Title: The Scarlet Carapace
Chapter 02: Flattened
Rating: T
Words: 5,123
Summary: "Our client is a ghost wolf," Sakura says. "He's a dispossessed king who wants our help to regain his throne." Mission-fic. Kakashi, Sakura.
Notes: Written for the Kakasaku Community's Give Me Some Sugar chat on the DW branch. Oroburos69's prompt was: "A wolf, a ninja, and a medic walk into a bar…" This is part 2 of a projected 4.
Sakura stares down at the sleepy little town of Tsukuba while absently brushing snow off her shoulders. It's cold out and she's not dressed for it but the wolf is managing to keep them from freezing to death. Sakura prefers not to think too hard about how. The one time she'd asked, a few days ago, had sent the wolf off on a spiel that had lasted six hours and she still doesn't know what all his words had meant.
"What are the odds," she says to Kakashi, who looks disgruntled, "that they've declared us missing-nin yet?"
Kakashi's eyebrow draws down. "Unlikely," he decrees. "We're a day late for our mission," which means they've been with the wolf for over a week and Sakura makes a face at that, "but that could mean anything. They're more likely to declare us MIA than rogue."
She supposes this is a plus.
"Any idea," she ventures, "about how we're going to explain this when we get back?"
It's a question both of them have thought about more than once. It's a question that, so far, they haven't come up with an answer to. Konoha's shinobi are not supposed to just ditch one mission for another one without warning. (Or at all.) Unless it was on orders from the Hokage, of course, but if that had been the case then this would be far less nerve-wracking and they wouldn't be having this conversation besides.
"It would be a lot easier," Kakashi says, "if you could summon slugs."
Sakura rolls her eyes. "We've covered this before-I can't. I never signed the contract. Besides..."
Kakashi's sigh says he knows what's coming. Sakura grimaces. They're both treading the same ground over and over again for lack of more options. She crosses her arms over her chest and says what he expects her to say. "I still don't see why you can't send one of your dogs back to Tsunade-shishou."
"Because they could be intercepted," Kakashi replies, like he's done before. "And if that happens we'll be in worse trouble than if nothing is heard from us."
Sakura's eyes stray over the village again, looking for the wolf. He's told them to wait and like good little captives they do, though they're not happy about it. Still, she thinks, it could be worse. At least we have our own thoughts.
It's a very dim sort of silver lining.
"Do you sense anything?" she asks idly, while stretching out her own chakra feelers.
Chakra signatures assault her senses but they're all the numb, low-level ones that civilians have. Not a single person down in the village, as far as she can tell, has the chakra of someone who is trained to use it, whether that training comes from shinobi lessons or elsewise.
It's almost comforting though she reminds herself, as she continues her careful sweep through the village, that there could be someone who has damped their signature down to the point that she can't spot the differences between it and a civilian's.
She knows, after all, that the wolf is down there and she can't sense him either.
"Nothing," Kakashi says, after a moment and sounding disgusted with everything. "If the Scarlet Carapace is here, then it's not something we can sense."
"Maybe it's not here," Sakura says, pulling her chakra back and sighing. "Maybe it just used to be."
"Or maybe this is a wild goose chase."
Sakura shrugs a little. "Maybe," she admits, "but what are we going to do about it? I'd rather pretend that this has a point than to think we're just wasting our time."
Kakashi muttered something that she didn't bother to try and make out. She got the gist of it.
"Besides," she continues, "he's said that the Carapace is different to his senses and ours. Maybe it's just nothing we can sense."
"Maybe." Kakashi sounds doubtful. "He mentioned it was a power repository, however, and we should be able to sense that."
"We can't sense him," Sakura says, narrowing her eyes at a plume of... something rising from the village. It was too pale to be smoke and too dark to be snow (not that snow rose from the ground but...) and as she watched, it twisted in on itself.
"Is that our wolf?" Kakashi asks, squinting against the snow to peer upwards.
Sakura follows his gaze, part of her wondering if she can tease him later about calling the wolf theirs, and sees nothing out of the ordinary for a moment in the blue sky. Then she swallows a gasp. The ghost wolf is up there, nearly invisible against a cloud, and staring at the plume rising from the village. He's angry.
"Kakashi," Sakura says, "I think we should probably... get away from the village? Before whatever it is that's pissed off the wolf comes looking for us."
As if her words are the trigger, the plume stops rising and twists around so that both she and Kakashi can clearly see that, well, it's a dragon. The only good thing, she thinks, as they both tense, is that the dragon isn't, doesn't, look entirely solid.
That doesn't make a huge difference, she thinks, when stacked against the malevolent ire in the dragon's huge, blank eyes.
"Running might get its attention," Kakashi murmurs.
"Um." Sakura gulps as the dragon writhes and then begins moving towards them. "I think we've already got that," she says, "and I don't know that the wolf can do anything about it since he's up there and, well, growling." Then, plaintively, she asks: "You don't sense anything from the dragon, do you?"
"Not a thing," Kakashi says grimly. "As far as chakra is concerned, it doesn't exist at all."
"Fabulous," Sakura murmurs. "Just what I wanted to hear."
"You asked," Kakashi points out.
She doesn't bother to dignify that with an answer. Sakura contemplates running but Kakashi's relaxed posture shows that he's got no intentions of doing so and while she feels that escaping to regroup and nag the wolf for information about this would be the better part of valour, she knows she can't just leave Kakashi on his own.
That's so not her way as a ninja, as Naruto would say. Kakashi would just think she was trash if she left him and Sakura would think the same.
The dragon's approach is terrifyingly slow. All the more dreadful, Sakura thinks, because they're just standing and waiting for it. It's huge and still growing from the center of the village. Its mass appears to be made out of a billowing whiteness, the same off-white shade as eggshells, and if she squints, Sakura can almost see through it, like the dragon is composed of air swirling hundreds, millions of little particles around.
"How are we supposed to hit that?" she asks dubiously. Sakura doesn't think the dragon has flesh and blood and if it's like the wolf then she doubts she'll even be able to hit it with pure chakra.
Kakashi pushes his hitae-ite up and lets his Sharingan study the dragon for a few seconds before making a sound of utmost disgust and recovering his eye. "I can't get a read on it at all."
"...and you still think fighting it is a good idea?" She thinks running sounds like a better and better one. Sakura's no coward and she's more than willing to fight but this... how are they supposed to fight something that isn't solid and doesn't have chakra?
"I like the idea of fighting it better than running," Kakashi corrects.
"I think getting possessed warped your mind," she tells him flatly.
He has the nerve to laugh at that.
"Possibly," Kakashi admits, sounding unconcerned, which Sakura feels implies a dreadful lack of understanding in their current situation. "But running without engaging the enemy at all-there's no point. We need data and this is one way to get it."
The worst part, Sakura thinks, is that he's right. That doesn't stop her from grumbling about idiots and lack of plans and insubstantial monsters. "Right," she says, once that's out of her system. The dragon is still oh-so-slowly approaching. "Are you taking point, or shall I?"
"I'll do it," Kakashi says promptly.
Her lips curve in a smile. "Thought you'd say that. Wait for it to get closer, and then go all out."
It would offend her, if he was just taking point because she was a girl. Or if he was doing it as a slight to her abilities. But Kakashi isn't like that. If he didn't trust her abilities, she wouldn't be out on missions with him-not now, not when she is a Jounin herself-and Kakashi has never held her back just because she's a girl.
(For other reasons, yes, but not that one.)
In this case, though, she's entirely certain his eagerness for a fight is because they've been stuck with a client, for more than a week, who was a danger to them and whom they could not attack successfully.
This was stress relief.
She feels she can live with that. Especially when, push comes to shove, Sakura doesn't really want to fight it anyway.
He just shakes his head. "I've been doing this longer than you've been alive," he reminds her.
"Try not to get mangled or anything," she tells him. The dragon, since she's not taking her eyes off it, is getting closer. Almost within Kakashi's attack range. Up close, it looks even bigger and she can see things swirling around to form it. "Putting you back together shouldn't be a full time job of mine."
"I make no promises," Kakashi replies. "It all depends on the enemy's moves."
"You could lie and make me feel better."
He laughs again. "Where would the fun in that be?"
Then, before she can splutter about how this isn't fun at all (though it sorta is), he's gone as quick as a flash of lightning, heading for the dragon.
Kakashi, she thinks, is most impressive on the battlefield. Off of it and she remembers and dwells on his faults (of which there are many) and his flaws (which are also numerous) and there are days when the fact that he reads porn in public and is known for doing so is anything but a good thing.
On the battlefield though it's like he's not human and she admires his deadly form even as it looks to be doing absolutely nothing but confusing the dragon.
Kakashi sets of an explosive note and the dragon just sort of tilts its head quizzically as she watches, braced to move in, just in case he actually needs her help.
The wolf lands next to her and she startles, badly, then swallows and tries to hide it. The wolf is still glowing, but she's used to that, and he's still sort of hard to see the details of, but she's also used to that.
What's different is the way he's got his fur bunched up and his teeth bared towards the dragon. He paces in front of her.
"Um," Sakura says, her view of the battle blocked. "I need to see."
He ignores her.
"You know," she says, striving to keep her voice conversational, "I really don't like being ignored. And this standing in front of me smacks a lot like you're protecting the damsel in distress and I'm not that sort of girl."
He ignores her. Again.
"I need to see," she snaps, giving up the pretense of civility, and moving to get around him.
::Stay where you are,:: the wolf king snaps, blocking her way again.
"But-"
::Enough.::
It's the same commanding tone that he's used earlier, a week ago and to great effect, but that was before she'd gotten kinda used to him and before Kakashi was in active danger from something that wasn't the ghost king.
That was then.
This is now.
Sakura's eyes narrow and she draws breath to repeat herself one more time but before she can do that-Kakashi begins screaming.
Without thought, without considering the ramifications, Sakura flings herself up into the air, over the wolf (if you can't go around, she remembers Suzume-sensei drilling them, then go over) and into the fray.
She lands on the other side of the wolf and quicker than he can react, runs towards the white dragon. Kakashi is on his knees, holding his head, and still screaming. Sakura can't see any injuries, which she tells herself is a plus, but doesn't let herself feel too relieved.
No one that is really okay would be making a sound like that Sakura knows. Her plan is to grab Kakashi and get the hell out of the area. There's a simplicity to it that appeals to her and then, when Kakashi is better, she promises herself that she'll remind him that she'd been the one to advocate running away in the first place.
When she's less than three yards from the dragon, who is peering down at Kakashi with an expression of mild befuddlement on its face, it seems to realize that she's approaching.
The dragon looks at her and breathes.
The world immediately goes thick and white and cold. It's like she's in a storm, so heavy is the breath, so much so that she can barely see, and as Sakura orients herself quickly-it has to be quick because the wolf king is furious and she can still hear him trying to tell her to come back-she can still hear Kakashi screaming.
Fixing the sound in her mind, she flings herself forward, through the blizzarding bits of the dragon, which cut at her skin like a thousand little knives. It's not far now, she tells herself, knowing her body can't take too much of the cold and the cuts combined.
Already she's a mess.
She nearly stumbles over Kakashi, who is still keening, and with a grimace, hoists him up over her shoulders. He doesn't resist her. Sakura thinks, as she turns back the way she came, that that bothers her almost more than anything else about this whole situation.
Then the dragon breathes again and her world splinters and fractures into a million white pieces that know only pain.
The sky is a dark, inky blue with stars that look like they've been pinned up. Sakura stares up at them and tries to decide if the stars always looked that way or if she's just lost her mind.
She might have, she thinks, because everything still hurts and she doesn't remember much after the dragon made things go really weird. She blinks and there's a giant wolf looking down at her.
::You,:: the wolf says while looming over her, ::are incredibly disobedient.::
Sakura cracks a grin (that hurts too) and forces herself to sit up. The wolf obligingly moves back enough to let her as she takes stock of her injuries and furrows her brow with concentration to smooth them away.
A few minutes later and she feels much better. There are perks to being a medic-nin.
"It's an occupational hazard," she says cheekily, then pauses and glances at the wolf. She can't see Kakashi anywhere. "Where's Kakashi?"
The wolf nods his head over her shoulder and Sakura turns to look. Kakashi is sleeping and she finds herself relaxing a bit. He looks okay, she thinks, getting up to properly survey him. A little paler than he'd been that morning but, really, she can't blame him for that.
"What did the dragon do to him?"
::Nightmare Breath.:: The wolf doesn't elaborate and Sakura finds that she doesn't really want him to. She can guess, from that name, what it did. ::He has had many things happen to him, to have been so effected.::
Sakura lets out a sigh. "That's also an occupational hazard," she says, a bit gloomily. "Is he going to be fine?"
::With rest.::
"What was the dragon anyway?" she asks, kneeling down by Kakashi and doing a quick diagnostic. Everything scans as normal except for his exhaustion levels.
Kakashi, she thinks, is not getting along very well with this mission.
::A Guardian,:: the wolf says slowly. ::It being present here gives me hope that we're close to finding the Scarlet Carapace.::
Sakura contemplates that dubiously and then rubs her forehead. "That sounds an awful lot like we're going to have to get past it to get to the carapace."
::It might come to that.::
She glances at the wolf. "Got any advice as to how? If I recall, you kept yourself well out of that fight."
For a moment she thinks that the wolf is almost... sheepish. ::I was caught off guard,:: the wolf says, ::and the dragons are not easy foes even for one of my world. I've never heard of one being in your world.::
Sakura crosses her arms. "So you're saying that you're not sure what we're going to do?"
::Not in so many words.:: He paced restlessly, catching starlight in his coat and reflecting it back. ::I need to look into a few things. I'll be gone a few hours.::
"Um," Sakura says, "I'm guessing that you'd prefer if we didn't try to run away?"
It's weird, she thinks, but she doesn't really want to any more. She doesn't want to fight the dragon, or even see it, ever again but the wolf doesn't scare her and the mission is interesting (though she'd like for Kakashi to stop getting the short end of the stick) and... it's sort of an adventure.
::You won't.::
Sakura isn't into the mission enough for the clear confidence in the wolf's voice to fail to rile her though. She grits her teeth and counts to ten and tells herself that it would serve him right if they did.
Even if all that meant would be that he'd just have to drag them back.
She's pretty sure he won't kill them by now. When she looks closely at his fur, he looks a little tattered around the edges and she realizes, with a bit of a shock that the only way they survived is that… he would've had to be the one to have done it, at the risk of himself.
He's getting fond of us, she thinks and then, when her own doubts about that surface, corrects it to he just needs us.
But she doesn't really believe that either. It's all muddled in her head. Maybe it's some confusing mixture of the two?
"Yeah," she sighs, "we'll be here."
The wolf nods and doesn't dignify any of her thoughts with a comment on them as he shimmers and fades away. Sakura is torn between being grateful for that and wondering what he made of them at the same time.
"When did everything get confusing?" she asks Kakashi.
Being unconscious, he doesn't answer her.
The hours pass slowly. She spends some of the time sewing up the rips and tears in her uniform and cleaning herself up in the deep stream she finds not five minutes away from their... well, she can't call it a camp but it's something like that. After setting up jutsu wards around Kakashi and making sure he's comfortable, she takes refuge in the water.
Being clean, she's always felt, makes everything seem a little brighter.
And it gives her something to do while she broods over her actions and mixed up feelings concerning this whole mission. There's a lot to think about and most of it isn't all that great.
As she scrubs her skin free of dried blood and grit-and it feels so good to do so-Sakura muses on the fact that while most of her thoughts aren't exactly positive, they're not as negative as they should be.
After all, she reminds herself, they were basically blackmailed into helping with a job that they barely understood and payment so far seemed to be that they might get out of this with their lives. By all rights, she should be a lot more negative.
But she can't quite manage that for some reason. It's not comfortable, this mission, not even remotely.
Yet she can't help but feel it's right.
Which, she acknowledges as she ducks herself under the water to rinse out her hair before tackling it with a comb, is more than a little worrisome. It's weird that she's not more unsettled about all of this, even with Kakashi out of commission for the second time in a week and as she works on her hair she tries to decide why she's so... calm about this.
Is the wolf messing with her head? Has he been? Or is that just taking the easy way out and putting the blame on him for her thought processes?
The problem, she thinks, is that Sakura knows herself and while she's good at faking it, when she's in control of the situation, she's never been what anyone would call actually being calm. Her personality isn't that way.
She tries to decide how she would have reacted a week ago to all of this.
For some reason, she can't.
That bothers her less than it should too.
"What's changed?" she asks herself as she dries off and gathers her things to head back to the camp. Disturbingly, she doesn't have an answer. The wolf still creeps her out if she thinks about it and she would still rather be in Konoha or have someone know where she was-being considered MIA is better than being labelled a missing-nin but she's never wanted to be either-and they still barely know what they're looking for. They've got a name and it's a descriptive name except for the fact that it might not even look like that to their eyes.
So nothing has changed, when she lays it out logically.
And yet, despite the fact that she'd commented about running away to the wolf... Sakura finds he was right.
She won't.
Even though she's pretty sure that a week ago, she'd have taken this chance and fled like a bat out of hell even if it means she'd have had to carry Kakashi the whole way back to Konoha.
Thinking about all of this has only served to make her feel more confused about it and so, when she gets back to camp, Sakura finds she's more than glad to see that Kakashi is awake and sitting up.
His company has got to be better than her thoughts.
"How do you feel?" she asks, her wet hair and changed clothes more than enough evidence for where she's been. Sakura sets her things down and offers Kakashi a canteen of water.
Kakashi takes it and studies it silently for a moment before looking at her. "What happened?" he asks.
"We got our asses handed to us," Sakura says, knowing that's not a real answer.
He snorts a laugh, or what might have been, had he sounded amused. "I figured," he says, "since I don't normally wake up later from the fights I win."
"I can think of a few times you have," she says, because she can't let him get away with saying something like that.
Kakashi just shakes his head. "What happened?" he repeats.
"What do you remember?"
He's quiet for a moment and Sakura finds herself hoping that he doesn't remember the Nightmare Breath and anything that getting caught up in that induced. He doesn't seem like he does, he's acting too normal, but then shinobi are all part actor anyway.
"I couldn't hit it," he says, turning the canteen over in his hands. If it wasn't shut, he'd have spilt in everywhere. "And it seemed amused by that." Kakashi sounds baffled. "Then it looked at me and..."
Sakura swallows a sigh. There's a tension in his voice that tells her he remembers more of what happened next but she's not going to press. They're his nightmares, not hers (though she's certain they share a few) and it wouldn't be a kindness to go prying.
"It breathed on you," she explains, toying with a bit of her still-wet hair. "And you started screaming. I didn't see what happened right then because the wolf got in my way but I got around him and it was like... like fighting a blizzard, one that's razor sharp."
His eyes study her. No doubt, she thinks, he's picking out the new repairs in her uniform.
"I got to you," she says, "and then... then I don't remember. I think the wolf saved us, though he didn't say anything about how." But then, she hadn't asked.
"Where is His Majesty anyway?" Kakashi asks, looking around.
"He thinks that the presence of the dragon is a good thing." Sakura disagrees, especially if they have to get past it again. "That we might be close to where the Carapace is. He's gone to look into it."
"... Why are we still here?" Kakashi asks after a lengthy pause where he raises his eyebrow at her.
"I promised him we wouldn't leave," she says weakly, though it hadn't been much of a promise as an assumption on the wolf's part that had turned out to be right. "And you were still unconscious."
Which was an even more feeble excuse and she knows it and he knows it. Sakura can carry him easily and still be able to book it out of the location.
"Right," he says slowly. "Now really, why?"
She shrugs a little, dropping her hands to her lap, though she keeps her eyes up. "I didn't want to," Sakura admits. "And that's pretty much all there is to it. I want to see this through."
Kakashi's silence remains dubious.
"Oh come on," Sakura says, when it gets to be too much for her to bear, "as if we would have made it anyway. He'd just track us down and then we'd be in worsetrouble. This way, we're more like partners than captives."
"He blackmailed us into this," Kakashi says, something indefinable in his voice.
"Everyone has their faults," she retorts. "You read porn in public, he blackmails ninja into jobs for him."
Kakashi laughs for real this time. "If that's the case," he drawls, "then how can I possibly hold his business methods against him?"
Sakura finds her lips twitching. "You're a jerk," she says. "You had no intentions of leaving either."
He shrugs in what, she thinks, is a mockery if her earlier shrug. "I can't exactly leave you here alone," he says, sounding oh-so-reasonable. "And I have to admit, I'm pretty sure that if I showed up back in Konoha without you, Tsunade would have my hide."
"She would," Sakura says happily. "Because she's awesome that way."
"Right," Kakashi's voice is deadpan. "So, really, I don't have a choice."
"There are always choices," Sakura points out. "Just because they're awful ones doesn't mean they aren't choices."
"Sakura," Kakashi says, "you're being ridiculous."
She laughs. "Maybe," she admits. "But it's better than the other options." Sakura wasn't sure what her other options were, except perhaps laughing and laughing until she couldn't stop or bursting into tears or just taking a nap and hoping it all made more sense when she woke up.
While the last one sounds appealing, she knows a nap isn't happening. She's too energetic, too wide-awake.
"He said we might have to get past the dragon," Sakura offers, as a reasonable compromise on a conversational topic that is neither ridiculous nor brooding. "If the Carapace is here. Any ideas on how?"
Kakashi caps the canteen, having taken a drink while her attention had been elsewhere and hands it back to her. "A few," he says contemplatively. "The easiest way would be to ask the wolf to serve as bait to draw the dragon away from the village while we slip in from a different direction. Anything that minimizes our odds of coming up against the dragon is a good thing. Chakra and our weapons don't hurt it but it can hurt us."
Sakura has to agree with that. Their one encounter with it sticks in her mind as possibly the most useless she's ever been in a fight and considering how little she'd been able to do way back when she'd been a poorly trained Genin with less motivation, she knows that's pathetic.
"I don't know if he'll agree to it," she says, "though I suppose either of us could play bait too. The dragon doesn't move that fast."
"For the most part, that's true," Kakashi concedes. "Though it breathed on me fast enough that I couldn't get out of the way."
"Point." Sakura winces. "That is a problem. You're still faster than I am." Which irritates her if she thinks too much about it and so she doesn't. "I guess we'll have to see what the wolf says," she decides. "If the Carapace isn't here then we'll just be able to go around the dragon and continue on."
Which, she thinks, would be the best for all of them.
Which probably means the Carapace will be in the village, she knows, and resents the odds.
"You think that's likely?" Kakashi is openly skeptical.
"No," Sakura says, "but I can hope, can't I? There's no one stopping me from doing that."
::From doing what?::
She jumps a little as the wolf lands on the ground in front of them. "Oh," she says, fumbling a little. "Hoping that we don't have to face the dragon again."
The wolf's amusement is a palpable thing.
Sakura sighs and hangs her head. She knows what that means. "No dice, huh?"
Kakashi looks resigned. "We're going to have to face the dragon again, aren't we?"
::Yes.::
"Do we have a plan for this?" Kakashi asks. "Or is it just 'get our asses kicked again'?"
"I'd like to avoid the second option," Sakura says helpfully. "If at all possible."
The wolf looks at the both of them. ::Don't worry,: he says, ::I have a plan.::
"I have never found that to be a reassuring sentence," Kakashi informs them both. "In fact, that makes me think there will be a million things that can go wrong."
Sakura smothers a laugh.
::Impertinent whelp.:: The wolf lashes his tail. ::I know what I'm doing.::
Kakashi's grin, when Sakura glances at him, is reckless even though the facemask. He's enjoying this too, she thinks, and wonders if they've both taken leave of their senses. "Of course you do," Kakashi says, "which is why the dragon won the first round."
::Both of you are giving me a headache.::
"Join the club," Kakashi says easily. "Tell us how you think we're going to win round two. You are planning for us to win, right?"
