It's A Humble Path

by A m r a k l o ve

She thinks of him when there's nothing else to focus on but the memory of the contours of his face and the bitterness of his smile. Perhaps, all she craved was his touch at this point, but she just kept walking at a fair distance, and he didn't question anything, as usual. / Post-Canon; 699-700 setting. Complete.

10. The Unexpected

A/N: I gotta upload these more often. I also gotta work on Parting Arrival. I also hate when chapters don't have sasusaku, but they're needed. Blah.

*Disclaimer*

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Chapter 10

- The Unexpected -

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She arrives at the village during the evening of the third day, a few hours later than anticipated. This is because she actually took some hours off to sleep, and then to eat.

There were various small tents set up on the outskirts of the Hidden Rain village, and she remembers reading something about this information in the folder Kakashi had given her. That's where the medics of different villages from Fire set up camp for the night; where they slept at night and left alone at daylight. The tents were spread out in a small clearing, surrounded by trees from all sides. She could estimate the distance from the tents to the village gate was barely a little less than one mile.

When Sakura first stumbles upon this setup, she stops herself from walking any further, and stands confused in the midst of the tents; why would they set up camp in a forest next to the village when they could just stay at inns, or even sleep at the hospital? They didn't have to sleep outside like this when there was a village nearby with plenty of housing options. The report didn't touch upon the reason, but when she hears distant screams she thinks she gets the idea of why.

She doesn't delve much into it, but sidesteps all the tents until she reaches the gate of the village.

And that's when she understands.

The village is almost unrecognizable. Everything is destroyed; somehow, she gets to notice how some towers have fallen and how there are limbs sticking from the remains. She gets to notice how some buildings are barely standing and how the cables and tubes that connected different apartments are strewn across the ground. People are screaming in pain and limping to the nearest doctor they can find. If they could find any, that is. Because, from the looks of it, there are not enough medic nins to take care of everyone at the same time. The people are out on the streets, hiding under towers and buildings that have already fallen or that will, soon.

Sakura stands there for the longest time, just looking at the village that is practically torn apart. She's aghast and everything moves in slow motion.

What once was the village with the most infrastructure in the Shinobi world is now coming apart. The once dark, immeasurably high towers are merely standing anymore, and some have completely collapsed to the wet ground like fallen heroes. There are a few towers and buildings standing in the far background, she can get to see, but the entrance of the village is a total nightmare. Although iron and metal are the dominant colours in this landscape, she thinks that the dark blue from the buildings can be dark just because of the blood that's probably spread around.

A long pipe suddenly gushes out water twenty feet from where she's standing, broken and fractured almost in the middle of its length. The shorter part stays vertical, still attached to its building. It's like time stops as soon as the longer part of the pipe starts falling forward, detaching from itself and moving rapidly toward screaming civilians. Somehow, because the length of the pipe could almost reach the astonished pink-haired Kunoichi, it only catches one of them. She scarcely sees a woman trying to get her torso out from below the heavy pipe, but Sakura can't move. Before she can even take a step toward the struggling woman, said woman collapses and ultimately stops breathing right before her emerald eyes.

There are voices everywhere and she can't get to focus on one only.

It's chaos.

The last time she visited, Konan was the ruler of this village, and after her death, she just didn't come back. Rumors had it that there has been no actual leader since the Akatsuki member's death.

An old woman collapses right next to where Sakura is standing, and she only notices because her elderly hand graces the side of her long-unmoving leg. She doesn't have time to berate herself for acting so stupid and standing for a whole minute in front of this havoc of corpses and screaming—she's one of the greatest medics of her time, if not the greatest, so she shouldn't have been in so much shock for so damn long.

Sakura finally snaps out of it and quickly bends down to check her pulse and breathing pattern. It takes her less than three seconds to know that the elderly woman is dead and that she probably could have saved her around five seconds ago. But she doesn't let it get to her head too much.

This wasn't on her mission file.

She stands up and looks around, trying to frenetically find anyone that is unattended and needs help.

It's not hard to do so since there is an obvious shortage of medics to the increasing number of critically injured civilians and Shinobi.

A little girl, probably around twelve years old, is holding another girl's hand whilst crying over her body to Sakura's left. It's the first thing she looks at and it's the first place where she goes. As fast as she can, she gets to the children and places a hand on the girl's back. Sakura's knees fall to the ground next to the child who's lying down.

The girl raises her head from the youngest kid, glaring at Sakura and holding a knife in one hand in a defensive stance, clearly ready to strike.

"Hello, I'm doctor Haruno. I need to check your friend." She tries to sound convincing, even smiling a little to let the girl know she's trustworthy. God knows what everyone has seen since the attacks. God knows if the girl is still in shock or if there is trauma.

She sounds convincing, for the girl breaks down even more and eventually inches away from the lying form on the ground, giving Sakura space to check up on her.

Three seconds later and Sakura looks at the sobbing girl next to the corpse, a heartbroken expression on her face.

"M-My little sister, she..." Sakura prepares to stand up and look for more injured people to heal, but the little girl reaches for her skirt with more strength than Sakura would expect of a twelve-year-old civilian girl. "She was running away with me after the tower with mom and dad fell down, when someone appeared in front of me. And then I don't know what happened but she... She pushed me aside and the sword struck her and..."

If it weren't for Sakura's trained, ninja ears she wouldn't have heard the story amidst all the madness around them.

"Please, you have to save her, she saved me." The twelve-year-old is looking at her with all the hope in the world, and she really wishes there was something she could do to save her long-dead little sister. But there were more people to heal and there was nothing she could do for this girl; she can tell her sister had died more than fifteen minutes ago.

"I'm sorry," Sakura says, slowly as if testing the water. "Your sister can't be saved, but I need to save more people that still can be." Sakura quickly realizes she hadn't checked up on her, crouches down to her level once more, and stammers an "are you okay?" which she immediately regrets; of course she's not okay, she's just experienced the death of her father, mother, and little sister in mere hours. Sakura examines her with her expert eyes and makes sure she's physically okay. She was referring to her injuries, not her emotional state.

"Please, stay here, save." And then she runs to the nearest dying person, with probably only a few breaths more to take.

It's a Kunoichi, like her, who's clutching at what she supposes is a wound on her head. The purple locks of hair cover most of it and the woman's hand doesn't really let her see much from a distance either. So Sakura gets to where she is sitting, against a concrete wall that once belonged to a building, and is now only three feet tall. Enough to hold the Kunoichi's body.

Sakura's knees touch the bloodied, wet ground and immediately she grabs a hold of the woman, who immediately opens her eyes to look at her in alarm.

"I'm sorry I scared you, I'm doctor Haruno," she offers a small smile to the disoriented woman and said person looks back at her, a frown marrying her older features. "I need to look at that on your head," Sakura rushes a little, wasting no more time and not waiting for the older woman to let her take a look. She moves the hand and parts her hair until she sees the entirety of the damage.

It's a pretty big gash, and a miracle gash at that; a little bit more to the left and it would've hit her brain stem. The problem is at the side of her head, a little behind her ear running obliquely. Sakura's hands start glowing an expert soft green, and with concentration written all over her features, she starts assessing the internal damage. For a moment there she thinks whatever sharp object entered her head had moved past the brain and inflicted harm in the actual temporal lobe, but it doesn't come that close; in fact, the sharp object hadn't even touched the thin cerebral cortex. In as little as five minutes, she has completely healed the wound and repaired all the extra nerves near the brain stem that had suffered the impact, only leaving a soft pink scar where the injury had originated. "All good, please stay here, far from harm's reach."

"Wait, doctor, please," she fists her hands are her sides and looks at Sakura in alarm. "Have you seen my son around? He's three years old, brown hair and green eyes and," she takes a deep breath, finding trouble in talking, "I was with him before the explosions started and soon everyone was running; it was chaos, we got separated and then something hit me and I just..." Sakura swallows, looks back for a minute and looks at her again. "Have you seen him?"

The desperate tone of voice is very clear in Sakura's ears and she debates with herself for two seconds. But she can't lie. She really hadn't seen any boy fitting that description around. "I haven't, but maybe someone else does" is all she can say, surprised that her throat is dry and the words are raspy, as if they didn't want to come out of her mouth at all.

The woman with purple hair barely has time to choke on her sobs before Sakura is moving quickly to another injured Shinobi. She has no time to think about the situation that the poor woman is facing, just like she didn't have time to think about the little girl from before losing her sister. She just didn't.

Soon enough, the people screaming in pain and gushing out blood from some part of their bodies stop coming up. No more than two hours later, all critically injured are partially healed or dead. The rest have injuries, but they are less grave, easier to heal.

Sakura moves around from person to person with as much speed as she can. She moves on to the people with things like dislocated shoulders or large scratches—things like minor scratches, scraped knees, and sprained ankles that have been left for last. It helps that she's not the only medic around helping.

After another hour, she's done with her work. Her chakra reserves are still plenty of healing chakra, around three-fourths of her body's capacity. She wipes the sweat from her forehead, looking up at the clouds that obstruct the bright full moon above them. For the village of Rain, it was really hot that day, even though it had rained little before she got to the village.

Sakura looks around her for the first time since she started healing and notices all the medics are looking at her from the sidelines; the six people that she counts are all pretending to be healing more injured people but, really, she can tell they've finally taken in her presence.

One of the medics, a tall blond man around his thirties, approaches her with a smile.

"Haruno Sakura? I'm the head doctor of Amegakure: you can call me Hiro." Sakura isn't surprised he knows who she is without her input. After all, her pink hair is unmistakable. The man continues. "I've heard plenty of your accomplishments, and I gotta say," the man lowers his voice and smiles more at her, a few drops of blood on his attire and face, "I'm very grateful you could arrive on time and help us."

Sakura nods, still confused about what has actually happened since she arrived at this village. With this in mind, she speaks.

"Thank you for letting me help, Hiro-san," she bows slightly as a sign of gratitude and looks at him again. "I'm sorry but, could you tell me what happened before I came here?"

"Of course, but first we should go somewhere else."

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Hiro leads her through the landscape of blood and destruction, walking swiftly and gracefully as if one-third of the entire village hasn't been almost completely obliterated. She trails close behind him, careful to not step on any of the few dead bodies scattered here and there from time to time.

After a few minutes, they pass the mess the attack left behind, and enter the two-thirds of the village that were actually still relatively intact. The buildings still stand tall and the towers reach for the sky and beyond, the remaining Shinobi are rushing to the attacked area after fending off this one, and civilians are in their houses.

They enter a building on the West side of the village, passing through two big double doors located in hallways before finally arriving at a room. It's round, large, and has a big round table in its center. Sakura takes notice of the other five medics seated around the table and five other people she doesn't recognize, who all stand up at their arrival and sit down when they do the same thing. Sakura takes a seat next to Hiro.

It seems to Sakura that this is where most important conferences are held in Amegakure, or at least one of the rooms for that.

A man directly in front of her, across the table, speaks first.

"As head of the Amegakure Investigation Quarters, which is now unfortunately in ruins, demolished, and lost to all of us, I will brief everyone on the recent attacks this village has sustained, starting with a month ago." The whole room goes silent as soon as he finishes and Sakura takes all the information in. "We don't know who is causing these attacks, at least here, but we do know that it's more than one person. More precisely, we think they're three." Sakura frowns slightly. "They travel by air, making it all the easier to drop bombs on us whenever they please.

"The attackers fly with summonings, but they're not made out of clay like the deceased member of Akatsuki, Deidara, once made. And they're not made of ink, so essentially we don't know what exactly they are, but we do know that some of the attackers have been known to jump down here and inflict damage more... Personally."

Sakura takes a deep breath, finding it hard to believe that no one has done any of them any harm yet.

"A month ago, they attacked by dropping only one bomb, and then they left. It seems they wanted to scare the general population, but we don't know why. The next attack was two days ago; they dropped several bombs on different buildings scattered all across the village and left again. By this time, most of the world heard about these attacks and some other villages communicated that the same attacks have been happening over there." There are several serious faces around the table, taking in all the information that some of them already knew, and some are hearing for the first time now. Like Sakura.

"Today, as you have seen, has been brutal. The worst thing is that they concentrated the attacks in only one small portion of the village: the South. And this time, two of them came down and started stabbing whoever they could first land eyes on. They left around four hours ago."

Deeming this as the end of the briefing, Sakura exhales the air she had been holding and relaxes a little against the hard seat.

The man in front of her does the same, she notices, and opens his aging lips to speak once again.

"Everyone in the village is fortunate for having more and more medic nins coming from several villages in Fire and its borders to help. Here Doctor Amarashi came from Kusagakure, the Hidden Grass village," he says, pointing to a man on his right with light blond hair and dark eyes. "Doctor Hika to my left came from Zetusen Village just a week ago," he points to a young man with a bright smile and sparkling blue eyes, and Sakura can't help but think of Naruto. There is barely any resemblance at all, given that his skin is darker and his hair is blue. Not to mention that this doctor is much skinnier and probably shorter than Naruto.

"-Just yesterday."

Sakura frowns slightly. It's a few heartbeats later that she realizes she hasn't been paying attention, more preoccupied thinking of one of her best friends back at home, with a wife and a kid and essentially a family to call his own.

She shakes her head a little and pays attention to the head of the investigation quarters in Ame.

He looks around the table and spots the man that had led Sakura to the place, and points to him with his palm up and arm extended. "Doctor Kore Hiro has been working as head of the Amegakure hospital for more than five years, which, if none of you have noticed, is also destroyed. Doctor Kore has been of great help to every injured since the attacks started. Thank you. To all of you."

Many nods are exchanged in the room, and soon the man lands eyes on her. She doesn't miss how she's the only female medic nin in the room, but she doesn't dwell on that too much.

"I was told the Hokage would send two medics of the lower ranks, but this is much better, and unexpected," a small smile graces his lips. "Doctor Haruno has decided to join us since this very day."

"I've seen how fast she healed the worst of injuries two hours ago, in the midst of the chaos. What everyone in the world says about you is really true. You are very skilled," Hiro adds to what the man in front of her had said, and she blushes in embarrassment. If she knew him more, like she does Naruto or Sai, she would have slapped his shoulder right then and there. But she doesn't, so she just tries not to cover her face and looks at him with a smile.

"Thank you. All of you, as medic nins, are sure to be skilled as well," she says. Hiro smiles and nods a little, turning to face all the other faces at the same time she does.

There's a middle-aged woman who clears her throat loudly two seats down Sakura's right, clearly making it known that she was going to start talking.

"I'm Hitoshi Yumi, head of ANBU in the village. I know ya'll have been acknowledging the docs and such, but I gotta say: What are the plans for my team? Surely the attackers gotta be, well, attacked, if you know what I mean." She looks like she wants to laugh at her own choice of words, but decides not to because of the serious atmosphere all around the room. When nobody speaks up, she clears her throat again. "Anyway, just wanna let you guys know that I'll dispatch a team of ANBU to search the area around the borders of Amegakure."

Sakura notices there are three people next to her who she's been pointing at during her talk, and maybe they are a few ANBU from her team.

The head of Investigation leans back in his chair. "Great. The sooner we find them, the better. But you might want to expand your search a little, and send two teams. Last time Shinobi went looking for them around Amegakure, around the second wave of attacks, they didn't come back alive."

It's as though Yumi remembers exactly that time, for a somber wave crosses through her expression before she nods briskly.

Sakura looks at everyone, taking in everything, and thinking for possible solutions.

"Alright, anyone wants to add in more comments?" He asks, clearly ready to leave the room.

Hiro, to her left, speaks.

"I'm not sure what to do with all the injured and all the people who are near the site attacked. Should we take them to the shelter on the East?"

The man in front of Sakura seems to think it through.

"There's really no other place to take them to, although that place hasn't been used since the Fourth Shinobi War. It shouldn't be in the best conditions."

Hiro nods. "Then again, any place is better than out on the streets."

The man and Hiro exchange knowing looks, and everyone decide to stand up. Sakura follows as if she had also known she had to stand up.

"Meeting is dismissed; everyone knows what to do."

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The first thing Sakura does after they all step out of the building is approach Hiro. She casually walks until she's next to him. She can tell the direction of where he's walking leads to the destructed area of the village, in the South. She clicks her tongue.

"So I need to talk to you about the attacks," she expresses without looking at him. He, though, looks at her with a funny face.

"Yeah? That entire meeting we had back there was held solely to talk about the attacks." This is when she looks at him. He raises his eyebrows at her, walking, and smiles with slightly bent teeth that were probably the product of not wearing braces as a kid—or just hereditary, she thinks.

"Yeah, duh, but this is about the hospital, which you direct. And I didn't want to have an entire conversation back there with you in front of everyone. That would waste their time."

"What is it?"

"Was the whole hospital destroyed, or were some wards saved from the attacks?" She asks, and he answers faster than she expected with a more serious tone.

"All of it is on the ground. There was nothing to be saved. Especially not the patients inside." Sakura suppresses the shiver up her spine in the humid, warm night. "We were actually lucky that at least six medics, including me, were not at the hospital at the time of the bombing. I heard that was the first place bombed today."

"Today? Which means before that it was intact, right? Do you happen to have anything that could be used to identify the attackers?"

"The equipment for DNA identification was stored at the hospital, although..." He looks away as if thinking it over in his head, and then runs a hand down his face. The dried blood from others on his cheeks doesn't move. "You might want to ask Noru-sama."

At her confused expression, he speaks again.

"The head ninja of Amegakure Investigation Quarters. They might have something." Sakura nods. "Why?"

"Because I might find something in the village. Two of them came down and touched several people, or they might have left something behind. I just want to cover all the bases here."

Hiro nods but bites his lip deep in thought. "Wouldn't you leave that to the actual investigating team?"

She knows there's not biting tone in his voice; he really was curious as to why she would go an extra length when that wasn't her field of expertise, or even why she came to this village at all.

"They can come back, and I want to make sure that if I can help, I will. In any way I can, really, I just want to make sure they are taken into custody before they harm more people."

Or before a certain special someone who has the Rinnegan is forced to take matters into his hands, she adds in her head.

Hiro, in turn, doesn't answer, and after a moment or two of silence, she starts seeing debris in the distance as they approach the South.

"I hope they know what they have done. Bombing a hospital is a damn sign of war."

He sighs.

"Yeah."