Another chapter thanks to my trusty Beta: Seth's Kiss
Running as fast as he could, Sasuke quickly headed over towards the smoke, not knowing what to expect, but sincerely hoping that it wasn't what he thought it would be.
But he couldn't be more wrong.
The moment he reached the place, he saw the whole neighbourhood collapsed under blazing fire. Almost everything was aflame, and there was a giant hole in the middle of where once stood a familiar house.
Sasuke's heart clenched painfully as his gaze landed on the gap between the two houses that once sandwiched her house in.
Sweat started to form on the young Uchiha's forehead as he started to panic: 'Where is she?!'
He was snapped out of his thoughts as he heard the rest of their small group of friends arriving.
"What happened?!" screamed out the loudest of them.
"I don't know," replied the young Uchiha, still eyeing his surrounding, hoping to spot Sakura.
Tenten quickly spoke up: "I just asked Hinata to look into the smoke and she says that she saw a man dashing off."
"Is that true?" asked Sasuke turning to Hinata, his tone a little bit too desperately for his taste.
"Y-Yes. He ran off into that direction, carrying something," replied the Hyuuga Heiress as she pointed out the direction in question - which happened to be that of the recently destroyed training grounds.
As soon as those words left her mouth, Sasuke sprinted off, while shouting out at his friends that they should help any survivors present while he'd go after man.
And before Naruto could protest, the young Uchiha was out of hearing range.
Training grounds
Finally reaching his destination, Sasuke almost tripped in his haste, mind too distraught to recall the extent of the damage present, before he hurriedly activated his Sharingan, to see if he could find the suspicious man.
Mother Fortuna was on his side, as he instantly saw him standing by the edge of our destruction, looking at the black flames - which Sasuke had forgotten to put out because of the quick escape he and the others had to make from an angry Yamato, who was now nowhere to be seen.
Dashing over to the mystery man, the young Uchiha saw him dropping his cargo to the ground, and much to Sasuke's surprise, it was a person.
'A woman,' he concluded, as his Sharingan began picking up more and more details.
One of the first things that came put clear to his enhanced vision was that her torn clothes, as if she had been through a pretty tough fight, in addition to a vertical burn mark on her right leg.
The woman had bright red hair from which droplets of blood profusely dripped onto the ground where she laid, immobile.
'Red hair?' frowned Sasuke, as focused all of his Sharingan onto her hair, until he made out something that caused his entire being to freeze.
Her hair wasn't red. It was pink.
Raging anger boiled up in the young Uchiha as he glared murderously at the mystery man as he just stood there, waiting, face hidden underneath his cloak of blistering flames.
Sasuke tried to define the chakra making up the bizarre cloak, but no matter how long he stared, he just couldn't define a thing.
"You're trying to analyse my jutsu with that Sharingan of yours, aren't you?" commented the mystery man, his tone holding contempt and Sasuke could've sworn that the other was smirking "Those eyes mean that you're an Uchiha, and, if I'm correct, your name is Uchiha Sasuke, the last one of your kind."
Sasuke put up his best 'Uchiha Poker face' as he maintained his glare on the other, indulging the conversation as he attempted to come up with a plan, his mind only on the young woman lying so worryingly inert: "You're right about that. Since you know my name, don't you it's only fair that you tell me yours?"
"Perhaps. Only that's not the most important for now," answered the other, voice unchanged, hooded head turning back towards the black flames "I trust that you were the one who casted these flames. The Amaterasu, am I right?"
"Yes," responded Sasuke curtly, more and more annoyed that the other seemed more interested in this fruitless interrogation, so the young Uchiha decided to cut to the chase "Release her."
To the young dark-haired Uchiha's surprise, the mystery man answered him with a laugh, a mocking one: "You really are an Uchiha (the man spat out the name as if it were poison). Those of your name all think that you're better than us. Don't even bother to deny it, because your ancestors were all the same. And when they weren't, the problem was just eliminated."
"Release her now," repeated Sasuke firmly, as he for the most of the part ignored the other's rant, though he had the distinct impression that the mystery man was chatting away on purpose.
"You know, Uchiha, you're pretty funny to think that you still hold the same power as back in the day, when your whole clan was slaughtered just like-" the man abruptly stopped his sentence midway, before he changed the subject, way calmer than before "Not like that's really important. What's important now, at least to you, is whether I want to release this girl or not."
'I need to make this quick - my poker face is wearing of,' thought Sasuke, glare just about burning as much as the mystery man's cloak, worry for his teammate growing with each minute 'I don't know how hurt she is. And I can't let whatever injuries she has worsen.'
"Let me think about it..." drawled out the mystery man, feigning to consider the matter at hand "How about...NO. You've probably already guessed it, but this child is the main reason for my earlier doings. And you, you would be the second reason I came here."
Bewildered and made uneasy by the others words, the young Uchiha warily listened to the other as he began laughing once more, like a mad man, before he suddenly went and kicked his unmoving hostage once, and readied himself to do it again.
And with that, Sasuke, seeing red, just snapped, charging right for the other with his Chidori, so utterly blinded by rage and resentment...that he forgot to reactivate his Sharingan. Or in other words, he was charging at the other while having tunnel vision.
Unable to stop, the young Uchiha knew that he made a big mistake, able to tell that the man was strong, too strong to attack without his enhanced eyes.
Waiting for the man to either dodge or outright kill him, he ended doing something Sasuke would have never anticipated. He didn't move, allowing the young dark-haired male to piece right through the other's being via a vital spot, with the mystery man laughing his head off.
And then he was gone, flames engulfing him and fanning out into ashes and ember, leaving in his place nothing but a tree, where the young Uchiha's hand was uncomfortably stuck in, trapped in the bark from the fingers to the wrist.
As he tugged and pulled to break free yet failing miserably, Sasuke, admonishing himself for being so careless, looked over his shoulder to see the other recreate himself from the ashes of his fire, exactly like a phoenix would.
'It seems that he's able to transform his body into fire,' analysed the Uchiha's mind, whilst being very aware of the mystery man making his way over to him 'That's how my hit didn't land. It looks kind of like Obito's Kamui only that he can be traced down by following the trails left by the fire and cinder.'
As the mystery man got closer, Sasuke tried to activate his Rinnegan, but that too got cancelled by the other's meddlesome cloak.
Hand now covered in the same substance as the flames of his cloak with a seal formed upon his palm, the mystery man set it upon Sasuke's chest, latter feeling no pain at the contact.
About to use his free hand to push the other, the young Uchiha suddenly felt a slow growing agony that paralysed him as the man's chakra dug through his skin, like the man was trying to perform medical chakra but was failing at it wretchedly.
His chakra began to flow through Sasuke's veins, as though it was trying to find something, his burning chakra entering all over the young Uchiha's body, as if attempting to tear something out, until the man finally pulled away.
But what the young dark-haired male saw in the other's retreating hand was rather unexpected.
In the palm of his hand, the cloaked man now held a small, vivid bundle of black flames, leading to Sasuke's upmost shock.
Amaterasu.
As the black fire flickered in the man's hand, the young Uchiha caught sight of every other black flame upon the training grounds dying out, until they were no more.
Slightly concerned, the young dark-haired male was also perfectly and utterly confused, but he forced himself to not let it show him, only the other saw right through him.
"You're probably asking yourself, how on earth did the flames extinguish themselves? Or perhaps you just wondering 'what did he just do?'" taunted the man, using a derisive, babying tone near the end of his sentence.
Even with that stupid, irritating, meddlesome cloak, Sasuke could tell that the mystery man was a little bit too amused over this whole situation turning to only his advantage.
Only, the young dark-haired male, drained and still under that odd paralysis, didn't answer to the other's words, his gaze cast forlornly where his teammate lay, feeling terrible that he hadn't been able to do anything to keep her safe.
The cloaked man merely carried on talking, not at all bothered by the young Uchiha's lack of response: "It's pretty easy to understand, really. I just took back that once belonged to us. And I did so, via a reverse sealing technique."
Absorbing the flames within the palm of his hand, the mystery man's cloak then changed from red to black, like his whole cloak was now made of the Amaterasu, while the man whispered to himself: "Not as hard to control as I thought."
Suddenly, Naruto's voice could be heard shouting in the distance. He and the others were coming. Maybe there was still hope to save-
But no. Not even troubled by the incoming backup, the cloaked man went over and gathered Sakura in his arms, before calmly walking back towards Sasuke and roughly knocking him out.
And the last thought on the young Uchiha's mind, as everything and all faded to black, was: 'Who is this guy?'