Chapter 25: True Pain Part 1

Konoha wasn't too far away according to Sasuke, but didn't want to think about Sasuke right now. Everything hurt too much to think about him, if I did I would just have second thoughts on leaving him. I was already beginning to believe that I'd done a bad thing by leaving him after wounding him, but I had to do it. If I had gone over to him I wouldn't be able to find it in myself to leave him. I knew that Falcon wasn't going to be going after me any time soon, not after I burned Sasuke. My heart was throbbing and I was fighting back tears. I told myself that I wasn't going to cry anymore, crying wasn't going to take back what happened and it certainly wasn't going to protect Konoha.

I was finally close enough to Konoha that I could see the smoke rising up beyond the trees. Soon the wall was visible to me and I ran in even faster than I was already going.

Everything was a wreck. Buildings were toppled over, and the ones that were still standing had a great deal of damage done to them. I had a few goals that I had to accomplish first before fighting off some of the enemies.

Find my students.

Find Hinata.

Find Kiba.

But first I had to notify Tsunade-sama that I had returned.

Even the Hokage's building was crumbling before my eyes. In order to avoid battle I snuck through the alleyways of the buildings left standing, and hid behind rubble. A few times I would sneak past the attackers. All of them had fiery orange hair with several piercings all over their faces and ears, probably more all over their bodies. I also ran by many dead bodies, but I tried my best to ignore them and move on. I couldn't waste time on the dead while I still needed to protect the living. I never saw the body of a good friend of mine, but every corpse I saw was a comrade. I didn't feel true loss until I saw Kakashi-sensei's body buried in a pile of rubble. Quickly I turned my head away knowing that there was nothing I could do for him, not when he was already dead. All I could do was avenge him, but I still had to see Tsunade-sama.

Finally, reaching the base of the Hokage's office building I began to run straight up the walls of the building, up to the roof where I could see Anbu members gathered with their animal masks. At first when I appeared from the side of the roof they thought that I was an enemy and raised their weapons at me, but then Tsunade-sama, who sat in the middle of their group, stopped them. "I've returned, Tsunade-sama," I said getting on to one knee, putting one fist to the floor, and bowing my head. "I'm sorry for my leave of absence. I got caught up in something."

I could hear the ANBU members talking about me like I couldn't hear them while my head was down. They said things about me disappearing with the missing-nin, Sasuke. They discussed whether they thought I was a traitor or not. Slowly I heard Tsunade-sama's footsteps approach me, but I made sure not to lift my eyes from the ground. I knew that I had done a bad thing; I'd left Konoha for almost a month and a half and traveled with Sasuke. If she did not trust me anymore I wouldn't blame her. I knew that if I were in her place I would not trust the person that was standing before her. Even I had to admit that I looked at myself as somewhat of a traitor.

"Take out your forehead protector, Azusa," Tsunade-sama ordered me with an intense voice that made me flinch. I quickly removed my forehead protector from my pocket. I made sure that Sasuke would not get his hands on it when I was with him. It was something that I protected with my life. I handed her the protector thinking that she was going to scratch out the Konoha symbol, telling me to leave, but instead she wrapped it around my neck like I had always worn it before. My emotions were a mixture of relief and shock, but either way I could not move. "Look at me, Azusa," she said.

Slowly I raised my head and looked in to my Hokage's creamy brown eyes. Her hand came down on my face like a hammer to a nail, and a felt blood fall down from the side of my lip. I gritted my teeth to bite back the pain and fear to look right back at Tsunade-sama again.

"You are late Azusa. I've been waiting for you to return," then she squatted down to the ground so that we were seeing each other from the same height. "Naruto will be coming back soon, but until then protect this village. I'm entrusting this village to you right now, do you understand?"

"I understand, Tsunade-sama. I am honored," I said bowing my head once more. In truth I could barely believe what I was hearing. She was entrusting the entire village to me right now, the traitor that had abandoned the village for a month and a half to be with her corrupted and possibly insane friend. Words could not explain how grateful I was to Tsunade-sama. If it were any other Hokage I probably would have been killed on the spot.

"Tsunade-sama!" one of the ANBU members said in disbelief. "She could be a traitor! She could be a spy for Sasuke Uchiha!"

Now the words that were coming from the masked ANBU member were the words that I'd expected from Tsunade-sama. "Are you a spy, Azusa?" Tsunade-sama asked me bluntly.

"No, I would never betray Konoha," I answered truthfully.

"There you have it," Tsunade-sama turned back to the ANBU member. "She says that she is not a traitor so I don't doubt her. There is a reason that she is the youngest Jonin we have in the village, and that is because I trust her wholeheartedly."

"Thank you Tsunade-sama," I said. "I have one last question."

"Yes?"

"Are Kiba, Hinata, my students, and all the others alright?" I asked uneasily.

"All of your friends are fighting hard. You should join them right away," Tsunade-sama answered.

"Thank you," I breathed a sigh of relief. "But Kakashi-sensei is dead," I told her what I knew she already knew.

"I know. I know…" she repeated twice as I ran off of the building and down the wall, back in to the battlefield.

I touched the side of my eye feeling one of the petals from my Mangekyo falling to the bottom of my eyes. One hour had passed since I'd activated it, and I had five hours left to defend my village. "That's plenty!" I cried blowing a fireball from my mouth in to the air to let everyone know that I was back, and that I wasn't going to stop until Konoha was safe again.

Right off the bat I used Shorai-Zo to see in to the not-so-distant future in order to find Kiba's whereabouts. He seemed to be within a building, so I searched through all of the buildings that were still standing that shared the same layout as the one in my vision. Finally, I burst through one of the walls and found Kiba and Tsume-san battling against another orange haired enemy. "Azusa!" Kiba cried whirling around and throwing his arms around me in a full embrace. "I saw your fireball, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, I just needed to know that you were fine too," I smiled somewhat painfully. Kiba was visibly still in love with me, but for me it wasn't the same anymore. I still cared for him and had feelings for him, but I wasn't in love with him. It would be better if I was still in love with him.

"Well sorry to break up your lovers reunion, but we're sort of in the middle of something, Azusa-san," Tsume-san growled while staring at the Preta Path before her.

"I can't stay for long anyways. Sorry Tsume-san." I apologized then turned back to Kiba, "Where are Hinata and my students?"

"Last I saw her she was looking for her parents, she had Sho, Tsuyoi, and Takeshi with her at that time. I wouldn't be surprised if she was keeping those three at the hospital to keep them safe," Kiba told me, and I immediately began rushing over to the hospital saying a quick goodbye.

Just as Kiba had said Sho, Tsuyoi, and Takeshi were at the hospital, but instead of staying within it's safe walls they were outside trying to fend off one of the Paths that were trying to break in to the Hospital. It was obvious that all three had gotten very strong since I'd been gone, and exceeded all of the other Genin in their age level. As I watched them fight I could see that Tsuyoi had found a medium between using her Nendono Kekkei Genkai, and other jutsus that she had learned. She would use shadow clones to attack while distracting the Asura path which was already breaking apart. Takeshi on the other hand was not so different from when I left him, which in his case was not bad since he was already a prodigy child to begin with. The only difference was the sense of leadership that I saw in him now. He would order out Tsuyoi and Sho's attacks, and they would listen to him like a true leader. Now I knew who helped Hinata run the group while I was gone. Sho was even better of a weapons user since I'd left him. He knew the perfect way to angle a kunai, and could hit the Asura path in the same place with three different shuriken, sneaking in the Kaze No Buki no Jutsu that I had taught him not long before I'd gone to extend his weapons, and increase their power. It was obvious to me that they could handle themselves, but I still felt obligated to do at least one attack.

Immediately I jumped in with a full blown kick to the Path's head, and began to move my hands for a seal. "Sen Katto no Jutsu," I cried as the wind daggers rained down on the Asura Path's head completely missing me. When I landed down on to the ground again I stepped on the momentarily knocked out Path. "Hi, did you guys miss me?" I grinned waving to them.

I could see the shock on their faces, knowing that they weren't expecting me to return for this battle. Tsuyoi was the first one to greet me. She ran right at me and wrapped her arms around me, soaking my shirt with her tears. "I didn't know if you were coming back or not. I thought that your Uchiha friend had made you switch sides."

"Well I'm here now, and I'm not going to switch sides. I'm always going to be a Konoha ninja, don't worry," I patted her on the head to comfort her. Then I looked at Sho and Takeshi who now standing with smiles on their faces. "Are you going to deny your sensei a hug?" I asked waving them over with a laugh. Sho ran over immediately, but Takeshi still stayed back. "Still the cool guy, Takeshi? Come on, or I'm going to punish you real bad at our next training." I threatened, forcing him to come over. Takeshi still reminded me a little bit of Sasuke, but I wasn't going to let him go down the same path as Sasuke. I was going to break down all of his walls that pushed people away, something that I had failed to do with Sasuke. At last I was hugging all three of them, realizing just how much I had missed them during the time that I was gone. When I felt like the hug had lasted long enough I released all of them, and asked them, "is Hinata still here?"

"No, she went with her bodyguard to go find her parents. She left us here," Tsuyoi replied. "There are a lot of people that are hurt in there. I don't know if they're going to be able to save them all."

"I'm going to go in and help the medical team for a bit. Keep defending the outside of the hospital like you were. You guys looked amazing out there," I smiled.

"You were watching?" Sho asked surprised.

"Of course I was watching," I laughed as I ran in to the hospital.

Just like Tsuyoi had said, there were too many people that were injured and not enough people on the medical team. I quickly spotted Sakura moving from patient to patient as fast as she could. Her eyes looked tired, and she looked overwhelmed by the amount of patients she needed to treat. I ran over to her urging her to treat the next patient while I handled the one that she was treating. "That guy over there is in pretty bad shape. I'll handle this one," I told her.

"Azusa, you're back?" Sakura looked surprised. Even she looked a bit glad to see me, considering that she was never really a big fan of mine.

"Yeah," I replied beginning to heal the patient's wounds. "I escaped."

"From Sasuke?" she asked uneasily.

"Yeah."

"How is he?" she wondered.

I remembered Karin healing his wounds while he tried to get me to stop running away. I remembered setting him on fire with Amaterasu. Guilt surged me once more, which was pushed away by my concentrating on healing the man before me. "Not in as bad of a shape as the guy over there is."

"Right," she nodded running over to the next patient. I sighed, knowing that I wouldn't be able to answer her questions about Sasuke. I couldn't even talk about him without contorting my face with guilt. From the patient over Sakura turned to me and laughed a tired laugh. "You know, Kiba yelled at me over you when you were captured. I said that you were with Sasuke of your own free will and he just snapped at me, but I guess he was right. You came back after all. You're really lucky to have someone like Kiba, you know?"

"Yeah, I know," I said to her. "But you were right, I was there of my own free will. He captured me, and I stayed because I wanted to stay. I thought that I could save him somehow, because it was me who was closest to him, but in the end I couldn't do it. I really want to save him, more than anybody. I even somewhat regret leaving him to save Konoha, but I knew that I had to do it."

Both Sakura and I then moved on to our next patients. "So you've realized it then…" she sighed.

"Realized what?" I asked curiously.

"That you're in love with him too," she answered bluntly. "That you've always been in love with him."

"Yeah," I nodded feeling sorry for Sakura who still harbored feelings for him. "I'm sorry, Sakura. He's always cared about me the most out of everyone though." I told her remembering him saying that he would never leave me before I knocked him down and called him a liar.

"I know. I've always known," she nodded back at me sadly, then she finished her patient and urged me aside and began working on my patient. "You shouldn't be working in this hospital right now, Azusa. Other than Naruto you're the next closest thing that could save Konoha. You should be out there fighting those guys. I can handle it in here so you handle everything out there."

"Yeah," I agreed beginning to walk off to the battlefield.

"Hey, Azusa," Sakura stopped me continuing to heal her patient.

"What is it?"

"Do you think that we could've been friends if Sasuke wasn't in the picture?" she smiled at me.

"We still can be," I replied walking away.

When I got out of the hospital I found my students still fighting. I snuck out of the hospital without disrupting their battle with the awakened Asura path and moved on. Suddenly, while I was running through the debris scattered streets I spotted another Pain path rise in to the sky. It was obvious that he was up to something suspicious so I decided to make him my first target. Hachidori! I summoned my blue hummingbird which flew me up to the pain. This Pain, like all of the others wore a scratched forehead protector and a long Akatsuki coat. He had the usual orange hair and piercings on his face, and his orange hair was short and spiky, somewhat like Naruto's hair. On the ground below I spotted Tsunade-sama running towards this Path, screaming his name, Pain…

It was now obvious to me that this Path was the leader of this attack, "Pain!" I screamed launching myself off of Hachidori and at Pain with a kunai surrounded by wind to create a longer sword.

"You're too late," he said in a monotone.

I felt a push throw me aside like gravity was pulling the wrong way. Hachidori caught me in the strong push and cradled me on it's back so that I would not be wounded. My limbs hurt from the push and tiny rocks of debris had cut my face so that I was bleeding a fair amount. When I finally woke up I felt like I was in hell, because below me where Konoha should have been was nothing. It was now bare and covered in clouds of dust. Once again I did not know who was alive or dead anymore. I didn't know who had left me behind.

As I watched Pain lower himself in to the cloud cover below I screamed with the most rage I'd ever felt. "PAIN!"