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..

"Here," says the old lady just as she places a small burlap sack onto his gloved palm. "Fifteen silver moons and seven gold suns, as promised."

Sasuke hums and looks at the sack from under his eyelashes, bringing his hand close and untying the stiff white yarn securing the coins inside. He looks up at the old crone, the way she smokes out of her handmade wooden pipe and expectantly awaits for her prize, hands behind her back. Sasuke kicks the harpy towards her, ignoring the screeches of obscenities aimed in his direction.

The old hag looks down at her for a second before she stares up at them for a moment, her eyes, hidden under wrinkles, glazed and almost curious. "You boys aren't hurt are you?"

"No harpies can hurt us, gramma," Naruto croons, grinning at her with his sharp teeth all out on display. His scratches speak differently. They're all healed up but even all the wonders his other half brings can't get rid of the marks that stay behind on his skin.

"Fascinating how he is quick to speak," Sai comments, catching the sack of coins Sasuke tosses him. "When the harpy was so infatuated with him."

"It was his tail," Sasuke drawls, flapping a hand in Naruto's general direction. "Even harpies have better taste than mongrels like—"

"Hey! Listen, if it weren't for my charm an' manly scent—" Naruto blinks his bright blue eyes, lips puckered up and his previous argument suddenly dropped and forgotten. "Oh right. Hey, gramma, wha's an old lady like you gonna do with a harpy anyway?"

Sasuke scoffs and turns his back to the group and the tree house, lifting a hand to adjust the harness of his shoulder armor. "That is not our problem, moron."

"Where are you heading to now?" she asks, taking her pipe out her mouth and inspecting it as if it were the first time she saw it and not the thousandth.

Sasuke stares up at the sky for a brief moment, his eye narrowed, scowl setting into place. He spares her a glance from over his shoulder. She watches them, her gaze calm and ancient; only a witch would be daring enough to live amongst the trees.

"That is not of your concern either," he tells her.

She laughs, the wind caressing her white hair, coaxing some of the strands out of the neat bun. "You Fire Breathers and your temper. I am merely curious to see if my warning will mean anything or if it will be for naught!"

"Warning?" Sai asks, arms crossed, head tilted. Under the sun, his white skin looks almost translucent and in its translucency the blackness of the ink inside him is almost visible. "What warning?"

Yelping and snatching his orange fox tail and holding it close to his person, Naruto scurries further away from the harpy and her red, preying eyes.

"While you boys were off finding my harpy, I went down to the nearest village for some supplies." She puffs on her pipe, nudges her head to the side as if to explain the direction she'd been off to. "I heard talk about a girl burning villages."

"There is always some radical lunatic doing things of the sort," Sasuke comments, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "It is nothing new or disconcerting. I think we will be fine."

Sasuke begins to walk away, the grass crunching under his boots, dead despite its vibrant green coloring if only because of some spell the witch has cast to keep the greenery from craving to devour flesh and soak in blood.

"That may be so, boy," she says and Sasuke's steaming blood steams all the more at the name. "But this fire is black."

She does not elaborate.

Of course she does not. It takes so much restraint to keep from whirling around to face her, but Sasuke controls himself and only slowly turns around when he finds the willpower to remain reserved.

"Oh?" he asks, head tilting to the side to seem innocent and genuinely curious.

"It is why I am warning you three," says the witch, kicking the harpy that's begun to laugh. "Quiet you! Have you no manners!" She turns back to them. "Black flames are far dangerous, touched by the Sorcerer Indra, son of the Creator of all Magic, Hagoromo."

Sasuke clenches his jaw taut and stares at her for a second, grabbing Naruto by the back of his long, leather coat and pulling him along with him. "We are leaving."

"Thank you for your information, Chiyo," Sai says as he brings up the rear of their hasty retreat. "And for your hospitality."

.

They walk in silence for a long moment, their strides long and fast. It isn't too clear up to where Chiyo's grasp on the shrubbery reaches and with so much time wasted on such small talk, they only have so much of it left to travel and find shelter before the sun sets and the moon rises, leaving room for darkness and shadows and the trees to hunt.

Still, their limbs ache from their brief battle against the harpy. Quick as it was due to her inexperience, she still managed to harm them despite her young age. That's the thing about the race of harpies; they look the same regardless if they are one hundred or one thousand years old.

Sasuke scowls as he rubs at a tender spot on his chest where the harpy had attempted to sink one of her sharp claws, cooing at his handsome features as she did so.

"So," Naruto drawls, noncommittally observing his disgustingly long, thick claw for nails. "Wha's the plan?"

Sasuke looks up from his mild observations of the grass. They seem to be looping themselves around his boots already, trying to find a way to keep him in place but being far too weak to do anything from having him walk away.

Naruto picks at his nails and Sai adjusts his leather bracers, sparing him casual glances, waiting to hear whatever is on his mind. And there seems to be something on his mind—and they know that.

Sasuke lifts a hand to scratch at the skin under the leather eye-patch covering his left eye. "We are going to find this presumed girl summoning Black Flames."

"And?" Sai asks, an eyebrow raised in question.

Sasuke smirks.

.

It is far too loud.

Vendors call out sweet promises, quick and beautiful descriptions of their products and the generous price to match. Along this, the shrilly shrieks of laughter of children zigzagging through the cobblestoned streets is throbbing.

The buzz of villagers speaking all at once is pulsing.

It is far too loud.

Sakura hides further into her cloak. Her breathing is picking up, her chest rising and falling quickly under her trembling hand holding onto the clasp of her cloak as a means for stability. She stares with wide, wild mismatched eyes at the people surrounding her, rushing by, indifferent to her hunched form.

She swallows, clamping her mouth shut and forcing her breathing to even out. She looks up at the sky. It's gray and growing dark with rain clouds, the breeze strong, and the rumble of thunder in the distance promising.

Sakura wraps her cloak tighter around herself, spares herself a glance at a shop's glass window. She is but a ghost of her former self: bags under her different colored eyes, pale skin all the paler… Her stomach rumbles and she wonders when she's eaten last, if rest has been such an impossibility.

She groans at the slight probing at her memories. She can still hear the yelling; they all mix with the present. The yells of the vendors, the squeals of the children, the villagers—they all blend with the piercing screams of before. The heavy stench of charring skin, dead eyes staring right at her.

Anxiety pops into life under her skin, like ants moving back and forth, burying under her veins and in between her bones. Paranoia fills her chest cavities, swelling so its hard for her heart to beat, pump blood.

Bubbles pop in her vision.

It is far too loud.

The vendors' coaxes and children's chortles and the screams of agony—they are all mixed into one.

"Stop," she whispers, rapidly blinking her eyes. "Please stop."

There is a familiar pressure on her left one, the darker one, the one she cannot control. It feels as if it sinks into her skull, the veins inside all on fire. She feels it tear up unwillingly, thick and sticky.

Blood.

"No," she pleads helplessly.

"Miss? Miss are you all right?"

Sakura lifts her head up, her eyes wide, the blood on her left eye leaking down her cheek. The little girl stares at her for a second before she gasps.

Everything is much clearer through her left eye—she can see every individual eyelash on the little girl, can see, can count the freckles on her cheeks, can see the scabs of a healed wound under her forelocks.

She manages to mouth, "Get away" before the flames come.

The flames always come after the clearness, after the blood.

It is as it always is.

They burst into life with deafening energy, scorching heat blasting steaming air back towards her; unable to hurt her for she is their unwilling summoner. The pitch black flames begin to devour anything and everything in sight upon revival, leaving nothing in their wake, lifting the stench of searing flesh and bones and the deconstruction of another village in their wake.

"No," Sakura sobs, nails digging into her scalp, pink hair sticking to her bloodied cheek. She's done it again—another village, another hundreds of people to die in flames she's unable to control.

It is far too quiet.

..

notes: hi