Guess who's back!
It's not that hard to figure out. My name's right below the title.
Anyways, without further ado, let's just go.
Chapter 39: Power Born from Necessity
Fighting with her life on the line had a funny way of putting things into perspective for Sakura. Last night, she'd been worried about being unable to summon a tree with her hands, so caught up in her desire that she'd nearly gotten herself absorbed by the curse mark's power.
…Which really did start to seem quite asinine when she was forced to dodge three direct slashes from a small knife, any one of which could've lodged itself into her neck or torso and ended her life.
Sai wasn't trying to kill her, that much she knew for certain. He'd been given direct orders from Danzo to bring her back alive. But that didn't mean he was omniscient. Sakura could still have tripped, or evaded slightly too slowly, or come up just short on a jump, and then, suddenly, despite the boy's desire, she was a corpse on the end of his blade.
She shivered slightly as the boy's blade nicked her arm, drawing blood but otherwise leaving her uninjured. She was still a bit low on chakra from the previous day's experiments, but she didn't have any problems calling some water chakra into her stomach, forcing it up through her throat, and expelling it in the form of a quick, almost razer sharp stream of water.
Her opponent dodged under it, and after she followed him with her head, he cut into the jet of water with his tanto, splitting the stream in half as he dashed forwards.
Sakura was calm as she blocked his first attack but lost her cool a bit as he came at her again, far faster. His second and third attacks struck inside her guard, landing solidly on her upper chest, and on her left breast, respectively.
She flinched, but managed to bite down on the pain, choosing to chain the boy's brief moment of downtime as he backed away from her as an opportunity to let loose another water bullet.
This time, Sai was forced to show off what he could do. He dodged underneath the bullet of liquid, before bringing a brush out of his pouch and, with an almost blinding speed, brought it across a small scroll. From out of the scroll came 3 or 4 birds made of ink, which proceeded to fly towards her, pecking at her head and just being a general nuisance.
It wasn't a terribly effective Jutsu for combat, but it certainly served it's purpose of keeping her occupied while the boy worked on something else. She slashed at the birds with a kunai, barely managing to get two of them before the boy brought his hand up in front of him.
It was a simple activation seal, the kind used for breaking out of Genjutsu or activating ninja traps. A second later, a massive centipede rose from Sai's canvas, clicking it's jaws together in a rather unsettling display. Sakura cringed slightly as the beast looked towards her, even if it technically had no eyes.
She hopped backwards, taking the time she was dodging to examine where Anko's fight was at. The woman had opted to fight her fellow Jonin, Ra, which Sakura had felt was probably a good idea, given that she would've been absolutely demolished by the woman had she tried to fight her.
Watching Jonin fight, even for the brief moment she was allowed before being distracted once more by Sai's drawing was… incredible. Their movements were faster than she could ever dream of being, their attacks came out not one at a time, but in flurries and combinations, chaining together from one to the next. And yet, despite all of that, they never once faltered. They were never afraid to jump between two attacks they knew they could dodge, never hesitated to sidestep an attack, rather than block it. It was almost like a dance, as odd as it may have sounded to say.
The birds that continued to peck at her face, at her eyes, and around her hair were really starting to get annoying, however. She just barely managed to tag another with her Kunai, dissipating it, before the Centipede caught her. It wasn't a terribly effective thing for fighting her, and it was far slower than she'd first feared it would be. Truly, it was likely the creature didn't have much in the way of a brain, but more acted on certain orders.
Still didn't mean she wanted to be caught by it.
She brought her hands together to form a fast set of seals, wincing slightly as the last of the four paint-birds bit her on her earlobe, and she resolved silently to make sure that particular one got a good, clean hit with her kunai. She brought her chakra-laden palms to the floor, shouting out "Earth Style: Mud Wall!". The floor rose just below the multi-legged creature chasing her, upending it and forcing it on it's back on the other side of the wall.
In the meantime, before it could recover, she slashed at the final bird, finally dispelling it, before she threw that same kunai at where Sai was sitting, quietly scribbling away at the massive scroll before him.
He caught the blade without even looking up at her, which pissed Sakura off in a way she couldn't quite describe.
A second later, the centipede she'd momentarily forgotten about rounded the corner of her mud wall, spreading it's jaws and threatening to close them around her now outstretched arm. She barely got her arm out of it's reach, before hopping backwards again. Her eyes widened, however, as she impacted against the stone wall behind her.
Ah, shit! Sakura realized with a small bit of panic. Judged the distances wrong.
She barely managed to duck underneath the creatures jaws, stabbing up into the bottom of it's jaws a second later, and causing the creature to dissolve. Even if it was gone, it seemed like Sai had finished whatever it was he'd been working on, for he brought his hand up once more, and activated whatever was on the page.
Three dozen large snakes coursed out of his paper, slithering across the ground and gunning for her. They were fast, far faster than the centipede before had been, and she realized with a hiss of her own that that thing's speed must've been a method to catch her off guard with these.
She tried to make some distance, but with the wall behind her, she couldn't find the ability. The snakes caught her within a few seconds, wrapping around her limbs and weighing her down heavily. A few wrapped themselves around her arms, then her legs, until finally, the only part of her that were uncovered by their bindings was her face.
She squirmed for a moment, trying to get her left hand into the pouch on her back and reach for a Kunai, but she found herself unable to move much at all. Sai walked towards her quickly and deliberately, sheathing his tanto and reaching out towards her.
Without any real warning, the boy was blasted to the side, impacting against the wall across from him a second later, and slumping down as he clutched his shoulder. Sakura barely had time to be surprised before the painted snakes coiled around her burst into ink, and Anko blocked a hit from behind by Ra.
"Sorry that took me a second." Anko let out with a small grin, talking through clenched teeth as she growled under her breath. "Had to break away from this bitch."
"T-Thanks!" Sakura managed to bring herself to speak, before pushing up off of the ground and pulling out a kunai. "I won't waste it!"
Anko laughed sharply, before parrying Ra's next attack and pushing into her, forcing the woman to jump backwards, lest she be caught by any of the snakes now flowing freely from Anko's sleeve.
Sakura couldn't focus on the two of them, though. She needed to finish what she'd started and defeat Sai, before the boy could manage to take her hostage again.
If they manage to get me captured, they could use me as leverage against Anko… Her eyes narrowed. I won't let that happen.
As she charged towards the boy, who had just managed to get to his feet, she heard an odd sound come from the center of the room. A feeling washed over her that she couldn't quite place, and she felt an odd compulsion to gaze towards the center of the room, completely ignoring Sai, who even now was recovering from the hit Anko had landed against him.
Her eyes were like saucers as she trained them upon the man stood there, holding a boy up with one hand like he weighed nothing at all.
"Sakura Haruno, Anko Mitarashi!" The man shouted, drawing their attention as he drew a knife from his bag. "If you don't want this boy to come to harm, then you'll surrender yourselves immediately!"
Zaku.
The Oto ninja was struggling in the older man's grip, trying to regain some semblance of control in the situation, but it was obvious from the way the man's arm barely strained, from the way he held the kunai to Zaku's neck with a casual ease, that it wasn't working.
"Sakura!" The boy shouted; eyes oddly panicked. "H-help me!"
Her head ached as the boy shouted and screamed, desperately begging for assistance as the knife inched ever closer to his throat. Sakura took a single step forward, surprised when Anko didn't voice her complaint.
In fact, the woman was strangely still.
"Anko Sensei!?" She called out to the woman, wanting at the very least some advice. "What do we do!?"
"I don't know, Sakura." Anko responded simply. "Do whatever it is you want. I can't help you."
What!? Sakura almost shouted aloud, as caught up in her confusion as she was. You're never like this, why are you suddenly putting all of the onus on me!?
A theory popped into her head a second later.
Idly, she went to bring her hands up in front of her, forming a small seal that she knew by heart from having it drilled into their heads when they were students. As she made to form the hand-signs, however, Sai charged towards her.
He did not speak, nor, truly, did she expect him to.
After all, this wasn't real.
"Release!" She shouted as loud as she could, sending a pulse of chakra through her own body in an effort to disturb her natural flow.
There was a shake, as if the world and everyone in it had shifted ever so slightly, but then nothing.
She opened her eyes, expecting to find herself out of the illusion, but instead, the only thing she was greeted with was the same familiar scene from before.
Wha–
Sai's foot impacted against the side of her face, jamming her thoughts then and there and launching her to the side. She tried to withstand the throbbing in her head, eyes wide as she was met with another barrage of hits.
Why? Sakura thought frantically as she barely dodged another few hits from Sai, looking behind her and seeing that Anko was still frozen in place, eyes dull and lifeless. Why!?
Why can't I break free!?
In front of her, Zaku's body hit the floor, entirely lifeless. She felt like screaming but knew she couldn't. The man was holding another Zaku already.
"Help!" The new copy called out feverishly, clawing at the hand around his throat. "Sakura! Please!"
"SHUT UP!" She called out to the fake before her, bringing her hands in front of her once more. "RELEASE!"
Nothing changed, and now she began to breathe heavily, panic circulating through her as she jumped backwards…
Directly into Ra's grip.
"Stay still, Ms. Haruno." The woman spoke, her hand like iron on Sakura's shoulder. "You will be hurt if you continue to struggle."
The limb moved upwards in one motion, gripping her neck hard. She could barely breathe as Ra forced her against the wall, her left hand gripping her wrist, and a third, almost inhuman hand rose from behind the woman's body.
In it was a single needle, filled with an unidentifiable black liquid.
"S-stop…" She muttered quietly under her breath, her head subconsciously moving away from the sharp injection moving towards her. "STOP!"
The world seemed to crack, as if everything were warping, separating from each other as the very universe unwound. After perhaps an hour, or maybe just a few seconds, she found herself back where she'd been before, stood beside Anko as the woman held her up.
"Sakura!"
Her mentor shouted at her, lightly shaking her with one hand as she used the other to point her kunai forward, lightly swinging it to make sure the other three people in the room, one of which she recognized as the person who'd been holding Zaku in her dream, didn't get any funny ideas and attack.
"I'm-" She felt herself falter, momentarily blacking out, before manually forcing herself back, biting the inside of her cheek to keep herself grounded. "I'm fine."
She was panting, and judging from the look Anko shot her, the woman didn't exactly believe her declaration. She felt that was fair, but they didn't exactly have any options. Either she was could handle the strain this new arrival's Genjutsu had left on her, or they were screwed.
Anko's left hand, the one that wasn't being used to fend off their attackers, dug into the pouch on her back, until she seemed to find what she was looking for. She brought a clenched fist out a second later, before offering the contents to Sakura.
Sakura didn't recognize the object being presented to her. It was an odd, purplish-black ball. It gave off no distinctive smell, aside from the smell of salt that came from Anko's clammy palm.
"Look, I know it's sweaty from my hand and probably won't taste very good but just trust me and eat it."
Sakura nodded without any fuss, taking the small orb and putting it between her teeth. With a single crunch, she broke the outer wall apart, and tasted the inside for the first time.
She nearly threw up right there. Even still, she couldn't spit it out. Anko had told her specifically that it wasn't going to taste great, but that it'd be important. She simply stomached the taste in her mouth and, with a great deal of effort, downed the rest of the contents without tasting them.
Almost immediately she began to feel it's effects.
"What…" Her body felt lighter, and her vision began to clear. The haze around her mind parted somewhat, and she could no longer feel the residual ringing from when she'd been hit by Sai in that Genjutsu. "What was that thing?"
"It's a food pill." Anko explained simply, drawing her hands together in a complex order of signs as the relative peace they'd been experiencing broke down. "Shit, I'll explain later!"
"R-right!" She dodged away from Anko and towards Sai as he and Ra charged into them once more, though this time, something was different right off the bat.
She recognized the feeling immediately, and before she could be caught in the illusion, she brought her hands up and swept the Genjutsu from her mind with a simple "Release!".
Still, the new arrival made something abundantly clear to Sakura.
"Sensei, we can't stick around here!"
The woman formed her own release seal, and it took Sakura a moment to realize she was likely caught in a Genjutsu far more powerful than her own. The man across from them was looking towards her, after all. It made sense his power would mostly be allocated there.
Anko seemed to break out a moment later, ducking underneath one of Ra's slashes and bringing her arm up, launching a set of snakes at the woman that knocked her backwards, and left her with a few bites as well.
"Yeah, you're right!" Anko brought her hands up, making the same activation seal Sai had formed earlier, and instantly Ra was completely still. "Alright, on my signal!"
Sakura felt that "on my signal!" was a bit vague, given she had no idea what said signal would be, but shrugged and nodded anyways, clashing her own kunai against Sai's redrawn tanto. In but a moment, the Genjutsu artist at mouth of the room was knocked off his feet, and with barely any delay after that, Sai found himself face first in the concrete.
"Alright, let's move!" Anko shouted, taking Sakura's hand and pulling them both out of the room. "Heh, that worked out surprisingly well."
"Wait, your signal was "Alright, let's move!"?" Sakura asked skeptically.
"No, my signal was the hand motion you missed by turning to fight that Sai guy." The woman didn't glare at her, but her jokingly annoyed tone seemed to say that somehow that was her fault.
"You do realize you never actually said what the signal was, right?"
"Yeah, but I implied it." Anko sighed. "And you went and missed my implying. How sad."
"I hate you."
"Oi! I was kidding, got it? Kidding!"
"So, that food pill thingy, what was that?"
"Ah, right." Anko brought a second out of her bag, and popped one into her own mouth. "They're basically raw energy. They'll keep you going even when you're exhausted, generally at the cost of energy later on. If you take a few of 'em, you can keep yourself going for a few days at a time, provided, of course, that you're basically going to be dead for a few weeks afterwards."
"Huh."
"Yeah, they're useful for situations like this, but they can be pretty risky." Anko surmised. "That and they taste awful."
The brief silence created by her own laughter got her thinking about something they'd left behind in the room behind them.
"Uhm, about Ra…" Sakura posed the question under her breath. "That poison you used on her to make her seize up…"
Anko barked out a quick laugh.
"Don't worry, it's not going to kill her." Anko's smile became slightly less bright. "That's one of the few non-lethal techniques Lord Snakesforbrains ever taught me. It's a simple paralyzing agent mixed into the venom of a mildly poisonous snake. Makes for some good stopping power when you need someone alive."
"Yeah, I can sort of see-"
There was an indistinct clicking noise that, despite being about as quiet as a pin drop, managed to cut its way into their conversation. She tried to say something, bring it up to her mentor, ask her if maybe she'd heard it too, but by the time she turned to look at Anko's face, the woman was already on her, eyes wider than she'd ever seen them.
"SAKURA! GET DOWN!"
Sakura barely had time to think about the woman's instructions before the hall around them burst into flames. The pain came hot and fast, coursing over her body for barely a moment, and yet still causing her to cry out as she was tackled to the ground.
There was a moment of complete and utter silence as the flames died out, accompanied only by her breathing, but the moment soon passed, and she found herself taking stock of the situation.
Absolute terror had a funny way of making her do that.
The bomb that went off had been embedded in the wall to their left, or, at least, that was her best guess, given the way the stone had been slightly concave in the last second Sakura's eyes had still been looking towards it. The explosion had been caused by a fire based Jutsu, an anti-personnel trap designed to take down a corridor of people, or, at the very least, to injure them severely.
Anko was on top of her, having shielded her from the brunt of the blast. The woman had drawn her trench coat around them both to prevent Sakura from being too badly burned, but the single piece of clothing could only do so much to keep the flames from burning into them. Sakura's own arms ached incredibly, for they'd taken the brunt of the initial blast as she'd brought them up in front of her as a makeshift shield.
As the terror wore off, and was replaced instead by crazed panic, her natural instincts allowed her to, instead of focusing on herself, worry about the woman laying atop her. She reached up to touch the woman's neck and found–
No pulse.
There was a moment of complete silence as she slid the woman's body off of her own. Anko's form was unmoving as it fell to a stop next to her own, her eyes still clenched shut from when she'd tackled them both to the floor.
I wonder if it was the shock of the initial explosion, Sakura wondered, completely bereft of emotion. Or… maybe the smoke got to her lungs… no, it was too quick for that…
She prodded the woman's cheek softly, idly marveling at the way her skin indented.
Yeah. It has to have been the initial explosion. She was right next to it as well. The shock waves just blew right through her…
Anko…
Something about staring at the woman's face snapped whatever shock she'd been under.
"ANKO!" She screamed, turning the woman on her back and rifling through her mental encyclopedia of emergency treatments. "I… I…"
She was hyperventilating like crazy, and her vision was encased in tears that she fought hard to keep under control. Anko's coat had been almost entirely blown away on the back, but from the front she looked mostly normal. No terrible burns that would've indicated a messier kind of death.
She tried to force herself to breathe clearly as her vision swam. It wasn't working. No matter what she did, she couldn't manage to force enough air into her lungs to breathe. She was going to pass out, she was going to–
"SNAP OUT OF IT!" Her inner self screamed at her, practically dragging her mind back into consciousness. "You know what to do when you're hyperventilating! Breathe deeply, purposefully! Pursed lips! Breathe low, and hold your breaths! If you pass out, who's going to save Anko!?"
Right. She forced herself to breathe as deeply as she could, forcing the breaths through her pursed lips, following her own advice as best she could. I have to save her… She's always doing so much for me… She's always taking care of me and watching over me… I can't… I will not let her die!
She wracked through her brain once more, trying to summon up the missing piece of the puzzle, the final link that would tie it all together and save her teacher…
She recalled, extraordinarily vaguely, that Iruka Sensei had once taught them something related to emergencies around the heart… but…
She couldn't recall what he'd said in particular, other than–
"When someone's heart stops, there's only one thing you can do. You must restart the heart via a powerful Lightning Jutsu. Other than that, forcing beats via a set of compressions is all you can do. That won't save them, though. You're basically just buying time until someone with those capabilities shows up.
Her own heart very nearly stopped.
They weren't Iruka's words, but the words of one of the Leaf Hospital's top surgeons. He'd been willing to answer a few of Sakura's questions when Naruto had nearly been killed, oh so long ago in the land of waves…
But now those same words damned her.
She possessed no Lightning Jutsu.
She brought her hands to the woman's left breast, brought her hands slightly to the right, and began to pump in small intervals. It was all she could do. All she could to was hope to the gods above that somehow her heart would restart itself with her help.
It won't. A cold and logical voice seemed to shout from the depths of her subconsciousness. There's nothing you can do.
"Don't listen. Keep going."
It's not going to do anything!
"SHUT UP!" She screamed out to nothing in particular, tears rolling in streaming bursts down her face. "Shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!"
She looked up, desperately searching the surrounding corridors for anyone, anything that could help her.
"ANYONE!" She cried out with reckless abandon, uncaring if someone caught her because of it. "PLEASE, HELP! PLEASE!"
Her voice was losing intensity.
"Please… I…" Tears flowed like rivers, and a horrid, aching sob wracked her entire form. "There's… there's nothing I can do… Please…"
She hadn't stopped pumping, and yet her hands seemed to slow as the tears began to fall on them. Her eyes shut, as if accepting what had happened, as if accepting what she'd lost.
As if accepting that Anko really was d–
Hashirama could heal.
She felt she should've hesitated there. She felt as if, in that moment, there should've been some modicum of doubt, a tiny piece of her that shouted that she couldn't reach the man's level, that she wouldn't be able to measure up in any way.
Something to tell her that she couldn't save her teacher.
Sakura was glad there wasn't. She didn't have the energy to ignore it.
Her eyes shot open faster than they ever had, and she brought her hands out once more towards Anko's form. She focused hard, harder than she had when Naruto had almost died on the bridge those months ago in the wave, or when she'd been useless fodder caught in Kin's arms and broken out. She focused harder, even, than she had yesterday, when Anko's own chakra had helped bring herself back from the brink of madness thanks to the curse mark's power…
And she let that very power free.
The curse marked covered her more completely than it ever had before. It wound across her left arm and chest, as it normally did, but this time, it didn't stop. It kept flowing across her body until it was upon her right arm, until it coursed down her pelvis, and until it fully encased her left leg. Her right leg was the only uncorrupted piece of her, but she didn't much care at that moment.
She needed the extra power.
Sakura focused hard on her chakra natures, Earth, and Water, and did the same training she'd been doing the entire week. She held her hands out in front of her, allowing the twin natures to mix for the first time, and let the curse mark's own chakra flow into her.
It was as if she already knew what it was she was looking for. A certain, almost arbitrary point on the scale was where she stopped adding the curse marks power, and with barely a thought, she forced it into retreat, making it snake it's way back up her leg and inhabit only her torso.
She had no real talent for Ninjutsu. It wasn't that she lacked the control, but she lacked the power most of all. She had no true talent for Genjutsu either, for she lacked the imagination in order to use it properly.
But from what she'd heard, healing was an entirely different kind of Jutsu. It utilized almost exclusively control, in order to apply chakra where it was needed.
She'd be attempting it on the fly, with no practice, no training, nothing. Nothing but a desperate hope and a children's story book that had once told her of a proud warrior named Hashirama, the strongest man to ever live.
She brought her hands over Anko's heart, and with a rasping scream, she unleashed everything she had.
As she let the energy flow through her wrists and into her fingers, small sprouts, almost like thorns, punctured her skin from inside, winding their way through her flesh, muscles, and bone, and nearly causing her to faint from pure agony. She endured through grit alone, forcing herself to keep pumping chakra into those broken hands…
And after another second, the space before her palms began to glow a faint, but radiant green.
It was a feeling impossible to describe. It was as if, in that small, minuscule moment of time, she understood some infinitesimal bit of how life worked. She forced more chakra into her hands and directed it specifically at the muscles in and around Anko's heart. She began to restart her compressions, finding that she could still heal while acting, which was a massive relief. She'd have to apologize to Anko when she woke up for the numerous puncture wounds now adorning her breast. It would be a bit hard to explain they'd been from her driving thorns into them over and over again.
Her head went entirely blank after that. It was a long couple minutes spent pounding her hands into Anko's body. After an agonizingly long period of time, in which she'd nearly blacked out over seven times, she allowed herself to take a small break. She didn't stop pushing chakra into her palms, fearing that if she did, she'd lose the secret to making Hashirama's healing work in the first place.
She put her ear to Anko's chest, and listened for any–
Ba-bump.
It was a quiet, almost absent sound. A tiny thing that should've meant nothing, taken for granted like it always was.
She scrambled to Anko's neck, pushing down perhaps slightly too hard on the woman's artery with two of her only non-thorny fingers.
It was such a pathetic thing, the woman's pulse. It barely even registered at all on the tips of her fingers, and even as she pulled them away once, she felt the need to push them against the vein again, just to be absolutely sure the feeling hadn't been a lie, some cruel trick by the universe to get one last laugh out of her.
When she drew away again, she let her hands fall to the floor beside her as she fell to her knees, her legs spilling out beside her on either side.
She giggled quietly, an almost maddening feeling of euphoria washing over her. She let her head rock backwards, and then, with a massive smile, she simply screamed. It was a raw, guttural noise that she was fairly sure she'd never be able to replicate. It was all of her fear and doubt, all of her terror and hesitation, all of her agony and hardship, all crystallized into one, single sound.
And then it ended, sputtering to a stop as her energy faded completely. The adrenaline of Anko dying, and then her revival, was a bit too much.
But it was funny… she felt a bit more tired than she felt she should've. It was a different kind of tired, and she had a slightly foreboding feeling that this particular sleep would be…
Longer than most…
"Honestly, you shouldn't go shouting like that in an enemy base." A voice called out from her left. "You're going to have a whole lot more people after you now, you know?"
She spun as quick as she could, some eighteenth wind filling her as she brought her arms up in front of her.
No, there were no arms, and she hadn't managed to control her spin at all. Instead, she'd merely fallen next to Anko, completely spent.
The new arrival sighed as she walked over to Sakura and Anko, looking at the latter's unconscious form with an intrigued expression.
"D-don't… touch her… I'll…" Sakura hadn't even realized she was speaking until her voice died in her throat.
"Oh, trust me, I know." The woman laughed. "You're quite strong, someone as weak as me would never be able to cross you."
She reached over and lightly pulled Sakura into her, before, with a small bit of pain, a liquid was being injected into her neck.
"What… is…"
"Just a chakra booster, nothing more." The woman giggled once more under her breath, gazing towards Anko with a faraway look. "Honestly, you completely overused your chakra. If I hadn't given this to you, you'd have certainly died."
Sakura had a feeling that if she were any less tired, that would've been a sobering thought. At the moment, not even it could crack through her exhaustion.
"P-ple… se… don't kill… her…" Her voice was forced past the block in her throat.
"Don't worry, I won't." The woman answered her with a small smile. "I'm glad I was able to do this… I'd been looking for a way to thank you, really."
"Wh…at?"
The newcomer turned back around, a tiny, sad smile adorning her face as she met Sakura's own gaze.
"For asking me my name." Ra spoke quietly. "Because… despite how small a question it might've seemed to you… like I said before… we were once human… and, well… I was thinking… maybe it's about time we remembered that."
Sakura sat silently as the woman's words washed over her. She didn't have the strength to say anything, but she liked to hope her weak smile was enough to convince the woman she thought the idea was a good one.
"The other's will be here soon." Ra told her, reverting once more to her emotionless state, though there was a certain stubbornness behind her eyes that Sakura hadn't noticed before. "Do take care not to die."
With that, the woman disappeared.
Sakura felt the exhaustion catch her a second later, her eighteenth and most likely final wind dying down rather quickly. Even still, she couldn't rest, not until she and Anko were out of here. Saving the woman's life would be meaningless if they were just caught the moment after.
Despite that altruistic thought, her legs were having none of it. They refused to budge even an inch, and her arms were much the same, so she couldn't even crawl.
Just as she was beginning to pass out, the wall beside her cracked, and she looked towards it with a wide-eyed stare, somehow finding a nineteenth wind, and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that when this whole Root thing was over, she was going to be out like a light for the next several weeks.
She couldn't quite combat her relief when the figure on the other side of the collapsing wall was revealed to be Tenzo. He spoke to her, but apparently her nineteenth wind was not only much shorter than the other eighteen had been, but was also officially as far as she could push it, because she fell backwards against the stone wall behind a moment later, too exhausted to care about the fact that the man would have to carry both of them.
Idly, she noticed an oddly shaped object on the tip of her right pointer finger. It was affixed to one of the couple dozen or so thorns that had grown out of her hands and weaved their way into her flesh. Her eyes traced the line of the point to the very end, where, atop the thorn, like a meaningless crown, grew a single, small cherry blossom.
She smiled as the unconsciousness set in.
/-/
Anko gasped, sitting up in a panic as she breathed in heavily. She had one, solitary thought as she tried to stand herself up.
Wow. I'm in immense pain.
"Hey!" A man called from over to her left, a scruffy sort of goatee on his chin that looked a bit stupid in her personal opinion. "No movement! We're still not sure if you're alright yet!"
She allowed the man to push her back down, sighing deeply as he ran a hand down his face in exasperation.
"All you goddamned kids overexerting yourselves." The man leaned back, sitting back down at the edge of the small tent they inhabited. "Tenzo tells me you were dead for a while. You have any memory of how that happened?"
"What!?" Anko shouted just a bit too loud, completely uncaring of the way the man only a few feet from her winced and cleaned out his ear with his pinky. "What the hell do you mean I was dead!?"
"I mean your heart stopped, Anko." Her eyes widened as her frazzled brain finally managed to put two and two together and recognize the man in front of her. "Your student performed… I won't say a miracle, but she performed an extremely high-leveled medical Jutsu with, from what I've been told, no experience at all. She brought you back from the dead."
Anko contemplated that for a moment, finding herself growing oddly dizzy as a question popped into her mind.
"Where's Sakura?"
"She's recovering." Shikaku answered her. "She severely overused her chakra reserves. Hell, Tenzo's pretty sure she was given a direct booster injection, and even still, that was only barely enough to keep her stable."
"Is she alright!?" Anko tried once more to push herself up, but an odd feeling took over her body, and she realized with some duress that Shikaku had put her under the shadow possession.
"Just… chill for half a second. I'm aware I worded that poorly, but I need you to stop overreacting to everything I say."
Anko clicked her tongue but pushed past the control to nod at the man. He acquiesced a moment later, pulling the shadows away from her and freeing her body.
"Yes, she's alright." Shikaku breathed out a sigh. "I don't think she's going to be waking up any time soon, but she's alright."
Anko nodded, at the very least accepting that.
"So… what're we doing about Danzo?"
"That's the real question of the hour. The problem, of course, is that we don't really have a good option."
One of Anko's eyebrows rose, a silent question asked to the man before her.
"Basically, Danzo's already starting to put up his guard." Shikaku explained. "It wasn't so bad when the six of you were breaking out of Root, because he'd only mobilized two squads, and most of the members went after Tenzo and the other three. The problem, really, is that he knows we're coming now."
Anko realized what the man was getting at just then.
"You're saying that we can't wait, right?"
"Exactly." Shikaku nodded, sighing exhaustively as he lightly massaged his face with one hand. "As nice as they would be to have, waiting for Jiraiya and Tsunade to show up simply isn't an option, not when Danzo is likely calling out for any and every one of his agents to return to home-base. If we're being realistic, it's likely that only a third of Root's actual battle strength is present inside the tunnels right now."
"You're saying that Tsunade and Jiraiya are strong, but they're not worth two-thirds of the enemies forces, basically?"
"You catch on fairly quick. Yeah, if we allow them to bolster their forces, then it won't matter how strong the Sannin are. Especially if he calls in reinforcements from Orochimaru as well, which we know by now he's not above doing." Shikaku looked her in the eye, his expression tense. "We'd basically have to pull of this assault today, with nothing but what we've got on hand right now."
"Neither side is at full strength though." Anko argued simply for the sake of giving a second opinion to the strategist before her. "That includes us."
"Of course, but we're still stronger than them as things are right now." Shikaku outlined. "We have Kakashi, Kurenai, and Asuma, not to mention Guy, Zabuza, and the Ino-Shika-Cho, not to toot my own horn or anything. Not like that's everyone, either, but we've got a strong enough assault force that if we attack now, before Danzo can fortify his defenses, we should be able to blow right past him."
Anko nodded, seeing the logic there, even if all she really wanted to do was lay down and sleep for a few days.
A few minutes later, after Shikaku left, announcing he'd need to plan the attack as soon as possible, a small voice sounded out from outside the tent that sounded oddly familiar.
"No." Anko said simply, hoping beyond all hope she was wrong. "I swear if she's actually up after all that…"
"Her tents right over there." A confused voice called out from outside. "But, are you sure you're in any condition to be moving around, Ms.-"
The tent wall just in front of her was pulled away, and standing in the makeshift entryway, somehow awake despite what they'd gone through perhaps only a few hours ago, was Sakura Haruno, panting heavily, and looking a lot like she shouldn't be up and moving.
"Sakura, what the hell are you-"
She couldn't quite finish before she was tackled into a bone-shattering hug. Quite literally. She was fairly sure a few of her already rather damaged bones just decided they'd had enough of her shit.
"S-Sakura?"
"I was so worried…" The girl muttered quietly into her chest. "You didn't wake up… even when your heart started beating again, you didn't wake up, and I… I just…"
Despite the fact that she wanted to tell the girl off for getting out of bed and coming to see her… she just couldn't. She wrapped her own arms around the girl, content, at least, that she wouldn't be letting her do anything too stupid if she were right in front of her.
"It's ok." Anko assured the girl. "I'm right here. Not going anywhere."
Sakura didn't say anything, though she didn't cry either, which really proved just how exhausted the girl must've been, given that she was, normally, a bit of a crybaby.
Probably shouldn't tell her I think that. Anko thought to herself.
"Oi!" Shikaku's voice called from outside the tent, pushing his way inside, and completely ignoring the nice little moment the two of them were having to yell at them. "What the hell are you doing up, kid!?"
Sakura turned back towards him, a look of guilt upon her face that had her laughing nervously.
"Well, I was pretty exhausted, but I don't know, for some reason, I just, like, couldn't sleep or something?"
Shikaku seemed to think about that for a moment, before, with a sigh, he turned to Anko, eyes narrowed as if he already knew what she'd done.
"Anko." He spoke simply. "You said you gave her a food pill earlier."
"Well, yeah." She replied confusedly. "I mean, she was running low on energy, I just wanted to give her a bit of a pick me up-"
"Anko, were the food-pills you gave her rationed out for a twelve-year old's system?"
Her eyes widened minutely as she remembered back to their time in the Root compound. She'd been on edge, not necessarily concerned with thinking about the dosage of the pill she'd given the girl.
"Uh…" She droned on awkwardly. "P-Probably not?"
Shikaku ran both of his hands down his face, letting out a worldly sigh that seemed to encapsulate the man's entire lifetime inside of it.
"Welp, Sakura, right?"
"Uh, yes sir?"
"The food-pill Anko gave you was for a twenty-five to thirty-year-old ninja. Even Anko's a year too young to be taking them."
"Oi! I need the kick!"
"Ignoring that comment." Shikaku continued. "Basically, Ms. Sakura, your body is currently running on overdrive. Your chakra has already semi-replenished itself, despite you completely depleting it just a few hours ago, and your wounds probably don't hurt at all, if I'm right in guessing."
"Uh… yeah, that seems about right." Sakura responded. "W-what does that mean, sir?"
"Gods, with that much energy coursing through you, I'm shocked you slept even slept for as long as you did…" The man let out another titanic sigh. "Well, basically, it means that you're going to be very, very awake for the next day or two." Shikaku gave a tired smile. "And then you'll probably sleep for a good three or four. In the hospital. If you're lucky, they won't have to completely flush out your stomach."
Sakura's eyes went wide, before she turned to look at Anko with a small glare.
"Eheh… Sorry?"
"And to think, this is the thanks I get for saving your life." Sakura spoke melodramatically. "To think I'd be betrayed by my lover, at a time like this…"
"I'm sorry, what!?" Shikaku turned to her, eyes hard.
"Inside joke, complicated to explain," Anko tried to diffuse the situation, ignoring the shit-eating grin Sakura shot her as the suspicious Nara closed in on her. "Please don't read into it."
/-/
Orochimaru hissed as his deadened arms blazed with pain. It was an anguish that he still couldn't quite grow accustomed to, even after a few weeks of dealing with it.
Not for the first time that day, he cursed Hiruzen's name, pounding his rotting fist against the tile of the shower before him. It only made them bleed more, but he truly didn't care.
They had more important things to worry about.
He turned off the shower, dried his body off as best he could, and dressed himself. Once he exited the bathroom, he was immediately greeted by Kabuto, who bowed before him, as he should, and then got right to business.
"Jiraiya made contact with Tsunade." He opened. "We don't know exactly what he wanted, but we're fairly sure it's related to Danzo in some way."
"Oh?" Orochimaru was curious. "Why do you think that?"
"Because the man sent you a message."
Orochimaru's brow rose, and he took the letter from Kabuto with as strong a grip as his dying flesh could manage.
He read through the message with some intrigue. It was an offer to obtain some rather interesting materials. Not just the three children he'd used for the Chuunin Exams, who were truly worthless, but also the girl he'd accidentally marked with the Cursed Seal of Heaven.
Hmph, what a fool. He thinks I'd offer him assistance for something as paltry as-
His eyes widened, and he instantly zeroed in on a tiny, almost insignificant part of the message, just a few words tacked on at the end.
"…Especially with her development of the Wood Style."
"Oh?" Orochimaru let out without even meaning to, cackling under his breath as he let his head fall back, laughing almost manically as he let the note fall to the floor below him.
"Lord Orochimaru?" Kabuto questioned, unsure of what could cause such an outburst from him. "What did the note say?"
He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, uncaring of the way it spread a bloody mucus across his face.
Truly, it seemed good things did happen to bad people.
"Don't concern yourself, Kabuto." He answered the boy, walking forward and past him as he stepped back into the main hallway of their temporary encampment. "I need to draw up a plan, Danzo's information has proven… most interesting indeed."
"If I may, sir, just what kind of plan is it?"
Orochimaru's smile was that of a starving predator, not just presented with a meal, but with an entire banquet laid out for him, just ripe for the taking.
"I think I've figured out a way…"
"To kill two birds with one stone."
End Chapter 39
Ominous things are ominous.
So, Sakura's shown off some of what the Wood Style's going to be doing for her! And she finally gets to pay Anko back for taking such good care of her.
Honestly seems like a win-win scenario, minus the trauma.
I know this was an entire chapter without Naruto and Sasuke, but I hope you'll forgive me. Or let me know that not only will you not forgive me, but you're cursing my first born in a review. I always appreciate them!
Anyways, next time, Anko has to explain her forbidden love for Sakura to the girl's father, Shikaku, and ask for her hand in- Wait, shit, wrong script again.
See you all next week!