Special thanks to my writing buddy Safrael for prodding me along in this, and hey Saf, congrats on being published! As always, many thanks and great appreciation to everyone who fav'd the story and reads. Everything, and all of you helps sustain the small, but eternal, hope that I can one day end up doing this for a living…writing, I mean, not plagiarizing a manga artist's already existing work for my own ends (though you guys seem to enjoy that bit as much as I do). Hehe. This story progresses slowly, but I thank you all for keeping with it. You guys are the reason that we do this, and I thank you for being such patient, and devoted fans. I love you guys!

~Shiranami

Chapter 11: Sutoringusu

It was a long time before Sakura finally opened her eyes.

Daylight…Sakura put an arm over her face as she tried to shield herself. Her vision was cloudy, dim, like she was looking at the world through a river of choppy water. All the colors and slivers of light were flowing into a single river of sight, giving her nothing that her eyes could latch onto, and nothing that could ground her amidst the chaos.

Dizzy…Sakura wondered if she'd accidentally grabbed sake instead of the water from her fridge the night before. She wasn't usually one to drink herself into a coma, but having done it for the past seventy-two hours she could definitely see the appeal.

Nothing hurts…like all the sharp edges are fuzzy… The words in her books and scrolls had started to actually swirl together several hours prior, so she could safely assume that a barely conscious cerebral cortex was to blame. Ino had always said that Sakura pushed herself too hard, too much, and that she would eventually "break-down" at some point if she didn't learn how to sleep like the rest of the human race.

Sleep is for the weak…Sakura snickered. She stretched, yawned, and rubbed her eyes. Three days Shikamaru had been gone, and it somehow felt like three years.

Can't take much more of this "rest" stuff…Tsunade had suspended Sakura from active duty, though she wouldn't give Sakura a straight answer as to why, and demanded the girl show up at the hospital every day for check ups. So far, Sakura had managed to ditch out on two of three scheduled sessions, but she felt that she might have to fake her own death to get out of the third.

Tempting…very tempting…Sakura thought.

Gradually, Sakura's sight began to adjust itself on it's own, but her eyes hurt, burning in her sockets as though she'd been asleep for years and not hours. How long had she been asleep, anyway? What had she been doing last night that keep her up so late? Sakura tried to sift through the sandy, heavy recollections of time in her head until she found what she was looking for.

Research, Sakura sighed, scratching her head, Reading far too much…Sakura held her head, trying to banish the painful aches that were slowly fading behind her tired eyes. She could barely remember mere bits and pieces of the books and scrolls she had been looking through the night before.

Aggressive micro-bacterial Orphan Diseases, Biochemical interference, and Magnoliophyta Zootoxins, were just a few of the terms that hadn't quite found their way out of her head just yet. Her brain felt like someone had reached into her skull, plucked out her mind, thrown it in the microwave, cranked the settings up to ten, and pushed "cook".

"Ow," Sakura hissed as she sat up. She half expected Akamaru to jump on top of her at the first sign of life, but he hadn't. In fact, Sakura couldn't even hear him breathing. With her eyes still adjusting, and her room doused in a waxy, painfully bright light, Sakura leaned forward, trying to find any sign of fur lying around on top of her bed.

"Akamaru?" Sakura whispered, feeling around in the blinding light for anything that might tell her he was near. After a moment, Sakura finally came to understand what was wrong with the situation.

She wasn't in her room.

In fact, Sakura wasn't even in her apartment, or any building, as far as she could tell.

Looking about, she could tell only that she was sitting beneath a large tree in a wide-open field; similar to those she traversed in the western mountains, when missions had brought her there. The place looked both familiar and eerie in the same moment, as if it were an old-friend returned to her with dark scars that ran too deep to fix.

Strange…Sakura thought, trying to take it all in. The air took on an odd, unusual fragrance just then. It grew heavy, smoky, foul with the smell of rotting wood and charred stone.

Why do I feel like I've seen this before? Sakura raised her head, looking up into the tree, which she recognized as a cherry tree. Cherry trees didn't grow in the mountains, at least as far as Sakura had seen, and there was something off about this particular tree, something that made it…different. Sakura stared up at the tree for several long minutes, trying to figure out what it was that she was overlooking here.

Grey…

The petals on the blossoms were grey. Sakura knew it was wrong, grey petals on a live cherry tree, but she couldn't seem to remember what color they were supposed to be. It was as if she had no concept of what normal was here, wherever here was.

Sakura stiffened as a strange breeze tickled the branches of the tree, sending the pale grey petals falling into her hair and collecting on her lashes like bits of rain. It was then that she realized what it was…genjutsu.

"Things are not always what they seem…" It was an unfamiliar voice, dark, deep and cold, like marble, or stone. The words had barely hit Sakura's ears before she was down in a defensive position, already spinning strands together for a chakra needle between her fingers.

"It is so handy, being able to create your own weapons. Very practical…useful, even," The voice seemed to chuckle then, as though they had just made a joke.

"Who are you?" Sakura demanded. The response was a laugh, echoing into the clearing from several different directions at once, making it seem as though the entity were everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.

"You would ask such a stupid question first." The voice said, "typical. Why a name, girl? Surely there are other things you could have asked for…"

"True, but nothing else would fit as snugly on tombstone, and I'm sure you would hate for me to make something up…" Sakura egged darkly, which seemed to change the mood of her mysterious assailant drastically.

"Considering your limited vocabulary and fondness of vulgarity, I agree, I would hate very much to see what you came up with." The voice growled quietly.

Suddenly, they were in front of her, just mere yards between them. A man carrying a long, black sheathed-katana strapped to his back, with dark brown robes, and long, jet-black hair that was speckled with bits of grey here and there. It seemed odd, but Sakura could not exactly tell his age from where she stood. He wore bandages over his eyes, hands, and feet, wrapped so tightly that they almost seemed a part of him, and they shielded her prying eyes from looking for wrinkles or spots that might shed some light on the subject. The man must have felt her staring, because he seemed to turn away from her gaze, to the side as though he didn't want her to see him.

It was almost as if he was ashamed, somehow, of his appearance.

"Are you hurt?" Sakura asked. The man smiled at the ground a little as if the thought amused him.

"Still trying to fix things, are we?" He chuckled. Sakura's ears perked up at the sound of the man's quiet laughter. It sounded…familiar…like it was some part of an old story, or dream, that she had suddenly remembered all on her own. It felt like,

Coming home…Sakura thought, slowly rising out of her fighting position.

"I know that voice," Sakura said bluntly, looking for some sort of explanation, but the man offered none.

"I collect many things," The man said, "voices being just one."

"You still have not given me a name," Sakura said, neither amused, nor entirely angry about it.

"We cannot return to the ruins of the past," The man sighed, wistfully, "No matter how much we may wish it…" Even through the bandages it seemed as though he was looking at her now, straight and unabashedly staring right at her as if he didn't truly understand who she was before now. Whoever he had thought she was, she apparently wasn't, and the realization of this seemed to hit the man hard for second–but it was only a second. Gradually, it was as though the revelation made no difference to him at all.

"You never answered me," Sakura was not accustomed to anyone except for Shikamaru giving her any trouble with simple, inane information. Anyone she couldn't kill, at least.

"Anger is good. We can use that." The man smiled, but it felt like he was insulting her. Sakura was use to such pride in her targets, but there was something different about this man. Something drove a little sliver deep beneath her skin with every inch of his smile, and Sakura couldn't help but feel…

Infuriated…Sakura bit the inside of her cheek to keep from attacking the man directly. It was apparent that he wasn't there for a fight, or even to necessarily spy on her, since there were much simpler ways to do that. No, he was there to talk, but why seemed to completely escape her.

"What do you want?" Sakura was growing irritated.

"Nothing," He said simply, shaking his head, "Nothing at all…Akiri-san."

"Akiri...how do you know that name?" Sakura demanded, furious. No one outside the village knew about the nickname that the academy students had given her in the past few years, and even then, only the children were allowed it's use. Who was this man that he felt he could say such things without having earned the right?

The man didn't answer her demand, not audibly at least. Instead, he smiled at her, haughty and arrogant, very much like a little boy she once knew.

It can't be...he couldn't possibly...Sakura stood, staring as the gen-jutsu slowly dissipated around her, leaving her standing in her apartment once again.

Not knowing what else to do, Sakura sat down on her unmade bed, trying to put her finger on that tiny little nagging feeling in the back of her mind. The man hadn't threatened her, not explicitly at least, and she sensed no ill intent from the illusory meeting.

So then, what was it that was bothering her about it?

Geez', where do we start? Sakura stretched, gently kneading at the skin to keep the scab on her shoulder from healing too tightly. The mark Shikamaru had given her burned a little, but not unbearably.

Strange thing, to waste an expert gen-jutsu on simple meeting…Sakura cracked her neck as she thought about the dream jutsu. She would figure out how they did it later, but for now, she simply wanted to understand their motives. There were an unfathomable number of ways to cast such a jutsu, but there were only a handful of reasons one might actually do so.

Could be the relative of a target, Sakura sighed, getting up and shuffling over to her closet to pull on a pair of black shorts.

Could be an assassin, too, Sakura ran a brush through her long dark pink hair, pulling it up and into a messy bun. She shrugged into a simple, calf-length long-sleeved deep-red tunic with a worn Haruno clan symbol on the back that had been "altered" some what by Naruto back when they were kids. It had been washed many times since then, but she could still see the faint white outlines of the smiley face graffiti Naruto had contributed to the Haruno clan's circle.

"Look Sakura-chan!" Naruto had roared with a cackle, "I made art!"

"Hn," Sasuke sneered in response, "if you call that art…dobe…"

"Who you callin' dobe, dobe! That's it; I challenge you, you Uchiha-bastard! Battle to the death! Loser buys Ramen!"

"You'd have to be a loser to want to eat that stuff." Sasuke had commented. Naruto lunged at him.

God only knows how many times she kept those two from killing each other over stupid bouts of raving stupidity and pure, blind, ignorance. In the end, Sakura had had to trap Naruto in a chakra net in order to keep him from hurting Sasuke, but knowing him he probably loved it. As Sakura remembered the whole event had almost been able to crack a smile in Sasuke's usually icy demeanor, which she supposed was saying something.

Almost wasn't good enough, though…Sakura sighed, strapping several daggers, kunais, and a small stiff pouch of needles to her leg. She would take her… katana and scabbard, and a dusty pair of sai, just to get back into practice. She didn't usually practice with her older weapons, often because either time or experience had rendered them inefficient or obsolete in her line of work. But today she felt like doing something she had never really been too keen to entertain,

Playing...