Chapter 25

Fire

Italics = English/Other language

'Single Quotes' = Thoughts

Edited by: Thomas Drovin

A/N: I'm back! Thank you all for patiently waiting. This chapter and all future chapters are dedicated to the donor who saved my life. I swear I will live life to the fullest. Chapters may be shorter than normal for a while until I get back into the groove of things.

x

After about half an hour of bargaining and haggling, I realized that Karura, despite being a hawk, was far more like a magpie. She loves, I mean really LOVES, gold and sparkly gems. I should have suspected this from the moment I saw the gold bangles on her legs, no doubt those cost a fortune to be made.

Sasuke seemed pleased by the conclusion of the deal though. Something about an annual "gold fee" until he removes his name from the summoning scroll. I was happy for Sasuke, I really was, and I wasn't naïve to think that any business contract should be hurried. However…that didn't stop me from feeling impatient. All I cared about was rescuing Samehada from his ledge, and then returning back to the others. I was extremely worried about Naruto.

"Fei," Sasuke called to me. "Karura will take us up to the ledge now."

'Finally!' I thought with a sigh of relief. I let the boy grab me around the waist as he leapt up with chakra enforced legs onto Karura's back.

'Oh wow,' I thought as I gently ran my hand over her smooth feathers. 'She's so soft!' I felt more than saw her muscles contract then tighten as she spread her wings wide and launched us up into the sky.

It was so much more interesting, and fun, flying up the mountain than flying down it. For one, I wasn't under the impression that I was going to end up as a pancake on the ground. I couldn't help but laugh and tentatively spread my own arms out like I was flying. Sasuke rolled his eyes at my antics, and responded by tightening his grip on my waist so that I wouldn't go falling off.

"Sasuke, this is so amazing! Karura! You are amazing and…amazing!" I found that the adrenaline destroyed most of my vocabulary.

Soon enough, we reached the ledge.

"Oh my…"

Samehada looked really REALLY angry. Yes I know he's a sword, and yes I know he technically has no face except for that mouth of his, but there was no doubt about it, Samehada was extremely pissed off.

Snarling and bristling to the extreme on his ledge, Samehada was an intimidating sight. Sasuke and I exchanged a worried look as we both thought, 'Is it safe?'

Warily, Sasuke picked me up and hopped onto the ledge as far away from Samehada as possible. His Sharingan was activated again, and he was glaring suspiciously at the growling sword. I squirmed a bit in Sasuke's hold, and reluctantly, he set me down, eyes still locked onto Samehada.

Taking a deep breath, I carefully inched my way towards the furious sword.

"Umm…Samehada?" I asked him slowly. "You okay?"

Before I could even react, Samehada leapt in my direction. In a blink of an eye, I found myself surrounded by giant scales as I realized that Samehada had twisted himself around me.

"Don't eat me!" I screamed out in panic

It was then I realized that Samehada wasn't going to hurt me at all, let alone eat me. In fact the reason why Samehada had wrapped around me in such an angry way, was because he wanted to protect me. Protect me from Sasuke it seems, judging from how his mouth faced Sasuke and was now baring his teeth angrily in his direction. It was SASUKE he was angry at.

Sasuke looked about ready to kill Samehada as well. The glare on his face from the hostile reception he was receiving was frankly terrifying.

'I can't have that,' I thought. Quickly slicing a palm open on one of Samehada's scales, I held it up to his mouth while soothingly murmuring how it was all right and to calm down.

I'm not sure if the words helped, but the blood definitely did. Ignoring Sasuke's glare and Karura's bemused stare, I focused on carefully pushing and wiggling out of Samehada's grip while he was busy lapping from my hand.

Luckily, it didn't take long for Samehada to calm down after that. I even sat down and let the living sword drape himself over my legs like a happy oversized dog or something.

"So…" I asked Sasuke. "How we go back now?"

Before the boy could respond, Karura interjected. "If all of you are ready, I can cancel the summoning for you. It'll send all three of you back to where you were reverse summoned."

Sasuke and I both stiffened a little at the thought. We both realized that there would be a chance that the masked man would still be there. After a moment of thought, Sasuke seemed to come to a decision. With a heavy frown on his face, Sasuke reached into his pouch and pulled out the killing seal I had given him. I felt all the blood drain from my face. Transferring it to his left hand, he tightened his grip on his sword and made his way over to Samehada and me.

By then I was already standing with Samehada's handle wrapped around my left hand. At Sasuke's nod, I quickly reached out with my right hand to lay it lightly on the boy's shoulder.

Sasuke then activated his Sharingan, gave Karura a quick nod, then we were falling… and yet not falling. The easiest analogy would be the feeling of standing in an elevator. You know, that weird feeling of falling despite your feet being firmly on a solid surface. It was a lot less terrifying and violent being returned home than it had been when we'd been reverse summoned.

In a blink of an eye, and a poof of smoke, we were back.

"What the hell?!"

My jaw fell open, and my hand slipped off Sasuke's shoulder as the boy jerked in shock.

We were in a crater. A crater that looked as if it was made only moments ago as birds still fluttered around in a panic above our heads, and debris in the form of twigs and leaves rained down on us.

That was shocking enough, but it was the heavy scent of petrol and the raging fire around us that really stole our breath, both figuratively and literally. We were completely surrounded and trapped and I didn't think Sasuke knew any water jutsu.

'Did we land somewhere wrong?' I thought frantically as I coughed into my arm. Samehada growled and shifted nervously while Sasuke was cursing as his gaze flickered around the smoke filled surroundings. If it were just him, I was sure that he could make it safely away, but Samehada and I were acting as deadweight.

"NARUTO! SAKURA!" He bellowed, causing me to jump in shock. I'd never heard him yell so loudly before in my life.

There was no response.

I gave another hacking cough as more smoke entered my lungs. My stinging eyes by then were squeezed shut and leaking tears. I felt Sasuke grab my head and push me to lay flat on my belly on the ground.

My eyes squinted open a fraction to see what Sasuke was doing. He was slicing open one of the many wounds on his already half mangled hand, quickly going through familiar hand seals.

'Karura!' I thought with relief. If Sasuke could summon her, we would be saved. She would easily be able to fly us out into safety.

However, my relief quickly faded into confusion, then horror as the summoning resulted in nothing but a cloud of smoke and a feather. I realized then that summoning was just like any other jutsu the preteens learned, they needed to practice.

But, there was little time for practice anymore. I was already going dizzy from the lack of oxygen. As my eyes slipped shut once again, I heard Sasuke furiously repeat the summoning. My last thought before I fell unconscious was that I really, really hoped that Sasuke would escape without me.

x

It was the jarring repeated pressure between my breasts that pushed me into consciousness. I then felt a puff of air force past my lips into my lungs, then again a repeated pressure. A cough sputtered out of me and my eyes flickered open as I wheezed. I felt the pressure stop.

A familiar voice ordered, "Fei…Fei, wake up."

Something wet dripped onto my face.

'What the…? Is Sasuke crying?' I thought with bewilderment. The curiosity alone was enough to make me open my eyes fully.

I couldn't help but to laugh a little as I realized that no, Sasuke wasn't crying. It was just his sopping wet hair that was dripping water onto me.

"Y-you ok Sas-?" a fit of coughing interrupted my whispered questions.

The boy helped me sit up, and he frowned heavily as he just awkwardly watched me cough my lungs out. He obviously wasn't sure at all what to do. That was okay though, saving both our lives and properly resuscitating me with CPR was more than enough. I wondered how I wasn't dead from carbon monoxide poisoning already though.

'Must be chakra' I thought. It was the only thing that I could think of.

I felt, more than saw Samehada, now much shrunken in size again, shift on my left. Once the hacking had calmed down, the boy pushed his water bottle into my hands, but I didn't drink yet. No, I wanted to hear Sasuke's answer first.

"You ok Sasuke?" I managed to completely ask the question this time.

Sasuke scowled at me before replying, "Yeah, I'm fine. Drink."

Once I managed a few sips, I asked another question. "How?" I wondered if Sasuke had somehow managed to summon Karura, but that didn't explain the fact that the both of us, including Samehada were dripping wet.

In answer, Sasuke just simply held up a sodden piece of paper. A seal…a WATER seal!

'You are a complete idiot Fay. You are soooooooo lucky that Sasuke is a million times smarter than you.'

Outwardly, I sighed and flopped back down onto the ground, ignoring the splat of mud. When I'd been sitting up, I'd seen the smoke of the fire raging and the village we'd been staying at sprawled out in the distance. The fire was far enough away though that I felt safe enough to relax for now. It also seemed like there wasn't any danger of the fire spreading towards the village, so there was that too. The only problem left now was to find Jiraiya, Naruto and Sakura.

Another hacking cough, this time from Sasuke, made me add get medical treatment to the list as well.

x

A/N: Sorry for the short chapter. An extra from Sasuke's POV to explain all the things Fay missed while she was unconscious. I have completely lost track of how many extras I am supposed to do... Oh well, I'll start counting from 1500 again. Thank you to all my readers!

Extra: Sasuke POV

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu! F-ck. Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" Sasuke's hands were trembling a tad as he quickly made the summoning hand seals again, trying to focus despite the smoke and the heat along with the fact that Fay was already unconscious. His cursed seal mark burned, distracting him further.

'This isn't working,' he thought while clenching his fists tightly to still his shaking hands. A glance towards Fay just proved to him again that he needed to think of a solution, and fast.

The killing seal he had carelessly discarded to the side while he'd placed all his efforts into summoning Karura fluttered, catching his attention.

'Seal…WATER seal!' Eyes widening in triumph, he snatched the killing seal back up and shoved it into his pouch as he unapologetically stuffed his hands into Fay's pockets. He shifted through the papers until he found the one he was looking for, the same water seal Fay had given him for his Chuunin match. The same water seal that Fay had used to soak him with to help him practice his new lightening jutsu.

He couldn't carry both Fay and Samehada though. Sasuke was realistic enough to realize that. The sword was also wrapped tightly around Fay as well, and didn't look like he would be letting go of her either. Sasuke glanced around him to see just how deep the crater was. Pretty f-cking deep by the look of it

Fay was barely breathing now. Ok, so the only way up and out of this crater and past the fire would be to flood the crater with a ton of water. That would carry up all three of them to the top of the crater, as long as he made sure Samehada and Fay didn't sink. That meant a ton of chakra though.

Sasuke gave the chakra saturated sword a considering look.

"Samehada," he said to him in his most commanding voice. "Give me as much chakra as you can or all three of us are going to die."

He didn't wait to find out if Samehada either understood or agreed to his demands. Instead, he grabbed the sword by the handle. To Sasuke's relief and shock, a huge river of chakra surged through him. Not wasting any more time, Sasuke grabbed Fay, tossed her over his shoulder, and activated the water seal.

The huge spray of water almost knocked Sasuke off his feet, but he luckily stuck to the ground with chakra in time. The crater rapidly filled with water, and within seconds Sasuke, with Fay and Samehada, were shooting up to the surface.

The water spilled out of the crater, creating a small tidal wave. At some point, Sasuke had the brilliant idea of climbing on top of Samehada, riding on top of the naturally buoyant weapon, letting them be carried along with the water.

The spray of water from the seal finally sputtered out, and the wave shrank until there was only muddy ground left. By then though, the three of them had made it a safe distance from the fire.

However, when Sasuke slung Fay off his shoulder onto the ground, he saw that there was a much bigger problem now. Fay wasn't breathing! Panic almost made him freeze up in shock, but training and adrenaline took over. Grabbing the girl, he tilted her head to the right angle, and quickly began CPR.

Ignoring Samehada, who was flooding Fay with as much chakra as he could, he continued his task.

'Breathe damn it! Breathe!' he growled mentally as he checked her heartbeat. 'Still there, but weak. Don't need to shock with lightning jutsu…yet.'

There was a cough and a small groan, which filled him with a rush of triumph and relief.

"Fei…Fei, wake up."

Extra/Preview: Naruto POV

'NONONONONONO!' This couldn't be happening! Everything was going so wrong. Fay and Sasuke were missing, and now this? He was crying so hard that he could barely see the red in front of him that he followed. They were dashing, no sprinting, through the trees. Hoping to make it in time.

'My fault. My fault. Oh Kami, no. Please no.'