Chapter 35: Seven Lead Chalices
Twilight came.
Team 10 didn't.
Sakura battled with old loyalty and recent apathy. She and Ino had parted ways. She wasn't obligated to care anymore. If Ino were dead, that would mean that there would be no more competition for Sasuke, but Sakura couldn't bear to think of that possibility like that. Old gratitude screamed that debts had yet to be repaid, but new wariness warned against risking it. Ino had protected her when they had been younger. Ino had been the wonderful friend that had pulled her out from behind the screen of self-doubt. Sakura had held Ino up above all others that had come after until their point of contention had been openly stated between them.
She alternated between gnawing on her dirty nails and scolding herself for practicing such a disgusting habit.
Revolted with herself, she clenched her fists and turned away from the woods. Hinata, who sat across from her in the tall grass, tried a timid smile, but Sakura wasn't in the mood. She gulped down the meat she had been chewing and sat up. "We need to go find them. Now."
Sasuke didn't respond with anything other than a self-satisfied smirk, but Naruto's blinding, proud grin made her feel better. They would find them.
Byakugan was the only other doujutsu in the village and supposedly the precursor of his own bloodline; Sasuke wasn't predisposed to liking the heir to the rival clan very much. Hyuuga lived a stuffier lifestyle that his mother ridiculed behind closed doors. The fact that the usefulness of her technique outstripped his in this situation was beyond galling. She wasn't showing off though: in fact, she was just as timid as he remembered, if not more so. Sasuke made a point of keeping the loser from scaring her into useless nervousness because his presence seemed to do that to her.
Sakura noticed this and smirked. Sasuke had the feeling that the loser was going to be made to suffer her demented whims. Pity surged, both for himself since he would be made to bear this messy process and for Naruto since he had no idea what was coming. Pity did not imply that Sasuke intended to warn the idiot though.
Hinata jumped from branch to branch just behind Kiba, who was doing what he could with his nose while Naruto performed a similar function at the rear, his clones acting as scouts that swept the forest well east and west of their position. She warned them against stumbling upon several well-equipped teams and two very lean and desperate groups.
Sakura manoeuvred through the trees with a kunai in hand. She had never done that before. She usually left her weapons in her pouch until the fight was well underway. While still ungainly, there was a focus behind her motions that had never been there before. She had always struck him as being a rather wishy-washy shinobi since she seemed to be more interested in trying to get his attention than actually improving her technique. This resolve was good.
"Hold up!" shouted Naruto, tilting back and forth unsteadily when he followed his own advice too quickly. "I got a lead on them. We need to go that way!"
"West, Loser?"
"Yeah, that direction."
Sasuke resisted the urge to snort at how directionally challenged the idiot was. Without ramen to give him a northern star, the poor guy was completely lost. Still, Team 8 tagged along when Team 7 trusted Naruto's iffy directions.
"What exactly did you see?" asked Sakura.
"A chip bag."
"Hurry," Sasuke said, knowing as well as Naruto did that Chouji would not have let that last reminder of food go unless every bit of grease and salt was gone.
Naruto poked a finger in the corners of the chip bag and licked it. Salty.
"They're definitely in trouble."
He tucked the overcooked venison covered in lint from his pocket in the bag and stuffed the entire thing back in his pocket as Kiba and Akamaru prowled among the roots of the giant trees. Sasuke ricocheted up into a tree and studied the ground from above, searching for signs of a trail, as the Hinata girl formed some handseals and used her bulgy veins thingy again. Shino's bugs covered some areas, relaying strange information to their master. Sakura, the only one without some sort of special technique useful when it came to tracking, stood near Hinata and stared around the space with narrowed eyes before glancing up into the canopy. Naruto blinked at her when she jumped up into the maze of branches and squinted into the darkness.
He followed her, reluctant to get separated after what had happened last time. "What are you doing?"
"I know Ino. I sort of know how she thinks. She's the leader of Team 10, so I thought…" She paused, hopping down "a level" and poking at some lichen that looked as though somebody had decided to assault it.
Sasuke-bastard landed beside them and stared around with his creepy eyes before nodding. The bossy prick called Team 8 up to inspect the site.
"Flowers, deer musk, and strange spices, yup, Team 10 had been here," Kiba said, and Akamaru yipped agreement. Shino's bugs fanned out around the area until the stoic nodded.
"They went that way not long ago." He pointed into the gloom. "They were not alone here. How do I know? There are signs of passage slightly north of here."
Sakura was gone before Naruto had time to swear.
Sakura recognized the strange mark on the forehead protectors of the group that had decimated Team 10. She had seen it on that mission to convince Tsunade-sama. At least those chuunin had looked normal. This group… she didn't quite know how to describe this group other than as weird.
There were two rules when it came to what a weird appearance indicated in a ninja: either the ninja looked weird because he was powerful enough that it didn't matter, or he blended in because he was canny enough to hide just how strong he was. Sakura wasn't quite sure which group these guys belonged to, but she was betting the former given how bad Team 10 looked. Even so, she had faith that a group of six would be able to take them down, especially since Sasuke-kun was with them.
Chouji looked extremely banged up: blood dripped from his nose and dribbled out of the shell of his outer ear and onto the ground. Shikamaru didn't look much better. Ino… no, Ino's leg didn't look good at all. Sakura knew that an angle wasn't supposed to exist in the middle of her shin.
Beside her, Naruto crouched and exposed his odd teeth. Why had those Oto ninja done this? Why not just beat Team 10 and take their scroll? Unless… maybe they didn't even have a scroll at all, and these Oto-nin had simply taken out their frustration on them. An odd rumbling emitted from Naruto's throat, and Sakura gulped nervously and forced herself not to edge away from him. The whisker marks looked too dark.
"What could make ears bleed?" she wondered aloud.
Sasuke was readying wires and shuriken on Naruto's other side. Kiba was preparing to leap. Hinata looked frightened; Sakura had to wonder just what good this timid girl was other than as a scout. Veins bulged under that pale skin, and silvery eyes hardened into something almost menacing. Sakura felt as though Hinata was staring right through her despite how the girl appeared to be looking down at the group in the clearing.
"Ready." Naruto smiled bestially to her left.
"Set." Sasuke's red eyes were locked on target.
"Go!" Kiba shouted much too loudly for any element of surprise to remain.
Sakura snarled curses as the three fools darted out of the trees and glanced at Shino, who hadn't moved. "Why aren't you down there?"
Though he didn't move, she knew that his eyes were watching her behind those concealing glasses. "For the same reason you aren't: I don't know enough yet, and they are willing to be guinea pigs. Naruto and Sasuke are strong enough to bounce back from strong opposition, and Kiba will not feel the hurt."
He was proven right when Kiba's whirlwind of motion ended when his intended target (the girl keeping Naruto from getting Team 10 out of danger) decided that she didn't want to end up as a pile of bruised goo, so the dog ended up ploughing into the ground instead. The Inuzuka was back on his feet in moments, ignoring how his jacket was ripped open in several places and how he was bleeding from several scrapes.
"There are those that take chances and attack without preparation because their self-belief or pride is enough to see them through," Shino continued as Sasuke set to incinerating everything in the clearing the moment Naruto and a team of clones got Team 10 clear. Torrential heat surged up through the trunks, and Sakura raised her arms in front of her face to keep her eyebrows and eyelashes from getting singed away. Hinata did the same, shielding her face and closing her eyes, but Sakura still got the feeling that the Hyuuga was carefully studying the fight.
"Kiba-kun!" Hinata yelled. "Behind you! He has strange chakra in his arm!"
Kiba, who had been crouched on a branch high above the inferno, ducked out of the way of the strike from the mummy.
"And then there are those that study the patterns and find the opportune moment to give aid," Shino finished, nodding in Hinata's direction. "We find the rhythm. We analyze. We find what those that dive in headfirst miss. Our help is subtle, often underappreciated, but significant none the less. We step in when the heroes fall."
Shino nodded back to the fight where something Sakura had been sure was impossible was happening. Sasuke, indefatigable, unbeatable, was faltering. He reeled back from a strike from the mummy that hadn't actually connected, clutching his head, while the other boy's attack from the front had been avoided. The ears again…?
"Bastard?" shouted Naruto over the din of Kiba's triumphant howls as he managed to down the girl.
"Strange chakra in the arms of the one death on his uniform!" warned Hinata, but Naruto wasn't listening, as usual.
The battle began to crumble before Sakura's eyes. Naruto abandoned Team 10 to his clones and lunged towards Sasuke, ready to offer what backup he could since Sasuke's moment of weakness had been exploited by the mummy, who had belted Sasuke into a sturdy tree trunk with a sickening crack. Hinata's warning turned out to be only too apt: Naruto was thrown back, howling with pain, by what appeared to be a windy assault. Sakura's terror stopped threatening to drown her when Naruto dissolved into wisps of smoke. So, he hadn't stupidly risked himself.
Sasuke's tumble towards the ground was halted by another Naruto, definitely a clone because it shouted, "I've got him, Boss!" before it got destroyed by another blast from that mop-headed demon.
Sasuke clutched at his arm as he skidded backward from the force of the blast, which ripped up hunks of earth and sent them flying alongside him. Beside her, Shino disappeared only to reappear near Sasuke as Kiba and his dog landed on a branch above him. Behind their protection, Sasuke grimaced and curled around his arm in a way that made Sakura positive it was broken.
Two heroes were down, she thought with a glance at Ino. "Hinata, will you help me?"
The timid girl got to her feet and nodded hesitantly. "Which one?"
"The one Naruto's going after: the mummy."
The kunai hilt was warm in Sakura's hand, a reminder of the silent promise she had yet to fulfill. What made ears bleed? She really wished that Tsunade-sama had given in to her demands earlier so she could have started med-nin training. Maybe she would have understood then. As it was, she would have to reason it out. Something had to be assaulting the ear invisibly since that attack hadn't seemed to connect. What was it? What was essentially immaterial and undetectable?
She couldn't think of anything until Kiba howled something about tsuuga and dove at his opponent. Seriously, if he kept shouting so horribly and yet attacking so ineffectually, the worst he was going to do was make his opponents' ears… Oh. Oh!
"He uses sound at high frequencies. Sound is a wave, so to counter this you need to produce the opposite wave at the same amplitude and wavelength." When Hinata shot her a baffled and embarrassed look, Sakura shrugged. "I don't know how to do that either."
"We still have to try," Hinata mumbled as she dropped down onto the ground with Sakura right on her heels. When Sakura chucked exploding-tag-laden kunai into the mummy's immediate area, Hinata swung wide, making Sakura positive that this girl could see out the back of her head. Sakura released the pulse of chakra required to activate the notes and swung the opposite way, chucking smoke bombs as she went to conceal the exact direction of her attack.
"Let's pummel this bastard!" a Naruto called, and several throats roared agreement, Sakura's among them.
The sound of a clone exploding made Sakura backtrack a bit. She could hear the clatter of many Narutos homing in on the disturbance as well and the slight scuffle that was perhaps Hinata. Three clones that had been faster than her screamed and died. Sakura, mere metres behind them, was affected by whatever had killed them: her world swooped sickeningly, the smoke being ripped apart by the wave simply adding to her disorientation. She couldn't hear the sound, and yet she couldn't block it out. They needed to counter this somehow!
Think, dammit! She wracked her brain as she staggered back. Every memory associated with sound was scanned feverishly until she stumbled upon one where she and Ino had screamed at each other in her living room as high and loud as they could because they had been fascinated with how their voices sounded so strange when they mingled. Her mother had shouted them into silence and explained that they were cancelling each other out. What was chaotic enough to break the high-pitched sound's pattern? Chaos…
"Naruto, Rasengan!"
"On it!" a Naruto said, and suddenly the smoke was destroyed by the pressure and wind that accompanied a complete Rasengan. The deadly ball broke up the waves from the strange device on the mummy's arm. With the two waves of pressure and noise interfering with each other, Sakura felt safe enough charging after the retreating mummy.
The Hyuuga had slipped around in the fog; she appeared in the mummy's path of retreat, a stern expression on her pasty face. There was something deadly about her bare hands because a glancing blow made the mummy squint with pain.
The sounds of battle on the far side of the copse halted with a thud. Sakura snatched a brief glance at the other opponent and paled at the swarm of bugs covering him. The mummy must have noticed that and the crumpled form of his female teammate because he almost seemed to hesitate. Two things happened because of this: Sakura hurled her kunai into the meat of his thigh, and then two Narutos raced forward as Hinata was knocked away by a blow to the abdomen. Just before Rasengan slammed into the guy, Sakura spotted a black bug crawling over the bandages covering the lower half of the mummy's face. So that was what Shino had meant…
Naruto must have been wary of using Rasengan's full potential on a human because the damage inflicted on the mummy was nowhere near the level that Sakura had witnessed during training when used on trees or the ground. Still, the guy cracked his head hard against the tree he impacted with and crumpled in a heap. It took a couple seconds filled with the sound of panting for Sakura to realize that they had won against a much stronger team.
Her elation was short lived when Sasuke, grey with pain, got to his feet. She ran past Naruto, who was tying up the mummy while Kiba bound the other boy and Shino took care of the girl. The look of the break made her cringe: the lumps indicated that it was clean and now misaligned. She wished she had read up more on useful things like setting bones instead of about jutsu she wouldn't be able to use for years at her current rate of growth.
"Does anyone know how to align bones?" she asked hopefully. One by one, everyone still conscious shook their head until Hinata stepped forward, flushing under everyone's eyes.
"I know a little bit," she said and stooped down to grab a stick that she shakily shaved with the edge of a kunai. She handed the cleaned stick to Sasuke as he grudgingly sat down. "You m-might want to hold this in your teeth."
Sasuke arched an eyebrow at her, but complied.
"Have you done this before?" asked Sakura.
Hinata blushed and shook her head. "I broke my arm once," she admitted in a soft whisper. "I had to watch how the doctor set it. I can see how the bones align, so I can help you. Both ulna and radius have been broken, so both must be set."
"Naruto, go find long, straight sticks for a brace. Sasuke, we're going to have to use some of your wire and maybe some strips from our clothes to wrap it unless you have another roll of bandages."
His good hand fished through his pouch and brought out another roll. Sakura had to smile at this mercy. Wire would have cut off Sasuke's circulation. With no more reason to delay, she braced herself and glanced at Hinata as Sasuke snapped his eyes shut against the sudden wave of pain as Sakura got a firm hold on his arm.
It turned out to be a painstaking process. Hinata's eyes were invaluable: she was able to figure out what tiny rotations were needed to correctly align the pieces. Getting the halves to synch up was horrible because manipulating the bones individually was a trial and required more force than Sakura wanted to use, especially when Sasuke snapped Hinata's stick shortly after she began and Kiba had to whittle a replacement before they could continue. The rate the flesh around the break swelled up made her leery, but Hinata kept offering quavering encouragement as she steadied the upper half of the break.
When they finally wrapped Sasuke's realigned arm, the victim was pasty and covered in sweat. Sakura didn't have time to fawn over him though. "Now we need to fix Ino's leg."
Naruto's clones hauled down their next patient as Sakura chewed some overcooked venison to try to calm down. Hinata gulped when she glanced at Ino's leg. "It isn't good. W-we won't be able to d-d-do much for her. There are too many fragments."
They did the best they could and braced it, but Ino wouldn't be walking for a while. Shino stood behind them when they finished. He presented a study stick that Ino could use as a crutch and a heaven scroll.
"Shikamaru carries an earth scroll. Team 10 needs it, not like us," Shino said when Kiba finished ranting about how Team 8 had done most of the work. Sakura froze, wondering how Shino knew that until the memory of the bug on the mummy made her shiver.
"So we're the only ones who need a scroll now," Sakura said.
"Great, now we've got to hunt down another team, and it's hit or miss again!" Kiba waved his arms around to emphasize his disgust.
"Most will be moving toward the tower now, so the best hunting grounds will be there." Sasuke adjusted his new sling.
"We should stop by the river," Sakura said, glancing back down at Ino's shin. "We need to get the swelling to go down, and the river water should do that."
"We also need to get out of here." Kiba glared around as Akamaru huddled near his ankles. "There's something big coming."
They abandoned the Oto-nin to the huge thing slithering through the trees.
Dunking his arm in the river for hours on end numbed the pain considerably. Sasuke wished that they didn't have to leave at all, but the sun marched steadily across the sky, whittling down the hours they had left. Common sense said that they should hurry, but common sense didn't have a broken arm that had been set only hours ago by two girls with no training. He had the feeling that the Yamanaka, who was sitting on her butt in the shallows near the riverbank so her entire shin would be submersed, agreed.
Team 10 had woken up halfway to the bridge. Chouji had consumed the last of their poorly dried dear meat while Shikamaru had explained how the Oto team had nabbed them. According to him, they had wanted to lure the others into battle.
"They were after you, Sasuke," Shikamaru had told him bluntly. "They kept asking us questions about your techniques and talking about the best ways to kill you."
This unsettling thought echoed through him as Naruto splashed through the stream like a maniac, intent on eating fish for lunch. When the loser and the others managed to get a satisfactory catch, Sasuke grudgingly came away from the river to light the fire they wanted before going back.
"You're both going to go numb with cold or get sick if you do that too long," Sakura chided them when she arrived with a fish for him and Ino.
He kept his reply to a terse grunt while Ino rolled her eyes before digging into her lunch with relish.
"Eating like this makes me wonder why we didn't simply all team up at the beginning of the test," the blonde said as Sakura hunkered down on the bank near him. "We knew we were going to get picked on because we were rookies. We should have listened to Iruka-sensei sooner."
"You talk, Ino-pig," Sakura said. "You were the one that decided the day we would meet up. You're just lucky that Oto team had a heaven scroll."
Sasuke began to consider the wisdom of moving farther upstream when Ino glared, but for once, Naruto had good timing.
"Let's go already! We've been here for hours. Everyone's had a nap, so let's haul ass to that tower and get an earth scroll already!"
An exploding tag went off between Shikamaru and the approaching Mist-nin. Shikamaru crumpled right in front of her; Sakura screamed good and loud.
The cordon around the tower was far tighter than they'd anticipated. She couldn't believe that some of these people were still genin. These Mist-nin had to be poaching; there was no way they didn't already have their two scrolls.
Chaos dominated her scattered thoughts for a good long time.
Hours.
Days?
She's aching worse than she ever has before. The burns on her arms and face ooze and sting with every motion. She's lost almost two whole fingernails, the naked nail beds tender and bleeding.
Gasp. Gasp. Clutch at Ino, who is whimpering as her nails dig into Sakura's arms.
Oh, how she hates snakes, the snakes that gobble Naruto and Sasuke. Snake guts rain on her hair amidst the smoke of Narutos ending. She will never be clean again.
Sasuke is beyond waking.
Another dead weight to drag.
"Go." Sakura rises from the haze of terror to watch Naruto stand proud despite his exhaustion as the Sound team they thought they had gotten rid of blasts Chouji into the trees. "You have your two scrolls. Team 10 isn't getting far with Ino and Shikamaru down. I could take their scroll and go with you with Sakura and Sasuke, but Team 10 would die. Your team has the best chance to keep going, Mutt Boy. Only two hours left."
"N-Naruto-kun!"
"We'll hold these Oto bastards and the Mist team here. You break through."
"Got it," Kiba says.
Shino nods.
Hinata sobs quietly and runs after her teammates.
Sakura's ears bleed. No more.
Mikoto was a little worried when the ANBU agent watching over her as she walked home from the market tapped her on the shoulder and gestured that she follow him. Something wasn't right. When they ended up in an empty warehouse, she knew something wasn't right. She snatched for kunai hidden in her sleeves, but the ANBU agent was there, pressing a kunai against her throat and her temple. "What do you want?" she spat out as she cursed herself for being too trusting.
"Oh, Mikoto-chan, all I want is a few moments of your time," a voice she recognized insisted from the shadows.
Her eyes narrowed into slits, and she bared her teeth at the twisted snake that slithered closer. "Go die in a hole!" she growled even as the kunai above her temple pricked her through her long hair.
"Now, now, my dear, that's not very polite! What on earth would Koui-san think of you now? Your sensei would roll in his grave if he hadn't been blown to bits on that mission." Orochimaru strolled right up to her and smiled.
She spat at him and was quite satisfied to watch the spittle flow down his pasty countenance. She hardly cared that his snakelike eyes only laughed at her weak resistance. She had to live. She had things to do. "Speak of him again and I'll show you what courtesy is really made of," she snarled back as he pompously wiped away her spit.
"Now, dear child, is that how you want to speak to the one who can bring your family back to you?"
She froze and stared at him for a long moment. "You're bluffing."
He laughed vilely and waved aside her suggestion. "I wouldn't dare to attempt to bargain with the matriarch of the Uchiha clan with only false promises. No, I have a jutsu that can bring the dead back to the living. Imagine; you can have Fugaku back. Wouldn't it be wonderful for him to get a chance to meet his daughter and finally see how well his son has done? Just think of how happy you would be! You were always making calf eyes at him even before I took little Anko-chan on as a student. You could have your beloved husband back."
She continued to stare at him, at a loss for words. Scenes of what he had described played through her mind's eye. It was like something out of her most cherished dreams, but there had to be a catch.
"It could all go back to the way it had been before Itachi-kun took it upon himself to wipe out those dearest to you."
"Someone like you would hardly offer this for free."
"Oh, nearly for free. You see, payment is required for the jutsu to work; not just chakra this time, something else as well. I need sacrifices, living sacrifices, for Edo Tensei. They would have to come from somewhere, of course."
She didn't oblige him by asking the obvious question of where.
"Konoha is to be burned to the ground. Surely you would love to have a hand in finishing the job that your husband started?"
"And what if I say no?"
"Then I'm afraid I must judge you unfit to act as a mother."
The snake disappeared before she fought her way free of the cloaked ANBU. Her only comfort was that she saw the sheen of glass behind the eyeholes of the mask before he disappeared.