The Isolation of Inner Sakura

Ch 25

No Rest for the Weary

I went to bed that night exhausted after spending all day searching through Sasuke's system studying his seal and then training with both Lee and Sasuke. Then I had trained with Haruko and Kou when Lee and Sasuke had started a taijutsu match. Sasuke was bruised and battered, and looked tired after facing the Taijutsu Master. I knew Lee hadn't gone easy on him like he did for me, but then Sasuke wouldn't have had it any other way. He thought that getting the crap kicked out of him meant he would be stronger the next time around. I knew better though.

So when my head hit the pillow that night I fell sound asleep, it didn't matter that there were two other guys scuffling around my room.

I was running, there was something behind me and I couldn't seem to get away. I'd think that I'd finally found a safe place to hide, but then I would have to run again, constantly trying to put distance between myself and what was following me.

But then the world had melted around me and I found myself in the forest, I was with Naruto and our two other jounin teammates that were testing for anbu. We had just finished our mission successfully and were headed back to Konoha, jumping through the trees.

But I could feel it, something was wrong. And when we dropped from the trees to camp I could feel the presence of something, but I couldn't seem to make the others hear me. And then we were fighting, the four black and red cloaks billowing in the wind as they converged on us.

The kunai's flashed through the air as I met Itachi's blade and the others became background noise. Again and again the silver light flashes as we struggled together in a battle of strength versus strength. He steadily pushed my blade back further until his face could press in against the side of mine, both our blades crossed against each other and pressed against my neck.

"Better, but not good enough my little flower." He whispered in my ear in that sultry tone of his. I struggled harder against his hold and dropped to the ground kicking him in the abdomen and throwing him over my head away from me. I flipped to my feet and spun around to face him.

"I'm not your flower, asshole." I replied and threw a barrage of shuriken at him to distract him to the jutsu I wanted to do. But then I blinked and he was gone and I found my body moving of its own accord, my fist curling back and generating a massive amount of chakra. My fist shot forward unhindered in the light air around me.

I felt my fist connect with and penetrate a squishing and tearing sound causing me to look up. I gaped in horror as I looked down to find Naruto looking up at me in surprise as blood poured out of his mouth and down his chin. His wide cerulean blue eyes held fear in them as he clutched me in a hug. I had plunged my fist into his chest and through his heart tearing it to ribbons as my hand burst out his back.

And I realized then that we weren't standing in the middle of a battlefield but on the red bridge where team 7 met to wait for Kakashi, Naruto had simply grabbed me up in his usual enthusiastic hug.

"I'm sorry Sakura-chan." He whispered as he slipped to the ground at my feet and hit the ground.

"No! No you're not dead! This isn't happening! Wake up! Please wake up Naruto!" I cried shaking his body, but his eyes wouldn't open, and I just hugged him tightly to me as I cried. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Naruto."

I was roughly shaken awake and I shot up in the dark searching for the kunai I kept under my pillow only to come up empty handed.

"Relax Sakura-sama, it's just us." I recognized Kou's voice and I squinted into the dark to find Sasuke was standing next to him beside my bed. He was the one holding my kunai. He was looking at me strangely and I wondered what he was thinking.

"Sorry if I disturbed you guys." I said pulling the covers back and sliding out of my bed and past them. I opened the bedroom door and slipped into the bathroom. I let out a sigh of relief as I leaned against the door and put my head in my hands.

Startled I pulled back when I felt the dampness, my hands coming away wet with tears. 'I was crying in my sleep?' I thought incredulously. 'No wonder they'd woken me, I'd probably roused both of them with me blubbering like a baby.' And I'd probably lost any respect I might have had from Sasuke, he had always told me that I was weak, and crying was weak. 'A shinobi never shows emotions.'

"Stupid Sakura, stupid, stupid, stupid." I whispered smacking my fist softly into my forehead. I thought about it again though, it had been awhile since I'd dreamt about that night.

It hadn't really happened that way. Our four man cell had been headed to Konoha when I'd gotten that twitchy feeling like I was being watched and then the four Akatsuki members had ambushed us. Itachi had knocked me into a tree while Kisame was slashing at Naruto. I could see Deidara and his orange masked partner taking on the other two jounins but I didn't have time to watch as I jumped to my feet in order to keep Itachi from jumping into the fight with Naruto to help Kisame.

I'd been off balance and was getting beaten pretty badly when Itachi had made the 'my little flower' comment and then suddenly disappeared. Leaving me with two near dead comrades and a crazed Kyuubi container that had killed Kisame, Deidara and the third man who I later learned was called Tobi. When I saw him, he was indeed eating Deidara's arm that he had ripped off.

When I tried to get Naruto to awaken from his Kyuubi coma he had merely attacked scratching and biting furiously without any real technique. He'd acted exactly like a rabid wild animal. I had intended to put my hand through his chest with my fist when I saw his eyes waver and turn blue again. But it was too late and I couldn't stop my fist. I was able to pull back enough so that when I hit him in the chest it didn't break the skin but instead knocked him away from me and into a tree. Unfortunately without his Kyuubi reflexes he'd solidly hit the tree and with all the external damage already done to his body from the Kyuubi chakra he had broken his back. He'd spent months in therapy after that re-learning how to walk.

I'd ended up with several long scratches on my forearms, one particularly nasty one went from the inside of my elbow leading all the way down to the knuckle behind my pointer finger. It hadn't healed properly at first because it was so deep and the Kyuubi's chakra had been rife in that wound eating away at the healthy cells and causing it to fester even without the help of infection.

I simply sighed, and let my head fall back against the bathroom door for a moment. Then I stood and splashed my face with a little water, it was already four in the morning since I could see the clock on the counter spouting the numbers four forty-five and I knew I'd never get back to sleep.

It was too early to train with any of my sparring partners, but that didn't mean that I couldn't go out and do my own morning routine a little earlier than usual.

I rummaged through the bathroom hamper and came up with some relatively clean clothes that I could use for a training session. They would just get dirty anyway, and I would take a shower when I got back. Besides, this way I didn't have to go back to the bedroom and wake up Kou and Sasuke.

So I dressed in silence and stealthily made my way to the front door. After writing a quick note to let everyone know where I'd gone, I grabbed my training pack over my shoulder and headed out the door and down the apartment stairs.

The pack held all my special training equipment. Blindfold, weighted vest gloves and shin guards along with several special scrolls that I had been compiling for a while now.

I walked through the quiet streets and took in the silence as few people were out this early. Even the business owners weren't out yet, the sun was just letting its gentle rays peek out from behind the treetops warning that the sun would soon rise once again.

It was peaceful, and I enjoyed the chirping of the early birds in the trees as I approached my usual training grounds. I listened to the morning aubade of the birds as I slid into my shin guards and elbow length gloves. The vest I put on last since I had to take off my shirt. The jounin vest was so small and tight that when I zipped it up I couldn't have anything on underneath it except my sports bra otherwise it wouldn't fit. All three items were specially weighted as an extra training tool like Lee's leg weights and bandages.

My gloves held thin yet heavy weights in them as did the shin guards and the vest, which was why it had to be so tight. If it wiggled around even a little it would throw off my balance and concentration.

I wound my braid into a bun at the base of my collar so that it wouldn't get in my eyes during training, and then I stepped into the center of the clearing and limbered up.

I moved through a series of stretches bending at the waist and touching my toes and then bending backward and grabbing my heels. I spread my legs and allowed my body weight to push my down to the ground in a sideways split and flattened my body onto the ground until my stomach touched the dirt. I held that position for half a minute and then leaned up and shifted into a right front split, and bowing low over my knee until my nose touched the dirt and my fingers pulled my toes back arching my foot and pressing my leg straighter and further into the ground. Then I switched and did the same with my left.

When I'd finished my limbering up exercises I did one hundred laps around the training ground, I wasn't as crazy as Lee who usually did one hundred laps around the outside of Konoha and the circumference of the entire village.

After I'd warmed up though I balanced myself on my hands and began my upside down pushups that allowed me to train for physical strength as well as balance and stamina. I supported my entire body weight plus the extra weights as I completed each push up. On top of that I had come up with a way to make it even more complicated, I would pick a song, which I knew the words to, and sing it for as long as I continued to work out.

It was even more difficult that the push ups by themselves because I was exercising my lung capacity. I had to sing the words, do push ups, and continue to breathe at the same time. I'd passed out several times because I'd been singing and not breathing enough as I worked through one of my sets. This morning I set a goal of five hundred push ups while I sang. I'd gotten a lot more confident in that area recently, maybe it was just that my lung capacity was expanding…finally.

I ended up doing extra push ups while I finished singing one of the songs I'd picked today and then allowed my arms to collapse, I tucked my head and gently rolled onto my back and the forward into a crouch to allow my head to go back to its normal blood pressure as I held myself still through the usual head rush whenever I got up too fast.

Then I walked back to my pack and pulled out the blindfold and walked back to my spot in the middle of the clearing. I tied the blindfold on, I'd planned to shadow fight with myself and several clones but I heard soft chuckling and froze in my defensive position.

"Who's there?" I called out, I couldn't tell who was there, I hadn't even heard them approach. It made me wonder how long they'd been there watching me.

"I thought I heard you over here, Yoake." I heard Neji calling as he walked toward me. I stayed in my defensive position, he'd probably come to spar since I knew he wasn't the kind of person that would be sent to relay a message unless, it was from Tasogare that is.

"Come on, you don't need to call me by my anbu alias unless we're on a mission…Hiruma." I said back not missing a beat as I heard his feet shift into a fighting stance in the dirt about ten feet away from me. It must have been after six by now for Neji to be out here training, I hadn't thought that much time had passed. He rushed forward in a movement that told me he was aiming for the right side of my body, where I thought he was planning to hit told me that he was going to try incapacitating me straight off by closing my tenketsu right from the start.

I crouched even lower in defense, and when his fingers had just barely brushed my right arm I spun out, around and behind him ramming my own palm into his back. Only his momentum had saved him from the worst of the blow. I'd only managed to brush him. I jumped into the air and aimed a kick at where I had last heard his movement. But I knew he was no longer there, so when he sped in from the opposite side I just twisted my body in mid-air and struck out punching him in his arm as I slid away in the other direction and rolled on the ground until I'd regained my feet.

But now I had no idea where he was, and I was at a disadvantage with the blindfold. Neji was quiet, even quieter that Kou if that was at all possible. I usually had to strain to hear even the slightest of movements.

I felt a rush of wind from behind me and shot my leg backwards to catch him with a kick as he approached hopefully headfirst.

My foot connected with his torso, but it only brushed across his chest as he twisted to the side to avoid the direct hit. Then he grabbed my leg and tried to throw me, only I'd thrown my other foot up to catch him in the chin and free the first leg while balancing on my hands. This hit missed but he let go of my leg. I then spun around on my hands in a move that brought my feet down under his and sent him flying onto his back next to me as I flipped him and sat on his back trying to pin him to the ground.

I managed to grab one of his arms but he twisted around and I had to roll away or else he would have rolled us over with him on top in the dominant position. I knew from experience that wasn't a good position for me to be in with him when we were sparring.

"Déjà vu." He said chuckling quietly. The unemotional man had loosened up quite a bit since I'd known him, he'd have never laughed around me before. But he was right, except for the blind fold this fight was very similar to a previous sparring match we'd had when we first got on the same team together a few years earlier.