XXVI: Harrowing
Sarada
"Sharingan!" the Stone ninja exclaimed excitedly. "I'd heard that Sasuke Uchiha had a little brat, but to think I'd run into you here! Let's see how things develop, I want me have a taste of the vaunted Uchiha power."
Sarada stared at her opponent coldly, still kneeling next to Ronin.
"Sarada," Ronin said quietly, "there's something that I want to test out, your eyes may be…of some help." The boy attempted to push himself up into a sitting position, wincing in pain from his wounds and burns.
Natsuko knelled down next to him, opposite of Sarada, gently pushing down on his shoulders, a worried expression on her face. "You're no condition to fight. What do we do, Sarada? We can't beat this guy, he's too strong."
Sarada thought for a moment but it was Ronin who responded. "We're not running, like I said I have an idea. Natsuko, throw a kunai at him, Sarada, watch it closely."
"But-" Natsuko started.
"Do it," Ronin said with a harsh tone of command in his voice.
Natsuko sighed and relented, drawing a kunai and throwing it at the Stone Ninja, who, as before, nonchalantly waved his hand, knocking it out of the air seemingly with some invisible force, but now Sarada could see.
"What was that?!" the rogue ninja yelled. "Come on Uchiha brat, show me what you got!"
"Well?" Ronin asked.
"It looks like he's using chakra to block attacks," Sarada answered, "but there's something different about it, it's a different color from the chakra that's just leaking out of our bodies."
Ronin leaned back, looking up at the sky. "I wonder…"
"You got something in mind, kid?" Gamaraka asked.
Ronin leaned back forward slightly. "I do, listen closely."
Sarada and the others leaned slightly to listen to Ronin's plan. When he finished explaining it they prepared to put the strategy into motion.
Natsuko opened the attack, launching Shuriken coming at the enemy from either flank. Holding his arms out on either side of him he blocked the projectiles with his chakra shield. Gamaraka then jumped at him from the front, which the Stone ninja again blocked.
"Now Sarada!" Gamaraka bellowed.
The Stone ninja turned around. "An attack from my rear? Elementary." He turned again when Gamaraka jumped to the side, putting up his shield as a last second response to Sarada's frontal assault. His eyes widened as he realized the exact nature of the attack.
"Fire Style: Fireball Jutsu!" Sarada yelled as she initiated the technique. To her surprise it wasn't deflected, in fact it was far stronger than she had intended it to be. She watched in terror as the rogue ninja screamed in pain, an unearthly cry the likes of which Sarada had never heard even in her worst nightmares. She could see the flailing, burning arms of her victim as both the flames and his screams receded and he fell bodily to the ground. Sarada's Sharingan deactivated, more of a result of her exhaustion than anything else.
"Well done, kids," Gamaraka said, "I think I'm done here. See ya." With that said the giant toad disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
"What was that?" Sarada asked after a moment of quiet. "That was way more powerful than I intended it to be. Is that an effect of the Sharingan?"
"No," Ronin answered, "I doubt it. I think my theory was right, that defensive jutsu he was using was wind based and he also used it to increase the effectiveness of his fire techniques. Unfortunately for him, that carries a risk, because enemy fire jutsu used against him would be strengthened too."
"You're right," a voice said, causing the genin to freeze in fear. "To think that a bunch of brats have done me in. It wasn't even the Uchiha brat that figured me out, but some random boy! Ha! I may die here today, but I'm taking you with me!"
Sarada turned to see the horribly burned Stone ninja push himself up from the ground and start charging the genin, who sat there, too shocked and fearful to move. Then suddenly a kunai flew in from behind Sarada, striking him in the chest and causing blood to spray out of the wound. The Stone ninja fell to the ground, skidding to a halt in front of the genin.
"Heh heh, well done…" the man said quietly in a fading voice.
After sitting quietly for a moment, staring at the Stone ninja, Sarada finally willed herself to move, crawling over to check on their enemy's status. She found his pulse on his neck and felt the last few, faint beats before his life ended. Sarada looked over her shoulder at her teammates.
Natsuko sat on her knees, her hand stuck where her kunai had left her grip, covered in the Stone ninja's blood. She was shaking and her eyes her were wide, the constant, bright sense of happiness and life that had always filled her eyes and annoyed Sarada so much was gone, replaced with an abject emptiness. "That was…cool…right?"
Sarada sat down with a thump. She stared at the ground for a while, not really keeping track of time, barely conscious of Ronin's slow but steady breaths and Natsuko's quick and sharp inhalations, just barely keeping herself from hyperventilating.
"I see you guys had a rough time of it," Sarada heard a voice say and she looked up to see Naruto standing over her, the unconscious form of the Mist ninja slug over his shoulder. He placed him gently on the ground and kneeled down in front of Sarada. "Sorry I didn't get here sooner. Should have finished with this more quickly." He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the Mist ninja. "I was too careful about not killing this guy and keeping him away from the farming village, should have been more worried about protecting you three. Sorry."
Sarada looked back at her teacher, but said nothing. She didn't feel the need to accept his apology, she didn't blame him.
"S-Sensei…" Natsuko choked out, tears starting to roll down her checks.
Naruto quietly moved next to her, gently patting her on head. "It's all right, you're safe now."
Natsuko's crying worsened and she threw her face into Naruto's chest who, after a moment's hesitation, wrapped his arms around her in a soft embrace. Nobody moved for a few moments as Natsuko continued her crying.
"Sensei," Ronin said, breaking the silence.
"Yes?" Naruto responded.
"There's one thing that I don't understand. Why did those two ninja chose to fight you? They'd seen you fighting before, why didn't they run, or surrender?"
Naruto looked over at the still unconscious Mist ninja. "You can ask him when he wakes up."
Ronin dipped his head forward slightly to get a view of the man. "Maybe I will."
Shortly after Natsuko's tears began to dry and Naruto untangled himself from her. Natsuko stayed where she was, a depressed look on her face as she stared at the ground.
Naruto walked over next to Ronin and sat down. He inspected his wounds and took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, you should never have been hurt like this." A chakra cloak then enveloped Naruto, similar but different to the Nine-tails Cloak. Again it was orange and black in color, but it was shaped differently and the sensation of the chakra it was radiating was different from anything Sarada had ever experienced.
Naruto gently touched Ronin on the shoulder and immediately his wounds healed and Ronin sat up and examined where his burns had been, a look of shock on his face. Sarada was also astounded by this, though she was too emotionally drained to really express it vocally and from the look on Natsuko's tear stained face she was thinking the same.
"I suppose this is what you used on Sarada after I injured her in the survival exercise. First time seeing it for myself," Ronin said as he got over his shock.
Naruto's cloak receded and he stood up. "Come on, let's get you three home," he said as he hoisted the Mist ninja over his shoulder.
As Naruto started to walk away Sarada stood to follow. She hadn't gone three steps when she heard Ronin's voice behind her. "Hey, Sarada, you forgetting something?"
Sarada turned to see Ronin holding out her glasses. In all the commotion she had forgotten that they had fallen off. She accepted the glasses from her teammate. "Thanks." She put them on and then immediately recoiled from the distorted vision that it gave her, taking them off again. She folded them up and put them in one of her pockets. "Thanks, but I don't think I'll be needing them."
Ronin shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever you say, Uchiha."
Sarada hadn't noticed before in all the chaos of the battle and it's aftermath but now looking around she could see that with her Sharingan awakened her eyesight was fixed. She wouldn't be needing her glasses anymore.
"Could you guys be any slower?" Naruto called from the edge of the forest.
Natsuko was still sitting on the ground, not seeming to have the will to stand up. Ronin grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up. "Come on, we need to get going."
Natsuko took a deep breath and nodded, starting to walk alongside Ronin to follow their sensei. Sarada quietly came along after them.
They stopped in the farming village to inform the clients of their success and to purchase some rope to tie up their captive with. They then continued on their way to the Hidden Leaf. The going was quiet for a few hours, Ronin and Sarada maintaining their traditional silence and Natsuko, the team's usual initiator of conversation, continuing her post-battle withdrawal.
The captive Mist ninja, still being carried by Naruto over his shoulder, seemed to be stirring. "Argh…wha? It seems I've been captured. Pity."
Ronin moved over to walk within speaking distance of the captive. "Hey, I've got some questions for you."
The Mist ninja looked up at the boy. "Hm…I may have answers. But first answer mine. What happened to the others?"
"They're all dead," Ronin answered flatly.
The captive smiled softly. "Good. Looks like you got there ahead of me, my friend."
"What about the other men in your group?" Ronin asked, sounding more mildly curious than disgusted by the ninja's apparent disregard for his men's lives.
The Mist ninja chuckled. "You know, I find that searching for your own death makes you unsympathetic to that of others."
"Searching for your death?" Ronin said. "Is that why you didn't flee when you realized who were up against?"
"Yes," the Mist ninja replied.
"But why?" Ronin asked.
"We already told you," the captive replied, "our villages released us, they had no need for us. There is nothing worse than not having a purpose to your life."
"So you couldn't fight for your village, big deal, there are plenty of other things you could spend your life doing," Ronin said.
The Mist ninja laughed softly. "Perhaps you're right, but we're shinobi, we've been trained since we were children for the battlefield, it is all we know. If we cannot contribute on it, what other purpose can we serve? Without that our reason for living became dying."
"For wanting to die, you sure fought awful hard to stay alive," Ronin retorted. "I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure there are more efficient means of suicide."
The Mist ninja looked up, a look of sadness in his eyes. "Suicide? Yes, we considered that. But that is…unseemly. We always thought, believed that our deaths would come for us on the battlefield, fighting for our lives. We couldn't have it another way."
"So the whole 'taking out grudges against the Hidden Leaf' thing was just a lie?" Ronin asked.
"Oh, no, that was real enough," the captive answered. "We figured that we'd take care of two things at once. We wanted work our way through as many Leaf shinobi as possible before they finally got us. We both considered that a worthwhile thing to do. As it happens the first person they sent was well out of our league."
Ronin eyed the Mist ninja silently for several moments before posing another question. "What is your name?"
"My name?" the reply came. "Boy, the dead have no need for names."
It was just past nightfall when Sarada opened the front door to her house and stepped through it, closing it behind her. She took off her sandals and started the slow walk to her bedroom. Her mother was sitting in the kitchen sipping on some tea when passed by the room in the hallway.
"Mission or training today, Sarada?" Sakura asked.
Sarada stopped and faced her mother, her eyes heavy with exhaustion, as much emotional and mental as physical. "Mission."
Sakura smiled amicably. "What did you do? Dog walking? Babysitting?"
"Fought bandits and a couple of ninja," Sarada answered flatly.
Sakura's face expressed her mild surprise. "Oh, that's…unusual for a rookie."
Sarada nodded slowly but did not speak, hoping not to be dragged into a long conversation.
Sakura stood up and walked over to her daughter and gave her a quick look over. "You look a little banged up but nothing too bad. You doing training tomorrow?"
Sarada shook her head. "We're getting tomorrow to recuperate, then a team meeting and training session the day after that."
"I see," Sakura said as she completed her inspection. She then smiled and patted her daughter on the head. "Looks like you deserve a bit of rest, so go ahead. Just remember, I'm proud of you."
Sarada nodded sheepishly. "Yeah Mom, good night," she said as she resumed her trek to her bedroom. She was due for a long rest, for that day had been long and harrowing.