Chapter Three: Hunting

As thrilling as her new speed was, Sakura didn't lose sight of her goal. She had to adapt, quickly, to this new form, and manage to go unseen as the brightest panther ever. She decided to practice a little before her real hunt began. It was just her luck that the siblings from Sand were on their way home that day. They would be fun to play… er, train with. Now, to start with a little tracking.

Using her new heightened senses, she sniffed out her friends from another village. They were easy to tell apart from their surroundings, the essence of their scent was different at the base than people she usually knew; they were wind, and tall grass, with the slightest hint of blood still clinging to Gaara. Sakura would never tell him, though; she knew how self-conscious he was about his past actions. Temari had a bit of a floral scent wrapped around her, like some exotic dessert flower was tucked into her hair, probably from spending a lot of time near it. Kankorou also had an extra scent, wood and oils from his puppets. They all had a base scent that stemmed from the environment where they were raised, and they all carried a personal scent based on their habits and actions. Now that she knew their individual scents, she could always find them.

Quickly, catching up with the traveling ninjas, Sakura landed high in a tree near them. The group had stopped so Temari could get a stone out of her sandal. Gaara glanced around, and for a moment she thought he'd sensed her. She crouched low and watched her practice prey. As they moved on, she thought, "Of course they didn't sense me, I'm neither a ninja nor a danger now." She silently leapt from branch to branch, well above the heads of those she followed.

It came to her almost naturally, following and watching them without making herself known. Something inside urged her to attack, but she remained well distanced. There was no further indication that they might know she was nearby. While they slept at night, she prowled the edges of their camp, keeping watch. Once they gained the border of the Fire Country, she left them alone and moved on towards her own goals.

She found food easily enough. Small animals were abundant, and she hunted with ease. It came almost naturally. Or it came completely naturally, of course, this body was trained and conditioned to stalk and hunt. She could take excellent care of herself now, and there would be no problem in achieving her goal. Her experiment with the Sand group had shown her that ninjas wouldn't sense her as a threat; there was no Chakra to give her away, and her animal instincts were not understood by humans. She hoped that would hold true when she prepared to attack.

Capturing a small buck for her meal, and not noticing the sudden taste in bloody and formerly cute meat, Sakura plotted her next move. "Sound is to the southwest," she thought as a leg bone crunched in her great jaw. She'd brought this one down swiftly enough to assure herself that she could fight in this body. "But I still want to practice before I go against them. Besides, the Akatsuki wander the country side while Orochimaru hides. I can drag him out if I catch the prey already in the open- the same prey he plans to help a certain other hunt down. I can play and learn on them, then have my final game with the former Leaf ninjas I really want." Strolling with graceful steps to the river bank, she dunked her head in for a drink and to clean up.

Her plans formed, she decided to start where she had last seen her prey, the river gorge where they had killed Gaara only a couple years before. Turning back towards Wind Country, she re-covered the ground with no delay. Moving faster than when following humans, she gained the edge of the destroyed cave in half the time it would have taken her before.

She rested in the shadow of the cliffs for that day, then she followed the river track back to where Kakashi and the blond had faced off. It had been so long ago, there would be no scent. Still, something would tip her off to the direct in which they had gone. Something had to. "What luck!" She purred in her excitement. "Blood in the ground."

Blood from Dedira had seeped well into the soil before rains came to that place. The scent was faint, and would disappear once the rains caught up to him, or he stopped bleeding. Still, she could get some way on that faint scent.

The trail died only a few miles away. It had rained so soon after his departure from his defeat. She sat on the path she had followed the trail along, stumped about her next move. As a human, she would have followed the path itself to the next town and asked questions. As a wild animal, she had no desire to go near men or their towns. Her two sides, her human intellect and her animal instincts, were at odds. She couldn't act until the pair came to some sort of an agreement.

She was saved from waiting for long, when a loud voice echoed around her. "Dedira-sempaiiiiiiiii," the voice cried. "Where are we going?" It sounded like an over-sized child. Still, luck had led her to some of her prey. Who was she to ignore the offerings of luck? Every hunter knew that luck was only kind to those who accepted her favors. And Sakura was a large hunter now.