Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me so now…I'm depressed. Wonderful.
Land of Wind, Unknown Location, 1:29 AM
Grasslands stretched in every direction, dead grass crackling and swaying in the wind. The entire unit stood arrayed behind her and Sakura looked around slowly. The dead grass rattled and hissed and it all seemed so inconsequential—
She frowned. "I don't…"
Sasuke sighed pointedly, grabbed the back of her neck, and used the leverage to turn her head. "It's right there. Stop looking with just your eyes."
Her eyes stopped sliding sideways and Sakura realized the field in front of her had far more depth to it then she'd thought. She blinked hard. Misdirection seals were in the barrier array and they were screwing with her head.
Lovely.
The barrier was right in front of them and she'd nearly walked them past it.
From somewhere behind her Naruto swore. "Fuck it. I hate these things."
Neji replied calmly. "If it's any consolation I can make out the contours of it with my byakugan without getting sidetracked."
Sakura rubbed her forehead. Naruto lightened considerably. "Oh, in that case, yeah. This might be doable."
Naruto unfurled a scroll and the squad gathered around him. Sakura watched from the corner of her eye, Sasuke's hand still on her neck.
The Uchiha's voice dropped low. "Do you think he's in there?"
They didn't have to specific which he they were talking about. Itachi. It was always Itachi.
"Maybe." She hedged. "Maybe not, we'll get that barrier down and then we can go looking."
He breathed in sharply and his hand left her. She didn't ask why and focused on Naruto explaining to the squad instead. "From the dimensions of the barrier and it's almost nonexistent aura, I would have to say it's an anchored barrier. Big thing and complicated as hell, but considering the kinds of guys Akatsuki has running around, they'd have the juice to get this thing up and running."
"Anchored?" Tenten asked. Her face was a mix of diligence and complete confusion.
Naruto usually brought that out in people.
The blond just nodded and pointed at four seals on the scroll in his hand. "To make this short the barrier is anchored by four inanimate objects outside of it, usually within about five hundred yards. They're sealed to the nines and pre-charged with chakra and an assortment of nasty surprises to keep them that way. Good news it they'll be placed in a coordinating pattern for maximum efficiency so finding them shouldn't be too bad. To bring it down all we need to do is find the anchors, survive the nasties, and destroy 'em. After that we can give the barrier a good smack and it'll come down. Any questions?"
There was a moment of shuffling and shrugs traded all around, but Sakura supposed the mechanics weren't really important as long as they understood the gist of it. Ninja were usually point-and-destroy anyways (with the occasional aside of hell raising involved).
"Alright then." She sounded far more cheerful than she felt. Her insides knotted and her chakra festered like a wound. The cheerful glee backslid to manic urgency."Gai and Lee will head east, Neji and Tenten west. Sasuke will head north and Naruto can move south. I'll head straight to the barrier and…knock."
Lee raised his eyebrows. "…knock?"
Her face twisted into a rictus of a grin, and Sakura couldn't tell anymore whether it was from fear or cruelty or glee. "It's the polite thing to do, don't you think?"
Lee for once seemed to understand that discretion would be the better part of valor. Sakura was looking for any excuse to unhinge and he was wisely not going to give her an outlet. Lee liked to fight but a murderous jinchuuriki would leave him a smear of blood on the ground, and do so while vacillating wildly between whistling happily and laughing hysterically.
He wanted no part in that.
The last time she'd lost it was when she was thirteen and tearing Orochimaru apart to an inch of his life. She'd gotten four tails in, brain fried, and spent a week in a coma. That was over three years ago. Her unhinging now would be much more…productive. And hell, she might not end up brain dead again either.
"Head out." She ordered. The grass flattened and she was alone. Everyone, even Naruto, wasn't going to stand in her way tonight.
She started walking and her hand absently slid to the pocket she'd left the Akatsuki ring she'd stolen of Zetsu's corpse. A stinging heat radiated from the polished metal through her sleeve, and the heat was ratcheting up with every step she took. It was trying to hook into somebody besides her.
She considered it. I wonder… The train of thought came and went.
Gaara still needed her.
Her hand to fell away. The barrier flickered and her hands clenched.
West of Unknown Location, 1:48 AM
Tenten looked around the grove of trees slowly and swore. Wires stretched across every branch and were latched, tied, and wired to more C4 than she'd ever laid eyes on. And considering she'd raided an explosives warehouse once…
In some spots there was only a few inches of clearance and the wires that weren't hooked to explosives were just plain old razor wire sharp enough to flay her.
"The anchor is in the forest." Neji told her dryly.
She groaned. "Really? I would have never guessed. And here I thought Akatsuki just liked leaving awesome booby traps for me to kill myself on laying around."
He snorted. "I can guide you through from here. But you need to trust me."
"That's stupid." She kissed his cheek and flounced off to the trees. "Of course I trust you."
Faintly, Neji smiled. "Then climb up that tree to your left. Five feet up is the first wire, duck left and two feet over by your right hand you'll see…"
East of Unknown Location, 2:05 AM
A wide chasm split the land in front of him, opening the ground miles down and splintering everything his eye could see. The rocky, sheer faced sides dropped down and down until everything went black. Even in the moonlight he couldn't see the bottom and for a moment Lee entertained the idea that it never ended. He prodded a rock with his foot and sent it tumbling into the murk.
He never did hear it land.
He was back to the: it goes forever theory.
Something on the walls fluttered and he leaned down, craned his neck, and stared. Exploding tags. Thousands of exploding tags. On every shelf, on every outcropping, on every rock that was even shaped funny.
He stood, put his hands on his hips, and grinned. "The anchor must be down below; our enemy would not waste exploding tags otherwise."
Gai slapped his back. "Perfect deduction Lee. If you find the anchor first then I will run five hundred laps around Konoha on coals in bare feet!"
Lee whooped. "Yosh!"
And they jumped in, because leaping without looking was their specialty.
South of Unknown Location, 2:16 AM
"You've got to be kidding me."
They were not, in fact, kidding him.
Naruto looked at the upturned earth. The upturned earth filled with mines.
Coincidentally, the anchor he was looking for was below the mines.
He stomped his foot once, partly out of frustration and mostly just to send chakra on a radar sweep down to see what he was dealing with. One mine shuddered ominously and he whined. "Trembler mines? Oh son of a—"
His chakra came back. He groaned. "And proximity too, this is just friggin' peachy."
North of Unknown Location, 2:35 AM
Sasuke's scythe was removed from his back, gripped casually, and resting across his shoulders.
Birds covered the dead trees around him with wings fluttering, beetle black eyes glittering, and talons clicking on the grotesque branches. His nerve endings buzzed. They were chakra constructions, twisted things of flesh and blood with a veil of genjutsu just to screw with him. They cawed like crows but they smelled like charred bone
One crow shifted heavily as if something about it was weighted. He considered the sound and came to realize it had the anchor tied to its back.
"Oh fun."
Because things could never be easy.
He dropped a kunai in his hand and flung it. The crows-not-crows took off in a hurricane of screeches. The first one fell on him, not the one with the anchor he needed but he smirked anyways.
Within a minute the ground would be soaked by blood, ichor, and mutilated feathers and flesh.
Unknown Location, 2:51 AM
Sakura put her arms out slowly, a kind of sickened fascination making her almost tentative as she reached out. Her fingers stopped and the air bent, and there was resistance at her finger tips. She pushed harder and watched blue ripples spread from her hands as if she had touched some kind of glass wall that was splintering into light.
She continued to press steadily but there was no more give. The empty field gave way to a fractured prism of light, and now with her hands fully enmeshed in it the misdirection seals were useless, laying the barrier in it full splendor out to her eyes.
She breathed in. The Kyuubi's chakra came up easy. Red met blue and the fractured prism became a tangled web of chakra and light and blue-red-purple. It was like watching a lighting storm high in the atmosphere spread out across miles and miles until the very color of light would bend, raging within the space of her arms.
And it wouldn't give an inch. The barrier held.
She heard a snarl of annoyance in the back of her mind and in a blaze the red chakra around her reared up and lashed out. The Kyuubi was awake and furious and she was only a vessel for his rage. She welcomed it; his rage gave her direction and sent that manic fear (because Gaara was going to die if she didn't win) back to some unimportant corner of her brain.
All that mattered was bringing down the barrier, all that mattered was Gaara.
The Kyuubi's voice was thunder and flame. Do they think they can capture and bind us, Demon Kings older than the very dust of this world? I was walking this plane before you bastards even crawled your way out of the muck…
The seal on her stomach flared and bent, and she could feel the seal giving its way through her as the Kyuubi raged. It was like having a furnace of hellfire at her back, and the heat licked and charred and swept up her spine.
It was, she supposed, a little like dying.
The last time she'd lost it she'd been thirteen and had fried her own brain. But that had been when she was thirteen. Three years was a very long time to get ready when one was a jinchuuriki trained by two Sanin, so instead of pulling back she poured it out and turned up the heat.
The chakra rippled and spun blue and red arced out, sizzling the air, burning it down to ozone. The grass under her feet withered and burned and she held.
So did the barrier.
The Kyuubi poured out more chakra and the furnace at her back became the center of a star, and Sakura was in the middle of a nuclear fire about to burn out of control.
Extraction Site, 3:09 AM
Gaara was falling. He'd been falling for miles. Falling since…
He couldn't remember.
It might have been forever, but it was too hard to think through the pain crawling through his skull and peeling back the layers of his skin until—
Until whatever it was, wherever he was falling, got there. He just wished it would end.
Something itched at the edges of the horizon, except he had no horizon, no sky or ground just…falling. It was red. Red. Rage made into mist and blood turned to light. There was a name for this and he knew it like his own.
Sakura.
His spine arched and it was molten steel melting out of his back and—
No. He wouldn't forget again. Sakura was here, somewhere, here. The jinchuuriki who knew his pains better than he did and loved him in ways Gaara couldn't even love himself.
Someone was screaming. He was falling into the screams or maybe away from them. He recognized them, it was the Shakaku howling and still clawing for purchase on his soul. Sakura had pushed it down so long ago Gaara had almost forgotten the sound of its grating cries.
Something was pulling it up and away and—
He was dying. His lifw was being bled away and there was nothing for him to hold onto. He took comfort in the fact that the Shakaku was suffering as much, if not more than he was.
Sakura was getting farther away.
No, that wasn't right. Gaara was the one dying.
He'd been falling for miles. Falling since…
He couldn't remember.
West of Unknown Location, 3:15 AM
Her forehead was beaded with sweat and Tenten grasped another branch to steady herself. Hanging upside down with ankles locked over a branch, her body crisscrossed by at least ten wires (with one strand of razor wire alarming close to her throat), she twisted to the side and looped her leg over the branch her hand was now grasping and wondered why she had even decided this was a good idea.
A good idea that was going to get her killed.
She sighed. There was nothing to do but finish this. With one leg still stuck to the tree by chakra and the other firmly in place, she let herself settle in and waited.
Neji's voice drifted to her, deceptively close. "The anchor is just below you, inside the tree trunk. Be careful."
A bead of sweat, as she was upside-down, trailed from her chin to her cheek and then burned into the hollow of her eye. Cursing, she rubbed at it before reaching down and letting her hand run over the trunk.
Her fingers tingled as if she was getting stuck with a thousand pinpricks of static shock at once. Without a second thought she peeled the bark back, fingernails becoming bloodied under her gloves, and occasionally she swiped at her sweat plastered hair. The bark gave way and underneath was an alabaster disk inscribed with so many seals just looking at it made her dizzy.
Space and reality may have been bending around it too, but she wasn't checking.
Her fingers smoothly moved together into a fist, primed with chakra, and she punched. The anchor disk exploded into dust and fragments, and space seemed to spread out back into the right contours of rightness. She did her very best not to start cackling manically.
Now all she had to do was find her way back without setting off all the traps.
She snorted sarcastically. "Yeah, this is gonna be easy."
East of Unknown Location, 3:36 AM
Gai bounded up the side of the chasm with a tiny disk in his hand, and light and space seemed to curl around it as if reality had decided it didn't feel like working for awhile. At any other time Gai would have probably worried a bit more about it, but at the moment Lee was at his heels and every exploding tag from here to kingdom come was going off.
Fire and shrapnel were chasing them and with a grunt Gai got leverage on a shelf and pushed up. Stone shattered beneath his feet but he was finally airborne and over the lip of the canyon. He hit the ground hard. The disk in his hand exploded on impact and he barely noticed.
Lee landed beside him in a tumbling skid just as a pillar of flame forced itself from the chasm and lit the sky above like it was day. The explosion shook the ground under him and Gai just watched the flame, surprised he'd survived it at all.
Next to him, Lee realized his spandex suit had been burnt and started sobbing. Gai patted his back absently.
Unknown Location, 3:39 AM
Sakura stumbled forward as she felt the barrier give and the Kyuubi immediately took advantage of it with another wave of chakra. The ground splintered at her feet and the prism took on new contours as a shatter point of light that was inexorably bending inwards.
It wasn't quite open. She tried to figure out what that meant but her thoughts were blurred, the Kyuubi was too close, feeding her rage with his own and twisted her around until she couldn't see straight. She was standing in the center of a star and burning—
There was no room for thought in the flame.
Instinct alone guided her and she examined the flaw lines, tracing them with their chakra and the edges were so thin but…
She mentally nudged the Kyuubi. He ignored her. The next nudge was more of a punch.
His growl scraped at the inside of her skull, but without a word exchanged a tail broke free from the assault and drew the katana from her back. The tail flipped blade around and slapped the hilt into her hands. The tail draped over her and the blade, knowing her instinct like his own, and the crimson chakra sharpened on the edge thinner and sharper than any razor.
Hotter than the surface of a star.
With one vicious motion she plunged the katana into the shatter point, finding the flaws and leveraging them open. It was blue-red-purple and the colors flared and burned into her irises.
There was more red than blue.
South of Unknown Location, 3:44 AM
Earth jutsu weren't his specialty but Naruto would have argued for mastery after the chakra-infused-gymnastics he'd had to perform to maneuver the anchor up between the mines. Now the disk sat open to the air innocently, quietly going about its way of bending space into a snarl around it.
"I hate you." Naruto told the anchor. It didn't answer but considering the kind of chakra it was putting out, he wouldn't have been surprised if it had.
He pulled a kunai from his pack and threw it with a lazy flick. It pierced through the middle and the disk shattered to dust. Space became space again, and Naruto felt kind of cheated by the anti-climatic-ness of it all.
It should have at least…screamed, or something. He was putting in a complaint to Akatsuki for sheer boredom.
He sighed and turned to head back to the barrier. As soon as he got within four hundred yards it was like walking into a solid wall of pain.
Sakura was flinging around demonic chakra and killing intent like the world was ending, and the hair on his neck stood up as his skin fought not to char off. He had seen the end result of the last time she'd flown into a rage like this, and he didn't think he could stomach her nearly dying again by self-inflicted wounds.
His walk turned to a sprint and even then, Naruto knew it was already too late to stop any of this. If she'd already lost it nothing would stop Sakura from her warpath.
North of Unknown Location, 3:51 AM
Sasuke smirked, feeling the cut on his cheek split further and pour blood down his face as he did. He was a ragged mess and he couldn't stop smiling through the adrenaline. With claws like iron, feathers like razors, and bodies faster than any crow should have had; these birds-not-birds had tried their best to kill him by ripping him apart.
Another murder of the crows swooped in (and god he had to stop himself from chuckling, a murder of crows, honestly) and he cut the first to pieces with a kunai, batted the second away with his forearm, and split the third apart with his scythe. The blood that spattered him smelled like ash.
Another crow went for his headband again, trying to get at his eyes to gouge them out. Sasuke chuckled. "You're a little too late for that." The lightning jutsu that had been charging under his skin burst out and caught every crow within thirty feet.
The birds let out screams and the stench of smoldering feathers just added to the odd charred smell they carried. The sound of their bodies falling in wet thwacks was the nicest thing he'd heard since this mission had begun.
He had to find his silver linings somewhere in this.
The wet thwacks grew louder. It was raining birds and raining blood, and frankly this was nothing too unusual for a S-class mission. That one time on the Iwa border, on the other hand…
The last crow, still trying to carry the anchor disk, fluttered uselessly on the ground with one of its wings sheared off. The remaining bone and sinew fluttered wetly against the dirt, and without a second thought Sasuke set it on fire and listened to its flesh sizzling and the anchor fracturing.
Distantly, he noticed the horizon of his black world was turning red as if some alien sun was waiting to rise. Sasuke knew what that meant. His fearless leader was about to get wild.
Calmly, Sasuke walked back to watch the show. Sakura had told him on more than one occasion to stay clear if she seemed to be angling for a psychotic break, and he wasn't going to go running in her way now.
As he considered his best vantage on watching his teammate go jinchuuriki crazy on someone, the hand he had on his scythe tightened and his grin pulled to a skeletal gash on his face.
Akatsuki was on the other side of that barrier and Sasuke still had a vendetta to settle.
Extraction Site, 4:00 AM
The last shreds of the Shakaku clung to Gaara, maybe trying to claw its way back into the seal. Gaara didn't know anymore, he'd been falling for so long…
He breathed.
The Shakaku screamed at him, gold and spinning black and a howl of terror and pain. He didn't want it anymore, any of it. He was getting to the bottom of wherever he was plummeting too, and dying in peace was the least this demon could give him. He shoved hard and with one final breath the Shakaku was expelled from him.
And just like that he wasn't breathing at all. Sabaku no Gaara, Kazekage of Suna, youngest of three siblings and one of only nine jinchuuriki in the world, died. His heart shuddered one last time before stilling.
A rattling hiss echoed through the room, a great last breath of something being lost from the world. The stone holding the cavern together fractured but held, and one by one the statue's fingers flickered out. The dragon effigies dragged back, a star dying, and the stone mouth of the statue-not-statue swallowed them back along with the threads of a Demon King's soul.
The translucent Akatsuki, however, regarded one another in confusion.
Kisame summed up their uneasy sentiment bluntly. "What the fuck just happened?"
Their leader looked to the only Akatsuki members there in the flesh. "Deidara, Sasori? What do you see?"
Sasori made a quick appraisal of the body of the Kazekage, the sleeping statue-not-statue, and the ceiling. His assessment was dispassionate. "The Kazkekage is dead and extraction is finished. I…do not know why it ended so rapidly. It should have at least taken…"
"Three days." The Leader murmured, but before anymore could be said, a snarling crack rang through the cavern like breaking of bones. All heads turned to watch as one of the blindfolded eyes slid open. The iris glowed a sickly gold like dried poison.
Uchiha Itachi rasped. "The soul is…fully extracted. What we came for is finished."
And yet an uneasy silence remained between the nine. An extraction normally took three days, one to draw out the soul and unravel it thread by thread. The next two days followed the threads of that splintered soul back to siphon out the chakra.
They had finished in under twenty-four hours.
Then the entire cavern shook again, and this quake was followed by an ominous shift and a flood of killing intent so strong even those only there through projection could feel it. A few of the projections almost flickered out.
"The barrier has been breached." Itachi remarked blandly, but his lips were twisted by a ghost of a smirk. "A little devil has arrived."
Deidara swore and even Sasori looked concerned by the news.
The Leader did not comment on the almost cold pride in Itachi's voice, and instead turned to his left and ordered. "Zetsu, go check the perimeter."
The white-side-there projection of Zetsu nodded and vanished. They waited nearly a minute before it became clear Zetsu would not be returning soon. It would take another week for them to realize Zetsu would never return at all.
The leader's teeth grinded together and the first flicker of something like annoyance rushed through him. "Everyone return to your bodies. Deidara, Sasori, retreat and bring the body of the Kazekage back to base. I will examine him further there. If it's feasible check for Zetsu as you go."
"Aye, aye Leader-sama!" Deidara chirped brightly, but it was underscored by a harsh edge of uncertainty. The killing intent in the room grew thicker, fast and slick as magma, and it wasn't ebbing.
The other Akatsuki flickered out, and Deidara leapt down to join Sasori on the stone floor. The sound of Itachi chuckling stayed in the air even after he was gone. Behind them the statue vanished in a swirl of smoke, sealed away back to sleep until it was called again.
Deidara shivered and then groaned as that shifted the broken bones in his arm. He looked down at his mangled and bandaged arm and wondered if it would ever set right looking like it did. Put through a meat grinder pretty much summed it up.
"You grabbin' the body Sasori-dana?" The blond almost jeered.
Sasori looked at him in something torn between cruel amusement and irritation, but before he could answer a sinister red glow flickered from the adjacent tunnel. They both knew what that meant was coming.
Deidara swallowed and Sasori turned grim. "No. You're not taking on a jinchuuriki with a messed up arm. Grab the Kazekage and fly out of here, leave one of those stupid birds of yours for me. I'll keep this little fox distracted with my art until you're clear."
Deidara thought about arguing, but his arm was throbbing and carrying a body seemed marginally better than having to fight. He nodded and acted more put out than he actually was. "Whatever, un."
Sasori gave him a look and walked straight into the rapidly brightening tunnel. Deidara watched him go. "Crazy son of a bitch. Now who's the one who's art is gonna end up transient?"
Sasori was already gone to hold off a jinchuuriki and didn't answer, and with a grumble the blond walked over to the Kazekage's corpse. On a whim he bent down and put his fingers to the jinchuuriki's neck. He confirmed what Sasori had already told them: Gaara was gone.
Something cold crawled across his neck. Deidara swiped at it and sand grated between his fingers. His insides froze.
The sand tightened like a garrote and he clawed at it with his good arm, only to find a thick undulating band crushing his larynx and content to move with his fingers and then just shift back into place again when he gave up.
The Kazekage breathed. His eyes came wide open and there was nothing in them but blackness. No gold, no sea-green, no anything. The sand dragged Deidara into the air and he could only wheeze and watch the jinchuuriki clumsily stumble to his feet.
"I saw you…" Deidara spat between his teeth. "Die."
A rasping, shuddering sound echoed through the room and it took Deidara a long moment to realize the jinchuuriki was laughing.
The black eyes gaped at him, Gaara's head titled, and a wound of a grin opened. "I did."
And then the sand wrapped around Deidara's good arm and wrenched it out of the socket. The blond screamed before clamping his mouth shut, muffling the sound to an agonized grunt.
"That's for getting me killed for…three minutes or so." Gaara continued languidly. "And ripping the Shakaku's soul out of me, that was very unpleasant for me, I assure you."
Deidara's tongue felt bloated in his mouth and he couldn't get enough air past it. "You…you should be…dead."
"You only got the soul." Gaara's hand flexed. "The chakra's been mine for a very long time and I decided to keep it. You know so little about jinchuuriki despite chasing after us for years, just because you grab the demon doesn't mean you'll get what you're after."
The blond spluttered and Gaara looked incredibly bored. "I suppose it doesn't matter." And his hand closed.
The sand rushed, grated almost like a blade against bone, and Deidara's decapitated head hit the floor. Sand immediately covered it and hardened into a box. Absently, Gaara picked it up and contemplated whether the resulting bounty would cover his latest budget shortfall until the new trade agreements with Kiri kicked in.
Something buzzed against his chakra, almost like a hook trying to find purchase. He looked down at the headless corpse in search for the source and saw a ring on the one of the hands. Just putting his focus on it nearly split his head.
The number of seals compressed into the space of the ring was staggering and he nearly started hyperventilating as his chakra went haywire trying to trace them. He stopped focusing on it, still feeling the irritating hook.
He gingerly sent his sand to gather it, unwilling to touch it bare handed. When his sand brought it up he examined it briefly. One Kanji was on its surface: Seiryu. The Azure Dragon, one of the oldest legends in the world. The Kanji carving on its own was a few thousand tiny stitched seals, all carefully melded into the metal to form the greater design. He felt a headache coming on that had nothing to do with the fact his heart had been stopped for the last three odd minutes.
A familiar killing intent caressed him like an old friend.
He'd deal with it later.
He took the ring and the head and left the cavern without a second glance. Sakura was nearby and he really should go and say hello to her.
Unknown Location, 4:07 AM
Her rage had cooled the moment she laid her eyes on her enemy.
They stood at either end of the tunnel. It was one wider than most and easily large enough to accommodate a fight without bringing the entire mountain down on their heads. Sakura stood at one end and Sasori was at the other.
Both were silent as they examined their opponent. They were enemies simply because they were on different sides, neither knew anything about the other and frankly neither of them cared.
There were no vendettas to be filled, no revenge being taken, and nothing personal about any of this. This was just two people whose paths would cross one time. One path would then end and the other would keep going on. It was already set in stone more permanent than the walls around them. It was the wave meeting the shore and it was just as natural and just as inevitable.
There would be no banter or gloating, they would not bother trying to strengthen or lessen the harsh reality of what was happening. Both of them knew how deadly their enemy was and they wouldn't pretend it was just a game. That kind of denial was far beneath professionals like them.
They wouldn't pretend this fight was anything beyond what it was: a desperate, messy, ugly act to live.
There were no ideals here.
No dreams.
No good or evil.
"I'm Sakura." And it seemed like the right thing to say.
"I'm Sasori." There was no inflection in his voice, but something seemed to pass between them. The violence approaching was no less ugly or final though.
That was all they would every say to each other.
Sakura took a breath and let her body go slack. She flickered to the side, afterimages splintering out of her chakra into a complicated genjutsu.
His eyes flickered between all of the images as she surged at him. Her katana glimmered red as she brought it up in a sweeping motion from up his left hip. He would have been split in half if that image had been the real Sakura.
The genjutsu harmlessly passed through him and he caught the real blade between his hands and pulled down. Sakura rolled with the momentum and her legs struck out. He dodged back, releasing her blade even as he was pulling out a scroll from beneath his robe. In a hiss of smoke a puppet with sallow limbs appeared.
It was not an ordinary puppet of wood and metal, but carefully preserved flesh imbued with some filthy chakra she couldn't name. The puppet had been a man once upon a time, the Third Kasekage who had vanished mysteriously and been presumed murdered decades ago. Sakura credited Sasori with the murder mentally, and was somewhat impressed by the sheer insanity that would have one stealing your murder victim's body and hollowing out the corpse for a puppet. Sakura may have been psychotic but she had not yet reached that level of crazy.
She barely managed to move out of the way as a spike of black sand, from the puppet, tried to impale her. Interest now thoroughly peaked, she watched as the black mass fell apart and slithered back to the puppet. Gaara was not the only Kazekage famous for being able to control sand, but the third Kazekage had done it with powdered iron in sand, and she could see the glitter of it amongst the black like the coils of a retreating snake.
A hail of projectiles splintered out of the sand. She brought up both of her arms in time to shield her head from the worst damage, but the passage was too small to dodge and she felt her body bruise and bleed and flay beneath the assault. She could almost taste the poisons mixed in the sand that were now smeared into her veins.
It was the same poison that had been in Kankuro's blood. That poison had never been part of the Kazekage's legend. Sasori had made some upgrades, then.
Without anywhere more to go in the small tunnel she did the only thing possible: she ran straight into the line of fire.
It took only two seconds to gather the Kyuubi's chakra under her skin and let it flare out like a nova. The sand froze midair and then was pushed back by the flood of her chakra.
She followed the torrent and bought her katana high in the air with both hands to sink it into Sasori's head. Her shoulders shuddered and her momentum halted, and she never got that far. The Kage puppet had leapt to the defense, catching the blade between its dead hands much like Sasori had done just minutes prior.
A growl crawled from the back of her throat and the mania was swinging back in full. Held in the air, still holding her sword, she jerked her feet backwards and the blades in the heels of her boots slid out. Without a moment's hesitation she brought both her heels crashing into the puppets shoulders. It crumpled beneath her and the gridning of steel against preserved flesh and brittle bone nearly had her gagging. She held on though and the puppet tried to throw her off.
It was too late. The shoulders broke, muscles cut, and the flesh strings of this puppet were now useless pieces of preserved flesh. Her katana came loose easily and she split the puppet in half.
Sasori's howl of rage was all she heard before she had a face-full of Akatsuki going for her throat. Maybe he was too enraged, maybe he'd thought a little thing like poison would slow her, maybe he thought her blood soaked and mangled body was somehow weakened.
She didn't know why he left himself so open.
Still on her downwards swing into the puppet she wrenched her feet free, broke off the blade on her right foot as she did so, and dropped that same right heel now bladeless into the ground with a surge of chakra. Tsunade had taught her well. A fissure rocked open beneath their feet and Sasori tumbled and caught himself, revealing far more arms had been under his robe than just two. It didn't even matter.
Adrenaline and fear(for Gaara, always for Gaara) sang in her veins, and the katana in her hands sliced forward and pierced through his chest.
More arms, too young for being decades old, and his face unlined. She had known from the moments she'd laid eyes on him: Sasori was only a puppet. He was alive in his own way, driven by some binding construct of blood and soul and flesh inside. He still had a heartbeat and she knew where to aim. Somehow, someway, he'd figured out how to tie his soul into the confines of his heart.
Her blade had madea clean hit. It was over.
His eyes dimmed and he looked at her in something bordering on surprise. He had kidnapped Gaara and probably killed Gaara and—
She didn't gloat. She let his body slide off and slump to the floor untouched. He was dead. She peeled apart his chest cavity with her hands and examined a cylindrical vessel covered in seals and holding a still heart, surrounded by some murky fluid that smelled like rotted earth and day old blood.
She sat on the floor exhausted, and gingerly looked down at her legs. Between the puppet shattering and the hail of sand, her legs had been mutilated. Pieces of the puppet had been driven through her feet and ankles in some places and her boots were just utterly shredded.
She tried not to think too hard what the puppet shards were made of as she pulled them loose. By the time she was done blood had soaked through the inside of her boots, and she pulled them off and tossed them to the side reluctantly before standing back up. Her bare feet stung but held her weight. Her chest was still tight with fear and fury and because of that the Kyuubi's chakra remained pulsing under every inch of her skin. She held up a hand and began concentrating chakra, but was disappointed when it flickered between green and scarlet before dying out. She had no human healing chakra and her wounds still remained open.
Sakura turned her awareness inwards. "Can I get a little help here? My legs are about to come apart."
The Kyuubi's snarl snapped against her. If you failed to notice my oblivious jinchuuriki, you have a poison cocktail nearly a pint thick in your blood about now. So excuse me if I keep you from atrophying from the inside out first.
"Fine, touchy." She raised her hands in defeat and made due with the pain.
The Kyuubi went back to poison detail on her blood, shutting her down on anymore conversation, and with a resigned sigh she checked Sasori one last time. There was a buzzing against her chakra, and she realized another ring was trying to hook her. She plucked it up, pocketed it along with the first she'd taken off Zetsu, and continued looting the body.
Next she found a scroll that had her dumbfounded. It held the legendary puppets of Chiyo: ancient kunoichi, a bitch who surpassed all others, and prolific puppet user. Sakura supposed she'd have to give them back to Suna…eventually.
Just as she ran her hands down the rough paper of the scroll, she felt a familiar presence behind her. The mania fled like fog in the sun, and all the muscles in her body loosened. She smiled, turned, and from her bloodied feet flung herself at the man behind her.
Gaara caught her in a hug and swung her around, any sense of decorum out the window. They laughed and pressed their forehead together and just drank in the other's chakra. She was so relieved. They spent five minutes like that before Gaara set her down and looked at her with eerie, empty black eyes.
The smile on his face dimmed. "Sakura." He swallowed. "My brother and sister, did you see…?"
She heard the dread and soothed him. "They're fine. I got to Kankuro in time to patch him up and Temari took him back to Suna. They're safe. The others with you…I'm so sorry Gaara."
She handed him Chiyo's scroll, and he closed his eyes tightly as if pained before accepting it. "Thank you."
There was nothing to thank her for, but Sakura didn't voice that.
The death of that many people: advisors, friends, and even his own sensei was a blow. Having his siblings live made it easier but didn't take it away. His hollow eyes cast around and settled on her bloody legs. "Are you all right?"
She shrugged. "Well enough, as soon as the Kyuubi filters the poison out of me the rest of the wounds will get taken care of. It's not like I haven't lived through worse." And in the context of her life, this (and this being having her feet and calves impaled at least a dozen times) really didn't even rate a two on the pain scale.
Gaara directed a wave of sand at her and it enveloped her feet, cool against her skin, before firming up into sandals. She tested them out and it was kind of like having something living on her feet, but she'd take what she could get. "Neat trick."
"Thanks." He answered dryly.
And then for the third time that night something buzzed her chakra. She swung around and Gaara leapt back, reading the danger. "What—"
She relayed tersely. "The Akatsuki rings, I can feel them tugging at me. Another Akatsuki must be nearby."
He relaxed. "No one else is left here but us. I…cleared the area." He held out a third ring to her. She accepted it sheepishly, now out of fighting stance, and added it to her rapidly growing trophy-kill collection.
"Do you have any idea what they are?" He asked her.
She made a noncommittal noise. "I'm not sure, if I ever figure it out though I'll clue you in."
"So can you feel the…?"
"The seal density on these things? Yeah. It freakin' itches just being next to them." She knew him too well; sometimes they'd have entire conversations of half-formed-then-finishing each other's sentences going on. It was worth it just to watch the faces Naruto would make at them in confusion.
He nodded and that seemed to satisfy both of them. The sound of footsteps echoed down the tunnel and they both turned, seamlessly covering any blind spots for the other.
Naruto and Sasuke rounded the corner in dead sprints and both slowed and halted upon seeing and or sensing her.
Sakura grinned smugly. "Mission accomplished."
Hokage Tower, Private Office, 4:51 AM
"No."
She wanted to scream her denial at the walls, throw punches and break things with her hands. Tsunade wanted to bring the whole tower down on the off change it might change the report that had just been brought to her desk.
She tried to console herself that Jiraiya was back en-route for Konoha, that she could keep things together without flying apart—
It didn't help.
They had made treaties and changed the game, made peace with Kiri and then an alliance that should have stopped any war from brewing for decades.
It had all gone so perfectly and now it was all dust. "No."
She didn't scream, but she wanted to.
Hokage Tower, Public Office
Gemma twitched and shifted from foot to foot, an ANBU mask fit snugly over his face. He longed for his chunin days when he could put in a senbon between his teeth whenever he pleased. Now he had to worry about identities and secrets and ANBU protocol every time he needed an oral fix.
And his oral fix was severely lacking right now, but he didn't move because the room was far too crowded to even get an elbow out.
The only open space was around Morino Ibiki and his favorite student Yamanaka Ino, and that was only because Morino looked like a scary monster and Ino a gorgeous monster, and both had reputations for metal torture that bordered on exquisite art.
Nara Shikamaru was leaning back in his chair, Ino's hand on his shoulder lightly, and his eyes were half lidded in boredom. Gemma knew the boy as the genius of the tactical unit but more than that as the childhood friend of Jinchuuriki Sakura.
At least with his mask on, he didn't have to hide his disgust.
Shizune stood behind the Hokage's desk having been the one to put out the call to gather them. She had said nothing to anyone and just stood there still as if carved from stone.
Various ANBU and jonin were scattered around by the dozens, the ANBU crouching on windows and chairs and the jonin leaning on any flat surface availible. A few chunin were dotted through the room but only the ones likely to see promotion in six months or less.
Everyone shifted and murmured in low voices. The summit had ended a day ago and it had been the unspoken understanding everyone was getting a week of vacation to celebrate the treaty. Now here they were with something of the top twenty percent of their ninja jammed in one place.
It meant nothing good and sweat slipped under Gemma's mask.
A door opened and the room held its breath. Tsunade stepped in and her demeanor was rigid, pale, and barely contained fury. They crowded to each other and shied back from her as she took her seat, but there was no comfort he could find by them standing closer together.
It just made them more nervous.
It was her eyes that chilled them and embittered their hearts of any hope. Her voice was somber as if giving a eulogy. "As a few of you know, some hours ago a squad left to go rescue the Kazekage from an assault and kidnapping by Akatsuki."
Sharp gasps punctured the silence, but that only made it heavier. Tsunade looked up at them with haunted eyes. "And that is…the good news. We managed to get a squad out in time to head things off. However we did not manage the same for the Mizukage. On his way back to Kiri he and his entourage were attacked by a platoon of Oto ninja. The entourage took casualties but withdrew to Kiri intact with the Mizukage."
A hush crept into the hollow spaces of Gemma's skull and filled every rational thought, and he could only wait for the other shoe to drop.
It dropped like a meteor. "The Oto ninja were backed by Kumo scouts. I have received a report that…that Kumo along with Iwa have made their own alliance with Orochimaru. They said they did it to combat our dangerous and stacked alliance with Kiri and Suna."
There was a low moan of pain from someone that had already understood what this meant, but Gemma was too blinded by fear to put the points together.
Tsunade did it for him, her voice soft but her words damnation. "Kiri is our ally and an attack on them is an attack on us. The treaty has been triggered." She paused and it hurt just to breathe. "This is war. We received missives from our enemy already saying the same. The Fourth Great Shinobi war has begun."
Gemma closed his eyes and was so godamnned thankful for his mask to hide behind.
The nightmare they thought they'd escaped, the nightmare that they still carried the scars of had burst forth again. Shinobi would kill shinobi and the world would burn for it.
Edit: This time Sakura is actually emotionally distraught by the peril Gaara is in, all of the scene switching during the barrier take down was streamlined with some just getting cut out, Gaara's 'leading up to death' scenes were made more trippy, the plotline with the Akatsuki rings was cleared up (and foreshadowed more) to make more sense why the jinchuuriki are going around picking up rings, Sasori and Sakura's fight became almost and oddly amiable, Gaara and Sakura's reunion was much more emotional, Jiraiya who was originally back in Konoha was shuffled out and will arrive later, and last Tsunade seriously freaked out over the war starting and everyone there including Gemma took it far more seriously.