Chapter 25

"I'll just go back to my room for now then, if there is nothing I can do to help." Sakura smiled politely and turned to go, internally cursing herself about what she could do to 'help'. Bollocks. Hopefully they would just leave her alone, but as one of them now likely held a vendetta against her, it wasn't looking like great odds.

She moved away slowly, not allowing herself to show them how truly intimidated she was. Her whole body was clamming up, she could feel herself shaking, she could feel their eyes on her. She knew they delighted in this. So she wasn't suprised, but still involuntarily jumped when a hand snaked forward to strongly grasp her elbow. It wasn't a wierd or remotely sexual place to touch her, but that didn't matter. He had his hand on her. She didn't want it.

She turned around to face them, manoeuvring her way out of his grip in the process, and pasted on a suprised, and slightly confused expression. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

He smiled back, as falsely charming as ever and Sakura came to the sudden realisation that she would trust this face even less than that of his black-eyed companion. It was difficult to ever tell if he was genuine, he flickered so quickly between sick-headed criminal and decent, caring citizen. "Yes, my dear. There is something that we need your help with, medically speaking."

"Oh." Well, that was unexpected, but the small niggling feeling remained that kept her on her guard. "Well, I only know basics, and am far from calling myself profficient in medicine. Perhaps you should send for someone from the village..."

"I'm sure any skill at all will be of help in our current situation, and I'm afraid that a village healer may act... hostilely to this situation."

His friend laughed. "You could say that it is of a rather delicate nature..."

The alarm bells began ringing again, creating a migrane in the form of a high pitched earthquake in her mind, and it took all of her control and clear thought left for her to nod along, while every nerve in her body screamed to run.

On autopilot she followed them, her mind miraculously crowded and far too hectic to allow her to single out any one order of events to focus on. She was too numb to accept any one theory of what could be wrong, what the village couldn't know, what they could do to her. The worry was still there, but in her current state she couldn't place the reasons. Only the panic.

And the fear of them hurting her.

They didn't go up to the top floor as she had been anticipating. Instead they stopped on the third, and headed straight for the last door along, just a normal guestroom as far as Sakura knew, and no one had been staying in there the last time she checked. At the moment it was the room furthest away from the others; for some reason they seemed to fill the rooms from one side in, starting where the stairs were. What were they hiding in here? It couldn't be anything that bad could it? If it were it would be upstairs, but all of the rooms were soundproofed... that was how she and Kakashi had been able to talk so openly once they'd made sure that their door and windows were fully shut. Although now that she thought about it, they hadn't always... such as a small while earlier when they were able to hear the pigs yelling for Kakashi. Did that mean that they heard what was said before that? Was that what this was about?

No, it wasn't. She hung back a little as they opened the door, not wanting to be cornered in, but the moment that heavy wood was moved she knew that this wasn't about her, a least not in any objectionable way. They really did need her help, and as close as she was to throwing up she would give it.

The screams and cries were the first things that hit her. A high pitched female voice crying for help out of pain. Strong heatfelt sobs that wracked her body and an erratic chakra that demonstrated to Sakura that this woman was a ninja. She hadn't seen any women wandering around here free before. Did she work with them or was she locked up too?

The next thing as the door opened wider was the blood. Covering everything, and spilling out over the floor more by the second. The third was the girl.

Yes, girl. This girl couldn't be much above Genin age if she were average in ability. Chunin at most; since as far as she knew none of the villages were deep in war plans, and all had come to an agreement to not send children on any mentally damaging missions. It was a matter of practicality rather than compassion. And going by her bulging stomach, this girl had likely not entered the Chunin exam. How long had they kept her here? What had they done to her?

Who was it who had gotten her pregnant? By her age Sakura highly doubted that the girl had been pregnant when she came here. How old had she been when she was brought here? Had they been using her since then? She was screaming now, large sobs wracking her body as tears sreamed down her pale face from frightened eyes. It didn't take much for Sakura to realise that she was in labour. The explaining was needed for the blood.

"Oh my god..." She whispered as she hurried forward to get a closer look at the girl. "What the hell happened here? What caused the bleeding?"

"Hmmm... we can't say really. Not too sure. Your job is the diagnosis right? All we know is that she and the child are dying. Save them."

"What?" Sakura hissed as her vision clouded up, her her whole body entering hyperdrive. Her heart rate sped up and she could feel moisture gathering on her collarbone from the pressure. She hadn't gotten this worked up about a medical procedure since she was a novice, under Tsunade's careful instruction. Usually she dealt so much better than this.

It was pure instinct that got her moving, all thoughts evading her as she worked from body memory. She didn't need to consciously think, that's how natural the technique had become to her. She didn't think, she did. And that alone was possibly what caused her success. As much as she hated to admit it, it was easier to work once the girl had passed out from blood loss and she didn't have to hear her cries. She focused on the girls multiple injuries first, hoping that there would be time to save the child. Something else that had been ingrained into her so that there was no room for doubt. Save the mother before the child.

Once the worst of the internal damage was cleared Sakura turned her attention to the baby that was still inside. The girl was in labour but unconscious. There was no way that she could control it. In her current state she couldn't push. So Sakura did what was natural to her in this situation. She turned to cesarean.

She worked quickly, healing up the wound before the child was even fully removed, cradling it's naked form against her chest for heat as she finished up. The girl's heartrate returned to normal as the baby began to cry and Sakura smiled, breathing a sigh of relief as she took off her cardigan to wrap the little girl in. She turned to face her audience happily, forgetting for a moment that they weren't just relatives needing reassurance that both mother and child were ok.

No, they were there to watch her. And she had used her chakra blade...

888

"What, so you just LEFT HER THERE?" Naruto exploded at the returned Ino and Hinata. "You should have hid and STAYED THERE! What are you STUPID?"

"Shut up dobe. They would have stayed if they could, and they did the right thing by telling us what has happened."

"Sasuke-teme..." Naruto quieted down at Sasuke's confidence in the other ninja.

"Besides, we're going to need to split out now anyway."

"Yes, this is becoming very troublesome." Shikamar took over. "Regardless of knowing all of the locations, they'll be hit down hard if we even take the ones we know. And who knows? Maybe we might find someone willing to talk."

"Exactly." Sasuke added in. "Now we need you two to go back to Sakura for now and make sure everything is ok there. We'll join you either with or without Kakashi to take them down, so you are there for protection only for now got it?"

"Aye aye captian." Ino grumbled.

"Ayah, yes!" Hinata added.

"The rest of you, you need to go off in the teams we decided earlier. We've given you the coordinates." Sasuke considered for a moment. "Or more or less... Sai and Yamato, we don't have all of the places mapped yet. We need you two to hit the head base so you'll be staying here. Same for Shikamaru and Tenten."

Ino scowled at Tenten. "Sasuke, tell us why we've been split away from our teams again?"

He sighed. "Because we need to work in pairs and we have put people together who will compliment each other's skills. Shikamaru is a mid range jutsu type. Tenten can cover either short or long with weapons. We've put them together to fill in each other's gaps."

"Whatever," She grumbled. "Are me and Hinata gonna leave our stuff here for now?"

He nodded. "That's probably best. You don't want to have to lug it around with you."

"Why don't you two go with one of the other teams to the other bases then?"

"Because we were stationed specifically here."

"So? We're here now."

"We don't have all of the coordinates, as we've already said."

"So why not add more people to each team?"

"Team 7 stay together."

"But you want the rest of us to split up!"

Kurenai massaged her temples and effectively ended the discussion. "Kids, everyone is equal in this mission, and we will all be to blame if things go wrong. Team 7 took this mission, Naruto and Sasuke are organising us as reinforcements so the rest of us need to pull together and do as we've been told. All of this has likely been preapproved by Kakashi anyway."

"Ok." Ino nodded, immediately giving in, and nobody said it but they all knew it was because of her relationship with Asuma. Team Ten would do her bidding till the day that she died, if not longer. As would Team Eight, her own team.

All in all, that one quiet woman possibly had more control than any other Sensei over the younger generation. And as soon as Tsunade realised that, she ought to label the woman as next in line for Hokage.

888

Kakashi Hatake scowled as he glared behind him at his rather contemptuous team. He sighed. Even as Genin he would never have allowed Team 7 to get away with this crap speed and skills. He had to remind the idiots to even mask their trail and not take soldier pills an hour and a half into the journey. And he left Sakura's sweet presence for this?

At the rate this was going tasks that should take hours would take days, and every single hour would be an extra hour away from her. "Come on, let's pick up the pace a bit."

As all of his efforts to spur things on failed, Kakashi couldn't help the feeling of unease that sank into his stomach telling him that something was gravely wrong.

A/N - Woo, another chapter :) Thank you to Little-bad-Angel and Temarilyn for reviewing!

Haha, no Temarilyn I don't think Naruto will ever bother with Shino's name and Hells yea, Angel we need to get our spoons ready!

R&R