A/N: Thanks for the reviews: magykalheart, TvonUchiha, cassirycake, mshccs, britneybish, RedGoddessEclipse, Of Healing Love, The Imperfect Me, TheseBattleScars, Pikas, GoldenPiggy, TheSecretNames, MissMikasa, Miyukino, Sadistic Pacifist, LoonyTuned, TheRYU, zero10296, Kasuka-chan, Lily Noir, anon guest, November Ember, Duner89, anon guest number two, AnonymouseXI, and Murithemagnificant.

Thanks for everyone's reviews and kind words. I am really sorry it took so long for me to put another update out. I had a bunch of personal stuff going on irl to deal with, but it's mostly sorted out now so I'll be getting back into the weekend updates. And honestly, taking some time off was good. I was getting way too anxious over these chapters and obsessing over every detail and whether my writing was good enough. Taking a step back and re-reading the story as a whole helped me start really enjoying the fic again. Plus Madara showing up in the anime again is great motivation.

Anyways, I want to thank all the returning and new reviewers again. I really do appreciate your support even during my time off. Lily Noir, thanks! I do try really hard to keep Sakura and Madara in character. I noticed that with Sakura in some other fics too. If she's constantly bitchy or always helpless it gets really annoying, and I can't even read Madara stories where he's not IC. I'm getting close to a major turning point with their relationship, almost 70k words in. XD And it'll be longer for a kiss to happen, but yeah, I hate rushed romance too so it's worth taking the time to get there. Duner89, you're half right with the latter part of your review. ;)

Hopefully there are no grammar errors. Enjoy! Oh yeah, and I also made some minor edits to the previous chapter, but nothing super important, so if you don't want to re-read, you're not going to miss anything (just a correction to the number of Peins Sakura thought were left).

Sakura speaking to Madara in her mind.

Madara speaking to Sakura in her mind.

-Invasion: Part II-

'Mmm...' Madara hummed in her mind, clearly debating whether or not to answer her question. Sakura didn't try to push him, aware that any sort of prodding would backfire, even though the situation was dire and she didn't have more than a moment to spare. Finally, after countless times where the Uchiha had declined to be helpful, luck fell on her side. 'The same reason there are six Peins running around with the Rinnegan. Well, it's a little different with animal summons, but the principle is the same,' he explained with a mental shrug of his shoulders. His tone was casual, but she could sense an underlying purpose to it. He was not one to ever impart knowledge without thinking about it carefully. It had to be a test, then.

Sakura frowned, going over his words again and again as she stared at the purple ringed eyes of the dead centipede. Something was nagging at her, as if she was on the verge of figuring out a critical bit of information. The pieces were there, she was sure of it. All she had to do was put the puzzle together. She was aware that Madara was quietly watching her thought process, which only confirmed her suspicions. She was close, but knowing he was studying her was actually fairly distracting.

She took a deep breath and refocused before her mind wandered down a path that she'd rather not let the Uchiha see. She tried to actively think about the sight in front of her rather than the sharp attention of the man inside her mind. It was actually harder than she expected, considering the human tendency to obsessively think about something that is trying to be ignored or forgotten, but she refused to fail. With another calming breath and disregarding Madara as much as she could, Sakura shifted her attention to the black rods in the insect's body. They looked very much like the ones that were in the corpse of the one Pein that Jiraiya had killed, just bigger.

Wait a second... wasn't the Pein in the autopsy room the animal summoning one? Then how...? How was she standing here looking at one of Pein's animal summons if the one that actually summoned them was dead in Konoha? It made absolutely no sense at all but there was no denying the truth in front of her. Sakura's mind raced, combing through all the information she knew.

The same reason there are six Peins running around... six Peins... there should be five... but Madara said six... dead centipede... animal summons with the eyes too... black rods in all of them... the real one isn't there... animal summoner... the real one... six Peins... more than six pairs of Rinnegan eyes... isn't there... the real Rinnegan isn't there...

The real Pein wasn't there...!

Sakura stiffened in shock with the realization. All the Peins here in the village, and all the animal summons with the same eyes, all of them were copies! None of them were the real one, the original Rinnegan, the real Pein. And not only that, somehow the animal summoner had been replaced. Which meant any Pein killed could be replaced. "Oh my god," she whispered, nearly overwhelmed with the understanding of how very bad this was. It was so very fucking bad. The real one wasn't there, so all the village would be fighting were goddamn copies that could be fucking replaced when one of them died.

'Took you long enough,' Madara drawled, 'I was starting to wonder if you would ever figure it out. You're mostly right, by the way. A bit wrong about the details, but not too bad overall. You can thank me for the hint now.'

"Shit," Sakura swore, burying her face in her hands, her head still reeling from the devastating conclusion she had arrived at. How were they supposed to beat Pein? Unless they found the real one... but good luck doing that while the copies were wreaking havoc in the village. She absentmindedly muttered a quiet thanks to Madara, and vaguely registered his dissatisfied snort. She was far too worried about Pein to give much thought to the Uchiha's unhappiness with her level of gratitude though.

She was shaken out of her despair by a familiar voice. "Sakura! Are you okay?" Iruka asked as he landed next to her. She nodded mutely, still half in shock. "The Akatsuki are attacking Konoha to try and find Naruto! I've already told Tsunade. There will probably be an announcement soon."

"Come on, Iruka!" a voice called from a short distance away. Sakura glanced over to see a small squad of shinobi waiting on top of the tail of the dead centipede. All of them, and Iruka too she noticed, wore a look of intense worry with a hint of panic. She definitely knew that feeling.

Stress started to fray her nerves. She had to tell someone, anyone about Pein's secret. Even if Madara objected and stopped her, she had to try. "Iruka, I think I-"

"You get to the hospital and tend to the wounded," he ordered, interrupting her, much to her displeasure. "The place is already filling up." Her heart clenched at that news, her medic instincts kicking in. She was needed there, and who knows how many people were injured and how many were already dead, but Pein...

She grit her teeth and fought the urge to tear her hair out as he turned to leave and rejoin the waiting squad. "Wait, I-"

"There's no time, Sakura! Go!" Iruka barked, his command punctuated by two successive explosions not too far away. The worry on his face doubled. He didn't even wait for her reply, leaping away along with the rest of the shinobi towards the rising fire and smoke. She was left looking at their fading forms, feeling helpless and hopeless. The opportunity had been right fucking there and she had blown it.

"Okay," Sakura whispered to herself, then clenched her fists and snarled, "Okay! Fine!" Even if she hadn't managed to pass on the information about Pein, she was absolutely not going to sit here and do nothing. She would not be left behind again... she had trained so hard and so long for this, to be strong when something terrible happened. Regardless if the Peins running around were just copies, they were still doing serious damage and she could help save lives. And if she had a chance to pass along the intel, she would.

But of course she didn't get the opportunity. Her luck must have run out with Madara finally answering her question. She didn't see any Konoha shinobi on the way to the hospital, only groups of scared civilians running from the fires. When Sakura arrived at her destination, she immediately joined a handful of other medic-nins desperately trying to heal the wounded. There was no way she could send any of them out to deliver information. Not with all the victims here...

And god, there were so many of them. She took charge and had the patients sorted out by minor injuries and those with serious wounds that required urgent attention. There were several civilian doctors helping in any way they could. She had them work on taking care of the more critical minor problems, like broken bones. Sakura and the other medic-nins focused on healing anyone with a life threatening injury. It was hard, draining work, made worse by the distant sounds of the continuing attack on Konoha and the pained groans of the victims in the room.

It seemed like more and more injured poured into the hospital every minute. She couldn't keep up. Some of the wounds were really awful... impaled abdomens, severed limbs, mangled faces... Sakura realized that she and the other medic-nins would run out of chakra at this pace if they kept fully healing people, so she instructed them to just heal the wounded to the point where they weren't in danger of dying. That helped only slightly.

"Damn it! I can't heal everyone at this rate!" she hissed to herself as she spotted another large group of Pein's victims stumble into the hospital. More than half of them had serious injuries and would bleed out unless the wounds were closed soon. She and the others were being increasingly overwhelmed. Biting her lip, she poured more chakra into healing her current patient.

'Then stop. This is pointless,' the Uchiha's voice cut into her mind. Her body jerked a tiny bit in surprise. He had been quiet for so long and she'd been totally absorbed in her work. Had he been watching her this whole time or what? No time to muse about it.

A wry smile twisted her lips. 'You know there's no way I'm going to give up, Madara,' she said as she finished healing a large gash in the chest of a middle-aged man. There, he would survive now.

'Your ninja way, huh?' he murmured, and she could feel a mental echo of the smile she wore on her face, along with an eyeroll. It wasn't outright mockery, but perhaps familiar teasing in a way. It was strangely calming though, soothing the building panic that had been growing inside her. A quick glance up showed a very welcome sight that helped settle her worry even more... Katsuyu had split up into hundreds of miniature versions of herself and a dozen of them were now slithering into the hospital.

'Yeah, besides I'm a medic-nin. I took an oath. It's my duty,' she told him as she scooted over to a woman who had a metal rod halfway stuck through her stomach. She placed one hand of chakra onto the area where the metal impaled her flesh and grabbed the end of it with the other, preparing to remove the object.

'Shit!' Madara swore suddenly, something that alarmed her greatly. He almost never cursed. A feeling of severe wrongness filled her and all her senses were screaming that she had to get out of there right now.

'Madara! What are you doing?!' Sakura yelped as he shoved her aside in her mind and took control of her body, ducking down to cover her head. She perceived a brief second of terrible pressure, an awful sensation that she had never felt before, and then everything went to hell.

There was a roar of sound and wind and everyone was screaming, glass and rocks and dirt and people swirling in a torrent of death in the air all around her for a horrid moment, and then she was covered by a heavy, slimy body and all she could feel was her heart pounding. Sakura began to struggle in her mind to regain control, desperate to see what was happening because she knew it was bad and she had to see, but Madara held her down for what seemed like ages until Katsuyu pulled away. Silently, he passed the lead back to her.

Coughing, Sakura sat up and rubbed the dirt from her eyes. As soon as she could she looked around. "Wha... What happened..?" It took a minute for the dirt in the air to clear away enough, but when it did, her blood ran cold.

There was no hospital anymore. In fact, all of the buildings as far as she could see were gone. All that was left was massive amounts of rubble and scattered bodies and clouds of drifting dust.

'To think he would use that. How ruthless,' Madara commented as they surveyed the damage. His tone was more neutral than anything, but the carnage was definitely not affecting him in the least.

"Oh my god..." Sakura gasped out as she took in the sheer amount of damage, tears beginning to fall from the corners of her eyes. How could she do anything now? How could anyone do anything now?!

Konoha, her home... there was almost nothing left. What... what had Pein done...? An anguished scream tore itself from her throat as despair gripped her soul. Naruto... if only Naruto came back... At that very moment, another cloud of smoke burst from the center of the ruined village, and Sakura's prayer was answered.

Next Chapter: Sakura gets a surprise victory after such a horrible tragedy. Madara is not happy at all. Nope. That's an understatement.