Twisted in the sand dunes:
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Her journey through the Land of Mountains is an exhaustive one. One hand tugging at her goggles, tight on her forehead to keep those pesky bangs away, Sakura leans heavily on the brittle bark of a dying redwood tree.
Kilometers ahead, the patchy grass underneath her well-worn boots disintegrates to coarse sand. The sparse number of trees surrounding her are non-existent in the nearby desert.
Sun flaring against her skin, Sakura slides onto the ground, ignoring the crunch of dead flora.
I don't really have to leave today, she thinks, taking a long swig of her canteen. Warm water pools in her mouth, and her face contorts at the odd sensation.
Her eyes trail the seemingly endless expanse of barren land. Though it seems incredibly innocuous, the edge of this fading forest marks the end of one country, and the start of another.
I could leave tomorrow, Sakura seriously considers, her motivation already evaporating into the unforgiving heat. I could grab more supplies… Rest up a bit more…
It's an age old excuse. She's wept over the harsh conditions of her travels so many times, she's already lost count.
Rising to her feet with an ugly groan, Sakura pulls up the hood of her cloak, swiftly soaking her mask in a handful of water.
Her breath shudders through the damp cloth, chakra flaring under the soles of her feet. To the tune of a silent countdown, Sakura moves forward, soundless in her run, passing through the Land of Wind's borders with ridiculous ease.
Much like her own home country, the Land of Wind has the unfortunate burden of holding a vast amount of land. The country's wide perimeter leaves pockets of areas that can be left unchecked for over a day at most.
During the relentless heat of midday, the chances of encountering any border patrols drop drastically.
Still, Sunagakure is more than likely aware of these potential gaps in security, and so, Sakura maintains a steady pace, cautious eyes on her surroundings and chakra solidified underneath, to avoid displacing any sand.
It's a three hour journey to the nameless town where Kimiko and her mother live. Sakura isn't so excited about traversing in this godforsaken desert, but she's on the last legs of her mission; with an end so close in sight, she's determined to complete this half-year trek across the continent as soon as possible.
I'll finish here and head over to Tanzaku-gai, her shadow ripples across the sand, chasing after her furious heels. Then it's back to the Land of Water.
In less than an hour, she hits the midpoint of her destination, the realization nearly tripping her into the nearby flora.
Strange, she thinks, distinctly wary and unsure if the past few months have distracted her so thoroughly, she's lost sense of her limits. It's very likely the case, since she had spent it in near fervous -
(the wind brushes past her neck).
Something is in the air.
Genjutsu, a part of her hisses. Her senses wrap around the area, like tendrils of smoke, slinking farther and farther away.
Lips pull downward to stretch the fabric of her mask, she steadies her steps and forces her shoulders to relax.
Hidden underneath, Sakura's heart stutters against her ribs.
(Genjutsu? On her? For how long? From this single moment? From the very beginning?).
No, that's unlikely, Sakura interjects quickly. It's less arrogance and more the fact that these days, very few genjutsu can slip past Sakura and her incredibly sensitive chakra. Breaking out of them is one thing, but it's been a long time since she's been caught in one unawares.
Her mind flips around in several directions - an attack like this, a ridiculously blatant attack like this, can only be done by the people who own the very land itself.
It will only attract undue attention, unless attention had been the purpose all along. Her attention.
She swallows drily. What exactly does Suna want with her?
Already arriving to the conclusion that there's no plausible way of avoiding it, Sakura comes to an abrupt stop.
The wind startles around her, and when she snaps the genjutsu in two, the empty air to her left transforms into a body.
Her eyes squint through the glaring sun's rays, the splash of brown hair appearing remarkably familiar.
"Oh," Sakura says slowly. "I know you."
Surveying the expanse of empty tundra surrounding them, in that single sand dune, she casually asks, "What was your name again?"
The boy swallows, a little taller than when she last saw him, still incredibly pale and a constellation of freckles crossing the bridge of his nose.
"It's Jun, miss," he says steadily, shoulders set and hands hidden behind his back.
Sakura's lips thin to a single line, as she shifts to the side.
A faint crackle fills the air, and Jun nearly flinches. It's a slight twitch, a near invisible motion, but Sakura has been in this business far longer than anyone in this world has probably realized.
The earpiece on his right sparks to life, ordering him to calm down, to act more natural, to seem harmless. It's a vaguely familiar voice, filtered with static noise, and Sakura is fairly certain she shouldn't really hear it as clearly as she actually does.
Silently, she begins to circulate chakra through her entire body, at a rate too miniscule for most sensors to notice. She takes care to remain absolutely still, to not give a single glimpse of her preparations.
(To send a genin, a little genin who shares a history with her, who she has shown mercy to…
What game is Sunagakure playing?).
Sakura makes the first move.
"And what can I help you with on this fine day, Jun?" her eyes crease. "I'm quite the busy individual, you see."
Tense silence fills the air as Jun blinks.
("Is she fucking serious?" another voice hisses into Jun's radio. "She prances on foreign grounds and we're the ones messing up her schedule?").
"Um," Jun says, clearly trying to shake off the distraction. "I'm pretty sure it should be the other way around. So, we'll have to, uh, take you in."
"We?" Sakura repeats, right as several individuals appear out of thin air.
Sand-nin stand impassively, quietly, watching from their places above the sand dune. A bit too frankly, Jun points out, "You are trespassing on hostile territory."
Well, fuck me, Sakura thinks, her heart in her throat. Besides the single genin, there are four more ninja, bandages wrapped around their faces, fabric billowing in the biting wind.
All too suddenly, sending out a seemingly defenseless genin makes terrible sense.
Sakura, without even realizing it, had fallen straight into an easy trap.
To her left, a woman twirls a single kunai between her fingers, dark eyes never leaving Sakura's place.
"As an unknown trespasser, our usual protocol is to make sure such an infraction never happens again. Permanently," the woman notes in a rather deep and harsh voice. The lines along her tan face become more pronounced. "Luckily for you, our leader seems to have made an exception."
"An exception," Sakura says blankly, performing an accurate portrayal of a dumb parrot.
The woman, who is clearly the team leader and a jonin, rolls her eyes. "Kazekage-sama has made it clear he has some use for you."
Sakura's clenched fists tighten further, the taunt fabric of her gloves digging into the skin.
(thoughts on what the Kazekage could possibly want from her, on the consequences of entering Sunagakure as a prisoner, what the price for freedom would be, what the price for anything could be - was it worth the cost, was it worth her life -)
"Do you think I could refuse?" she asks, half-joking, her toes curling inside her boots, chakra crawling along her limbs.
To her right, the only other jonin chokes, his voice awfully familiar as he spits out, "What? Of course you can't."
Consciously relaxing her body, Sakura gives a shrug.
"Worth a shot," she mutters, as the woman bends her knees, lowering to a specific position.
There is a pause, a single breath encased in the swirling dust.
Sakura does not count, does not think -
In a moment of explosive sound, Sakura flies forward, passing Jun, who scrambles to the side. Startled shouts flood the air, the two chunin waiting behind her stumbling to chase her.
The two jonin, unluckily enough, catch up to her with ease. A sharp gale of wind whistles past her, slicing through her cloak and barely cutting skin.
Too close for comfort, the supposed leader of the group curses, abandoning her protective outerwear for easier movement.
Sakura races north, taking a sharp left turn to readjust her alignment, chakra flashing under feet at the precise moment they hit the sand.
How much longer, how much farther? Sakura inhales the dry, thick air, her nostrils flaring at the acrid scent of brimstone.
She leaps in irregular steps, dancing around the shuriken aimed at her ankles. A sharp ring is her only warning and instinctively, Sakura ducks, just quick enough for kunai to slice several strands of hair.
Grains of sand burst upward, as gales of wind pierce the ground. She's rapidly approaching the border, far sooner than she has hoped, the two jonin desperately at her heel.
Her heart thuds against her ribs, rapidly, incessantly - just a bit more -
A single kunai passes her very eyes. Barely avoiding the loss of her nose, Sakura abruptly halts, the world tilting slightly because where the hell did that come from?
In her single moment of hesitation, three more ninja rush at her from the front. Three unknown ninja, how the fuck -
The radio, a voice in her head seethes.
And that is the only thought time allows her to make, before senbon are thrown her way, right to a pressure point on her neck. The gleam on the needles are telling enough.
Without pause, Sakura weaves around a kick aimed at her head, deflecting the senbon with a kunai. Her hand blocks the knee flying to her right, twisting her wrist to grab at the ankle and then flings the ninja forward.
The man spasms violently, but Sakura only has time to pull her tanto out to cross paths with another kunai from another ninja.
Shifting her weight to her left leg, she slams her fist into the woman's solar plexus, the rasping gasp of air letting Sakura know the ninja will be out for a while.
(Vaguely, in the back of her mind, Sakura has long since come to the conclusion that her pursuers are here to incapacitate.
She's unsure why she's been given such a luxury, and she's not eager to really find out).
By now, the jonin have entered the fray, and Sakura has no time to think, no time to breathe. It's an entire sequence of evading every single attack, blocking only when necessary, and in the short span of a few minutes, she finds herself heaving over one jonin's body.
A meter away, exhaustion lining her face, the team leader nearly staggers to the side.
"What," the woman pants, eyes darting to her partner, knocked unconscious under Sakura's feet. Far away, her other team members remain still, buried in the sand. "What the hell are you?"
Sakura exhales heavily as she drops the prone man's arm.
"That's a great question," she says haltingly, only able to spit those words out before the woman charges again.
True to her skills, the team leader is relentless in her movements, sharp and quick and clearly a taijutsu specialist.
But Sakura has had far too many sessions with Senju Tsunade to count, and it's almost too easy to deflect every blow, to send a jolt of chakra into the woman's muscles.
The team leader lunges to the left, hands splayed flat and Sakura takes the chance to grab hold of the woman's forearm.
Feet twisting in the sand, Sakura pulls forward, one knee slamming straight under the team leader's jaw. There is a swift crack of bone, and the sound nearly covers the sharp twang of metal.
(But Sakura is too close, too focused, and by the time she realizes, it's far too late).
The kunai, pulled from the woman's sleeve, her fingers changing the grip in a single blink, arm still locked from Sakura's grip - pierces soft cartilage, right behind the ear.
Pain flares like a searing brand.
Sakura bites down the scream that threatens to escape her throat. With a snap of her leg, she sends the already unconscious woman down to the floor with a dull thud.
Warm liquid floods down the side of her head, seeping into her hair and pooling at her neck.
(For the longest of moments, Sakura's entire world turns numb).
The overwhelming scent of iron hits her with heavy-handed force, and she snaps back to reality.
Her mind works faster than her hands; already, Sakura is moving, racing to find the nearest source of water.
She needs to stop the bleeding, sterilize the wound, find out how much of her ear is still fucking left, if there is anything left at all.
Bursts of chakra move to numb the pain, one hand hovering over the river of blood.
She crosses the Land of Wind's border from one blink to the next and, quite spitefully, leaves behind the entire squad of Suna ninja half buried in the sand.
"Never again," Sakura hisses, struggling to not leave a trail behind. "Never fucking again."
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notes!
- after the previous, pretty long chapter, this one probably will give you some whiplash. it's a transitional chapter, and it hits several key points of our plot - i'm curious to see how many you all may be able to catch.
- our favorite Sand genin, Jun, should be familiar by this point, but I thought it was hilarious that his sensei, Yoshiro, was actually the jonin that Sakura first knocked out. He, unfortunately enough, wasn't important enough in Sakura's mind to even warrant much recognition.
- there are several layers to what Suna wants with Sakura, but I'm assuming we're all aware of at least one of them.
- i had some trouble writing this chapter, especially the fight scenes. I hope they were believable, both with Sakura's abilities and mistakes. She made several that could have been easily avoided, and now, clearly, she's paying the price.
- in case you missed it, there is a six month gap between this chapter and the last. What happened in between (and before!) will be addressed, of course, in future chapters.
some updates:
This chapter came out late, like really late, because of several reasons, the most important being that my laptop broke in late February. I wrote this entire chapter on my phone (for the most part). It's been an exhausting year already, but the encouragement and love I've gotten from all of you keeps me going - I'm really grateful for it all.
Lastly, this chapter is dedicated to "teawithmochi," who hopefully still reads this fic LOL. They drew a fantastic sketch of Sakura in this verse, and you can check it out on my tumblr "searchingforenadi." Feel free to check the art out and support them!
Again, thank you all (both vocal and silent readers)! I have no words for how excited I am for these next upcoming chapters.
- SE