AN: Note that I do not own Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, or any of the characters from either Anime. This work is a fanfiction written out of my love for the series and not in any attempt to make a profit.
Proofread by: Author
First off, I should probably clarify that I made an error when I wrote my intermission and that I was not planning to shuffle today's chapter over onto tomorrow, officially breaking my streak. So, yeah...
Despite my current situation IRL, I managed to write this chapter. It helped me relax. Unfortunately, I don't have all the time in the world to dedicate to it. So I can not promise it to be my best work. I might come back and edit it actually. We'll see. Probably...
Chapter 94: Elevated, no way to escape
"Shit!" Sakura and Heikō swore as one, mentally. As soon as the realization that Gaara was now focused on them, their survival instincts kicked into full gear. They could feel how the stream of consciousness born from their core suddenly flourished. Instead of a raging, yet controllable river, it was suddenly a flood. Sakura felt her mind expand and adapt, elevated to Heikō's level of understanding and control of their mindscape, only that this time, there was no pain or disorientation to come with it. She could feel every door, nook, and cranny Heikō had tried to hide away in their mind but didn't focus on it. Instead, she was focused on the flood raging through their mind, no doubt field by a fear for their life, adrenaline, and other things Sakura couldn't name.
Sakura could feel the flood flattening many of the filters in place, understanding that the fear and survival instinct was literally flattening their personality for them to do what was needed. The natural version of what Heikō had managed to do to them previously, only on a much larger scale. Of course, this observation was brief and one of the millions of thoughts torrenting through their minds. Insignificant in the flood that carried it.
On a far more conscious level, Sakura felt as if the world expanded before her very eyes. Details in her vision and Natural energy sense sharpened, her head felt lighter, in a good way, and she suddenly had a myriad of ideas on how she would survive this encounter.
Sakura found it a bit sad that she grew the most, whenever she was thrown into life or death situations. She wondered if she'd been able to learn how to fly faster if she had just jumped off a cliff. Of course, Sakura didn't think she had the time to think about things like that at that moment and focused back on Gaara, only to grow confused at what she saw. He was moving towards her, with an animalistic, crazed snarl on his face, having reacted to the fear that had shown on her face. Yet, he was moving so slow. In fact, everything was moving really slow.
Sakura took in the sight before her and felt like she had all the time in the world to plan and react. It was… peculiar. As soon as she tried to comprehend what was going on, she felt the answer make itself known to her. She was dying. Her body wasn't just in survival mode, it was completely out of control. It hadn't even been Gaara's killing intent that had caused it, but Sakura's and Heikō's own rational mind had reached the conclusion and rattled them to the core. It had resulted in their body automatically releasing all limits.
"So this is how people feel before dying?" Sakura asked, almost feeling amused by the thought. Her thoughts were exploding at a rate she could barely follow consciously. She felt free, energized, and despite the fear, at peace.
"I swear, if you use this moment to go through every one of our memories, I will never forgive you," Heikō muttered in response, causing Sakura to chuckle mentally, realizing that the action was way to slow in the real world, her lips barely managing to form an amused smile.
"Life flashing before our eyes? Yeah, I don't plan on dying." Sakura agreed, before carefully adjusting her thoughts and performing the necessary movements to avoid Gaara's swipe at her, by backflipping into the air.
A lot of things had happened in that one moment. Besides Sakura's nearly peaceful ascendance, allowing her to experience the real world in what felt like slow motion, she knew it was temporary, and something her body would pay the price for later. She could already feel the neurons firing in her brain overheating from the adrenaline and chakra boosted mental state they were in. If it didn't stop soon, she'd have chakra burns all over her brain.
While Gaara lunged for them, as well as Karin who was still in their arms, Hinata and Naruto had called out to them, worried and rushing to intervene. Sasuke had just managed to awaken and looked on in horror as Gaara, faster than ever, was lunging at a scared Sakura, while he was unable to help. What interested Sakura, however, was one of Asuma's trench knives spinning through the air, accompanied by kunai and shuriken flying toward Gaara. They had been thrown by Asuma and Kiba as they arrived in the nick of time, equally worried and eager to intervene.
Of course, due to Gaara's speed, and the moment the weapons had been thrown, she knew most of them would miss. Their trajectories were all wrong. Not that it really mattered, since none of them would even pierce Gaara's defenses anyways. Yet, somehow, through her connection to the Natural energy surrounding her, Sakura felt as if her deduction was wrong.
Guided by this feeling, similar, yet completely different to the time she had used Natural energy to heal Karin, Sakura held onto Karin with one arm, reached out towards the trench knife, grabbing it briefly, ignoring the pain the chakra in the blade caused her as she altered its trajectory, and then threw it towards Gaara, whose sand now looked like it was trying to swallow even more of him, creeping across his face to mirror the already covered side, as well as the rest of his upper body.
Feeling her body was reaching its limits, Sakura exhibited the increased control she felt over her body one last time and forced the flow in her mind to slow down to a crawl, allowing the flattened filters to spring back up into place, and the pressure within her mind to relax. The results were instantaneous, as she suddenly felt ready to drop dead. Her entire body was sore, her mind nearly blank and heavy, while her chakra reserves were cleared out to the point of threatening her Sage mode to fall apart, the only thing that was currently keeping her conscious.
Time seemed to resume to normal speed almost instantly, causing Sakura to stumble as she landed on another branch, her knees nearly buckling underneath her while her right arm hurt terribly. Fortunately, while Sakura couldn't keep up her energy sensing, she still had the pleasure of seeing Asuma's trench knife shear right through Gaara's arm, making him snarl in displeasure as the sand from the arm fell to the ground, dispersing. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to inconvenience Gaara for long, as he landed on another branch, before willing the lost sand to join the rest that covered his body again, now covering the entire top half of his body, while slowly advancing to cover his legs as well.
However, despite the destruction of the sand arm, Gaara didn't care for the ranged attacks from Kiba and Asuma. His gaze remained locked on Sakura, and his now two animalistic eyes were trained on her and Karin, while his creepy smile remained. The only warning Sakura got this time was Gaara's sudden, deep intake of air before multiple additional ones appeared over his body.
Sakura wanted to dodge, but before she could, Gaara let his technique out, sending a blast of air out in a cone, centered on her and Karin, blasting them off of the branch they were on, and into another tree. Sakura barely had the state of mind to tuck her head in to avoid hitting it against the tree, only to feel her back slam into the bark, painfully, and with enough force to knock the air out of her lungs, shocking her enough to accidentally let go of Karin. Although, it didn't matter as there was no branch to catch them below the spot they had hit on the tree, and Sakura was too tired to even tree-walk, resulting in them both falling and landing on the ground harshly, further keeping Sakura from drawing breath.
Sakura's vision grew spotty and dull from the pain and lack of oxygen, but after a few attempts, she managed to inhale painfully, sending her into a coughing fit as there was plenty of dust in the air from her landing. While she recovered, she tried to listen in on what was happening and was glad to note that Gaara's attention was no longer entirely on her, but on Naruto who was shouting and exchanging words with Gaara.
Once Sakura finally managed to look up again, she saw Hinata's back, as she stood protectively above her and Karin, using her clan's gentle first Taijutsu style to hit sand shuriken launched by Gaara from hitting them.
"This is such a mess. We barely have enough chakra for even a transformation right now!" Heikō complained, sounding frustrated and worried. Sakura could tell that she was desperately trying to come up with some way for them to escape or defeat Gaara.
"Hey, lady. You alright?" Sakura suddenly heard a young-sounding male voice from her left, really close to her. Startled, her head snapped towards the voice, only to reveal an orange toad with purple markings around his eyes, mouth, and stomach, wearing a dark blue vest.
"What?" Was all Sakura managed, before her mind caught up to her and she realized it had to be one of Jiraiya's or Naruto's toad summons. "N-no, I'm not. I'm almost out of chakra, hurt and we're losing against him!" Sakura explained, almost pleading the summon to help somehow, provide her with some kind of an idea or solution.
"Yeah, it doesn't really look good for you guys." The toad admitted, scratching his head before looking over at Naruto, Asuma, and Kiba, who were all being blown back by sand "shuriken" that Gaara threw at them. Wincing, the toad looked back to her. "I'm sorry I can't help you." He apologized, making Sakura smile sadly at him. She could tell he really wanted to help.
"Maybe he can. He could lend us chakra, for a summon." Heikō suggested although she didn't sound convinced herself. It did give Sakura an idea of her own, however.
"Um, Mr. toad?" Sakura tried, intending to ask if reverse summoning was an option, only for said toad to politely correct her.
"Gamakichi, my name is Gamakichi." He informed her, before nodding at her, giving her permission to continue.
"Uh, right. Gamakichi, are you able to reverse summon us to your realm? We were supposed to get Sasuke and retreat to a safe place. I was wondering if you could reverse summon us, or take us with us when you go back." Sakura asked him, seemingly surprising the toad for a moment, based on how his eyes widened before he narrowed them on her instead.
"You're a summoner as well, aren't you? No way you'd know you could be reverse summoned otherwise. Sorry, no can do. And even if I could, I wouldn't. Bringing someone contracted with other summons isn't allowed. And I don't have the chakra to bring more than maybe one person with me." Gamakichi explained.
"I see," Sakura answered, disappointed, wondering if there really was a way out of this situation. She knew that Naruto, as the nine-tails Jinchuriki, but to use that fact and even the playing-field, Naruto would have to rely on the chakra of the nine-tailed fox, and Naruto had explained exactly why he didn't wish to do that.
Suddenly, with another large burst of air, Gaara managed to throw everyone back, forcing Hinata to grab onto Sakura and Karin to prevent them from being hurt further, while Asuma caught Sasuke as he was sent flying. Kiba, Akamaru, and Naruto all managed to soften their own landings.
"That's it. I didn't want to have to sue this, but I've got no choice!" Naruto announced, drawing attention to himself where he had drawn a kunai, before summoning multiple shadow clowns to back him up as he launched towards Gaara again. "From here on out, Secret Ultimate Taijutsu technique! Naruto Uzumaki… Clone Body Slam!" Naruto announced.
Sakura couldn't help but smile a bit in amusement at Naruto's poor naming sense. His techniques were always very literal in their naming schemes. One could most likely deduce what he intended to do based on the name. Sakura hoped that he would surprise her this time, something she hoped would be a habit he never lost. Considering two of the Naruto's hadn't joined the rest in the charge, but instead hidden, kept Sakura's hope up. Perhaps Naruto could save them even without relying on the nine-tailed fox. She hoped because even Asuma seemed out of his depth against Gaara.
AN: So, some good, some bad I'd say. Sakura's "moment before death" was essentially meant to be a reaction to believing one would die. You always hear how people, before their death, supposedly see their life flash before their eyes as time seems to slow down. It does make sense, as a defensive mechanism that if it seems like your death is certain, your brain would risk putting an immense mental strain on itself to review everything that ever happened in your life to find a solution to your current situation. Of course, that is just a theory, and Heikō has kind of shuffled things around in their head, so it might be why Sakura and Heikō could instead take the time to rationally try and think of a solution instead, taking advantage of their own state. Possibly find a way to imitate it somehow as a safer technique or something. Doesn't that sound cool?
I'll be honest, before writing this chapter, I completely forgot in the last one that Asuma and Kiba were supposed to arrive alongside Naruto. Although, it does feel in character that Naruto would rush ahead of them just a tiny bit if he came close enough to hear signs of struggle, so I ended up going down that route.
Asuma… is a Jōnin, but he is, unfortunately, a taijutsu and close-quarter specialist. So, unless he can get close to Gaara, we won't be seeing any kind of epic levels of beatdown from him… Throwing his trench-knife, while it was infused with wind-chakra was a rather stupid idea. Although, it was a move made in a desperate attempt to save Sakura. Fortunately, Sakura managed to at least use it to her advantage, so I hope this AN helps clarify some things and why certain things ended up happening the way they did.
