The Wanderers

Chapter 86 – The Demon Within

A/N: In a strange way, I'm kind of happy that the first review for the previous chapter was as strongly worded as it was. As a writer I don't expect to please everyone, but I also don't like to disappoint either. Judging from how this story starts, is it really that surprising that something like last chapter could happen? I didn't do it just to mess with people; it was planned from the start. I'm sorry if you don't want to read my story after that chapter; that is certainly your prerogative. I'm happy that people are so invested in my story; it makes me feel like I've made a real connection with you guys.

***Previously-On***

The final battle has begun.

While the shinobi strike force fights against the Quiraji leaders, the rest of the shinobi world has suffered its own horrifying defeat at the hands of the Quiraji without even raising a hand in defiance. As the strike force entered the crater a Quiraji projectile was shot up into the sky and scattered into thousands of objects that spread to every part of the shinobi continent outside of the Land of Fire. The bombs fell to the ground despite some shinobi resistance and spread out blue pulses of energy that killed anyone with the ability or capacity to produce chakra. They died painless deaths, but they died nonetheless. The bombs did nothing to the civilians of the shinobi world. The villages of Kumogakure and Kirigakure were wiped out by the bombs, while Sunagakure was already in the process of being invaded by the Quiraji and is about to suffer the same fate. The Seven-Tails container saved a pair of villages from their fate by sacrificing herself to destroy one of the bombs and the Five-Tails container escaped the continent on a ship before the bombs fell. The remaining resistance force in the Land of Earth was killed. Shikamaru made the ultimate sacrifice to hurl his wife and their child over the border to the Land of Fire before dying. Everyone in the Land of Fire, the defenders at the Fire Temple and the survivors of the battles for the chakra nodes survived the slaughter, but no-one else did.

***End Summary***

The blue pulse of death had flooded the village of Sunagakure with relenting fury, taking out civilian shinobi and fighters alike. There was not a single part of the village that was spared its wrath, even as the shinobi within were being slaughtered by the Quiraji invaders. If it hadn't happened the village still would have fallen, though the small groups of Sunagakure shinobi that fought with ambush tactics and desperate techniques would have brought the battle out for days.

In a single sweep of genocide, the war for Sunagakure was over. The few civilians that had been spared had only moments to remark on their fates before the Quiraji soldiers fell into them and cut them down when they stood.

Within the Sunagakure hospital, patients that had been barely hanging on were given the silence of death, though not for the lack of trying by the one remaining doctor that had survived. As chief of medicine at the hospital, Haruno Sakura had given herself over to the treatment of those patients that only her extensive medical knowledge would be able to save. She hadn't had the ability to use medical ninjutsu since her rescue by her fiancé, but with her former training by Shizune and her study of medical journals she knew more than enough of medicine and surgery to be the most qualified person in the entire hospital to keep people alive.

Moments after the blue pulse had flowed through her place of business, all of her patients had died. While the invasion was going on she had thrown herself into her work and ignored the business of the outside village, not thinking about how much she wanted to throw herself out there and get it over and done with.

Since her return to her friends and Sunagakure, Sakura had struggled with the overwhelming urge to kill herself for what she had done. Her time as a Quiraji assassin weighed on her mind constantly and gave her many sleepless nights. She had medicated herself into enough of a state that she was able to work, but she had been consumed by her own mind long ago.

Her fiancé knew all of this. Rock Lee's presence in her life had been the one thing that had kept her going; it had been the reason she had proposed to him and promised to be with him regardless of what happened in the war.

But when the Quiraji had broken through to the village, her resistance had broken and she had accepted her fate as inevitable. She had occupied herself with saving those she could before they came for her, but even now the patients under her care had all died in an instant.

For almost an hour she tried to revive a variety of the patients in the Intensive Care Ward, but it was clear that their systems had fought and won against them and none of them could be saved. Sakura tried to get a hold of the various nurses and doctors that had decided to remain behind when the call for evacuation had come, but they too had suffered the same fate as their patients, their bodies lining the corridors and rooms with an eerie silence.

The only sound she could hear were the machines in the rooms informing her that none of the patients were still breathing. The buzzing sounds from the various machines had merged into a singular reminder of her failure to keep them alive and haunted Sakura as she dragged herself away from her deceased patients back to her office.

She didn't know what to do. The blue pulse that had killed everyone else should have killed her, but she hadn't felt anything as it had passed through her. Like the others she had seen the objects fall into the village, the one that had crashed through the Kazekage's tower had made a particularly large crashing sound before silently spreading out its wave of death throughout the village.

Stepping into her office, Sakura tried to keep herself from hyperventilating at the situation unfolding in front of her. Reaching into her pocket with her hands shaking with sweat, she produced a small white pill that she swallowed quickly, grabbing at a bottle of water and downing half of it in a series of large gulps. The medication took effect fairly quickly and her body became her own once again. Her mind ran through every scenario she could think of, processing the information she knew and accounting for that which she didn't know.

There was no evidence to suggest that the attacks here had been an isolated incident. As much faith as she had in the people in the Land of Fire fighting for their freedom from the Quiraji invaders, she couldn't shake the terrifying feeling that she was alone in the world once again.

She remembered those times as Iceheart. It had been through psychological therapy that she had begun to remember the feelings and emotions that had been at the centre of her being as that creature.

Even now, she did not feel like a shinobi. She didn't have chakra or the ability to produce it, but she wasn't a civilian either. She didn't know what she was.

But as much as she wanted to lie down and accept her due, a part of her resisted that urge. She'd not considered herself a stubborn person by nature, but while she wanted to die she also wanted to live. She was stuck between two conflicting mentalities.

Regardless of her decision that was still to be made, Sakura knew that she couldn't stay here. The hospital was an obvious building full of people from every angle of the village and she was surprised that the Quiraji hadn't already come to clean up the mess that was the hospital's occupants.

Sakura didn't want to leave the bodies here without doing something about it, but she couldn't stay just to be slaughtered. She had to resist, she had to do something.

She didn't want to fight. She wasn't sure she could fight. But she had to. There was no other way to survive, even if she didn't think she deserved to.

Shaking herself back into reality, Sakura quickly packed a small bag of all the medications she would need for herself, plus a few vials of special materials that she could use to defend herself. She opened a draw and drew one of the kunai that she had kept there from her shinobi days. Even without the ability to use chakra, she still knew all the techniques and abilities she'd once had. If it came to it, she would do what she had to.

A loud explosion rocked the building and nearly knocked her off her feet. Sakura didn't need to look out the window to see that the Quiraji had blown up the entrance to the hospital and were likely flooding in to finish off whatever civilians might have survived their attack. She couldn't stay here anymore.

There was no easy way out of the hospital without running into the soldiers that were probably flooding the corridors as she was thinking about it. Having packed what she could, Sakura wrapped herself in a large black cloak that had been hanging in her office as a legacy from her medical teacher.

Taking a deep breath to steel herself, Sakura took a long run up and leapt through the open window from her office into the burning village below. It was a three storey drop into a hard stone floor, but that wasn't the half of her problems.

It was the soldiers that were resting just around the corner that had seen her leap. They would be on her the moment she landed.

oOoOoOo

Sakura rolled as she fell to the ground, trying to keep as much impact off her ankles as possible. If she'd been able to use chakra it wouldn't have even bothered her, but as she was the landing sent shockwaves of pain up her legs as she felt her muscles struggle against the effort. She stood up out of her roll clutching the kunai she'd taken from her desk, not sure whether she'd be able to use it or not.

The soldiers that had been resting nearby picked themselves up from their seated positions and stared at her with obvious hatred in their eyes. There were four of them that looked like they'd been in some heavy fighting before the bombs had fallen, as two of them looked to be carrying injuries, but Sakura could tell that they hadn't had their fill.

She glanced around the area to check for any avenues of escape, but the only corridors that were available to her were too far away for her to reach. She wasn't fast enough to get away from the soldiers. She had to fight.

One of the Quiraji soldiers stepped forward with an unsheathed sword while the others walked behind him and drawing their own weapons. It was clear by their movements that they thought she was just another civilian that wasn't able to resist them.

Clutching her kunai tightly for fear of dropping it, Sakura tried not to think about how she hadn't fought a single battle since being rescued by her fiancé. She still knew all the tenants of battle and taijutsu moves that didn't require chakra to perform. But she wouldn't know how it would go until she actually fought.

The other soldiers seemed happy to stand back and let their companion attack her first. He appeared surprised by her lack of fear at his approach, but he wasn't about to give her a reprieve. They had their orders after all.

"Shame to kill her," said one of the soldiers behind him. "She's a pretty one."

The attacker raised his sword in front of the pink-haired doctor and brought it down towards her neck.

Sakura had no choice but to step forward and attack him directly with her kunai. She exploited his disinterest in really attacking her properly and moved her kunai up to slash his throat in a single motion.

She couldn't do it. Her weapon hovered just in front of her enemy's throat while her hands shook with her hesitation. In the corner of her eyes she could see a single familiar figure that struck a dagger of fear into her heart; it was because of her presence that she couldn't go through with her attack.

The Quiraji soldier was initially surprised at her sudden movement, but he was a soldier and wasn't about to let a mere civilian get the better of him. His sword was too long to be useful at such close range, but he still had a hand available to him. He reached up to grab at her attacking wrist, stopping her kunai from attacking him even though it was clear she didn't want to really hurt him. With that taken care of, he pulled back his head before crashing it down into the young woman's face.

The impact almost broke Sakura's nose at the same time as sending her down to the ground. She dropped her kunai and clutched at her face with both her hands, while the other soldiers walked towards their companion.

"That's a bit harsh, don't you think?" asked one of them with a disapproving look on his face.

"We have our orders," said another, drawing his own blade from his side. "No survivors."

The soldiers nodded in approval and also stepped towards her, while the original attacker looked down at the ex-shinobi with appraising eyes. She had had a chance to kill him but hadn't taken it. Those movements were clearly shinobi-like, but down on the ground she didn't look like a threat at all.

This is what I deserve, thought Sakura as she struggled to stand back up on her feet. Her nose wasn't broken but the head butt had shocked her and forced her to re-evaluate what she was doing.

Inside her mind, she could feel herself shaking her head in disbelief. I can't die here if Lee survived. I couldn't do that to him.

But she didn't want to kill anyone either. That part of her life was long over, she despised the part of her that had so easily embraced her own bloodlust. There had to be a way of surviving without killing the soldiers who probably deserved death as much as she did.

The soldier that had attacked her earlier moved to cut her down once ahead, while his companions moved to either side of her so she had nowhere to escape. If she tried to move to the sides or backwards, she would be killed without much effort, so Sakura knew that she had only one way to go.

Without any further hesitation, Sakura sprung forward in a burst of energy and tackled her first attacker down to the ground. She felt a hard strike against her chin as he tried to bring up an armoured hand to defend himself, but her momentum was enough to knock him down with her landing on top of him. Before he or his companions could react, Sakura placed a hand on one side of his head before slamming her other arm's elbow into his temple. The strength of her attack was enough to knock him out instantly, but not enough to kill him.

Before she could recover back onto her feet, Sakura felt a sharp stabbing pain in her side. She didn't need to see to know that it had pierced into her liver. Despite the overwhelming pain, she rolled to the other side and put pressure on her wound immediately. She bared her teeth and tried to ignore it as the three Quiraji soldiers descended onto her quickly to avenge their unconscious comrade.

Sakura had no way of moving out of the way of the swords falling down in cutting motions, so she was forced to reach over with her spare hand and grab the fallen soldier's sword to defend herself. She slashed across her own body to parry the strikes before snaking her blade forward and cutting at the wrist of one of the soldiers. Her blow was enough to cause them to pull back and clutch at their hand painfully, though they still kept a tight grip on their blade. The other two soldiers hesitated for a moment at how quickly she had struck back at them, which was enough for her to get back to her feet and hold her sword in front of her menacingly.

Feeling at her side with her covered hand, Sakura determined that her liver had been spared any serious damage and she brought it up to hold her stolen sword with two hands. She tried to put on a serious face as she stared down her three opponents, but it was obvious to them that she was hurting as she was still unsteady on her feet from the previous blow to her head.

The Quiraji soldiers now saw her as a threat from the resistance she was displaying. They stood in a staggered formation and prepared to attack her all at once. The soldier with an injured wrist changed his sword arm and moved forward to claim his revenge first, meeting Sakura's blade with his own in a clash of strength.

Shifting the angle of her blade quickly, Sakura took a bold step forward and slammed the hilt of her sword into the centre of his forehead. The strike was enough to draw blood and send him stumbling backwards while she moved to fight against the other two soldiers. They leapt forward and slashed at her from both sides at once. Her sword grip didn't allow her to parry these attacks and without chakra she wasn't fast enough to dodge out of the way completely. The only recourse available to her was to lean a shoulder into one of the sword slashes and hold her sword blade along her body to block the other strike.

She bit back a cry of pain as the Quiraji soldier's sword slashed through the muscles in her arm, but she had been able to block the other attack and that gave her an opportunity to strike back. She tried to slash forward with her sword at the Quiraji soldier, but he was smart enough to jump back out of the way. His companion that she'd struck in the head moved to re-join the combat, though he was bleeding heavily from his forehead.

Sakura knew she was going to lose this battle if she kept fighting like this. She had been cut in both her side and her shoulder, plus her vision was still blurry from the first attack. Two swords shot forward to cut her head from her shoulders, but she was no longer there.

Having dropped to the ground, abandoning her stolen sword, Sakura reached into her pack and produced a pair of small vials that she smashed together in her hands. The two liquids combined to produce a large grey cloud of chemicals that covered their small battlefield instantly. Her hands stung at the small shards of glass but she ignored the pain in a rush to grab at one of the pills from her pack. As she fell back out of the grey cloud she popped it into her mouth and hoped that it was the right one to counterattack the effects of the cloud.

After ten seconds of no ill effect, Sakura figured that she was safe as she watched the shadows of the Quiraji soldiers fall to the ground unconscious. She hadn't wanted to use that last resort so quickly after leaving the hospital, but she also couldn't bring herself to fight the enemy soldiers to their death.

Regardless of what the image standing off to the side of the battlefield was demanding her to do. She knew it wasn't really there, but its presence was more troubling than any part of that battle.

She couldn't sense whether there were any other soldiers in the area, but the grey cloud was already rising to the height of the surrounding buildings and the hospital behind her, so she knew that other soldiers would come to investigate.

Wrapping herself up in Shizune's black cloak, Sakura looked for the closest building that looked like it had already been searched for a place to heal her wounds and get herself back to a reasonable level of health. She had some anaesthetic and a fair amount of bandages, but the wound in her shoulder was deep and each step sent shockwaves of pain up her sides from the cut there.

She wouldn't be able to move much until those problems were taken care of. She hadn't lamented the loss of her chakra for a long time, but now that she was on her own in a hostile environment with serious wounds, she wished she had the ability to simply place her hands over her wounds and heal them with blue energy.

"Stop staring at me," muttered the Sunagakure doctor to the familiar-looking image as she ran past it into a nearby corridor of buildings. It was a gamble on whether she would run into more soldiers or not, but Sakura had to take that chance.

That's what she had to do to survive.

The nights in the desert were cold and harsh.

Even in the village of Sunagakure that was built to keep the cold out at night, many buildings would have small contained fires going throughout the night to keep what warmth they could from escaping.

Huddled in the rubble of a building that had been destroyed by a Quiraji siege engine, Sakura clutched her old teacher's cloak around her shoulders and tried to keep her body from freezing up. The winds of the ruins of Sunagakure were relentless, cutting to the bone and threatening to clatter her teeth and reveal her position to the enemy.

While she tried to keep herself alive without any fire, Sakura watched as patrols of Quiraji soldiers went through the village with ruthless precision. By the way they were walking around it was clear that any resistance that had survived the devastating blue pulse of death had been wiped out by the enemy in quick order. They had won the battle in a single sweeping attack and weren't even aware of her survival.

Sakura's mind and body were only focused on her current survival. She knew that any large motions during the night might cause a piece of rubble to dislodge and reveal her existence to the strolling soldiers nearby, but if she kept still she might freeze to death.

"So what do you think we'll do now?"

The young doctor's head snapped over to the sound of voices behind her, though she didn't breathe out a sigh of relief when she saw that there was a solid wall between her and the Quiraji soldiers on the other side. Any sound could give away her position to them.

"Probably get recalled to the Land of Fire. The fighting there isn't done yet."

The Land of Fire didn't get hit? Maybe Lee is safe then!

"Surely it will be by the time our groups are sent over there. The master and the Four are all there. Could you think of anyone that could stop that much power?"

"You're probably right. After the bombings I doubt the shinobi have any spirit left in them to fight anyway."

Sakura felt like it was something she should have gotten angry at hearing, but instead it only made her incredibly sad. If the other lands had been hit by the same bombs, hundreds of thousands were dead. It was the worst thing she could possibly conceive, yet she had no anger in her body. No hate.

Only despair.

In her darkest times, Sakura couldn't help but slip into her memories that had been coming back to her over the years. She could see her hallucination glared at her from the other side of the ruined building she had taken up hiding in, which triggered the one memory that she had wished she had forgotten.

It came to her so strongly that she forgot for a time that it was a memory. It was only due to luck that the Quiraji soldiers patrolling nearby had little interest in searching every single building for civilians that might have survived the bombing. It was assumed that they would be found eventually due to their occupancy of the village and sheer numbers present.

The fact that there was still one person alive in Sunagakure was barely even a factor to them.

***Flashback***

***Just after Separation***

Sakura couldn't move. Her body had been hurled through the void and felt like it had been torn apart and put back together. She had blacked out after the transition and had woken up without the ability to move. Her eyes worked perfectly fine and when she glanced down at her arms and legs she saw that she wasn't restrained in any way. She tried to make her muscles move, but nothing seemed to respond to her commands.

It took her a few moments to realise that the strange feeling she had in her limbs was because the nerves that connected them to her brain had been cut. She'd been immobilised in such a way that even if she had the strength to resist, she wouldn't have been able to move.

At that moment Sakura saw that she was in a dark room with no distinctive markings on it. She had been laid down on a cold slab table and left to her own devices by some unknown force, but that wasn't the most worrying thing.

All along her body were tubes that had been surgically implanted into key parts of her body. They hadn't bothered to remove her clothes when they had done this, wherever a tube was held in by her body there was an appropriately sized hole that had been cut out of her shinobi clothes. The tubes made a soft sucking sound at specific intervals and appeared to contain a greyish blue liquid that it was draining from her body.

Sakura realised, in absolute horror, that her lifeblood was being drained out of her as she watched it happen. Her mouth opened to scream, but it refused to open. She had been instinctively breathing through her nose to keep herself alive, but there were no stitches or material that was keeping it shut. It just refused to open. Without any other recourse, Sakura screamed with her eyes for hours as she watched herself die one bit at a time.

Time seems to pass at an agonisingly slow pace within the room, but eventually a light shone onto her face. Its sudden brightness was enough to hurt her eyes and she forced them shut, but only for a moment as she heard a large object being wheeled into her room followed by a single set of footsteps. Not really wanting to see her torturer, Sakura reluctantly opened her eyes and regarded her new acquaintance. Pushing a wheeled table into the room was a tall woman in a clean white apron and a set of loose-fitting clothing that was the same blood red colour as her hair. She seemed to be silently whistling a tune to herself and counting the objects on top of the table with one of her hands, ignoring her patient for the moment.

Once she stopped the table next to the pink-haired shinobi however, a pair of blood red eyes snapped to attention and stared directly into hers. If she'd had the ability to open her mouth, Sakura would have spat into the woman's face on general principle; the look of both contempt and fascination that she gave her was so infuriating it made her feel even more helpless than her disabilities did.

"Ah, awake are you?" The woman checked the watch on her wrist, "And before schedule? My, but you are full of surprises." Her voice had the illusion of calm and control, but it concealed nothing of the malice she clearly bore for the young kunoichi. Sakura was sure that if the woman had the interest to, she would cut her throat and not even think twice about it.

And judging by the implements that sat atop the table she had just wheeled in, that might just be what she intended to do.

The red-haired woman gave her a humourless smile and pulled out a pair of plastic gloves from a box on the table and put them on with deliberate motions to show how little she cared for Sakura's suffering. She stepped towards her prisoner and traced a single finger along the front of her body until she met the first tube that had been inserted directly between her breasts.

"I suppose the anaesthetic will wear off fairly soon. I would have preferred not to use any at all, but previous patients have…well…died from the pain of the implementation process. With you, we're trying to be a bit more careful."

Sakura tried to move her head and open her mouth to speak, but her muscles continued to refuse to respond to her, though she did get an amused reaction from her captor.

"Oh, don't mind that. It'll wear off once I'm done with you." She wrapped her hand around the tube in Sakura's chest, "These lovely things will remove your taint and then you can finally start to serve your true masters."

The Konoha shinobi had no idea what this woman was talking about, but she had no interest in serving anyone, let alone as the result of torture. Sakura had considered herself a proud shinobi, despite recognising her own inadequacies throughout their wanderings around the world. She had worked hard to prove her strengths to both her friends and to herself.

This much was nothing. She would find a way to escape and take the fight to the woman who seemed so confident in her own safety that she didn't bother to restrain Sakura beyond the nerve-severing.

With a defiant look in her eyes, she attempted to mould chakra in one of her chakra points. She had such fine control that she was able to do so at such a fine level that it would have been almost undetectable. Sakura figured that if she could build up chakra within her chakra network, then she could heal her nerves from the inside and then surprise the red-haired woman in an instant. She had no means of determining whether she was the only one that was suffering this fate, but if the others had been captured by these people then she had the obligation to help them.

She might be the only one that could.

However, the moment she attempted to mould chakra, her body reacted in a violent manner, as the multiple tubes that were stuck in her began to vibrant as they sucked out huge amounts of the greyish blue liquid into the large container placed on the floor beside her.

Her captor laughed and patted her on the stomach like she was a piece of meat about to be thrown onto the stove. "You shinobi are so predictable. The moment you are in trouble you fall back on that one thing you never had a right to." Her red eyes traced along the tubes as they sucked the lifeblood from her prisoner, "At this rate it'll only be a few hours to go."

Looking back at the kunoichi's blazing eyes; the red-haired woman answered the question that she could clearly see she wanted to know the answer to. "Until your precious chakra is no longer yours. That is the easy part, my dear. I have great plans for you, so mighty that you are. You will become my champion, a shinobi designed to kill shinobi."

She reached over to her table and picked a scalpel, sterilising it with a cloth before leaning over the terrified shinobi's face. "But before that can happen, I must remake you. You will break. You will be torn apart and put back together. This will happen over and over again until you no longer exist. Then we shall see if my little experiment is deserving of the gifts I am willing to give her."

She moved her other hand to the side of Sakura's face and caressed it like a mother would an injured child. The touch was enough to send a horrified chill down Sakura's spine as she recognised what was going to happen next. She'd studied torture-resistance techniques and had believed herself able to withstand a reasonable minimum required before she could be rescued or killed. But now that she was confronted with it, Sakura found that what confidence she had was non-existent. She was terrified, horrified and unable to express it in any reasonable manner. She knew that she had likely soiled herself with the confrontation, but her senses told her nothing of what was happening below her neckline.

"Do not fear, my child," began her captor as she placed a pair of fingers to the side of Sakura's mouth. "I am not so cruel as to deny you your voice for so long."

In the same instant she repaired the nerves she had damaged to keep her mouth shut, while beginning her first cut with her scalpel.

Sakura's first sound was a high-pitched scream for as long as she had breath. This continued until her voice was hoarse and dry, with no water or sustenance to maintain it.

The woman seemed to revel in her agony as she began the process of 'remaking' her. As she had promised, the anaesthetic had worn off and Sakura felt every cut and burn that was inflicted upon her. She was torn apart and put back together again, long after the tubes had sucked her chakra dry and been removed from her body.

For three weeks the woman she would come to know as Sensou would come into her room and break her. Initially Sakura had tried to defy her torture through sheer stubborn willpower, but that did not last long as her captor was a master at her craft and was able to bring out pain in her that she'd never known existed in a person.

Sakura did not know what kept her from submitting for those three weeks. After the first few nights she had begun to hallucinate, seeing images of Sasuke mocking her obvious weakness. He had been followed by hallucinations of Naruto, saying that she had let them down and gotten everyone killed. She knew they were false, but Sakura's heart broke upon hearing those words spoken by people she had so respected. Those products of her pain-riddled mind did more damage to her psyche than her captor's torture ever could.

After a week she began to be visited by images of Rock Lee, but he never said a word to her, despite her pleadings. He simply stared at her, unblinking and lifeless.

She held out for as long as her mind could and more, but Sakura was only human. Her body had been pumped full of foreign materials and drained of everything that she had been born with. She felt like she was lying on the cold slab as a prisoner in a body that only wore the face she'd once had. Her spirit was trapped within a foreign shell and was eventually supressed entirely.

When Sensou asked for her submission at the end of the twenty-second night, she complied. Using her newfound strength, she stood up from the cold slab that had been her home for three weeks before bending the knee in front of her new master. The Quiraji leader seemed satisfied at her submission and directed her to another room that contained several instruments that she was now to use. She was fitted with a helmet to constantly feed her information and allow her to track chakra signals while sending the data back to her master.

She was given a name, a squad and a mission. Haruno Sakura no longer existed.

She was Iceheart.

***End Flashback***

The night was quiet after Sakura pulled herself back from the harsh reality of her memories and she remained unmolested by the Quiraji patrols. From the conversations she overheard around the ruined building, she knew that there wouldn't be anyone else left alive in the village. No shinobi would have survived the bombs and the civilians had been mopped up by the sheer number of Quiraji soldiers scouring the village. There had to be at least forty-thousand soldiers throughout the large village, but the more disturbing news was that they had already started to send soldiers after the civilians that had fled to the north. There was no way to tell whether they had survived the bombs, but they wouldn't stand a chance if the Quiraji army caught up with them.

Sakura didn't know what to do. Her wounds were as healed as they were going to be without any more supplies or another doctor to operate on her. She hadn't gotten any rest during the night and had taken more of the pills in her pack, but she still had no idea what she was doing.

There was no way she would be able to get out of the village. The building she was hiding in was closer to the centre of the village than the hospital had been. With her injuries she doubted she would be able to maintain a reasonable level of stealth to escape their net of patrols. She might be able to outlast them within the village, as she knew many of the secret pathways that had been built for the war that she doubted the Quiraji would be able to find easily.

But if she was discovered, she wasn't going to be able to kill any of them. The previous battle had confirmed for her that she just didn't have it in her, despite what they had done or were planning to do.

Regardless of whatever tricks her mind played on her. Sakura was not going to change the person she had decided to become. She couldn't bear the thought of taking another life.

But she definitely knew she couldn't stay in the ruined building any longer. The sun had risen and light was beginning to shine into one of the gaps of the building that had been demolished by a boulder shot by the Quiraji siege engines. She wouldn't be able to hide in there any longer.

If she had any chance of getting out of the village and making it to her fiancé in the Land of Fire, she would have to risk making it to one of the tunnels that the civilians had used to evacuate. She didn't know every entrance that likely existed, but there were at least four that she knew of near the destroyed Kage building. However, that was Quiraji-central.

She also knew of another entrance, one close to the eastern wall. It was a dangerous journey under enemy occupation, but she didn't have a choice.

Sakura waited until a nearby patrol of Quiraji soldiers slowly made their way around the ruined building before covering herself in her black cloak and used some of the mud on the ground to cover her pink hair. It wouldn't be too much of a disguise, but if she stuck to the shadows she might be able to get further than if she hadn't done it.

With a long silent breath, Sakura aimed herself at the nearest building shadow that was still covered from the rising sun's light and bolted out into the streets of Sunagakure. Her side protested at her movements, but she ignored it as she slammed into the wall of the building and planted herself inside the shadows.

There were no soldiers in the gaps between buildings for now, so Sakura decided that she was momentarily safe. She had to keep making small victories like this until she got to her goal. That was how she would be able to survive, one step at a time.

She glanced around the next building she could reach with as little time in the open as possible, taking a moment to steel herself before jumping out as fast as she could.

She didn't even see the projectile that smacked into the back of her head and knocked her unconscious. A pair of Red Warriors leapt down from the roof next to her body and glanced at each other for a moment.

"What should we do with her?"

The more senior of the two considered the fallen doctor for a moment before coming to the decision. "Take her to the square and execute her. She's the last."

Sakura had no means of resisting the Red Warrior that picked her up from the ground like she weighed nothing and held her over his shoulder as he walked to her designated execution block.

oOoOoOo

***Flashback***

***Unknown time***

Shouri stepped back from her with a scowl on his face, turning to his older sister to demonstrate his displeasure, "You have given this one too much power, Sensou. Father would not have wanted it done this way."

"I don't answer to you," spat back the scientist. "She is my creation and mine alone. Since she's been active, she had killed more of her former brethren than any of us combined. She is our tool and nothing more."

Iceheart stood perfectly still in front of her master and her Quiraji sibling, silent and subordinate without a command to do anything else. Through her mask she could see the varying powers of the two powerful beings in front of her fluctuate, but made no comment or observation about them. It was not her place to have independent thought or reason. She was exactly what her master had called her and there was no part of her that could process it any other way. She had no joy or sorrow in her body, only the call to obey any command given to her.

Shouri crossed his arms over his chest while maintaining his disapproving expression, "I understand the necessity for your experiments and that you've perfected the technique, but why this one in particular? She is no general or anyone special in particular. She's just a shell."

His older sister grinned malevolently and stepped to the side of her creation to lay a hand on Iceheart's shoulder, "On the contrary, she is my perfection. Incapable of disobedience and fully capable of killing any of her former comrades that she comes across. She proved to be a most fortuitous gift that you sent me."

"It's not as if I picked her out specifically," said Shouri back to her. "You needed a subject, I gave you one. But you gave her too much of our power. If she were to turn…"

"She can't and won't," clarified Sensou quickly. She reached up to trace a finger around the side of the heavy mask that sat on Iceheart's head. "If I told her to carve out her own heart and hand it to us, she would do it without question. I broke her and she is my creature alone. You asked for a weapon to help you win the war, I made one for you."

That was as far as her memory went, but there was something that her old master had underestimated about her. She hadn't broken Sakura completely. Only a miniscule part of the ex-Konoha kunoichi remained in the shell of her new body, but it existed regardless.

She wasn't gaining strength though. She was just surviving and watching helplessly.

***End Flashback***

oOoOoOo

Sakura's vision slowly came back to her as she was being dragged along the open ground at the centre of the conquered Sunagakure. The Red Warrior that had been carrying her earlier was standing a short distance away, shouting some words to the Quiraji soldiers that threw her to the ground like a ragdoll.

Her head throbbed painfully and she wasn't sure whether this was real or just another creation of her increasingly broken mind. Around her there was a large crowd of Quiraji soldiers that had gathered to witness the end of the resistance.

The Quiraji soldiers threw her to the ground in the middle of the cheering circle of soldiers and one of them stepped back while the Red Warrior completed his speech and turned his fiery gaze towards the downtrodden doctor.

A soldier behind her brought down a steel gauntlet on the back of her head, forcing her to the ground on her knees in a submissive pose before stepping back to allow its commander to have the pleasure of taking her life.

On her knees, Sakura could only watch as the Red Warrior slowly stepped towards her while drawing a sword from its side. More Quiraji soldiers had gathered around them as he walked towards her, seemingly happy to watch the execution of the last survivor of Sunagakure.

The blow to her head had caused her vision to become fuzzy and unfocused, while she felt like she was going through a river of memories at the same moment as she was watching her own execution. She remembered the sensation of squeezing the life out of Kurenai's body; the satisfaction as the young woman had tried to trap her in a genjutsu to save her child but failed as the look of absolute betrayal sat in her eyes. It had not pleased her to kill the retired kunoichi but she had taken pride in her work, even if now it revolted her. She remembered the tender touch of her fiancé for the first time since he'd returned from one of his missions to the Land of Fire, that single moment pulling her from her depressed stupor for the hundredth time after her release from Quiraji control.

She remembered the spark of emotion she had felt when she had stabbed her sword through the throat of a resisting Shino, admiring his tenacity and unwillingness to give up. The emotion had been immediately squashed under the overwhelming power of her master and she had put her heeled boot through the young shinobi's head just to prove to Sensou that she was still her creature, but the feeling had persisted in her mind and reminded her of something she had long since forgotten.

Sakura glanced up at the Red Warrior coming towards her to see that the scene appeared to have frozen in place. Her eyes widened with terror, though not because of the scowling expression on her executioner's face, but rather from the image of the person standing beside him.

It was her. Or at least, what she had once been.

The image of Iceheart, complete with mask and overwhelming physical presence cocked her head slightly at the downtrodden shinobi. Her eyes blazed a fiery ice blue beneath the orbed sockets of the mask and Sakura could feel the contempt and judgement pouring out from the hallucination.

She had denied it for a long time, but she had known all along that Iceheart had not disappeared completely when she had regained control over her body. She had persisted, just as Sakura had, gaining power and reminding Sakura of what she had once been.

Sakura was the intruder, not her. Silently, the image told her of a truth that she had tried to forget.

She had forfeited the rights to her body during those nights of torture. Her mind was still her own, but the being known as Iceheart was as much a part of her as if she'd been born with it. The power gifted to her by the Quiraji leader persisted in her body with only the right request necessary to access it. She knew what that request was, but had denied it for so long.

The image of Iceheart stepped forward and reached out a hand to the fallen woman.

Sakura knew she couldn't deny it any longer. The shinobi side of her had not existed for many years now and the doctor façade that she had created for herself had been a means of coping and little more.

There was no denying it any longer.

With a heart heavy with regret, Sakura reached out and took Iceheart's hand.

The Red Warrior that had moved his sword to execute her stopped his blow and looked down with disbelief. The young doctor had regained her footing despite the soldier behind her trying to hold her shoulders down.

She had also driven her bare hand through his chest out to the other side. Her hand was fixed as a bloody claw as she pulled it back, turned around quicker than any of the observers could react and snapped the neck of the soldier behind her. The two Quiraji warriors fell to the ground almost at the same time as Sakura's unblinking eyes regarded the gathered soldiers around her. Her green eyes had adopted a light blue circle around them and the look of uncertainty and hesitation was gone.

With slow deliberation, Sakura placed her bloody hand on her face, holding it long enough to leave an imprint before lowering it back down to her side. Around her she calculated that there were more than fifty Quiraji soldiers that had gathered there to witness her execution.

It would be an adequate start.

With her Quiraji-given powers fully under her control, Sakura tore the moisture out of the air with a sweeping motion of her hands before sending it straight at the heads of every Quiraji soldier in view. The spiritual energy-infused water clamped onto their heads like a parasite and resisted their efforts to through it off. There was no defence to her technique, within minutes the Quiraji soldiers collapsed onto the ground. If she had still been Sakura, the head doctor of Sunagakure, she would have removed her technique and let them remain unconscious.

She wasn't that person anymore. She watched with passive observation as the Quiraji soldiers died, choking on the water she had torn out from the air around her. Once her eyes recognised that none of them had a pulse remaining, she pulled the water from their heads and collected it in one of her hands as a large floating orb.

She could hear a group of Quiraji soldiers approaching the area with shouts of confusion and anger as they suspected what she had done. There was no amusement or anger at their approach in her mind.

Only the cold fury of hatred.

Through the bloody glaze of the Quiraji blood over her eyes, Sakura waited until the group of five Quiraji soldiers witnessed the carnage she had wrought before solidifying the water orb above her hand and sending it flying towards them at breakneck speed. Within seconds they lay on the ground with their heads caved in from her attacks and she let the water fall to the ground in a bloody pool around the bodies.

Now she had to seek out her next targets. There were tens of thousands of soldiers destroying and looting the shinobi village.

And she had all day.

oOoOoOo

Moving through the areas between ruined buildings, Sakura's eyes were fixed on finding new targets for her wrath. After a few minutes of looking she found two Black Robes by themselves in front of the school, having a discussion over something she couldn't quite hear. Their backs were turned to her, but only temporarily before she made her presence felt by slamming a fist into the side of a nearby wall, sending it crashing down into bits with a burst of physical energy.

The two Quiraji specialists flipped around and regarded her with fascination before moving to attack her without missing a beat. One of them flung a large ball of spiritual energy-based fire at her, while the other flicked his hands to send a pair of wind blades behind the ball of fire. It was a good combination attack that had killed many Sunagakure shinobi before the bombs had fallen.

Sakura watched the attacks approach her until they were almost about to hit her. Then she vanished in a blur of instant motion.

The Black Robes took a step back at the same time, unsure of whether she had been consumed by their attacks or if they had missed her. Their dark eyes looked around with confusion written on their faces, but it only lasted a moment before the pink-haired doctor reappeared in front of them and she placed out her hands towards their chests in claw-like poses.

The human body is comprised of about sixty per cent water. With her hands controlling the spiritual energy within the Black Robes' bodies, Sakura tore that water out of the Quiraji specialities by every orifice that it could escape out of.

It was not a painless process. Even battle-hardened veterans like the Black Robes screamed like little children as much of their essence was tore out of them, leaving them as dry husks without a drop of moisture left in their bodies. Sakura held the bloody globes of water between her hands for a moment before dropping it back onto the dead Quiraji specialists and turning on her heel away from them.

Gathering in a small group opposite her was a cluster of Quiraji soldiers that seemed horrified at what they had just seen. She wore the image of a shinobi, but some of the older soldiers were startled by the image of the bloody-faced pink-haired woman that had the same look in her eyes that her old master had once worn.

Despite her mostly emotionless state, a grim smile grew across her face. She could taste the Red Warrior's blood on her lips from her bloody handprint and it gave her a ghastly appearance that she relished.

In a burst of physical energy she shot forward with her fists clenched tightly. The Quiraji soldiers struggled to get their weapons out from their sheaths as she appeared in their midst. She slammed a fist into the side of one of the soldiers, smashing every rib in that side of his body and shattering his liver. In the same motion she flipped on her other hand on the ground and drove one of her heeled feet into the head of another soldier. Her strike shattered his jaw and sent him flying away while Sakura leapt back onto her feet. One of her hands shot out and clasped over the face of another soldier before clenching inwards and allowing her to spin around to kick out at the remaining two soldiers.

The battle lasted three seconds. Sakura gave them a total of five seconds of life following it before finishing them off on the ground with fists and feet heavy with physical energy.

She continued on her way like nothing had happened. This scenario would continue to repeat throughout the day.

oOoOoOo

After several hours of slaughtering small groups of Quiraji patrols, the enemy army finally wised up to the fact that there was a force in the village that was not friendly to them and began gathering large forces to try and hunt her down.

But they made the incorrect assumption that they were the predators and she was the prey. Sakura was grateful that the Quiraji had gathered in larger numbers. It made her work easier and more interesting.

After her massacre in the execution square, Sakura had made her way back towards the hospital she had previously escaped from. With a sphere of water she had taken out of the bodies of Quiraji soldiers, Sakura went through the hospital floor by floor, room by room, executing every soldiers that had walked in. After she'd cleaned up in there she leapt from roof to roof until she reached the main entrance to Sunagakure that the Quiraji army had flooded in through.

There was a large gathering of Quiraji soldiers beneath her, but Sakura wasn't interested in them anymore. Standing with his sword drawn was a Red Warrior adorned in golden armour that exuded command and power. He had to be the general of the Quiraji army.

She would enjoy tearing him apart.

The general noticed her presence without a twinge of fear in his eyes, using his sword to wave off the hundreds of Quiraji soldiers that had gathered around him. It was a clear challenge to the ex-shinobi to come down and fight him fairly, one on one.

Kneeling on the roof of the Sunagakure building, Sakura cocked her head slightly at the challenge before standing up on her feet and placing her hands at her sides. Her body exploded out with spiritual energy and the ground began to shake uncontrollably beneath her building.

The Quiraji soldiers on the ground looked around for the cause of the shaking, while the general's hands began to shake in response to what he could see that his men could not.

After a few seconds of rumbling, a pair of huge waves of water came crashing through the gaps between buildings into the gathered Quiraji soldiers, following the motions of Sakura's hands as she sent it through the army in an instant and pushing it out to the other side. Using her hands to control its movements, she purposefully avoided the area the Quiraji general was standing in, so that he could do nothing except watch as his soldiers were crushed beneath waves of water before being washed out of the village.

Within moments the Quiraji general was all alone on his single patch of dry land in the Sunagakure village entrance way. Sakura leapt off of her building in a single bound and landed opposite him with a graceful flip. She rose eerily slowly to stand up fully and glared at him through green and red eyes.

"You are just a monster of our making, girl," he said with obvious fury in her voice. "I'll put you down and avenge my soldiers right now."

Sakura didn't say anything in return. She watched as the Quiraji general roared out a challenge and charged towards her with his sword swinging expertly towards her. He was both fast and powerful from his approach and she could feel his influence that would have stopped any chakra-based attacks from harming him. If she used her water-based spiritual energy she could take him out from afar with little effort, but there would be no meaning to such a victory.

Using her physical energy to increase her speed to the equivalent of her fiancé's, Sakura ducked under the expertly-timed slash and grabbed at his sword arm with both her hands. She twisted it hard enough to break apart the armour surrounding it and snap every bone in his arm before yanking on it, hard.

The Quiraji general's arm came off with a violent pop, sending a spray of blood all over his opponent that was only matched by the ungodly scream of agony that followed suit.

Sakura tossed his now-detached arm to the ground and shifted the beautifully-crafted sword into one of her hands before lowering her stance and sweeping it across the general's thighs from the side. Her hands were pumped full of physical energy and made mincemeat of his armour and flesh as it came out on the other side in two more sprays of blood as the Quiraji was sent flailing to the ground.

There was very little of Sakura that wasn't covered in blood at this point, though she disliked the sword's feel in her hands and tossed it away to join the growing pile of limbs.

The Quiraji general screamed and begged at her treatment of him, but Sakura had no time to waste on the flailing of one that was already dead. Stepping over the stumps that were all that was attached to the bottom half of his body; she reached up a foot over his remaining attached limb before slamming it down just above his elbow. The arm dislodged and was sent flying, while the Quiraji general nearly passed out from the pain and immediate loss of blood.

Not one to waste time, the young doctor reached across the quartered Quiraji general and pulled of his chest plate in a single motion, exposing his brown shirt and chest beneath. Making a claw with her right hand, Sakura shoved it into his chest and felt his heart slowly stop before crushing it beneath her fingers and pulling her hand out of his chest.

More Quiraji soldiers had come to investigate the massive waves of water she had used earlier and had witnessed her brutal quartering and slaughter of their general with almost no effort involved. With her body drenched in blood and her hands itching for more, Sakura stood up and slowly turned around to regard them with a twisted smile on her face.

It was good to be back.

Author's Note:

So, Sakura basically has become Batman. I hope this part of the story was conveyed well, as I've wanted to do this with her for a long time. This is going on at about the same time as the 'final battle'.

Next chapter will be the commencement of the final battle with Benkei. I won't issue any warnings about the content of those chapters, but just remember what I'm like.

Please review and tell me what you think. I try to take each review into account, and believe me I read them all. Tell me what can be improved, what you liked, what you didn't, everything. I'm a writer so I'm always open to criticism.