Effloresco Secundus

Chapter 6: Necessary Education, part 2


Sakura placed her hands half a decimeter above the spilled tea, forming three seals in quick succession. Her hands glowed with a stronger bluish light than Sakura had anticipated as she carefully created a bubble around the pool of liquid. In this manner, she methodically quarantined every single drop of tea she or Pakkun found, pouring enough chakra into the quarantining bubbles for them to stay in position for several hours without her having to manually maintain them. Then she went to pull the curtains shut. Filtered through the thick cloth, the light in the room grew duskier and yellower.

Drawing the 'no-go' seal, formally the Seal of Separation, on the floor, she created a thin net of chakra around the house that every shinobi passing by would recognize as the mark of an ongoing investigation that required no further interference at this point. It was one of the few seals they'd been taught in the Academy, but one she hadn't expected to use for quite some time yet.

Naruto had been so quiet that when he spoke up, she nearly threw a kunai his way. He was perched on a chair, looking smaller than he usually did, but a bit less pale. "What was that?" he asked, voice uncharacteristically quiet but lacking the previous stutter.

Absently she explained the principles behind the seal, her mind still caught up in trying to figure out the poison.

"Naruto, when your clone dispelled, you said there was a strange smell..." Sakura said slowly, wondering why she hadn't picked up on that before now. She didn't notice any outstanding smells at all, but Naruto had said the smell cloaked the bodies.

"Yeah." Naruto grimaced. "It does smell sort of oily, but underneath that-" he sniffed the air and then his nose crinkled. "- there some another smell. It's biting, like that stuff in jars with pickles."

"White vinegar?" Sakura guessed, intrigued. She tried sniffing the air as well, but still couldn't catch any hint of a scent that matched either Pakkun's or Naruto's description.

"The boy's right," the pug said. "Don't know much about human foods, but Kakashi likes pickled daikon. It does smell sort of like that, the venom." Pakkun turned towards Naruto, scratching absently at his ear. "Boy, you have a good nose. Could give an Inuzuka some competition on that end."

Looking confused, Naruto thanked the nin-dog, and Sakura had to wonder if her teammate hadn't actually realized how good his nose was before this. She'd have expected him to brag in that brash, loud sort of way he sometimes did, but he just seemed surprised.

"Girl, maybe you should bag a sample." Pakkun was still turned towards Naruto, but that comment was obviously for her.

"I don't have any sample bags with me." Sakura muttered absently, annoyed with herself. Naruto looked up at that, then reached with one hand into his kunai pouch and withdrew a small transparent container and a plastic pipette. Sakura immediately recognized them from the Academy lectures on poison.

"Well-prepared," she said, nodding as she accepted them and tried not to look surprised that Naruto had remembered to pack these. Naruto shrugged, seeming faintly embarrassed.

"I packed them ages ago and forgot about them." Sakura would have thrown him an amused glance, if not for the dead body lying only a few feet away. Instead she focused on taking a sample of the spilled liquid and then tucked it into her own pouch.

A moment later Naruto tensed, and recognizing the signs now that she'd seen him receive his clone's memory once before, Sakura braced herself. But Naruto looked relieved.

"The kid's room is empty," he began, and Sakura assumed he meant the room Abe's grandson had been staying in. "So are the guest rooms. No weird smells or anything."

"That's good," Sakura said, and carefully didn't add that perhaps the rooms were empty when they shouldn't have been. If she suggested kidnapping at this point, she'd only spook Naruto for no reason. Pakkun met her eyes for a moment, and Sakura got the feeling the pug was thinking along the same lines.

Kakashi showed up a few minutes later with Sasuke in tow, looking grim but not like he'd been fighting. That was a relief, at least. The jounin's grey eye swept over the scene, nodded approvingly at the bubbles that contained the poison and at the Seal of Separation.

"No sign of any intrusions or of fighting," Sasuke said after a glance at the jounin. Kakashi had Sakura and Naruto report their own finds, eye half-lidded in apparent thought.

"Did you notice if the window to the child's bedroom was open?" Kakashi said from where he'd wandered over to stare at one of the contained pools of tainted tea. Naruto's brows drew together in confusion before he went on to deny it. The jounin hummed. He looked a lot more relaxed than he'd been before he and Sasuke left, but she didn't fail to notice the fact that Kakashi's clones hadn't returned with him.

Naruto fidgeted in the following silence. "What now?"

"We report to the Hokage's tower," Sakura said automatically, remembering the Academy lessons on the proper post-mission procedures. Though the procedures mentioned in the Academy only applied to genin-level missions, and there was no doubt that whatever had happened here was way above genin-level.

Kakashi turned around, hands in his pockets. "Sakura is right." He made a shooing motion towards the door, and both Sasuke and Naruto were very quick about following that particular suggestion. If Sakura had moved out as fast as the boys, she would have missed the masked person who between one second and another was suddenly crouched in the window. A ringlet of violet hair curled over the person's shoulder, but that was all Sakura registered before Kakashi guided her out the door.

Sakura kept her mouth shut when they joined Sasuke and Naruto again. An ANBU? Kakashi must have called him or her here. But why an ANBU? Why not another jounin, or a chunin, even? ANBU only attended to the most difficult or secretive missions, at least as she'd understood it.

Sakura's thoughts occupied her the whole way to the Hokage's tower, which was just as well, since her teammates didn't seem to be in any mood to talk either.

Maybe Kakashi signaled them in some subtle way, or maybe the jounin gathered in the tower were feeling particularly generous, but they allowed Sakura's team to head into the Hokage's office despite having arrived there before them. Sakura heard the girl on Shikamaru's team, Ino, make loud complaints to who she assumed was their jounin-sensei before the door closed behind her and shut out the noise.

They walked through the chamber where the lower-ranked missions were received and reported in, and then moved on to the door to the Hokage's office. Sakura noticed Iruka-sensei seated behind one of the desks. Funny, she hadn't known Iruka worked in the mission room.

"Requesting a private briefing," Kakashi said the second they stepped inside the spacious room, his voice lazy. Their aging leader looked at him for a moment, taking a long draw of his pipe and nodded to the secretary at his side. She stumbled up ungracefully, tall heels making her walk fragile and slow.

"Civilians," Sasuke muttered under his breath, and Sakura threw him a sharp glance. She knew some shinobi held less than favorable views of civilians, but she hadn't expected that from Sasuke. She'd never heard him make any disparaging remarks towards civilians in the past- but then again, he had once been part of a clan. Clan shinobi were more likely to hold some level of contempt for civilians, in her experience.

She was tempted to say something, but settled for keeping her eyes on him until he looked up and, noticing her expression, grimaced. Sakura could have pointed out that the secretary's purple hair was quite reminiscent of a certain ANBU she'd seen not five minutes ago, but she had a feeling that would have ruined the point she'd been trying to make.

Sakura wasn't overly surprised when they were all called to report, though she wasn't sure if it was to ensure a comprehensive picture of their findings or if the Hokage was testing them. He had to know they'd already reported to Kakashi before coming here.

Naruto explained what his clones had found, and then Sakura rehashed her and Pakkun's discussion as well as her use of the 'no-go' seal and the quarantining of the tea. Sasuke went ahead and explained his and Kakashi's lack of perimeter finds that were even remotely suspicious. Though, as they were all aware, absence of proof wasn't proof of absence. Someone skilled at not leaving tracks could have left through the perimeter limit Kakashi and Sasuke had scouted.

Kakashi added a few words to Sasuke's report, but other than that he stood quiet. Sakura found herself doing a double-take when from the corner of her eye she spotted her teacher with his nose in that damn book. In front of the Hokage.

"For your D-rank to turn into something like this..." Konoha's old leader said with a sigh, leaving the sentence unfinished.

"Sir, had Abe-san received any threats prior to... this?" Sakura asked when he didn't say anything further. She made sure to keep her voice quietly respectful and to stand straight-backed. As Sakura, she was unaccustomed to feeling the thrum of war zing through her veins. The adrenaline wouldn't drain from her body and in her mind, flashes of blood and fire and green light danced, drawing her tight posture even tighter until her shoulders felt strained.

The Hokage looked at her for a long moment. "I'm afraid I was not acquainted with Abe-san, Haruno-kun."

Sakura blinked and nodded, feeling oddly high-strung and like something in her chest was vibrating. Of course he didn't know Abe. Why would he? She hadn't really expected the Hokage to know every person in the village, so why would she assume that he knew their client? Naruto started saying something about how maybe Abe was secretly a spy or secretly a yakuza with a rival, sounding jittery-nervous rather than cheerful, and she took a step back.

These were battle nerves, she thought as she observed the slight tremble in her fingers. Being jarred out of complacency would do that to you, she thought with a hard mental smile. She'd spent years feeling relatively – mostly – safe in this village. This village of ninja. What a stupid mistake to make.

"You will receive a payment equivalent to that of a completed C-rank's," the Hokage was saying when Sakura's attention wandered back out of her own head. "This mission is to be regarded as classified. You will not speak of it with anyone outside your team."

Sakura and the boys nodded immediately. She doubted any of them felt like talking about this, and even if they did, who would they talk to? The closest she herself had to a friend besides her team was Shikamaru, who was really just an acquaintance, and as far as she knew, Naruto and Sasuke had even less than that.

"You may take your leave." As politely as the Hokage had phrased that, they all knew it for the dismissal it was. Sakura immediately headed for the door, the boys not far behind her.

"That was... huh." Naruto sounded shocked still, and Sakura turned to look at him from the corner of her eye. If this was the first time he'd seen death, perhaps he shouldn't be left alone right now. But she herself wasn't really in the mood for company, not with the jingle-jangle of her war memories ringing like bells in her head.

Sasuke's back was ramrod straight as he stomped ahead of them, and Sakura's thought turned briefly towards the death of his clan. Damn it. He shouldn't be left alone either- and why was that even on her shoulders? Shouldn't Kakashi...

As though her thoughts had summoned him, Kakashi suddenly appeared by her side, and only then did Sakura realize they'd walked off without him. She was more rattled than she'd realized, obviously.

"Children," Kakashi said and clapped his hands. "Your day isn't over yet. Did you suddenly forget you need a dismissal from your teacher before you can take your leave?" The air about him was less than serious, but he wasn't as chirpy and annoying as usual. Sakura doubted he was as affected as they were, or even affected at all, but perhaps he was for once being mindful of their collective mood.

He casually herded them out of the tower and continued leading them through the Maple district's alleys. They walked in silence, and for once Sakura wished that the boys would start bickering. All she could hear was their steps against stone and the whoosh of her heart in her ears.

"And here we are," Kakashi spoke up suddenly, facing a large green door with heavy scorch marks making black gouges in the wood. Voices could faintly be heard through the door, a murmur of conversation.

"What is this?" Sasuke said in a mutter, looking narrow-eyed at the door. Probably just his reasonable suspicion of everything Kakashi said or did shining through, Sakura thought.

Naruto was looking up at the door with a tilt to his head and then said slowly, "Sensei, it smells like beer. Or maybe sake." He could smell that from the other side of the door? Sakura spared him a surprised glance, relieved to find that the conversation was lessening the jumpiness in her limbs.

"Bars usually do," Kakashi said, leaning nonchalantly on the door until it opened. Sakura's eyebrows rose, Naruto gaped and Sasuke's expression grew sour as he crossed his arms. "Now, now, don't be like that, children." He swept them in through the door before they could protest, and the three of them almost tripped down the short stairs on the other side. The smell of alcohol was like invisible smog in the air.

"Kakashi-kun," Said the woman behind the bardisk, pausing in her cleaning of a large glass to smile at him. The empty eye sockets that gaped up at them would have taken Sakura aback more if she hadn't been so busy adjusting to the change in atmosphere. The air was warm and comfortable, with people playing cards and go at different tables. She'd underestimated Kakashi, because when he'd mentioned that this was a bar, she'd assumed it would be something not out of place in Knockturn alley. But this was different.

"Momo-san, it's been a while." Kakashi sauntered up to the woman and gave her a quick kiss. It didn't look romantic in the slightest to Sakura, but Sasuke grunted and Naruto made some vaguely shocked sound. "I brought some brats for you to meet."

Sasuke was the first to head towards the woman, though his steps were rigid and his expression uncomfortable. Naruto and Sakura followed a second later.

"First time here?" the woman, Momo, asked gently when they were all standing in front of her. She reminded Sakura of a Ministry interrogator called Asma-something, if Sakura recalled correctly. That woman had been without eyes too, and had that same air of focus that made you feel like she could see you anyway. Though Asma's cheeks hadn't been adorned with faded red triangles.

"Yes, ma'am," said Naruto hesitantly. He was staring at her face with horrified fascination. Sasuke avoided looking at her face directly at all, though whether from discomfort or politeness, Sakura couldn't say. Though Sasuke usually wasn't much for politeness...

"First timers, hey!" a man a few tables over called out, and when they turned to look at him, he and most of the other patrons raised their glasses or mugs or sake cups as if in salute. It felt strangely formal, maybe because their gazes lingered even after downing the alcohol.

"I don't suppose it's anything you can tell an old retired nin like myself," Momo said, "But have the first round on me, bratlings. I imagine you need it." The large shaggy dog at her feet that Sakura somehow hadn't even noticed let out a grunt, like it agreed. She squinted at it, realizing that the dog was missing one of its ears. A deep scar slashed through the short fur on its muzzle.

"First time's always the roughest," said another patron seated on a bar stool and leaning heavily on the bar disk. He took a sip of his mug as they watched. Sakura was starting to realize that the first time being referred to had nothing to do with first times in a bar.

"It's not my first time," Sasuke muttered, crossing his arms even tighter over his chest.

"First time during a mission, Sasuke-kun," said Kakashi quietly. He patted him briefly on the shoulder and ignored the subsequent glare directed his way.

"Eh? What?" Naruto frowned at them all, absently twisting the edge of his shirt in his hands as he looked about the room.

"First time here means first time mission death," the man leaning on the bardesk slurred and Momo shot him a small frown even as she turned towards Naruto, who'd paled a little again, and nodded.

"It's become something of a tradition, though of course not everyone follows it." Momo smiled again, bittersweet as her sightless gaze passed over them.

"Yeah, those snobby Hyugas would never set their dainty, high-class feet in here," the patron who'd shouted at them before shouted again. Quiet chuckles spread throughout the room.

"Now, what can I get you?" she asked, putting her hands flat to the wood. Before Sakura could declare that she wasn't going to let her young, not-yet-teenaged body consume any quantities of alcohol, Kakashi leaned forward.

"A small cup of warmed junmai-shu light for each of them."

"Kakashi, you cheap bastard! Junmai-shu light? That barely has any sting in it," a woman with short purple hair dressed in fishnet said loudly around a mouthful of what looked to be dango. Kakashi threw her a crinkled-eyed smile, but made no comment.

If Sakura remembered correctly, no distilled alcohol was added to high-grade saké, so the light version might be... acceptable, after all. A small cup wouldn't do any harm. "Okay," she said quietly, and met Sasuke's surprised look with a wan half-smile. Naruto was already nodding, apparently more at ease with the idea than she.

Momo poured them a tiny cup each of the warm liquid and placed them in front of three seats. Kakashi was already lounging against the bar with a slightly larger cup. The atmosphere was still warm, friendly. Sakura seated herself in between the boys and waited until they had their cups in hand before she awkwardly saluted them and Kakashi, and took a long sip of her small cup.

Perhaps this day wouldn't end in complete disaster, she thought as the warmth of the drink and the atmosphere chased away the hum of violence in her blood and the shiver in her fingers.


Sakura woke with a gasp, an animalistic sound making its way out of her throat before she smothered it with her forearm. Flames and blood, green light and deep cold. The winter battle of... when? She struggled out of bed, ignored the dizzy feeling in her head and stumbled up into the cool air of her room. She went to rummage through her drawers with what felt like a boulder seated in her chest.

She shouldn't be forgetting these things, these important dates. Seamus, with the silver of his Patronus fox fading as he gurgled up fleshy chunks... Had that been poison, or a spell? Ah. There, now. She found the correct paper and here was the notation. Right. It had been a combination of the two, a potion. That's what had taken him, that cold day in February, one of the Death Eaters had thrown a small jar at him and the cursed fluid inside had eaten it's way into him. She remembered now.

Sakura shakily drew her fingers over the words and then let herself sink to the floor. Harry had been there too. Him and Ron, hunched over Seamus' body. Urging her to fix it, to help their friend. Failing to meet that request. And then when the potion opened holes in his chest and stomach, she remembered crying her eyes out like a stupid little child, instead of doing something productive.

The phantom touch of her two best friends' arms were around her and Sakura had to fold the paper and put it away, lest her tears ruin these important memories. She leaned back and softly thumped the back of her head against the wall until her breathing eased. Stupid. She hadn't even known Abe, she had no business having nightmares like this at the event of his death. The gods knew his family would be having enough of those now.

Resolutely, she crawled back into bed, folded the covers over herself until they covered every inch of her and stuffed her hands between her thighs in the vain hope that it would make them stop shaking.

Hours later Sakura sat up in bed, shielding her eyes from the pale morning light and resolutely pushed the thought of how she'd awakened after a peaceful fall into slumber to the back of her mind. After their visit to the bar, Kakashi had dropped her off at home. He'd spoken a little with her mother and it wasn't too difficult to guess what about, as Sayuri had seated herself beside her bed as quiet and steady as a statue when he'd gone. Sakura had fallen asleep with her mother's fingers carding through her bangs.

As she got out of bed and slowly began preparing for the day, she hoped that Kakashi had gone to visit Sasuke and Naruto as well. They needed it more, and she shouldn't have left them, not even at Kakashi's urging. She wouldn't have, back when she'd been Hermione. Back when her boys had been Harry and Ron.

She left with her mother's kiss on her forehead and made her way to the team's usual meeting spot, as Kakashi hadn't mentioned any change in plans even after the dramatic development in their mission.

"Good morning, Sakura-chan," said Naruto. It was unusual for him to be here earlier than her, but she was still unsurprised to find him and Sasuke standing there. Both had dark circles under their eyes, though Sasuke's were more pronounced. She imagined his nightmares would have been like her own, with a shade of reality cast over it to make the horror even more pronounced.

Kakashi was barely an hour late, and Sakura was deeply thankful for that. The hour they'd waited had been very quiet, and though they'd stood close together in a way they'd never done before, it hadn't felt very intimate. Sakura suspected the boys had been as lost in their own thoughts as she herself had been.

"Good morning, my cute little team!" Kakashi called in that annoying way of his. And it was actually a relief. Naruto even made some halfhearted attempts to complain at him. "It's time to report to the Hokage, so we mustn't be late," he said and Naruto complained again, this time about the hypocrisy of that statement. Sakura found it in herself to smile a little, and maybe even admire the way Naruto seemed to be making himself bounce back. Ron used to be able to do that; the only one of their little trio who could. Both she and Harry had been much too good at brooding and worrying.

"Was the report from yesterday lacking?" Sasuke asked quietly, and then it occurred to Sakura that it was very odd indeed for them to be seeing the Hokage specifically this morning. Usually they'd get their D-ranks from a chunin behind the mission desk.

"Hmm, no," Kakashi said unhelpfully, meandering along the road like he hadn't just told them they mustn't be late. Sakura didn't feel like reprimanding him, and though Naruto threw a frown at his back, he stayed silent as well.

It took them several minutes longer than it should have to reach the tower, and by the time they knocked on the Hokage's door Kakashi had his nose stuck in that garish orange book again. Why he wasn't reprimanded by their leader, Sakura couldn't understand.

"You haven't had a good night's sleep," the Hokage stated when they'd bowed and greeted him. "Genin are not meant to be subjected to death so early on in their careers." His lined eyes were shaded with both sympathy and recognition. Sakura imagine that this wasn't the first time he'd seen genin deprived of sleep due to the reality of their profession.

"We'll pull through, old man," Naruto said and although his voice sounded shaky and exhausted, Sakura thought she heard certainty in his voice. Something about the way he said it made her feel less uncertain herself, to the point where she bothered to smack him lightly about the head and murmur a reprimand for his way of addressing their leader.

"I'm glad to hear that," the Hokage said with a small smile, though his eyes remained darkened. "Because I'm afraid I have some news you will not like." Sakura felt a leaden weight settle in her stomach at those words, and Sasuke's already hooded eyes grew darker. Naruto's smile wavered.

Their leader proceeded to explain that Abe-san's family had requested a follow-up mission, wanting to know who'd killed Abe and why. And possibly get revenge for his death. They'd requested that the team who found him be the ones to receive this mission, as apparently in their eyes team seven were the only ones who would understand their situation. A stupid way of reasoning, in Sakura's mind.

"Normally, I would not have entertained the idea of sending genin on such a mission, but the reward they've offered for its completion forced me to consider it." The stunned silence in the room spoke volumes of their thoughts on this sudden turnabout. "Of course, you would not be going on what would be considered a B-rank mission alone. In addition to your teacher, two members of ANBU would accompany you."

'Two ANBU operatives? For a B-rank?' thought Sakura with an internal frown. Was he trying to make them feel more at ease, perhaps? Kakashi himself should be enough protection on a mission of this rank, in her mind. But ANBU had a fearsome reputation, and perhaps the Hokage thought they'd be comforted by that.

Sasuke was the first to speak up and break the silence. "They want revenge for the death of one of their relatives." His voice sounded scratchy, like it was tearing itself out of his throat. Sakura felt her own throat ache in sympathy. "Fine." He didn't sound particularly enthusiastic, and Sakura knew there was something deeper behind his agreement. For once it didn't take much thought to figure out what her teammate was thinking.

"The old guy didn't deserve to die," Naruto said, and if he hadn't sounded so sincere Sakura would have glared at him for referring to their dead former client in such a way. 'Old guy', indeed! "So yeah. Whatever." Naruto sounded even less eager, voice slow and reluctant and Sakura had to wonder if he was just agreeing so Sasuke wouldn't show him up. But no, she couldn't think that badly of him. He wouldn't be callous enough to turn a person's death into a part of his game of one-upmanship with their teammate.

"I suppose this means we're accepting," Sakura said, that small hard smile slipping onto her lips like a knife between the ribs. These stupid and immature boys had no idea what they were signing up for, but she did. And because she knew, she had to come with them. Had to take this mission that made it feel like end-of-the-war Hermione was rising up to lean against the inside of her skin, waiting to break through. She had to be there when they finally realized how bad things could get.

"You don't have to," Kakashi said quietly from where he was slouching against the wall. Sakura smiled harder in response, and her hands barely trembled when the Hokage's seal stamped their fates onto the mission scroll.


"I've never been out of Konoha," Naruto said a few hours later. The sun lit up the dirt path ahead of them, and the birds chirped, and a gentle breeze sifted through the bright green leaves of the trees lining their way, and Sakura wanted to hex something. The sheer bright normalcy scraped against her insides like steel wool.

She took a deep breath and looked over at her blond teammate. "I have." To distract both herself and her teammates, she told them the story of how she'd accompanied her mother on a large construction project a few years earlier in a close-by village. Her mind remained on the mission more than on that old memory, though.

Sakura had recognized the purple-haired ANBU who'd greeted them with a silent nod at Konoha's gates as the one she'd seen at Abe's house. The second one had light brown hair to his chin, and Sakura couldn't for the life of her figure out either of their genders, unless the purple-haired one really was the secretary from the Hokage's office. She hadn't had much time to observe them either, as they'd disappeared into the trees that lined the path the moment they reached it. Sakura hadn't seen them since.

"I have been, as well," said Sasuke and it took Sakura a moment to realize he'd taken up the thread of the conversation. Unusual for him, to say the least, so she turned to listen. "Once, I accompanied..." There was a pause, and Sakura saw his eyebrows furrow. "...my mother. To the Hanro-gai fair."

She and Naruto traded a glance, though Sakura had only meant to look Naruto's way to see if he realized that Sasuke had done something thoroughly unusual. He'd shared something personal with them, even mentioned his late mother. He'd never made any reference to any relative within her hearing before. Perhaps he became more unguarded when he was sleep-deprived?

"What was the fair like?" Naruto had bounded up to their teammate, and bumped his shoulder in that awkward Narutoish way of his. Sakura smiled, just a little. "I've heard of it before, I think, and anyway I've never been to a fair before!" He looked a little grumpy by the end of that sentence, and Sakura noticed that the tense line of Sasuke's shoulders easing.

"Fine, I guess. I don't remember much of it." Sakura wandered up to walk beside him as well and brushed her arm against his. Though she kept her eyes on the road the whole time, she saw from the corner of her eye how Sasuke's gaze darted her way. A few seconds passed before he suddenly frowned. "Stop boxing me in, idiots."

He sped up his pace until he was walking quite a bit ahead of them, but Sakura was more surprised that Sasuke had let them 'box him in' in the first place than by his sudden withdrawal. Naruto muttered something uncomplimentary, but stayed next to her rather than following Sasuke. Was he trying to give Sasuke space, having realized that he'd just let them in a little? It was difficult to tell with Naruto, who seemed to take turns being stupid and stupidly perceptive.

The warmth of the sun and their conversation had sufficiently distracted Sakura from her earlier dark thoughts, so when the dust and debris of an enormous explosion tore up the road ahead and to their right and enveloped Sasuke like a fog in the process, she had to take a second to process what was happening.

"Bastard!" shouted Naruto, and that drove Sakura to action. With a kunai in hand, she darted forward, saw a blur in the stirred-up dust cloud ahead and couldn't decide if it was friend or foe. Her ears rang from the blast, and that horrible cold feeling of war froze her blood.

There was the sound of metal against metal to her right, and then again to her left. And up ahead. Three opponents? More? She threw herself breathlessly into the dust, crouched low under a swinging blade- no, not a blade- white and heavy and when it met the ground a centimeter from her foot, it looked more like a pike but- Sakura swiped at an ankle wrapped in bandages below violet below-the-knee pants- her opponent wielded his weapon like a sword, like it had sharp edges-

"Sakura, behind you!" came Sasuke's voice to her side, and thank Merlin he was still alive! She threw herself in the direction of his voice, just as something came down heavy on the ground she'd been standing on, cracking the dry, packed soil like it was nothing. She crashed into someone and nearly put the kunai into his arm before she realized that someone was Sasuke. No, green eyes and glasses- what? No, black eyes, her teammate had black eyes...

"You will not be able to escape us," said a man's voice, the one who'd cracked the ground. He adopted a Taijutsu pose and then his head was promptly split in two. Sakura saw the purple-haired ANBU flip into a tree and then disappear again, but she was distracted by the familiar feel of brain matter and blood and pieces of cranium descending on her like some sort of macabre rain. Sasuke made a choked-off sound, and Sakura pulled him aside as the dust cleared enough for her to see their first opponent, the one with the white sword. Mindlessly, she wiped the bodily fluids from her face, jaw locked and teeth grinding with tension.

Dressed almost exclusively in different shades of violet, with long white hair and a rope tied around his waist, he looked like the sort of fashion-reject Lavender would have turned her nose up at. Had he taken the time to put on that red eyeshadow and those small red dots over his thin eyebrows before coming to ambush them? Sakura wasn't sure what expression she was wearing when that thought hit her, but it was surely an odd one.

"We're not going to escape you, you fucking bastard!" Naruto yelled, as two Naruto clones attacked the young man. One got distracted by the gore on the ground and was summarily reduced to smoke by a swipe of the man's slender white sword, and the second clone only got a bit closer than that before joining the the first in smoky nonexistence. Naruto yelled, making more clones as Sakura dragged Sasuke further to the side. Half a minute later the clones were gone again and the man stood in front of them, sword raised. He was so much faster than her it wasn't even funny. If only she'd had magic at her disposal...

A kunai was a poor substitute, but she met his sword with it and pushed back as he bore down on her. With her other hand, she pulled out her oversized senbon. Chakra pumped through her arms to keep them steady, but the man's expression was unchanging, as was the force of his sword-arm.

Sasuke came to her aid, his own kunai aiming for the man's other arm. "Trash ought to stay put," their opponent murmured and suddenly, impossibly, the flesh of his forearm started bulging, like snakes were curling under his skin. Sakura tried to keep her attention on the man's sword, the one that was slowly but steadily coming towards her head despite her blocking it, and the irrational thought that he was a werewolf did pass her mind. But no, it was daytime and sunlight and this was not England. His natural strength was reinforced with a great deal of chakra, nothing else. So when the bulges pulsed and split to reveal white bone spearing itself out of his flesh, she focused on that instead. No seals, so- bloodlimit, had to be- she grunted as pushed down on her harder, as the bones growing like a crown out of his arm lengthened until they were a handspan from her face-

"Mou, I don't appreciate you bullying my students," said Kakashi, appearing out of nowhere and tsk'ing. His fingers wrapped around the man's upper arm and pulled it from her face, and Sakura simultaneously wanted to hug and hit their teacher.

"Sharingan Kakashi," their opponent said, tilting his head like a bird as he studied their teacher. Calculation and caution warred for dominance in his eyes. "This trash is your-"

'Enough with the 'trash' already', Sakura thought, breathed in sharply and stabbed him in the leg. When his head spun back around to stare at her she bared her teeth at him, and his glare somehow turned the air around them into something that pressed down on her and made her feel small and scared and like resistance was just futile and- wait, what? She'd been in the presence of dementors, and this young human's stare was nothing compared to the feel of every good and loving memory collapsing inside you until nothing remained but the cold and the despair, and so- and so- fuck this!

Sakura glared right back at him, thought of those horrible years of war and all the hastily put-together funerals, and thought again, fuck this. She'd heard of killing intent, of course, and she would not fall under its thrall. Not when she'd already been so useless in this battle. It got easier to breathe, and then Kakashi tugged on the young man's hair and threw him backwards, threw her a quick eye-crinkled smile and then followed.

She turned to Sasuke to say something, took one look at his pale and sweating face and realized that not everyone had felt something worse than that killing intent. Touching his shoulder carefully, she called out his name under her breath. They needed to move before an other enemy came for them, but she'd read somewhere that you had to bring people out of KI-induced fear gently. It took several nerve-wracking seconds for Sasuke to look at her, pupils blown so wide she could barely see a thin line of his dark iris surrounding it.

"Let's move, Sasuke," she said and when he nodded she felt that she could pull him along without causing him to attack her in his fear. Several Naruto clones were standing, looking up at the tree-line where Kakashi was still fighting. Sakura frowned at it, because their teacher was definitely much stronger than that young man was. But Kakashi probably had his reasons for drawing out the fight, and as far as she could hear, his was the only fight still ongoing.

"Sakura-chan! Bastard, you're- you're hurt!" a Naruto gasped and Sakura immediately followed the line of his gaze to see blood running in thin tendrils over Sasuke's hand. Cursing herself, she almost slipped on some bodily fluid or other from the man whose head had been split open, when she turned to tend to the injury. It was a sizable gash in his upper arm that might need a few stitches, but it wasn't too bad. Bandages would do for now.

"He said-," Sasuke started and then coughed. His face was caked with dust and sweat, hair matted and dirty. Sakura imagined she looked about the same. "He said something about... my eyes."

"What're you talking about, bastard?" said Naruto, and it was almost funny how he could sound so endearing while insulting Sasuke. Concern widened his blue eyes and he hovered around them as Sakura cleaned and wrapped their teammate's wound. She noticed that he was avoiding looking at the ground, and she couldn't blame him, covered as it was in viscera. The whole road around them looked like something out of a horror movie.

"That man. He said he'd come to collect me, that my eyes... something." Sasuke rubbed his brow, frowning. Sakura was relieved to see his face was slowly regaining what little color it usually had.

"What? What man? What are you talking about?" Before Naruto could start shouting at an already frayed-around-the-edges Sasuke, Sakura explained what man he'd been referring to.

"That quite a few people covet bloodlimits was something we were lectured on in the Academy, if you remember," Sakura said and Naruto frowned thoughtfully before nodding.

"Yeah, something about burning your dead teammates bodies if they have bloodlimits or some special body techniques," Naruto said with frown, and Sakura nodded. "I still don't get why someone would wanna have someone else's body parts inside them. That's just creepy."

"That's how you have sex, you realize," Sakura said, which felt a bit crude but made Naruto splutter in such a way that the strain in the air thawed. Sasuke even snorted, and the fist he'd clenched on his knee unfurled.

"Sakura-chan!" Naruto sounded scandalized, and Sakura had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at his expression. "And anyway, that's not what I meant," he finished with, still looking like he was a second away from shouting 'pervert!' at her.

"I know, I know. And I agree, it is creepy. But don't underestimate the lengths some people are willing to go to gain more power." The last part she said softly, her hands slowing where they were wrapping the end of the bandage around Sasuke's arm. She would have continued if at that moment Sasuke hadn't decided to turn his head and look at her.

In one of his red eyes, a lone comma-like dot spun slowly in a circle.

"Sasuke, you..." She put a finger to the corner of his eye and he twitched away from her with a confused frown. Naruto bounced over to look as well, and then promptly tripped over his feet.

"What? What about my eyes?" His gaze was flickering between them and his brows furrowed harder. It took a second for Sakura to recognize the expression on his face as worry, and she hastened to explain what his eyes looked like. When she was done, Sasuke's eyes had widened, and now he was the one to put fingers to the corner of his eye. "Oh. I guess that's why..."

"Why what?" Naruto said impatiently. "Shouldn't you be more happy about those eyes, bastard?"

"I am perfectly happy," said Sasuke, sounding like the word somehow burned his tongue, and scowled. "I could see chakra flicker in that bone sword, so I knew it wasn't a normal sword even before he started..." He gestured vaguely.

"-growing bones out of his arm," Sakura finished. Sasuke nodded, a shade of astonishment in the back of his eyes, still. Being as close to him as she was, Sakura could see the red of his iris was circled by a black line. That explained why she hadn't noticed the red of his irises when his pupils had been enlarged.

"Uh, alright," Naruto said, shrugging a little. "Well, you have those eyes now bastard, so congrats!" He punched Sasuke in the shoulder of his uninjured arm, caught sight of something behind them and then yelled, "Kakashi-sensei!", bounding away towards their teacher. Though she found his response a tad flippant, Sakura was mostly just relieved that he didn't seem to be jealous of Sasuke's new ability. Perhaps that talk they'd had after she'd carelessly revealed that Kakashi had the Sharingan had stayed with him.

She looked over and saw Kakashi with the young man they'd been fighting slung over his shoulder. Naruto greeted him enthusiastically, bloody footprints marking his path to their teacher. The two ANBU appeared on the road as she was looking, carrying two other people. The other enemies, obviously.

"... didn't do much good." Sasuke murmured in the silence of Naruto's departure and Sakura raised a questioning brow at him, making an inquisitive sound. The Sharingan had faded from his eyes. But Sasuke wasn't looking at her, instead staring down at his bandaged arm with a blank look in his dark eyes. Oh. She got it, then. Or at least she thought she did.

"Well, you haven't trained with them yet, have you?" she asked gently and Sasuke snorted again, but it sounded... off. Before she could say anything further, he rolled his neck and then started walking towards Naruto and their teacher. She would have felt dismissed, if not for the taut curl of his shoulders and the stiffness of his back. She'd have thought activating his clan's bloodlimit to be cause for celebration, but apparently that was not the case.

The wind carried a few more muttered words back to her, half a sentence, and she didn't think he'd meant for her to hear them. "...he would have been able to." She wasn't sure who he was referring to, but the feeling that something was wrong didn't leave her.

With a mental sigh, she righted her shirt and tried to brush some of the dust off. Then she followed him.


A/N: It's been ages, I know. But none of my stories are abandoned, still. RL has just been terribly busy. My health issues have cleared, though! :)

I love your reviews, obviously! What did you think about this chapter? About everyone's reaction to their first brush with mission death? About the team 7 interaction? About their new mission? About the fight scene? Also: did anything happening in this chapter seem to contradict anything in another chapter? I reread this story before writing this chapter and I have a bucketfull of notes, but since it's been a while I thought I should ask, just to make sure...

I in general receive wonderful reviews for this story, and as I reread them I was again very thankful for your support. It's still awesome to me that people like what I write, and take the time to comment as well! That said, reading through/skimming all the reviews I've gotten for this story, there was something I wanted to mention...

If your review sounds like this: "Do this, do that, if you don't do so-and-so you're doing it wrong, your characters have the wrong opinions, so-and-so character is obviously [negative opinion], this character is obviously acting like that because of so-and-so, etc." you're not giving me constructive criticism or suggestions, you're deciding things about my story/characters based on your own (subjective) opinions. It comes across as bossy and arrogant rather than helpful, even if you mean well.

A lot of people have asked me if Sakura will have magic in this story and whether there'll be any pairings, and so I thought I should say that I would never write a Naruto/HP crossover without magic in some form, and that whenever I decide to include a pairing the thought of writing conventional romance bores me. It's not set in stone yet, but I imagine the main ship in this fic to be Team 7 friendship. I certainly won't be pairing any twelve- or thirteen-year-olds, in any case. That's not to say nobody will ever fall in love or have sex, just that if you're looking for romance, this fic probably isn't a good fit for you.

Finally, thanks to Against-The-Current (FF won't let me write out her name properly for some reason, but substitute the hyphens for dots and there you have it), for her help (and general awesomeness)!