Reading Ahead of the Lines – Chapter 10
----
(AN) I can't believe it's been over a year since I started writing Reading Beneath. Wow the time has flown by! I want to thank everyone who has been following these fics for months and welcome those who have found it more recently. This started off as a selfish project to rewrite the story how I wanted it to be, but now I've realized that I enjoy writing for other people. Sharing it with everyone has become a real highlight in my life (I'm such a sap…)
Anyway, I hope you all had a good holiday, and here's to a happy new year (/AN)
----
"What?" Sakura said in confusion as she stared at the eight members of Root standing between them and the gate.
"What the hell do you mean?" Naruto asked angrily from where he knelt in the shadow of Katsuyu's corpse. "Someone get help! The Hokage has been murdered!"
Uzuki said nothing, but she moved closer to Kakashi and calmly pulled her mask from her pouch. The porcelain surface was still spattered with blood and gave her the appearance of a hellcat as she set it in place.
Kakashi likewise did not respond, but raised his hitai-ate from his left eye. The Root ninja shifted their weight, but Sakura saw their leader flick his fingers quickly, and they relaxed again.
"Hatake Kakashi. Uzumaki Naruto. You are hereby under arrest. We have orders to bring you to Danzou-sama dead or alive," the dog-masked man said again.
"Didn't you hear me?" Naruto demanded as he stood up. "Tsunade-baa-chan has been killed! We have to…"
"Naruto-kun," Kakashi said, cutting him off. "They already know."
"Then why aren't they doing something about it?" Naruto continued. "Why are they wasting time?"
"They are doing something about it," Uzuki hissed from behind her mask. "And they aren't wasting time."
"Danzou has no right to issue arrests," Kakashi told the Root leader conversationally.
"He has every right as the new Hokage," the tall man replied.
The anxiety and fear Sakura had been bottling up all day was now fueling the rage that was building in her chest. She had known. Tsunade had known.
She reached into her pouch for the special tag that had been included with the scroll from Kiyoko. Immediately, she felt a prick on her neck.
Not daring to move, she saw from the corner of her eye that one of the Root ninja was holding a kunai to her throat. Neji was beside him with two fingers against the man's temple.
"Nobody else move," the leader said. "You Hyuuga, move away from her or you all die here."
Sakura was frantically trying to decide if she had enough chakra left to gamble using Kawarimi no Jutsu to escape when she felt something cold and scaley brush against her leg. She bit back a shriek as she realized that a giant serpant had immobilized the ninja who was threatening her.
His mask had fallen off, and his blue eyes were bulging at the giant snake's head, which was flicking its tongue near his ear. A hand grabbed her arm and yanked her away from her temporary assailant.
She looked up as Neji pulled her protectively behind him, but his attention was on someone else. Standing ten meters from them was a disheveled Uchiha with a sullen, scarlet glare. His clothing was still in tatters, but his sword's blade was clean and sharp.
"Sasuke!" Naruto said in astonishment.
"Sasuke-kun, you followed us," Kakashi said with raised eyebrows.
The last scion of the Uchiha clan opened his mouth to reply, but then shut it with a grunt.
"We can talk later," Sakura cut in, saving him from having to respond. "Right now, we could use another ally."
"Is he?" Kakashi asked blithely with a glance at Sasuke, who nodded. "Then we'll discuss this all later," the older man agreed.
Sakura remembered what she had been in the process of doing and removed the tag from her pouch. With a quick flick, she had the tag affixed to a shuriken flying skyward.
The Root ninja responded at once and slowly spread out to surround them amidst the shower of blue fireworks from her tag.
"What was that?" Neji asked as he closed the tenketsu of the man still struggling with Sasuke's serpent.
"Tsunade's message said to use it if we encountered trouble," she told him. The man's eyes rolled back in his head as Neji finished the job, and the snake disappeared in a puff of smoke.
She looked over at Sasuke, who was looking at Neji. Crimson met silver again as both men nodded in acknowledgement.
Then, the Root ninja closed in on them, and everything dissolved into chaos. It was obvious that she and Neji were not Root's priority because only one man with a fox mask headed in their direction. The majority of their numbers were closing in around Kakashi and Uzuki.
"Head for the gate," Neji said in a low voice as they warily watched the Root shinobi approach.
Suddenly her arms and legs felt a hundred times heavier, and she realized that Uzuki's jutsu was wearing off. Days of traveling came crashing down on her body all at once as she stumbled towards the gate. The man with a fox mask had no problem dodging Neji and cutting her off.
Kakashi must have also felt the consequences of the jutsu because he fell to his knees in the middle of making a series of hand seals. Uzuki positioned herself in front of him, but one against three was near impossible when in the best of health. A man with a boar mask spun quickly to deliver a vicious kick to the side of her head, and she flew through the air to land in a crumpled heap.
Naruto and Sasuke each had their own opponent, though Saukra could tell even Naruto was winded. All in all, they were a pretty ragged team of shinobi. Six against eight would have been difficult had they been fully rested, let alone in their current state.
Suddenly, Neji appeared in a blur of motion and pushed the fox-masked man into a defensive stance. Sakura wondered at how he could still move so quickly and gracefully when she felt like a sack of potatoes. "Go now!" he shouted sharply.
She turned towards the gate, but something was setting off alarms in her head. Including the man on the ground, that accounted for seven Root ninja. Where was the eighth?
"No!" she screamed, suddenly spotting a figure moving near the motionless bulk of Katsuyu. She made a move towards the giant slug, but the fox-masked man slipped around Neji and landed a blow to her stomach.
She fell to her knees gasping, but ignoring the tears she forced her diaphragm to suck in a lungful of air. "Don't touch them!" she screamed again, and this time the man struck her face down onto the ground.
Spitting the dirt from her mouth, she saw Naruto whirl around and finally notice the man who had picked up Tsunade's body. "Don't touch…" she whimpered, stretching her arm towards her master and mentor and role model.
Naruto threw his head back in a howl of fury, and the Kyuubi's red aura sprang up around him. In an instant, the chakra had manifested itself in three glowing tails. The man who had been fighting Naruto tried to distract the enraged blond, but in the blink of an eye Naruto had grabbed him by the throat and tossed him fifty meters into the woods like a straw dummy.
The man holding Tsunade's lifeless body disappeared in a puff of smoke, and Sakura curled her fingers into the dirt as her body began sobbing uncontrollably.
Suddenly, the man who had knocked her down was flying through the air in front of her. Neji hauled her to her feet with a grim expression and brushed the dirt from her face. "Neji, they took…," she choked through her sobs.
Her words were interrupted as something heavy fell from the sky and landed with a bone-cracking thud on top of the man with a fox mask. She and Neji both stared open-mouthed at the broken body of the man who had just tried to escape with the Godaime.
Still snarling, Naruto landed nearby with Tsunade's body carefully cradled in his arms. He placed her body gently on the ground and brushed a few strands of gray hair from her face with a claw-tipped finger.
Three Root shinobi, including the dog-masked leader, cautiously circled around Naruto, who paid them no attention. She quickly assessed the situation and decided it had gone from bad to worse.
Kakashi had been bound and blindfolded, and Uzuki was still motionless where she had landed. Sasuke was holding his own against his opponent, but his eyes were pitch black now. Without his Sharingan, Sakura doubted he could match an ANBU-rank shinobi for much longer. A short distance away, the man Naruto had thrown into the woods was staggering back into sight.
"I'll help Naruto," Neji told her. "You have to get into the village and get help." His body betrayed his confident words, however, as the veins surrounding his eyes thinned before fading altogether.
"I'm not leaving you all," Sakura said stubbornly. "I'm not leaving Shishou to these vultures."
"Someone needs to tell everyone about what happened here," Neji countered.
"Then you go," Sakura fired back. "I don't think I'll get very far anyway."
Neji opened his mouth again, but another voice cut him off. "Neji, you should know by now that you shouldn't bother arguing with Sakura when she's like that," Tenten said from behind them.
"I have never seen you in such condition, my greatest rival," Lee commented with a touch of glee in his voice.
"Wha...wher…," was all Sakura could manage to splutter. In less than a second, forty Jounin and Chuunin had appeared outside the gate. Sakura gaped at how crowded it felt all of a sudden.
Kurenai smiled at her from a short distance away. "Godaime-sama sent messages to us earlier this morning telling us to watch for a blue flare. She said it would mean trouble and to hurry if we saw it."
"Sorry it took so long," Ibiki added. "We were all meeting at the top of the Hokage Monument, so it took a couple minutes to get here.
"With this, Kakashi, I am certainly ahead in our score," Gai crowed as he removed the blindfold from his white-haired rival.
"Let me through!" Shizune said, pushing past the spandex-clad man. She dropped to her knees beside Uzuki and immediately began examining the unconscious woman.
Everyone kept their distance from where Naruto was still hunched protectively over Tsunade's body, but the red aura began to fade when he spotted Iruka working his way through the crowd. By the time the scarred academy teacher reached the blond, his appearance had returned to normal.
Sakura continued to gape wordlessly as the situation was resolved in twenty seconds. The remaining five Root ninja were no match for three dozen of Konoha's elite, and they were securely bound and trussed like pigs for the market.
"She knew," Sakura murmured to herself as she watched the spectacle unfold. "Sheknew."
"What happened?" Neji asked Kurenai. "It seems like you were all expecting something like this."
Kurenai let out a sigh and turned towards where Uzuki was tottering to her feet and holding her head gingerly. "There's no point placing blame now, but word got out that Godaime-sama had died, and Danzou immediately attempted to seize power using Root. He currently has the council captive in their meeting chamber, but I don't think they'll give him their votes even under threat of death. And at least we managed to recover Godaime-sama's last testament."
"Pardon the interruption, Kurenai-san," a deep voice said from nearby. "May I have a word with my nephew?"
"It's no problem, Hyuuga-sama," Kurenai replied smoothly. "If you'll excuse me, I wish to inquire about my team." She spun on her heel and headed towards the circle of people crowded around Kakashi and Uzuki.
"I wish to know the same," Hiashi said, focusing on Neji. "Kakashi's team is here, but what of the rest? Where is Hinata?"
"We hurried home ahead of them," Neji replied with a small bow. "But I think you will be pleased with Hinata's accomplishments during the mission."
"Umm… please excuse me too," Sakura interjected with a hasty bow. From the corner of her eye, she had noticed a group of people surrounding Sasuke, and she quickly headed towards them.
"I'm pretty sure he was in the bingo book," Ebisu was saying as she elbowed her way closer.
"Wait," she shouted. "Wait!" She pushed to the front and turned to face the skeptics. "Give him a chance. If he wants to return to Konoha, surely you can't deny him that."
Ebisu looked like he was about to say something, but Anko cut him off with a flourish of her arm. "I think I have the best grasp of this situation, so leave it to me," she announced to everyone. "Forgiveness is not cheap – trust me I know – but everyone deserves the chance. I'll take responsibility of him from here."
There was some muttering, but the group began dispersing, and Sakura bowed low to Anko. "Thank you so much for understanding," she told the older woman.
"It's no problem," Anko told her with a wry smile. "I was in the same boat, remember." She turned to face the ragged Uchiha, who shifted his feet awkwardly. "And I also know what it's like to come home."
Sasuke met Anko's gaze and gave a curt nod before looking away again. "You will be under probation, of course," Anko said, addressing Sasuke. "But that's a small price to pay and worth every penny. Come with me for now."
Sasuke followed the Jounin obediently but paused as he drew even with her. "Thank you, Sakura," he whispered before striding through the gate and back into Konoha.
She wondered that she had any tears left in her body as she scrubbed at her cheeks yet again. She noticed Naruto walking towards her with Tsunade's body in his arms and decided that her tears would have to be infinite to last through this ordeal.
"Oy, Sakura-chan," he said softly. "I think you should be the one to carry Tsunade-baa-chan back. Don't worry, she's a lot lighter than you'd expect."
She sniffed loudly and took the Hokage's body from her teammate. He was right, she felt light as a feather. She tried to be scientific as she studied the cuts and wounds on her master's body. Who had done this? What the hell had happened?
Naruto returned to her side carrying the body of the gallant Jiraiya. Wordlessly, they passed through the gates and back into the village of Konoha.
----
(AN) Sorry for the delay with this update - the holidays had me running in circles. Hopefully I'll be back to posting a chap a week after this. I'd estimate another 3 chaps or so, but who knows. I honestly didn't expect this side-venture to last this long let alone for another month or two. I got carried away! (/AN)
----
.'Sabaku No Annie'.: Don't worry, Uzuki is too old for Neji XP
Jay95: Sorry I didn't answer your question this chapter. I promise I will in the next!
AngelWing1138: LOL You were close! It was Sasuke who followed, not Sai.
sara1965: Hopefully this is a little less of a cliffhanger
Da Cute Snowbunny: Ever since the Jiraiya/Pein fight started, I had this in my head for Reading Ahead. Sorry it's so sad :(
seguha: Hope you had a good vacation!
Dakishimeru: Sorry for the wait for this update. I'm gonna try to stick to the chap-a-week timeline until I finish (hopefully soon XD)
nejisakura: I'll be sure to explain next chap!
animevivverz: This is my first venture into writing a continuous story (Reading Beneath was really more like a compilation of one-shots from the same story). I didn't realize I'd have such a penchant for cliffhangers X3
icy-cold refreshment: Very very close! You called it on the civil war!
xXHyuugaSakuraXx: I must confess I've had that planned for a couple weeks X3
xXxfallenxsakuraxXx: I'm glad you're wondering about it so much! It means I'm doing my job
Mayumi Crescent Moon: Glad you're still enjoying it. I'll keep the updates coming!
Jemiul: Thanks for continuing to follow my fic, and I'm glad you still like the story!
pixiedust8831: I'm sorry it took so long to update after that last cliffhanger. The holidays got in the way of everything!
Trinity Tomoe: Sorry I didn't explain their arrest fully. Would it suffice for now to say that Danzou is an arse?
chaosdragon82: Heheh, I had to give Sakura little spur in the side to stop taking Neji for granted. Poor Jiraiya, halfway through the Pein arc I knew he wouldn't make it. With that over, hopefully the manga will advance faster. I'm hoping to finish this side-sequel before going back to Reading Beneath. Hope you had a nice holiday break!
Pharos Hyaline: I'm so glad you think this is canon-like! That has been one of my main goals this whole time. As for the brevity, I've read some fics that are really phenomenal, but tend to drag things out a little too long. That's why I keep my chapters pretty short, too. Were you saying that it IS jarring or is NOT jarring? Either way, I hope that in my enthusiasm to move the plot along I haven't been neglecting other things.
al2010: I'm glad you're enjoying this fic. Thanks for stopping to say hi