Author's Note: Yo. Felt the need to edit some parts of this fic. And about my other fics, the x-over one is in progress yeah? Should be up in February.

'nuff said.

Don't look back. Keep running. Don't look back. Everyone else is gone. Dad is gone. Mum is gone. There's nothing left to do but run.

Haruno Sakura let out a yelp of shock and terror as another building exploded a few blocks away, raining charred pieces of god-knows-what over her small form. She covered her arms over her head, almost tripping over a crack in the road. As she ran for her life, she saw, with revulsion and pity, a woman cradle her baby tighter to her breast as she just stood still, watching, waiting, for the building to fall on her, inevitably crushing her and the baby.

Sakura couldn't really blame the woman. Here, in the Districts, you can't even go to school without trembling in fear not knowing if the entire school was going to blow up the next second. One moment you're talking to your best friend at the cafeteria, the next the whole building goes ka-boom.

Getting a job is almost impossible. The pay is so pathetic even before they started cutting it down due to rapidly rising taxes.

And then there're the raids. There's bound to be at least two raids each week. Normal, on-ground, raids are usual. The more occasional, and terrifying, ones are the air raids. Once someone knows there's an air raid in that area, they know that it's the end of the line for them. Drop a bomb in the middle of the street, and the rickety apartment flats within a yard of range would be blown from its foundations.

And there're, of course, the SOLDIERs. They're like the army of a country, just that they hold a much, much greater influence over everything in the Districts. They control everything. They own everything in the Districts. From a pebble on the road, right up to the filthy moss-coloured sofa which used to sit in Sakura's now-burnt down three-room apartment which she shared with her parents, who had burned down along with the rest of Sakura's possessions. She had been in tennis practice, unknowingly saving herself.

The only place which was free from all the bombing and raids, and had any source of luxury, was the Central District. That was also where all the SOLDIER recruits lived and trained, their armory and war machines hidden someplace dangerous and heavily-guarded. The Government who had partial control over the ridiculously influential army lived among them.

There were five Districts; Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Districts. Sakura currently resided in the Northern District. It was well-known throughout the entire country that the Eastern District had been completely demolished many years back, a nuclear bomb dropped smack dab right in the middle of the District, subsequently wiping the entire Eastern District off the face of the Earth.

It was strange, but ever since the devastation of the East, it had started raining ashes, and hadn't stopped since then. Sakura, in her entire fourteen and a half years of life, had never seen the blue of the sky, or if there was a colour to the solemn, grey skies she'd been living under. She had always dreamed of the green of trees, the crystal bottle green and indigo of the pristine ocean, the gentle sway of flowers in a non-polluted breeze. She sometimes wondered why she even thought of things she's never seen before.

Maybe that's why she's so damn determined to escape the raid. Maybe that's why she doesn't want her life to end. No, not just yet.

Sakura let out a small whimper, tears streaming down her pale cheek, as another building exploded a few yards away from her. She skidded to a halt, arms flung forward to protect her head from all the flying debris. Long, waist-length pink hair whipped around wildly in the raging wind. A sink flew overhead, debris trailing behind.

She looked up. Empty and lifeless pairs of eyes met bright emerald. Residents stared at her with a hopeless expression on their dirty and unwashed faces through the broken windows of their houses. She knew most of them were probably thinking, 'You're not going to make it. No one can survive an air raid.'

But she needed to get out of there. Away from the air raid. She still wanted to live. Have a future. A normal life. If that was even possible to achieve.

Sakura continued sprinting, arms pumping by her side. Her lungs were aching. She had been running home from tennis practice the moment she heard there was going to be an air raid. Seeing her home in nothing but a huge pile of ashes, the first thing that came to the girl's mind was to run and find the bomb shelter that was situated at the very end of the street. And that was exactly where she's heading now.

Run. Just run. This can't possibly be the end.

She wasn't much of a runner, nor was her stamina good. By now, her steps are becoming pathetically small, and slow. It was almost sluggish.

She stared at the end of the street, where her safety lies. It seemed so far away, when it really was only half a mile.

A shrill scream of a little girl as she watched her mother be buried under a pile of rubble pierced Sakura's heart in such a way she couldn't understand. She raised her hand and grabbed her shirt where her heart should be, tightly. More tears flowed.

She hesitated for a moment, her body already twisting to pick the little girl up, before another pile of rubble collapse on the girl. The last thing the innocent girl saw had been the petrified face of a pink-haired girl who was practically soaked in her own blood.

Sakura nearly choke on her own sobs and bile rose in her throat. She backed away and turned back to the direction she was heading, stumbling as she did so.

Move faster. Run. Keep moving.

Sakura cried out as another bomb went off, sending chunks of glass and metal flying everywhere. This bomb went off way too close to where she was. Upon instinct, the rosette leapt to the side to avoid getting pierced by a particularly sharp end of a pipe.

Exhausted, she trudged on. The muscles on her legs and arms were burning, and they felt like lead. She was barely even running now.

Dressed in only a tennis vest, skirt and shoes, she suffered cuts and bruises on her arms and legs, obtained from each explosion. She had ignored the stinging pain when she ran down the street. Adrenaline and shock had been pumping through her being, causing her to block out all the pain. Now that the adrenaline had sort of died down, even though the shock was still present, she was slowly beginning to feel the effects of the wounds. She had also used up most of her energy during tennis practice.

Her vision getting blurry, she stumbled on, coughing.

Another explosion, louder this time, and then Sakura felt a blinding pain on the left side of her abdomen. She looked down, and almost shrieked. An extremely sharp piece of glass had actually pierced through her side, leaving a deep gash there, where crimson blood flowed freely. It stained her light pink tennis vest, and soon spread to her tennis skirt.

Sakura winced as she pressed her hand on her side to try and stop the bleeding. She went on, barely making any progress, not even running straight or properly, as the world slowly spun around her in a big swirl of run-down houses and cracked streets.

Then there was an explosion, just two blocks from her. The sheer force of the explosion caused Sakura to be blown off her feet, land a few meters ahead with a loud thud, and rolled to a halt, lying face-down in the dirt.

Now she knew she wasn't going to make it. Her body just couldn't take the strain anymore. Her knees were scraped raw from the fall, and her legs were numb from all the running. Her left arm was beneath her, cushioning her torso. It was bent in a weird angle; broken.

Desperately, Sakura raised her head and clawed at the ground with her good arm. Looking up, she knew she was beyond hope. The shelter was too far away, and she could barely stand up, let alone run.

Determinedly, Sakura clawed even more at the ground, moving, but just barely. At least if she didn't make it, she'd die knowing that she tried.

And then she sensed it. She knew, even before it actually happened, that the building right next to her tired form was going to blow up, harder than the other buildings. Her exhausted brain didn't have time to ponder on the fact that she had just sensed that something was going to happen before it actually happened, before she saw a huge flash of orange, red and yellow, which was followed by a loud boom.

It sounded so… so… far… away…

Sakura stared at the inferno with empty jade eyes, knowing that it was really her end as she watched the fire reach out at her. It looked so welcoming at the moment. It'll take her away from the pain and sorrow. She'll finally be... free…

Her body slumped to the ground as her eyes slowly drifted shut.

"NO! Sasuke-teme! The fire's - !"

"I'll be fine, Naruto."

"B-but I don't want to lose you like how I lost Neji!"

"Jeez, you sound like a girl, dobe. See you at the shelter."

Almost like a dream, every sound around her shut off, except for the soft, tinkling sound which seemed to echo in her mind, radiating comfort in ripples.

Suddenly, beautiful, onyx orbs met emerald ones. For a fleeting second, Sakura thought she was looking at death straight in the face, but the next, all thought was gone from her mind as obsidian turned blood red.

There was a whirl of a cloak, and then black oblivion.

I like his eyes.

Author's Note: Review if you wanna.