Fate's Allotter: Part 1 finale

Chapter 9: Tight Corners

It didn't take a shinobi of Minato's caliber to put two and two together. He saw Kakashi's bandaged eye, Obito's sharingan, Rin's tears, and Sakura's notable absence, and it wasn't hard to figure out the rest. Kakashi had given him the coordinates for the cave, and Minato had wondered, as he dashed through the bamboo forest, if he would find a woman or a just another body.

He didn't know what to feel. She had saved his kids, but what about her own? There were seven little boys and girls hoping and praying that she would return home, and he didn't know what he was going to tell them if she…

He shook his head. Best not to think about that possibility unless it came to it.

Suppressing his chakra as he approached the cave, he considered the situation carefully. When he pressed his hand on the ground, he sensed two people in the cave, but that didn't tell him if they were friendly Konoha bred shinobi or a trap waiting to spring. Given his luck, it was more likely the latter.

His wrist flicked, and one of his special kunai found a home in a clearing not far away. Better to be on the safe side. Then, he approached the entrance with great care, half-expecting a genjutsu to hit him, but he didn't sense the usual itch of foreign chakra trying to invade his central nervous system. Instead, he heard the quiet murmuring of voices.

"It seems as though you are a rarer find than I had first imagined," a man said. His voice sounded hollow and slightly mechanic as though he were speaking through a ventilator.

Minato paused, once more considering the possibilities of a trap. He edged around the corner discretely but was only greeted by another wall of rock. This was a bad place to be in: poor lighting, unstable surroundings with a potential for a cave-in, and the certainty that at least one shinobi was not a familiar friendly.

For a moment, he considered drawing back, retreating before his presence was detected, but then there was this quiet sound, a cough, followed by a sharp intake of air.

"You won't win in the end," a female voice strained while a note of pain crept into her voice.

Minato released the breath he didn't know he had been holding. Sakura. So she was alive.

Now all he had to do was make sure she stayed that way.

Mindful of his surroundings, he edged forward, careful not to overturn so much as a pebble.

"You never win," Sakura continued, sounding hoarse yet determined, "You never get what you want."

Fabric rustled. "You assume too much."

Minato peeked around the next corner, and it felt as though someone had punched him in the gut. He very much doubted that this was the state that Kakashi had last seen her in, designs slashed into her arms, pink hair matted a crimson red, and skin so pale that it was obvious that she was running dangerously low on blood. She looked as though she was on the verge of collapsing.

"Goodbye Haruno Sakura or whatever you are."

His body was moving before he fully registered what he was doing, appearing at her side in a flash, gripping the man's wrist and forcing that kunai back. Dark eyes glittered at him through the slits in the man's mask in way that made it seem as though this is exactly what he had expected.

Those dark eyes crinkled as though, behind that mask, the man was smiling.

.

Sakura looked from one man to the other.

There was a strange amount of tension in the air as though the impending fight held bad blood on both ends, and there was a certain eagerness to the masked man's posture as he leaned into Minato's grip as if this had been a fight that was long overdue. He seemed to feed off of Minato's anger, shifting his weight so that the kunai scraped through the superficial layers of her skin.

Minato's eyes narrowed, and the bones of the masked man's wrist whined and cracked under the strain. Despite this, Sakura still got the impression that the masked man thriving off this open animosity, and she imagined that a rather crazed smile had taken residence on his face.

'Shit.'

.

Fighting in cramped spaces was not something typically taught in the Academy. Especially not when you had to simultaneously worry about a comrade who was not only immobile and slowly bleeding to death.

While Minato wasn't exactly a Nara, he could usually find a decent tactical strategy out of any mess. Yet, the situation he found himself in didn't exactly making things easy. First, there was the anger. That was a problem his analytical mind was quite aware of as fury had a way of tunnel visioning one's objectives. It increased the likelihood of a poor outcome.

Knowing this though didn't dim the degree of his rage, but it cooled it somewhat so that logical thinking wasn't forgone. The desire to hack the man in front of him to shreds was still there but now it was overshadowed by control. Cold, calculating anger replaced the boiling overflowing fury. In many ways, it was this very trait, so rarely expressed by the normally calm man, which made him so formidable.

He assessed her condition quickly, forcing his mind to categorize her present state in as detached manner as he could. How much time did he have to work with? Taking in the pale complexion, the short, rapid breaths, and the blue tint to her lips, he grit his teeth. Not much. She had lost too much blood, and was dangerously close to organ shut down. The fact that she was still conscious was nothing short of a miracle; that she kept holding up several tons of rock spoke volumes on her titanic willpower.

The man with the mask stared at him with something close to curiosity as though he had stumbled upon a novel specimen. "How… interesting."

Minato pressed his weight forward as though he was intent on forcing the kunai away from Sakura's neck—which he was, but perhaps not by the obvious means.

Seeming to read through his intentions, his opponent raised his other hand in a single hand sign.

Timing was everything in the shinobi world, especially for ninja like him that relied on superior speed and enhanced reflexes to get the edge on his opponent. Minato was a master of precise timing, but that is not to say that such a talent came without its close calls.

All around them, exploding tags lit up like sparkling candles as Minato's elbow brushed against Sakura's collarbone. The tips of his hair singed as he activated his jutsu, and if he hadn't still been wearing his pack, he was certain his back would have taken a fair amount of damage.

Right away, he knew he had pushed an excessive amount of chakra into his teleportation technique, but he was taking no chances in making sure that even though the point of contact was small, no part of Sakura was getting left behind.

Unused to the aftereffects of his jutsu, she wobbled uncertainly when they landed. Taking in her surroundings, he couldn't blame her for that weak pulse of chakra to disrupt genjutsu; the flying thunder god technique was still pretty unreal even to those who had faced it firsthand. It took her a moment to grasp onto what had happened, but then she steadied herself, smiling at him weakly.

"You came back for me."

A drop of ruby blood trickled down the side of her neck, and he watched her worriedly as she swayed unsteadily. Then like the flip of a switch, her legs seemed to give out, and it was only his good reflexes that saved her from a nasty face plant.

Setting her gently on the ground, his hands hovered over her at a temporary loss on what to do. She was so pale and so still, and he wasn't a medic nin. Her skin was cold and clammy, and the tips of her fingers were turning blue and cyanotic.

Minato knew the basics, stitches here, bandage there, and he could even set a broken bone if he had to, but as he frantically dug through his hip pouch, he couldn't help the belated thought that he didn't know enough. He wasn't Rin, and medicine had been one of his worst electives when he was preparing for the jounin exam.

But that didn't mean he wouldn't try. Fingers closed around a small red pill, and he tilted her chin back before shoving it down her throat. Given their side effects, blood pills were only to be used in desperate situations as a last resort when no donor blood packs were within easy reach.

Minato didn't really understand all the science behind it, but he was pretty sure this qualified as desperate.

"Come on."

He knew the effect of such things was not instantaneous, but as her pulse grew fainter beneath his fingertips, he began debating giving her a second pill.

It was about this time that he realized that his other hand was still hanging onto something. A quick glance down and the object was instantly released. A man's arm.

Unfortunately for the masked ninja, Minato didn't quite take the same care to include all of him in his transportation jutsu so only part of him came along for the journey. The arm began bubbling and oozing as though it had been dropped in acid, and the blond shinobi was quick to kick it aside. He had no interest in finding out what kind of crazy chakra was left in that thing.

Sakura's lips began to lose the blue tinge, and some color seemed to be returning to her face. Minato sighed in relief. Just as he was bending to pick her back up, the back of his neck prickled.

"It seems as though I have made the same mistake twice."

Minato's head swiveled to the edge of the field where the masked man was picking up his lost appendage. Somehow, it didn't surprise him to see that the unnamed shinobi had survived the resulting cave in, but he refused to feel remorse for wishing for the opposite. Anger still simmered beneath the surface, demanding ramifications and vengeance, but he let that hatred cool, converting it to a cold, calculated focus.

"Again I was too slow," the masked man lamented, "but I can assure you Yellow Flash of Konoha, such an error will not be made a third time."

Minato stood protectively in front of Sakura, drawing several kunai from his pouch. There was something odd about this man, something that set him on edge. He had no markings of village affiliations, and he kept his appearance as ambiguous as possible behind that cloak and mask. What was he hiding?

And how did he know Sakura?

He could have teleported back to his team where Rin could have taken over Sakura's medic care, but his gut told him that this was one opponent he didn't want anywhere near his team. One potential hostage was bad enough. Add in that Kakashi was wounded and Obito was low on chakra, and it added up to a bad combination.

He decided to take his chances here, pitting his skill against an unknown opponent. No backup. Just two men standing in eachother's way.

He sincerely hoped that was a decision he would not come to regret.

A dozen or so specially marked, three-pronged kunai were sent flying in all direction around the clearing. When there were only two left in his hand, his grip loosen on one and he let it slide from his fingers. Down it fell, digging into the dirt next to Sakura's arm. The last kunai, he kept. His knuckles turned white with the strength of his grip.

If his opponent was worried, his mask hid his expression. "I hate loose ends."

.

The masked man studied his opponent with a kind of wariness that might have come across as somewhat unexpected from a shinobi of his caliber, but if one considered the history of this particular matchup (at least from the masked-man's perspective), he had every right in the world to be hesitant.

There were only a few opponents that could go head to head with him, and only three that had ever been able to bring him before the knees of death, begging for more time. The first was a near-replica of the man standing before him, a Minato of a different world yet one that was not so different from this one.

He hated that Minato. All of this, his home world's destruction, his endless quest, all of it was Minato's fault.

He had been subtly making plans for nearly two decades since the collapse of his original universe, and he had been searching relentlessly for the perfect match, the world with the right elements required to achieve the desired result. In essence, he had been waiting a long time for this particular opportunity, and he'd be damned if he let it slip by just because another Minato stood in his way.

The problem with his first world was not that he had lost, but that he had won. Stupid of him really since what he won was the wrong thing. As his world had faded from existence, she had laughed at him, spitting blood in his face.

"You never get what you want."

Damn her.

Her curse had echoed through his mind as his clumsy efforts led to the destruction of hundreds of worlds. Even later, when he finally perfected his technique, her words still lingered. Never what you want…

He would prove her wrong and would laugh in her face when she saw what he had done.

He was so close now.

The girl had done her job, as expected, but letting an extraneous Allotter linger in this reality would only cause unwarranted complications. Her existence alone was tedious at best, and a dangerous threat if she ever managed to return to her original world.

No, that would not happen, the masked man thought as a kunai appeared from the folds of his sleeve, not while he still breathed.

Across the clearing, Minato crouched in a low defensive stance, a heavy kunai in hand. Behind him, the girl remained limp and unmoving. Perhaps nature would just do the job all on it's own, drowning the annoying vixen in the grim reaper's cloak. Her death would be a permanent thing, no reincarnations, no successful revival techniques, no more Allotters, and while that prospect was particularly exciting, the man with the swirled mask was leaving nothing up to chance.

He had waited a long time, a very long time. He was not about to allow perfectly laid plans to fall to pieces.

.

Steal slid through his fingers with an ease that only came from years of practice. Minato didn't have to calculate distances or projected trajectory; that came from experience. He simply waited for his opponent to duck or dodge as he pooled chakra around his naval.

But the problem was, the masked man didn't move. He simply stood there as a three-pronged kunai slid though his eye socket and out the other side, neither cracking the mask nor slicing the skin.

Had Minato been anyone else, his eyes would have widened of shock. Had he been anyone else, he would have made the rookie mistake of standing still, gaping openly, and failing to follow through on his next strike. But Minato wasn't just anybody.

The kunai landed on the ground, splitting a thick weed neatly in half. Less than a second later, drops of red sprinkled on the leafy grass.

.

"Do you think I am such a fool as to fall for the same old tricks twice?"

The blond shinobi didn't reply, unable to move.

"I did expect more. Pity."

.

Sakura hacked wetly as she fought against the waves of dizziness and nausea. Feeling very much as though a freight train had steamrolled her, she wondered, given her present condition, what the poor train must have looked like.

Ha, ha. It probably wasn't as funny as she thought it was, but the dry humor at least helped her roll over to a more defensible position.

Spotting a kunai next to her elbow, she pulled it from the ground. Her hands were shaking badly as she gripped the steal, and it took a considerable amount of effort to steady them. The kunai was heavier than she thought it would be, but she already felt better by simply holding a weapon in front of her. Heh, she truly was a ninja if the cold edge of steel is what brought her comfort. Her mother would be so proud.

Fighting off a wave of vertigo, she pushed herself up on her knees. Her hand splashed in something wet. It took her a long moment—longer than it should have—to look down and realize that the coloration was somewhat off. Blood. Her hand was covered in blood.

The ground was saturated in it, and everywhere she looked, her eyes encountered increasingly gruesome horror. Entrails dangled from the undergrowth, Kakashi was strung from a tree with both his eyes and ears scooped out like scoops of ice cream. Farther away there was a pile of bodies, and she could make out tangled strands of dark brown hair as Rin stared at her lifelessly. They were all there, Obito, Naruto, Sasuke, her Kakashi-sensei…

She took a deep breath. 'No. This isn't real.'

Shakily, her hands pressed together forming a simple seal. "Kai," she whispered hoarsely.

The genjutsu broke, but while the scene of horror changed, an equally disturbing image took its place. A double genjutsu?

"Kai," she said again, more urgently, but this time the image didn't waver.

Her ears were ringing and the grass felt cool beneath her fingertips. There was still blood on the ground, but the dark stains belonged to more than just her. Heart pounding, her pupils dilated in shock.

She felt off-center as though someone had tilted the earth and everything was now backwards and sideways. She must still be trapped in some kind of genjutsu because there was no way that was Minato, the Yellow Flash, Hero of Konoha, the man who had just saved her. There was no way it could be him with a kunai through his spine.

.

Perhaps, Minato thought, he had severely underestimated his opponent. But then, he mused as the masked man let his "body" slump to the ground, not even checking for a confirmed kill before charging headlong at the arousing kunoichi, his opponent had also underestimated him.

What a pity.

It seemed as though the masked man was another victim of an inflated ego. He had played with fire so often that he had forgotten it was dangerous. It seemed like a common problem of shinobi once they reached a certain caliber. While Minato knew for a fact that he was not the strongest shinobi in existence, he also was quite aware that overconfidence was the number one downfall of powerful shinobi.

All it took was one mistake.

He didn't know why the masked man thought he was stupid enough to purposefully put his enemy between himself and the person he was defending. That was just basic tactics 101, and Minato wasn't stupid. He had teleported to a rather scenic view of the clearing in a tree just above Sakura's position while his clone had tested the waters.

He only regularly used a few techniques, things he was sure no one could copy or steal from him, but that did not mean that they were his only jutsu. Only a few people still remembered that the once-upon-a-time prodigy had started his shinobi career with the sudden realization that he had earth type chakra.

Shocking? He hoped so. It was one of the trump cards he held close to his chest in the event that he ever came across an opponent that required something more than his usual card tricks.

Earth clones were incredibly convenient in that sense; they were solid and could land lethal strikes almost as well as he could. They were perfect for testing his opponent's abilities without having to use himself as the test dummy. Clones were expendable; he was not.

In any case, it seemed to work well enough to deceive the masked nin. What concerned Minato though was the fact that the man seemed to not only anticipate his strike pattern but also knew how to counter it. His speech implied that they had fought before, perhaps before his development of the dematerialization jutsu (as that's something Minato would have undoubtedly remembered).

In any case, the Konoha nin had deduced that the dematerialization jutsu also came with its limitations. The masked man had been able to grasp the man's wrist earlier, and at the very least, he would need to become tangible at the exact moment of an attack (or else his strike would phase though his target). It was also possible that the jutsu only covered his head, but Minato didn't really have the time to experiment.

As the masked man reached striking distance from Sakura, she raised her arms defensively, too slow and unsteady on her feet to dodge the blow. From above, Minato held his position until the last possible second.

'Now!'

His body moved back to the first kunai he had left next to Sakura.

.

She turned to protect her vital organs and moved her right arm up to block the strike. There was this sickening sensation of something slimy crawling through her arm like a ghost's ectoplasm. It was almost surreal, like a slow motion horror film, as she watched the hand with the kunai slid through her arm.

Eyes widening as she predicted its path, her chakra, or what little was left of it, moved through her system on impulse. There wasn't a plan; there wasn't anywhere to go, blocked in by the trees as she was, but the reaction was as instinctive as the one that made her raise her arm to block the blow.

She couldn't say exactly what she did, just that one moment the kunai was sliding through the subcutaneous fat above her hip and the next everything exploded. Rocks went flying in all directions as she was thrown backwards and slammed into a tree with a sickening crack. Dazed and wondering what she had broken this time, she had trouble focusing on her surroundings. As her head lolled to the side, she couldn't tell if she imagined that flash of yellow or if there really was a sudden splash of orange.

There was a buzzing, ringing sound in her ears. It grew louder as the initial shrill deepened into a voluminous roar.

.

It felt as though her body was on fire as she stared at the world through a crimson hue. Sasuke stood several feet away, sword drawn, blood dripping down his side. The sole survivor of the Uchiha massacre was clearly favoring his right side while his left arm swung uselessly against the grisly wound.

The pungent smell of ash and burnt flesh stung her nostrils, but her attention had narrowed down to a single thought: Make him pay.

Sasuke coughed, blood and saliva spattered against the ground, and despite the slight sway in his stance, he stood resilient. Proud until the very end.

"She's dead Dobe. This is pointless."

Sakura growled, a low and threatening timber. Make him pay. Sharp claws twitched, yearning to dig into flesh, her lips lusted to taste hot blood, and her ears demanded to hear the melody of his screams. She had no patience for useless words, and there was nothing that slivery tongue could say to take back what he had done.

She had curled up, ready to pounce, when suddenly there was another body in her way. Kakashi.

"Naruto stop! If you loved Sakura at all, you won't undo all that she worked for!"

That made her, (him?) pause. Sakura, that name meant something. The bloodlust was still there, boiling, churning, demanding as it rolled beneath the skin, but the pause lifted the haze slightly, enough so he could remember.

"Sakura?" he croaked, wiping his head around as though she would suddenly appear.

"Sakura?"

In another world, in a different time, and as far from him as fate could push her, a pink haired girl shuddered. She felt his call. An inferno ripped through her body; it came pouring from the scar in her arm, itching and burning and racing all the way down to her toes. 'You're hurting me!' she whimpered.

It didn't stop or yield. It gave no leeway, no option for compromise.

"Sakura!"

Arms slipped around her, and she fended them off as best as she could. The three-pronged kunai struck home, sliding through something soft and warm. Two worlds swam before her vision in a nauseating manner as her face was splattered in warm crimson.

Blue eyes winced, but the arms didn't let her go. Instead, hands gently wiped the flecks of blood off her chin.

She knew those eyes, blue with flecks of green. She stopped struggling. She blinked at him as the vision of burning red chakra and bleeding teammates gradually dissolved. The shaking didn't stop, and she felt raw on the inside as though all of her organs had been burned down to ash.

"—ato…?"

She didn't really know whose name she uttered that night, but later she would come to realize, that this may have been the deciding factor in what the future held for her. At the time, she didn't realize what such a thing could have meant, but she would learn soon enough.

"—s okay… I got you."

In her last moments of consciousness, Sakura felt herself falling, hair flying past her face as she gave into gravity, but before her body could collide with the ground, something warm and safe wrapped around her and spun her away.

.

Kakashi had always been observant; it is one of the many traits that made him such an effective scout, but this time, with his eye in its present condition, the small band of three had to depend on someone else's eyes.

For Obito, it was a somewhat unusual position to find himself in, playing lookout while the other two rested. Prior to rediscovering that he was in fact a Uchiha (and not some bastard son like it had occasionally been implied), he suddenly found himself thrust into the position of having the best eyes on the team whereas previously he had had the worst.

Good eyes or bad eyes though, he would never get used to his sensei's abrupt appearances.

Out of habit, he opened his mouth—maybe in greeting, maybe to crack a joke, maybe to angrily demand why it took him so long—but his mouth just kind of hung there, gaping open, as everything he might have said died in a breath of sputtered air.

Obito would never forget the way those eyes looked when his sensei was covered in blood and his elbow was oozing some sort of purple substance. In that moment, Obito never doubted that there was anyone alive more dangerous than Minato Namikaze.

"Get Rin."

Swallowing his shock, the young Uchiha stumbled over himself, nearly tripping, in his rush to obey.

In Minato's arms was a young woman. Her pale skin was speckled in dry blood while twin track lines ran from her eyes down her face from where tears carried the dirt away. Her lips parted slightly as though she were crying out for help, while green eyes stared onward, unblinking.

Obito had seen dead bodies before, in the anatomy class at the Academy and then later when his team made their first kill, but he had never seen a dead body of one of his comrades. As he scurried under the tangle of tree roots to their makeshift shelter, he prayed with every fiber of his being.

Please, Kami, don't let this one be his first.

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At the end of the day, they still had a mission to complete. So regardless of the fact that one of their teammates was comatose and two others had to remain behind (Rin to heal and Obito to guard the hallowed out tree trunk they were hiding in), the other two ninja still had an obligation to complete their assigned mission even if their heart wasn't really in it. They had each learned something important from this disaster of a mission.

Kakashi, had arguably learned the most, and made it his mission in life to be the best-damned one-eye ninja the world has ever seen. He vowed to get stronger so that he could protect his teammates.

Ironically, Obito learned to never give up on his teammates because sometimes it was the ones that asked for the least amount of help that needed it the most. His dream didn't change so much in quality as it did in character: Hokages needed to be skilled enough to protect all the ninja under them—especially the strong ones.

Rin learned that just as she depended on her teammates for support, they depended on her as well. As she knelt next to Sakura and poured chakra into her ruined back, she quietly pledged to train harder so that everyone she counted on could in turn count on her.

Minato didn't like to think about what he had learned but decided that as soon as they returned to Konoha, he was putting teleportation seals on every floor of the hospital, the hokage tower, his apartment and anywhere else he could think of.

But what Sakura learned wasn't so much as spoken as it was dreamed…

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She was bathed in golden light, warm like a soft blanket. She felt strangely… safe, such a rare thing for someone of her profession. So she was dead then?

"No, not dead," an ambiguous voice answered her, "You still have a task to complete."

She frowned. The spirits were seeking her out? Why? To send her back to her world?

"No child, Kami guided your passage to this world to complete your task. Why would he send you back?"

She felt anger grow, burning through her chest. She had been ripped from her Konoha, shoved out of the way, sent not only to a different world but a different time, and the spirits still expected her to fulfill some paperwork fortune-cookie task for them?!

The golden light stirred around her uneasily. "Although you feel betrayed, child, Kami did not curse you. You are precious and beloved, and such a task would not be given if you were unable."

Sakura shook herself. What was the point of arguing with spirits? "What's my task?"

Again, the golden light drifted around her in a somewhat anxious manner as though she were a bird about to take flight.

"You are more than you know," it answered her evasively, "This is the third world you have been in, and in each world, you bring balance and courage. You are the key, the pivot, the balance. You turn the broken lock."

Sakura didn't understand. She was just a girl, boring and plain and average. She wasn't special.

"Oh, but you are child. Kami would not have entrusted this task to anyone else."

"What task?" Sakura asked again.

"You bring balance."

"But how?" she persisted, "How do I do that?"

She felt as though whatever entity was surrounding her was smiling. "You simply do. It is your way. It is your nature. By living, you do these things without push or prompt. Your existence alone brings joy and courage even if you do not find it for yourself.

"For so many lifetimes and in so many worlds, you have done this without fail. Kami has sent you here for one last task, most trusted and beloved child, to do what you have already done. The time, nearly stolen by the Reaper Grim, has been returned to you in reward."

Sakura tried reasoning with the strange spirit, "The fire sages said the fates were thrown off balance when I came here. How is that 'bringing the balance?'"

"Sometimes one balance must be disturbed to bring about another."

"But that doesn't make sense."

"You are a mortal being. The nature of the Gods is beyond your understanding."

And Sakura didn't know how to argue. How does one contend with the divine plan of the gods? She wanted more than anything to return to her world, her life, her friends, but she didn't know how to ask that without sounding selfish and self-centered.

"It is possible," seemingly reading her thoughts the golden presence reluctantly admitted, It shifted as though it was uncomfortable. "There are very few things that are impossible if the person with the necessary skill set comes along."

In the strange lighting she made out a figure, tall and masculine. His back was to her, but his spiky blond hair was as characteristic as it was striking. But, as she had recently come to appreciate, from behind, that figure could belong to one of two men. So the question was whose back was she staring at? Naruto or Minato?

"Who do you want it to be?" The spirit asked, and Sakura felt as though it were goading her, as if it were trying to trick her into saying a name.

"I doesn't matter what I want," she grumbled somewhat bitterly, "I'm stuck with whatever destiny you throw at me."

The spirit swirled around her. Resting like a hand on her shoulder, it was a gesture meant to provide comfort and reassurance. "No fate is unbreakable, and no load is unmanageable… but some things are hard to change."

Some things are hard to change?

Eyebrows furrowing, she struggled to understand the hidden meaning. What was the spirit referring to? Her ability to go back home? Being able to pound some sense into Naruto's thick skull? After a moment of deep contemplation, she gave up on the specifics. The point was that she could change her fate or whatever just that it wouldn't necessarily be easy. She could go home, but it might be a long road to get there.

"He can help you," the spirit nudged drawing her attention back to the man with uncertain identity.

Frowning, Sakura crossed her arms determinedly looking away from the man's back. "I don't want anyone to rescue me. Not anymore. I can figure this out myself."

"Don't be silly," the spirit murmured softly, "Being what you are, it shall be you who will be rescuing him."

End of Part 1

A/N: Sorry about the slow updates, but this is probably about the speed I will be able to go at for the summer. I'll update as quickly as I can of course, but I don't want to give you guys any false promises.

Anyways, let me know what you think of the new cover. I was originally going to wait for the start of part 2 before I posted it, but now seemed about as good a time as any.