xvi. The Greatest Loss

Darkness engulfed Sakura. She didn't know which was up and which was down, but panic drove her forward. Her lungs screamed for air, but she held back her body's raging instinct to heave in a great draw of breath. If she tried, the black seawater would flood her airways, filling her to the brim, sending her sinking to the ocean floor, dead as rock.

The water grew thick against her limbs as she paddled, dragging against her flagging body while unconsciousness pressed against her mind, threatening to eclipse her thoughts.

Something clamped around her wrist and began to tow her through the darkness. Distantly she knew she should kick her legs, but the eclipse was almost full and it became increasingly difficult for her to remember why it was so important that she should hold her breath. When a rush of saltwater flooded her lungs, she remembered then, but it was too late. She was going to drown.

Then air hit her face, and she exploded into a violent fit of coughs, salt water burning every orifice of her face. She heaved, desperate to fill the empty vacuum of her lungs, maybe crying a little as she struggled to breathe. Her arms flapped up and down with a renewed will to survive as she bobbed in the sea, gasping at the mist-veiled air while black waves cut past her. Broken pieces of the Shimotsuki floated by. Men shouted. Sakura then remembered she had destroyed a ship.

Beside to her, Sasuke pulled himself out the ocean, the water sucking at him as he dragged himself onto its surface. He staggered to his feet, wheezing—Sakura had plunged deep underwater and he had almost died while bringing them both back. He blinked and the Sharingan—the reason why he had been able to find her—disappeared. With one eye clenched tight against the pain, he turned his attention to his teammate.

"You all right?"

"I'll be fine," Sakrau told him.

She eked out as little chakra as she could spare and slowly climbed out onto her knees, unable to scrounge up the strength to stand. That last punch had wiped most of her reserves and now she was running on fumes. The buffeting winds tumbled into her, and she broke out in a fit of shivers. Her head swiveled as she tried to take stock of the situation. Less than a hundred yards away, the Shimotsuki lay in two pieces on the ocean, looking as if a giant had taken the vessel in its hands and snapped it like a toy. A few lifeboats crammed with men floated off to the side watching the vessel go down. "Oh god," she muttered to herself. She had done that.

Sasuke was staring, but not at scene of destruction laid out before them. "What happened?" He asked her.

Actually, he had seen everything: sakura had cleaved an entire boat—no a ship— in half with a punch. That was crazy for anyone. What made it even crazier was that it had been Haruno Sakura who had done it. Haruno Sakura, the girl who screamed when she got bugs in her hair. The girl everyone on the team was falling over to protect. The one whose green eyes welled with tears at a drop of a hat. That girl had broken a whole fucking ship in two. With her bare hands.

And because the sun had broken over the horizon somewhere beyond the heavy wall of fog, the air around them was growing lighter, and Sakura could see Sasuke's thoughts on his face, clear as the day dawning upon them.

"What was that?" He asked, and Sakura knew by the tone of his voice he wouldn't let this one go.

She tried to disarm him with a smile. "I missed?"

Her smile shrank when he leveled her with a furious gaze—they both knew that was not what he had meant.

On some level, Sakura was telling the truth. Earlier, when she dove at Orochimaru, fist pulled back and ready to smash him into irreconcilable chunks of flesh, he had unleashed a mass of angry snakes, sending the hissing pillar towards her like a battering ram of scales and fangs. She had been hurtling with so much force and speed, the only way to avoid the teeming nightmare ahead had been to avoid it completely. So she had jerked her body out of its path and suddenly the ship's deck was coming up on her fast and hard. Her choices had been to either smash face-first into the deck or keep going. She had chosen to keep going, busting through the layers of wood and steel like a fired shotgun ripping through a barrel.

She bit her lower lip and avoided meeting Sasuke's eyes, afraid if she did, she'd give some part of herself away—she really hoped Kakashi would be able explain this one.

"Sakura—"

She had a fairly good idea of what might've come next: a demand for answers, probably confusion, maybe some anger. What she didn't expect was something to grab her ankles and drag under, rip her through the waters in a mass of bubbles and yank her out heaving for air as she hung upside beside Orochimaru like a prized catch, the tail of a giant snake curled around her leg. The world spun and Sakura sputtered, scrabbling to gather her senses. Somewhere out in the distance, she heard Sasuke yell out her name.

Orochimaru leaned in close to her face, examining her as he would a cut of meat at the butcher's. "You're quite the little nuisance aren't you? I could kill you this instant, but unfortunately for you, you'll make fine bait for the boy," he said with a conspiratorial smile. Sakura wasn't sure what Orochimaru had meant by that. She got her answer when the giant snake unhinged its pink maw and swallowed her whole.

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Sasuke watched in horror as the snake imbibed Sakura, rooted in place as his teammate's bulge travelled down the snake's throat, down the length of its body, the scales clenching and unclenching as the muscles pulled her along its stomach.

He drew a breath he didn't realize he was holding—inhale—and flared to life on the exhale, bursting forward with eyes blazing a furious red. Only a single thought burned white-hot in his mind, everything else lost in the shadows: tear the snake open, save Sakura.

Orochimaru cut into his path with a wicked grin, and Sasuke blocked the man's right hook with his arm. Kenji's face—his disguise—had torn away, revealing the pale skin and reptilian eyes that had been lurking beneath.

"Come now, Sasuke-kun. You can't possibly have dessert without the main course."

Sasuke barely heard him, the words drowned out by the sound of his own voice screaming in head to tear the snake open and save Sakura. Save Sakura. Save Sakura.

Orochimaru shuddered beneath the thrilling press of those seething blood-red eyes. Just as he had suspected, the boy had been blessed with the Sharingan. His tongue ran over his lips in greedy excitement.

Sasuke disengaged from Orochimaru's arm, his fingers flashing through a blur of hand seals. A familiar warmth expanded in his chest. With a mighty exhale he unleashed a firestorm upon his opponent, the inferno large enough to engulf a small ship. When the jutsu dissipated, Orochimaru was nowhere to be seen and Sasuke charged forward, the air around him still hot as steam rose off the waves like dragon's breath. He doubted the attack had done Orochimaru in, but right now getting to Sakura was all he cared about.

Sasuke had taken four steps forward when a hand shot out of the water below. His Sharingan caught it in the nick of time, and with a frustrated roar, he threw himself back into a flip before the hand could snatch at his ankles. He landed on his feet, his right knee shuddering beneath him. The rest of Orochimaru climbed out of the water belly-first, sliding across the waves' surface.

"Oh, Sasuke-kun, you're going to have to make a better effort than that. The poor girl likely has less than a few minutes left."

The winds shifted direction, and an increasing gale pushed against Sasuke's back, stirring whorls in the rising steam. His red eyes again caught sight of the snake and the fat bulge lodged in the middle of its body. Rage exploded in his chest, and he imagined scorching the entire span of water between him and Sakura in a field of fire so large and hot Orochimaru would be boiled alive even if he tried escaping underwater again. He began to draw the chakra into his chest when his right leg buckled beneath him, his foot plunging knee-deep into the ocean. He released some chakra back into his leg, regaining his footing on the water's surface.

He grit his teeth, trying to ignore the angry voice in his head as he hurled insults at himself for having blown off so much chakra with his last justu. But what else was he supposed to do? His gaze landed on the snake and the bulge again, suddenly reminded of his parents' bodies thrown over one another in his living room.

Foolish little brother.

He squeezed his eyes shut against the incoming tide of memories.

Breathe, he said. He inhaled, drawing air into his lungs and pressing the terrible ghosts back down. Kill the snake, save Sakura, he told himself. Breathe.

He exhaled and the quivering line of his thoughts stilled. Kill the snake, save Sakura, he repeated before opening his eyes. Kill the snake, save Sakura, he said to himself one last time before he blitzed forward. Save Sakura.

Orochimaru intercepted him once again, but this time it was different. He swung at Sasuke's head, but Sharingan was faster and the arm moved so slow. Sasuke blocked the attack with his forearm and countered with a punch into his opponent's chest. Orochimaru went to grab his fist, but Sasuke had seen that, too and redirected his strike downward. His knuckles met the softness of the man's belly. Sasuke twisted his body to drive in the punch as deep as he could. He heard the breath leaving Orochimaru, and sensing an opening for the first time, channeled the flow of his momentum into his leg, pivoting on one foot and unleashing a vicious spinning kick to Orochimaru's head. There was a loud crunch of bones as his opponent's neck twisted around like a corkscrew before the body fell against the waves with a splash.

Without a second glance in its direction, Sasuke shot towards the snake with kunai in hand, prepared to tear the snake's belly open.

"Sasuke!" Kakashi raced towards him across the waves, soaking wet. Naruto ran at his heels in a similar state.

"The snake! Sakura's in it!" Sasuke shouted over the wind and waves. He wasn't sure whether his teacher caught his words, but Kakashi followed Sasuke's pointed finger and seeing the human-sized bulged in the reptile's belly, quickly put two and two together and shifted the arc of his run in its direction.

Relief flooded Sasuke's chest. Kakashi was here, and even that dumbass Naruto had survived. His teammates had survived. Things were going to be okay. Then a voice near his ears said, "Very interesting," and a sharp pain pierced the softness where his shoulder met his neck.

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As soon as the ship had split open, water had begun to gush into the steerage where Kakashi had engaged Sanosuke. Within minutes, they were up to their waist in seawater. Naruto splashed to his teacher's side.

"Kakashi-sensei! What's going on?"

"I'm guessing Sakura broke the ship," he said, and before Naruto could ask him what the hell that was supposed to mean, the floor quaked beneath their feet as the low groans of a ship taking on water echoed through the chamber. Moments later, a wall of water exploded through the hull. Kakashi grabbed hold of the ruff of Naruto's jacket seconds before the flood slammed into them, extinguishing the oil lamps and plunging them into a dark airless void.

Without loosening his iron grip on Naruto, Kakashi had swum in the direction he assumed to be up, the ship creaking and moaning around him as it began its slow descent into the ocean's depths. Fortunately, his assumptions had been right, and after what had felt like an eternity underwater, Kakashi's head broke the surface. Still treading water with one arm, he hauled Naruto up as well, relieved when the blonde popped up arms flailing as he shouted variations of "what's happening?" between water-logged coughs.

Having confirmed Naruto's lung capacity was wholly undamaged, Kakashi pulled himself out to his feet onto the agitated waves, a colony of goose bumps rising on his wet skin. Ignoring his students' tide of questions, Kakashi ordered him to stay close as he set off in search of Sakura and Sasuke. On one level, he was just as confused as Naruto about what had happened, still not fully understand how they had ended up in ocean. Knowing Tsuande-sama's monstrous strength, he did have a sneaking suspicion Sakura had a hand in the ship's destruction, but questions would have to wait. The first order of business was to secure his students' safety, something that was becoming progressively difficult to do with each turn of events.

As the sun began to rise unseen in the horizon, the darkness began to lift and the air grew gray. Kakashi's sharp eyes picked out Sasuke's smudged form in the distance. As he headed towards him, his stomach beginning to sink when he realized Sakura wasn't with him. He called out Sasuke's name. The boy turned, pointing ahead of him, yelling something over the waves. Kakashi followed his finger to where the giant snake lay coiled over the waters with a conspicuously human-shaped bulge in the middle of its body.

Kakashi swore loudly and changed direction, running full tilt towards the snake and what he had deduced was his third student in its stomach. He dashed two steps and with a burst of chakra, left Naruto in his wake as he ripped across the water. Faster than Naruto could blink and wonder what had just happened, Kakashi appeared before the snake and plunged his blade into the reptile's scales. With a deft pull of his arm, he dragged the kunai through its belly, ripping open the flesh. Blood and organs slopped out into ocean, and the snake hissed as its head and tail thrashed about in its final death throes. Kakashi shoved both arms into the cut. By the time Naruto had caught up, the snake was dead and Kakashi was shoulder deep in its entrails.

"Kakashi-sensei! What's going on—holy crap! Sakura-chan!" Naruto said as his teacher wrenched Sakura free. Gooey webs of digestive slime clung to her body as Kakashi pulled her out of the carcass, lowering her into the water so she was floating half-submerged on her back.

"Sakura," Kakashi said, patting her cheeks. She remained unresponsive.

Naruto fretted over his teacher's shoulder. "What's wrong with her, Kakashi-sensei? Why isn't she opening her eyes?"

"Well, getting half-digested by a giant snake probably wasn't the best thing that ever happened to her. She's having a rough day."

Kakashi tried to wash the gunk off her face. How long had she been in there for? Even the skin on his hands had begun to prickle after just a few seconds of exposure to the snake's the stomach acid. She looked fine though, if not a little slimy. He went to check her pulse—it was slower than he liked, but steady and strong.

"Sakura," he said, this time giving her a firm shake.

Her eyes creaked open.

Naruto threw up his arms with joy. "Sakura-chan!"

"Kakashi-sensei? Naruto?"

"We came to rescue you and the asshole!"

"Sasuke," She said, and her teammate's name triggered the rest of her awake. The waves grew agitated around her as she flailed about, trying to scramble out of the water and onto her feet. "Orochimaru—"

"Oro-what?" Naruto asked.

"Easy there," Kakashi said, helping her to her feet. "Sasuke took care of him. I saw the body. He's safe, you're both fine,"

"What?" Killed Orochimaru? Uchiha prodigy or not, that was impossible. Sasuke was only thirteen and Orochimaru was a sanin!

Even in the Forest of Death, Orochimaru had Sasuke out-classed by species—they were of a completely different stock. For a brief moment during their fight it had seemed Sasuke had gained the upper hand. But when it was over and the tallies counted up, all Sasuke had really managed to do was ruin Orochimaru's henge disguise, while Orochimaru had sunk his teeth into Sasuke and planted the curse mark on his body—he had been toying with Sasuke the entire fight.

Wait a minute. How did she remember that?

A memory from the future. Or had it been the past? Sakura gripped her teacher's arm. "Kakashi-sensei."

Naruto's voice broke in. "What the hell is that!"

He pointed across the choppy waters where Sasuke stood. A stone's throw behind him, most of Orochimaru's body lay afloat. The rest of him—his neck—had stretched out like a length of pulled dough, ending on the pale head sinking its fangs into Sasuke's shoulder.

"No!" Sakura lunged in Sasuke's direction, but a terrible vertigo struck her down. The ocean and sky flipped places, she faltered, pressing a hand to her head as she sunk to her knees: Chakra exhaustion. Forced to continuously heal herself while the snake's digestive juices ate away at her skin, the needle in her tank now hovered at "empty."

Naruto rushed to her side. "You okay?"

"I just need a moment."

A gust of wind pulled at her as Kakashi rushed past, raikiri crackling electric blue in his hands as he flew like a shot arrow, aiming for Orochimaru's neck. Kakashi swiped at the grotesque appendage, but Orochichmaru retracted back to his body. From afar, the man pulled himself back upright on the ocean's surface, grinning. Kakashi took a step in his direction, Raikiri still in his palm screaming for blood when a pained cry stopped him in his tracks. He spun around.

"Sasuke!"

The boy was kneeling, one hand clapped to his neck where Orochimaru had bit him while the other pressed against the water's surface, braced against an invisible weight. A groan clawed out of his this throat, and his head bowed towards the water. Parts of him began to sink beneath the waves as his chakra control fumbled.

Kakashi looked over his shoulder, shooting Orochimaru a withering glare most would have cowed beneath. Instead, the he stood with the same grin affixed to his face, swaying above the passing waves. A full-blown howl of pain tore out of Sasuke, and Kakashi's stomach twisted into an odd-shape he had almost forgotten: fear.

Kakashi shifted his attention back to Sasuke, knowing turning away from Orochimaru was likely a mistake; even the toddlers at the academy knew not to keep your back to the enemy. Right now though, Kakashi didn't have the luxury of choice.

Sakura, with Naruto's support, had made it to Sasuke, who was reduced to a writhing mess of thrashing limbs and screams, straining as if he were trying to burst free from his own body.

"Hey bastard! What's wrong? Damnit, Sakura-chan, what's wrong with him?"

Naruto fought to keep a grip under Sasuke's arm to prevent him from slipping underwater with one arm, while the other struggled to keep a hold on Sakura, who was having a hard time staying above water herself.

"It's the curse mark," Sakura said.

Naruto wanted to ask, "The what mark?" but Sasuke exploded into another fit of thrashing limbs, and Naruto lurched as he lost balance. "Damnit, bastard!" He cried, his voice sounding more frantic than angry as he struggled to keep a hold on both his teammates.

Relief poured through him when his teacher showed up and crouched beside him. "I've got him, Naruto," Kakashi said, and Naruto was more than happy to let him takeover.

Sasuke twisted in Kakashi's grasp and grabbed a fistful of his teacher's shirt as the other hand clawed at the nape of his neck.

"Kakashi."

"It's going to be okay, Sasuke."

His sharp eyes picked out the three tomoe, arranged in a circle on his skin. A curse mark. This was bad.

"Sakura," Kakashi said.

"I know, hang on, hang on, give me a second," Sakura said, rifling through her index knowledge for a solution.

When she had begun studying under Tsuande, she had dedicated time studying the curse mark in the hopes to save Sasuke someday; who knew someday would arrive in this manner.

"Kakashi-sensei, can you turn him around so I can see his neck? Naruto, I'm going to need your help staying above the water. I don't have much chakra left."

Sakura pried Sasuke's hand away from his neck. His hand twisted in hers, fingers tangling with hers as his nails dug into the back of her hand, searching for purchase away from the pain. He was crying as she laid a palm over the curse mark.

There was no real "cure" for the curse mark. No matter how many books and scrolls Sakura had sifted through, no matter how deeply she had dug, no matter how arcane the texts she had translated, Orochimaru had been meticulous in his secrecy, and the curse seal had remained swathed in mystery. But, brute force wasn't apparent in just the way Sakura fought, it was how she used her brain, too.

Despite the lack of progress, she had continued for years to rail against the indecipherable codes and texts that walled-off the curse mark from common knowledge. Her mind wasn't as elegant as Sasuke's or Kakashi's, but the horsepower was there. She never did manage to bring the wall crashing down, but she had put a small crack in it from which a trickle of knowledge slipped free: the curse mark was formed using part of Orochimaru's chakra, bleeding through the user's body like venom.

It wasn't much, but it was enough to lay down the theory for how the mark worked and perhaps how to dismantle it. She grit her teeth as her hand began to glow green over Sasuke's neck. A theory wasn't a cure and Sakura barely had enough Chakra to stand on water, but if the curse mark really acted like a poison, she needed to work fast before it could spread through his body, something she'd let happen over her dead body.

She was convinced Team 7's downfall—all their strife and pain and horror— had originated from the three black tomoe beneath her palms; she would squeeze the chakra in her cells to the very last drop to erase them from the earth's face.

Closing her eyes, she inhaled, pulling as much air as she could, down into the furthest reaches of her lungs. With a loud exhale, she forced her Chakra into Sasuke. He seized beneath her, screaming as he crushed her hand his grip—she let him: this wouldn't be easy for either of them.

"Wait, what are you-" Naruto began to ask, but Kakashi cut him off.

"Let her focus, Naruto."

Her head began to spin and her stomach curled as her body fought against her to hold onto every last bit of chakra it could. All she had left was whatever kept her vitals pumping; it went against her body's natural biological programming to divert away from it, but override switches were easy when you had god-tiered chakra control like hers. Shutting down one kidney wasn't the greatest thing she could do to herself, but she had two for a reason.

She continued to exhale, expelling her breath and the chakra through Sasuke like a cast net, engulfing Orochimaru's chakra where she came across it. Then, she began to drag her captured load back to the surface and out of Sasuke: she was going to yank the curse seal out by its roots.

As if sensing what she was trying to doing, the curse seal flared up in defiance, igniting Sasuke, who had passed out from the pain, in a flame of purple chakra. Her skin crawled as the vile energy spilling from him licked at her body. Somewhere, she heard Naruto shouting in surprise, but she didn't break her concentration and continued to reel her chakra in, dragging in her catch centimeter by centimeter.

The reward for her tunnel-vision focus materialized in the next pull. Large blobs of purple chakra seeped out through Sasuke's skin and slipped down his neck, plopping into the ocean below like fat plums. The wicked light around Sasuke dimmed, and if she had lifted her palm, Sakura would have seen the curse mark grow a shade lighter.

It was Kakashi who had noticed first through the faint prickle in the back of his neck: his sixth sense for danger, honed from years on the battlefield. Never once having forgotten that his back had been to the enemy, he moved more on instinct and reflexes than conscious thought—there had been no time for anything else.

He threw himself back with Sasuke in his arms, and had just begun to utter his other two students a warning when Orochimaru blew past them. It happened faster than a blink of an eye, but Kakashi's sharingan had seen everything, every detail as clear as day. But even then, he hadn't been able to do anything.

He saw Orochimaru charge Naruto and Sakura with his mouth agape, katana brandished in his mouth, half the sword's hilt still lodged his throat; saw Orochimaru aiming to run Sakura's chest through with the blade; saw Naruto—in a freakish display of speed that reminded Kakashi of a certain Yellow Flash—yank his female teammate out of the way; saw the blade rip through flesh anyways. All of it happened in moments, but the horror packed into those few seconds shook even him.

Orochimaru lips curled in distaste upon realizing he had missed his target. He shifted his stance, the blade still protruding from his mouth, blood weeping off its edge. He took step towards Sakura, who was now bobbing on the water's surface, eyes closed against her approaching death.

"Wait!" Kakashi said with his arm's stretched out. It had been one of his less well-thought out attempts, but Kakashi wasn't thinking straight at this point. Whether he would have managed to jerry-rig some sort of solution out of this mess would never be known, because an unlikely savior came crashing through in the form of a brandished sabre an showy blue coat, bellowing with a carnivore anger.

Sanosuke gripped the hilt of his blade with both hands, cleaving at Orochimaru's neck as if he were wielding an axe.

Orochimaru evaded the attack with a deft duck, swallowed his own sword, and smiled. His eyes darted around the scene and its players as his mind weighed the pros and cons of staying.

"Sanosuke-kun. How nice of you to join us."

"I'm going to skewer you from your mouth to your ass like the rat you are."

Orochimaru's yellowed eyes narrowed in on Sasuke. The curse-mark was still there—good. The mark itself had become fainter, but he'd planted the seed. He then glanced at the pink-haired female with open distaste. Pity he didn't have time to do away with the girl—she'd likely be a nuisance in the future.

"Unfortunately, we'll have to save our fun for another time, Sanosuke-kun," Orochimaru said, and slipped into the ocean below. A shadow passed beneath them. Moments later, a great blue serpent with a whale's girth rose out of the waves, water sluicing down its scales. Orochimaru stood astride its head, not bothering to look back as his summon bore him away, his long black hair lashing at the winds behind him.

"God damnit," Sanosuke said, and stomped a frustrated foot against the waves. The seawater rose up to meet his waist with a splash, and his cursing began anew. He then spared Kakashi a glance. Sanosuke nodded towards the two kids.

"Hey. Shouldn't you do something about that?"

His words knocked some of the plaster loose from Kakashi's shell-shock. Holding onto the same numbness that had gotten him through those gruesome years in ANBU, Kakashi kept his breath steady and his emotions an arm's length away as he bent down to scoop Sasuke against his chest. Staggering to his feet with his burden, he walked up to Sanosuke and pressed his student's limp body into the other man's arms without a word.

"What the hell are you giving me this for?" Sanosuke asked.

Kakashi ignored him and tore the skin of his thumb pad against his teeth. Weaving through a blur of seals, he summoned his largest nin-ken Bull onto the water.

"Go get Sakura," he said, pointing at his female student whom the waves were beginning to bore away. Bull baritoned a woof once and bounded over to comply. With Sakura's safety secured for now, Kakashi walked to Naruto's side and crouched beside him. The boy's blue eyes were dazed.

"Kakashi-sensei."

Kakashi reached into his equipment pouch and dug out a roll of emergency bandages. "It's going to be okay, Naruto."

Naruto stared at the arm bobbing in and out of the water's surface. A cloud of red blood spilled out of its severed end.

"You're going to be okay," Kakashi said as he worked to tie off the stump beneath Naruto's elbow.

For once, Naruto couldn't speak.

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A/N.

1. Haha. Told you I was 'bout to FUCK SHIT UP.

2. Your reviews are amazing. Please continue to feed the monster within me.