as the leaves danced over the horizon.
The Will of Fire sang inside her unforgiving blood and set her chakra aflame.
"Come," she whispered to the wind, and the armies of three nations approached warily across the grass, weapons raised.
