Yo.

League of Legends is going interestingly. At least the final should be fun?

Eh, screw it. I hate rooting for European teams, but I hate the east winning another championship, so I guess go G2.

Pretty simple chapter this week. The next two chapters should wrap up the Chuunin Exams.

Chapter 31: About the Time for a Counterattack

As it turned out, having a second person around to help deal with Gaara's perfect defense certainly removed a bit of that untouchable reputation he'd built for himself.

Every time Sakura was about to land a hit on the boy, forcing the sand to respond, Sasuke would attack from the other direction, dodging into the Jinchuuriki's guard and landing a hit of his own on Gaara's backside, forcing him backwards, setting him off balance, and making a follow-up attack even easier for the two of them.

So, it seemed even weirder to Sakura that despite how well the fight was going, she was feeling more nervous than ever as the two of them continued to wail on their opponent.

Why do I get the feeling that he could turn this around at any time?

It was Gaara's eyes, really, that clued her in on why she was afraid. They were not panicked, or scared, nor did they betray pain or exhaustion. They were hard. Focused only on absorbing information. As Sasuke moved in behind him, Gaara's eyes followed, tracking and analyzing as he watched the kick be blocked upon his sand, and even as Sakura stabbed a kunai up into his gut, which the boy blocked with his porcelain-like outer skin, his eyes never left her figure.

I feel like he's just waiting… Sakura shivered at the thought. It doesn't feel like we're winning this. It feels like he's losing on purpose.

No, that wasn't quite right. They were pushing him, that much was for sure. But it didn't seem to be enough. Gaara was perfectly willing to bend.

But it would take more than they were giving right now for him to break.

"Sasuke!" She shouted

Unfortunately, her words shook the boy's concentration, inadvertently causing Sasuke to stumble slightly as he went in for another attack, probably assuming she would follow up and keep up the rhythm they had going.

In an instant, Gaara flipped from defense to offense, springing a trap she'd known was coming, but still hadn't been able to stop. His sand snaked across the bark below them, wrapping around Sasuke's leg and pulling him forward. Her friend was taken a few feet into the air, and then slammed down onto the wood below him, hitting with a sickening crunch. Gaara threw his lifeless body off of the tree they stood inside, and Sakura watched, her feelings nearly muted, as her friend fell silently.

Without thinking, she moved, falling in line with the plummeting boy and catching him, landing hard on another tree, perhaps 20 or 30 feet below where they'd been before.

I'm lucky my ankles weren't broken. Sakura thought through a hiss. Still doesn't feel great, but at least they're intact.

She'd caught the boy, sure, but she'd had to land them as well, and right now, her legs were burning with a fierce pain, to a similar degree to when she'd been stabbed earlier, but in a different way altogether.

That pain before had been sharp. Now, it was a aching, constant pain. It was easier to ignore as she stood up, facing off against the opponent that had landed before her a few seconds ago, but that didn't mean she could afford to.

She probably shouldn't have been standing at all, given that the wound on her stomach was still acting up.

She hadn't wanted to say anything, not and delay their pursuit, but the stitching that had been done on her injury had been shoddy and quick, hastily put together by a Kakashi that seemed slightly out of sorts.

His hands had been shaking, though for the life of her she couldn't imagine why.

As they'd hopped over here, using the tree line as a sort of highway, the stitches had begun to come undone one by one, until at last the wound was bleeding freely, as much as it had been before.

She'd already lost a lot of blood before, and now, the dizziness had returned with a vengeance, making her vision shake, along with her legs, as she tried to put up a threatening front for the boy before her.

"I'll offer you a deal as well." Gaara said simply, perfectly calm as he took a step forward. "I have no objective related to injuring the two of you. If you would allow me to tie you up, I will go to my siblings without harming you, and I will not harm your squad members either."

That… doesn't seem all that bad. Sakura thought quietly to herself, trying to ignore the pain in her legs and the spinning of her vision that threatened to topple her entirely. I could just… just give up.

That's fine, right?

But there was something about the whole situation that had her thinking she couldn't. Gaara's entire plan revolved around getting away, getting to somewhere he couldn't be seen by leaf ninja… and then what? What was it he was trying to accomplish by sneaking around?

Perhaps it was foolish, but her instinct told her that if she let the boy before her run off, a hell of a lot of people would pay the price for her weakness.

But how do I even fight him?

"Isn't it obvious?"

…?

"You've been given power."

"Use it."

A tranquil smile came to rest upon Sakura's face, and as she turned to look at the boy before her, standing still and seeming entirely above this whole situation, she felt a bit of the anger for the boy pass through her.

Threatening my home… Hurting my friends… Trying to kill Ino…

I won't forgive you.

"Sorry." She answered after a few seconds, feeling a dark energy begin to flow through her, originating from a singular point on the back of her neck. "But I can't afford to give up."

Despite their situation, Gaara merely nodded, a blank, nearly emotionless expression settling upon his features as he geared himself up for combat once more.

"I understand." He spoke simply. "I cannot give up either."

There was a moment as she dashed forward where Sakura felt her world briefly slip away. She thought that she might have simply passed out right then and there, too tired and having lost too much blood to push forward. But there was something that kept her on her feet. Maybe it was Sasuke's lifeless body, silently counting on her to protect him behind him. Or maybe it was the thought of the people in the village just beyond them, already dealing with threats from all sides, desperate for aid. Or maybe it was something entirely her own, a will of iron that she'd discovered just now in the heat of battle, that allowed her to keep calm and soldier forward, drawing a kunai and bringing it to bear in front of her.

She just didn't know.

She slid underneath Gaara's sand as it streaked over her, having been aimed directly at her head, and jumped out of the maneuver, coming at her opponent with her legs first and connecting directly with the boy's stomach, sending the both of them spiraling towards the floor. Sakura recovered first, grasping madly for purchase on the bark below her and just barely managing to get to Gaara's prone body before he could push himself up.

She brought her kunai above her head, preparing herself in a scant moment to slam the knife down upon her opponent's back. She knew that the safety of the tens of thousands of citizens of the leaf village came before the life of the boy below her. Sakura, however, couldn't quite shake the image of Kin's fearful expression as she'd threatened the girl's life, as she'd begged and pleaded, and as Sakura, having seen it all, had still nearly brought her blade down upon the girl.

That hesitation, however small, was enough for the strike on Gaara's back to be weaker than it perhaps should've been. The boy cried out in pain, sure, but he was not fatally wounded, and as the sand that had initially missed its target came back around, forcing Sakura away, she watched as the porcelain-like sand that covered his back fell away, revealing a bloody stain that threatened to spill through the thin cloth covering his body.

The boy's sand threatened to overtake her almost immediately upon stopping to breath, and so she was forced to keep going, jumping over the oncoming stream, and winding around a tree to avoid another. Her breaths were coming out in harsh pants, and yet it had only been perhaps 30 seconds since their 'fight' began.

At the very least, her opponent sported an injury of a similar degree to the one she carried. They weren't exactly even, given that her legs still felt like they were on fire, and she was beginning to think she'd sprained something, but she could fight through that.

The problem came in endurance.

She was fairly sure that if it came down to it, having a giant monster in your chest that acted as a battery of sorts meant you outlasted practically anyone in a straight fight. Even with the both of them sporting wounds, if Gaara was anything like Naruto, then Sakura imagined that even now that cut across his backside was zipping itself up, as if a small, invisible sewing needle was pulling it closed.

She had no such benefits. The curse mark, from what she'd seen, amplified her physical capabilities, and gave her an extra pool of chakra to work with in combat, but it didn't heal her wounds, it merely made her forget the pain. Whenever she looked down at her red dress, it was to find the material clinging to her, caked with sweat, and slightly more crucially, with her blood.

She had to wrap this up quickly. She had to carry Sasuke back to the village.

I can't fall… at least until I can get the two of us some help.

A sharp pain pierced through her curse mark, as if growing out of it, but she ignored it as sand once more threatened to overtake her position. She flipped backwards, landing on a branch some 10 feet away from Gaara and watching the sand to try and find a pattern.

At this point, she had to hope it had some overt weakness she'd simply missed all this time. It was practically the only thing that could bail her, and Sasuke by proxy, out of the situation they'd been trapped in.

And yet, the sand seemed to still as Gaara's eyes widened, nearly bulging out of his head as his right hand touched the side of his head, his teeth clenching together as pain seemed to spread across his visage.

"You…" Gaara whispered quietly, some of his calm veneer falling away as he reached up and grabbed his head in his hands. "Shukaku! Be quiet!"

Her eyes widened at the drop of the name. Did Gaara have the ability to communicate with his tailed beast, even in combat?

When she thought back, Sakura remembered Naruto saying that when his life had nearly been ended by Haku's attack, the nine-tails had approached him and taunted her friend about how he was going to take his body. Did that mean this tailed beast was trying to do something similar?

I don't think I could handle something like that! Sakura thought, her thoughts racing as she took a single step towards the boy. If I could stop it…

"Gaara, you have to fight it!" She shouted at him, trying to get the boy to heed her words as he grasped his skull madly, as if the pain from it was worse than the wound on his back. "Don't listen to Shu-"

"SHUT UP!" Gaara cried out, his eyes bloodshot as he looked up at her. "All you damned leaf ninja! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

Inadvertently, Sakura followed the boy's demand, going quiet almost immediately as he rambled on.

"Here I was, forgetting the most basic of things because of you bastards!" The boy shouted out, truly seeming to have lost himself as he swung wildly, his upper body flailing back and forth. "I can't rely on anyone! I can't trust anyone!"

The boy fell to his knees, pounding his hands upon the bark below him and sending splinters of wood flying as they arced into the air. Finally, after nearly thirty straight seconds that had the bottoms of Gaara's fists bleeding, he stilled, though whether or not that was a good thing, Sakura could not yet tell.

"That boy… Naruto… He said he was just like me." The red-head's voice was far calmer now, but it still carried a dangerous edge behind it, as if the veil Gaara had kept over his emotions could not be put back. "How… how come he's so easily able to talk with others, and how come they want to be around him and interact with him? Why don't they hate him!?"

"How did he… how did he escape being a monster?"

There was far too much to unpack about that statement, far too many things that Sakura could analyze and overanalyze, but that didn't mean she had the time to do so. Instead, she pushed straight for the first thing her mind gave her as the pain the curse mark usually muted started flowing back through her form.

"Naruto wasn't always so popular." She stated simply, drawing the Jinchuuriki's attention as she continued speaking. "He used to be loud, and annoying, and obnoxious. He didn't really have any redeeming qualities to speak of, and if I'm being honest with myself… I judged him heavily based only off of that."

Gaara seemed confused, but he didn't speak, even as she gave him a chance to, so she felt she'd better keep going before he decided to try and kill her again.

"But there was something about him that changed when he met Sasuke." Sakura replied simply, looking back over her shoulder to the unconscious form of the boy in question, who seemed to be breathing more evenly now than before. "Maybe it was only how he appeared on the surface, but all of a sudden Naruto's better qualities, that he was a kind, considerate boy, who valued his friends above everything else, began to shine through over his more negative ones."

Gaara was paying rapt attention, and whether or not he saw something he could emulate himself or was simply hearing Sakura's story out to the end, she knew she would have to wait and see.

"If I'm remembering correctly, it was a few weeks after that that Ino and I became friends with the two of them as well, and as the years went on, well, Naruto's antics didn't stop, but he was kept far more in line than he'd been previously. We made sure of that."

"Is that friendship?"

Her eyes widened as she looked up at Gaara, the boy's eyes were filled with wonder as he stared at her, seemingly having come to some grand epiphany.

"Is… is what?"

"You're smiling." Gaara sounded almost excited, which, even in Sakura's admittedly brief interactions with the boy, was something she'd never encountered. "When you think about someone, or talk about someone, and that makes you smile… is that friendship!?"

The boy had practically shouted his final words, as if finally equating his own experiences with the words that he'd been assaulted with constantly by the people he'd met in the Leaf Village.

"I suppose it is." Sakura reasoned, pain from the wound on her stomach flaring up, causing her to double over, and nearly fall flat on her face. "I mean, I don't see why it's any better or worse than any other explanation, so… sure. I guess that could be friendship as well."

Gaara didn't smile like she'd hoped he would, but his expression did lose some of the edge that it'd had before.

"But then… why don't I smile or laugh when I think of my siblings, or about Naruto?" Gaara looked back towards her, seemingly confused. "Why don't I feel anything? It is not as if I hate them… I do not feel like I do towards father towards them, but… but I also can't bring myself to smile for their sakes…"

This is turning out to be a bit more than I bargained for. Sakura joked dryly as the pain became too much for her to bear. But this is definitely better than fighting to the death.

"I can't really answer your question." She remarked, clutching her stomach as she fell backwards, bracing against the tree behind her as she slid down it. "I wish I could, but unfortunately, it's just not that simple. The reason there is no concrete definition of friendship is because everyone experiences it in a different way… Or, well, I think they do, I least."

Gaara gritted his teeth together, looking down at his bleeding and bruised hands as he did. Sand still poured off of them from where he'd broken his makeshift armor, having slammed them into the bark enough to fracture the porcelain-like structure, and she couldn't imagine that it felt good for him to have to the grains falling into his open wounds.

"But then… how do I know what this feeling in my chest means?"

"It's simple."

Both of them turned suddenly, Gaara's sand coming up to form a protective barrier in front of him, but it fell a second later as they saw who was hobbling over towards them.

Sasuke had certainly seen better days, but it seemed at least he could move, so that was a plus.

"What is it you mean?"

"That feeling." Sasuke spoke, walking over to the two of them and sitting down, just close enough to Sakura to protect her in case the boy in front of them decided he was done talking. "That's love."

Both her eyes and Gaara's widened. It wasn't exactly the most original answer, hell, Sakura was fairly sure she'd heard this exact same conversation in some of her mom's crappy romance novels, but that didn't exactly make it any less true. From the look on Gaara's face, however, he seemed to feel a bit differently about it.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"What do you mean, I'm asking why you think I would feel such things." Gaara shook his head, and if he weren't so emotionally stunted, Sakura felt like he might've laughed as well, as if calling them both fools. "I love only myself. That is how I have chosen to live. My siblings may be useful to me, but-"

"Are you not the one who said you felt something for them just a few minutes ago?" Sasuke fired back, causing the boy to halt his speaking. "You said you felt a pain in your chest, did you not? That's your love for your siblings, warring with your duty and your mission."

Gaara recoiled from them both, standing up and gripping his head in his hands as he took several steps backwards, trying desperately to escape either the truth of their words or the pain in his skull.

Perhaps a combination of the two was more accurate.

"Shut up…" Gaara whispered quietly, whispering perhaps to Shukaku, or perhaps to them. "I don't… What do I do?" The boy whispered quietly, looking up at them with his face hidden behind his hands. "I can't abandon my mission. They put their… their trust in me. Or… no, No!" Gaara yelled out suddenly, shaking his head in a crazed way as he kept speaking. "They're just using me!" Gaara shouted, his pupils shaking as he discovered the 'truth'. "Good… that's good! I'll use them back!" He looked back up at them, smiling widely. "I'll just kill the two of you, and then… then everything can go back to how it used to be!"

Gaara let his hands fall to his sides, and Sakura cringed as she saw the right side of his face.

"Back to when everything made sense!"

It was monstrous, as if it had swelled to an almost insane degree. Yet it did not seem to be skin that it was made of. Instead, it was like sand, and yet there were odd markings built into it as well. Ino's words came back to her, about how the monster she'd seen, Shukaku, had had markings on the sand that made up its body.

Is he gone for good? Sakura wondered as she steeled herself for combat, allowing the curse mark to once more flow across her upper body. Or is he still in there?

"Sakura… what happened?"

She turned to Sasuke, and met the boy's concerned gaze with a small smile.

Probably about the curse mark, I suppose.

"You passed out, and the wound on my stomach reopened. I didn't have much choice but to rely on the curse marks power."

"No, not that." Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "I'm asking about this."

He reached out behind her neck, and immediately, Sakura couldn't help but think the boy was losing it a little.

Did he forget what the curse mark looks like?

A second later he tugged on something that had her whole body move, and her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.

"What are you grabbing!?"

"You mean… you didn't know there was a tree branch sticking out of your curse mark?"

…Wait, what?

A sudden dizziness shocked her out of any such thoughts, and she realized instantly that the curse mark must've been suppressing the effects of her blood loss. Her vision swam as her legs gave out, and she fell backwards, barely managing to halt her descent against the tree behind her.

She watched Sasuke's mouth open and close, but she couldn't quite hear him. She could feel the warmth of his hands as they scooped her up, and the wind on her skin as they flew through the air, landing on a nearby branch and barely evading the explosive power of Gaara's new right arm as it broke into the trunk of the tree they'd just been stood upon.

But even those senses were fading, and as her eyes closed, the last thing she could think about was the last words she'd heard Sasuke speak.

Why… would there be a branch growing out of my curse mark?

/-/

"Any time now, Naruto!"

"Yeah I'm working on it!"

Summoning was going so-so. The problem was that he and Kakashi sort of needed it to be going swimmingly, given that there was a giant hydra trying to swallow the both of them.

"I'm really trying, I'll have you know!"

"You said you'd be able to do it!"

"Well I lied a bit, OK!?"

"Why!?"

A decent question, easily answered if Naruto were willing to admit that he was a bit frightened that if he did say he might fail, then they wouldn't have had much of a plan in the first place.

That and a bit of a selfish need to show off just how strong he was now.

Neither of those make me sound like a very good person. Naruto thought with a grimace. I guess I'll just not say anything.

"Look, I should be able to manage this, just give me a second!" Naruto shouted out, biting back into the skin on his thumb that had already managed to heal itself, thanks to his panicking making some of the Nine-Tails chakra run through his system. "T-This time for sure!"

"NARUTO!"

He heard the scream and sort of assumed something was about to kill him. He dodged backwards, just barely avoiding the collapsing jaw of one of the hydra's 3 heads. It tore a massive chunk off the building they'd been standing on, and Naruto had to try really hard not to imagine that being him.

It didn't super work, but at least it came with the caveat that it wasn't him, and he was still rather alive.

Still, maybe it was just the rush of almost dying for the eighth time in five minutes, but he was feeling pretty good, physically. He brought his hand up above him, preparing to slam it down onto the roof below him, and felt, just for a second, for the chakra within him. Not his own, even that apparently large pool of chakra had been too small to reliably summon Gamabunta, and if he was going to summon something as large as him, he'd be needing something more.

He reached into his chest, left a silent, almost pleading note with the Nine-Tails, requisitioning as much chakra as the beast could afford to give him, and brought his hand down upon the ground below.

"Summoning Jutsu!"

For the first time in over two weeks, his entire world became white smoke. A half-crazed smile took over his expression, and as the animal below him, whoever they were, rose to their full height, he used his chakra to run up it's back, practically jumping up and down from the excitement.

"Yo!" He shouted out as he reached the toad's head. "What's your name?"

The beast didn't respond, instead, it merely lurched to the side, bringing it's massive shield to bear and slamming it into one of the hydra's charging heads, before jumping upwards (practically scaring the piss out of Naruto as he grabbed on for dear life), and slamming it's weapon down on the offending head, slicing it clean off.

"My apologies for not answering your question sooner." The massive toad spoke out politely. "My name is Gamaken, and I'm afraid I am rather clumsy."

/-/

Ino and Haku were spotted at around the half-way point, and unfortunately for them, it wasn't another scouting party.

"Leaf Ninja! By 5 o'clock!"

They ran as hard as their injuries would let them. This was, unfortunately, not particularly fast. They weren't slow enough to be caught immediately, however, which gave them the time to try and come up with a method of avoiding their pursuers.

The problem, of course, was that the sound ninja's chasing them were Jonin, and they weren't going to be fooled by a simple trick, much less a hiding place or a cheap distraction

On the bright side, it didn't seem like any of the ninja chasing them were that fast, even if they were gaining on them bit by bit, that was to be expected, given that the two of them sported burns along their legs that kept them from truly booking it.

"They're coming." Haku spoke with an almost unnatural calm. "We won't be able to make it to the arena without them catching up. Not at this speed."

As he spoke the words, Haku jumped forward and turned in midair, firing ten or so senbon back into the crowd of ninja chasing them. If the small screams Ino heard were anything to go by, then at least a few hit the mark.

"How many senbon do you have?" Ino asked as the boy caught back up to her, having dashed far faster than he reasonably should have. "Could we hold them off with those?"

"I wasn't exactly prepared for a fight when I went out to enjoy the festivities." Haku spoke with a hint of dry humor in the back of his voice. "I've got maybe twenty of them left, and that's a fairly high estimate."

Ino bit down on a curse that bubbled up through her throat. If the people behind them were to hear, they might stop hesitating as they were now and move in for the kill. At the moment, it seemed their assailants were being cautious, likely unsure of whether or not two kids out in the middle of a warzone wasn't an odd sort of trap, or if the two of them were more experienced or dangerous than they let on.

It could also have been that they didn't see the two of them as much of a threat, and as such were conserving chakra that they could've been using to unload powerful ranged Jutsu into their backsides.

To be honest, Ino thought with a mirthless laugh. I'll take it.

They ran through a particular area that Ino recognized, and she realized that meant they were only a few blocks away from their destination. She had been able to see the arena since they hopped atop the rooftops, but that didn't mean it was particularly easy to gauge distance when all of them looked exactly the same.

Being so close to safe haven, however, naturally meant that their enemies were ready to throw caution to the wind.

"Ah, screw it!" The sound ninja captain shouted out from behind them. "Dale, blow em' to smithereens!"

"Fire Style: Exploding Flame Shot!"

A blazing ball of energy shot straight past both Haku and Ino, passing between them at far too close a distance for comfort, and landed a way's away on the next rooftop.

The building detonated a moment later, sending debris and flame into the sky, and preventing them from continuing forward.

"End of the line, brats!" The ninja who'd thrown the jutsu out, apparently named Dale, shouted. "Fire Style: Exploding Flame Shot!"

This one was aimed for the both of them, the previous having only been to trap them in place. The projectile sailed towards the two of them, and Ino had only enough time to wish that her life could've ended a bit cooler before the Jutsu's impact was interrupted by a massive wall of ice.

"Ice Release: Ice Wall!"

The mass of frozen water shattered almost instantly upon contact with the other jutsu, but it did prevent the explosion from killing the two of them. Ino had expected to be just as easily killed by the shards of flying ice nailing her in the coming moments, but when they did hit her, they immediately melted into water, cresting across her skin harmlessly.

Was that the flame melting the ice before it hit us, or is that within Haku's realm of control?

From the way the boy fell to his knees a second later, it seemed like the latter. She couldn't imagine forming ice and then immediately melting it back into water vapor was a particularly easy thing to do, especially for the already exhausted Haku.

"Well alright then." The captain from before walked up to the two of them, smiling arrogantly as he stepped past the remains of Haku's wall, and onto an ever growing puddle growing out from it. "It's been fun, kiddos, but we've got places to be." He leaned down, drawing a kunai and bringing it to bear before him. "Try not to hold it against us."

The kunai flew downwards, but just as it was about to hit Haku's chest, and probably kill him, it stopped.

"Wha – what did you-!?"

The captain looked down, to where ice had already encased over half his body. The innocent pool of water on the ground had frozen over, and was crawling up the man's body, using the water that had exploded off of the ice wall earlier as a means to freeze the ninja in place.

"You damned basta-" The ninja's voice was cut off as his head froze as well, and a second later the sculpture stopped moving. If Ino were to guess, his internal structures had also become too cold to function.

The man before them was dead.

"Captain!" One of the ninjas shouted out, drawing an odd weapon that looked like a cross between a glaive and a whip. "I'll kill you!"

The other two ninja, one of which Ino remembered as being Dale, charged forwards as well, wielding their own unique weapons as well.

Haku's hand came to rest upon her mid-section, in a way that at any other time would've had her blushing and slapping him in the face, but now had her looking towards him, wondering what he wanted.

He gave her only a small smile…

Before he pushed her off the rooftop.

She screamed as she fell, from so many different things. There was, of course, the fear of falling a good 50 feet towards the ground below, but that was perhaps secondary to the frustration she felt at being saved. Haku had given his life, so very casually, to save her own. She looked up towards the roof, hoping beyond all hope that the boy's figure too would manifest itself.

All that appeared from beyond the steel horizon was a massive explosion, a few screams, and then silence.

Ino hit the floor hard, collapsing upon the ground below her in a heap and feeling tears swim through her vision. She wanted to scream out in pain, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. Perhaps she was so completely shocked by the situation that she could not even make noise. She could only sit on the floor, a broken, helpless mess of a ninja, and wish that Haku would, somehow, survive his encounter with the ninja above her.

No! Her mind shouted out to her, sending strength to her fingers that she'd not known existed to just barely pushed herself up onto her knees. I won't… I won't be some useless, demure girl!

I refuse!

She pushed herself up once more, onto her legs which cried out in agony. Silently, she prayed they were not broken. After a few seconds, she was able to conclude that they must not have been, because they were still capable of carrying her.

Good. That means I can go rescue Haku!

She walked over to the building's entrance, ignoring the massive piles of rubble that gathered around the broken-down doors, and pushed her way inside.

There was no one inside, nor were there any corpses or any signs of blood. For that, Ino was thankful, she wasn't sure she'd have been able to handle seeing the body of a civilian, especially not that of a child.

As she made her way towards the stairs in the back of the room, she found her legs growing numb. She imagined that was not a particularly good sign, all things considered, but couldn't find it within herself to care. If it allowed her to see Haku more easily, dulling the pain so she could focus on climbing the steps, then that was fine.

By the time she reached the second of the building's six floors, her vision was already beginning to distort. As she climbed further, it only got worse, and by the time she made it to the roof, she'd had to practically drag herself up the final flight of stairs.

I'm here… Haku… She panted as she reached the door, pushing it open in a daze. Please… please be alright.

She stepped out onto the roof and immediately fell flat on her face, having used only forward momentum to push the final door open, and having very little control over what happened after that. When she looked up, it was to find the roof a sea of blood. It practically caked the concrete beneath her, and made the whole place smell heavily of iron and decay.

She saw Haku a second later, and the sound that came from within her was nearly inhuman in it's relief.

"HAKU!" She shouted, pushing herself up one last time and landing atop the boy, hugging him tightly as he merely breathed in and out. "You're okay!"

"Yes." The boy spoke simply, smiling only very slightly as he opened his eyes, seeming barely able to keep them open. "I… someone showed up to help me."

He raised his arm, pointing towards the corner of the rooftop, where a man in a black trench coat sat quietly upon the edge, hanging his legs off of it and looking back at them. His face was adorned in an almost terrifying mask, and though her immediate instinct told her it was that of the Anbu, there was another part of her that thought that couldn't have been farther from the truth.

"Who… are you?" Ino asked, at the very least wanting to thank Haku's savior, and trying to ignore the way the mask sent shivers down her spine.

"Who I am matters not." The man in black spoke, rising a second later. "Know that the man to whom you owe your life is Danzo Shimura. If you must give gratitude to someone, then let it be him."

With those words, the ninja jumped from the rooftop, falling out of sight and, assumedly, onto the streets below.

Ino felt her exhaustion get the best of her. She knew she could go on no longer, and that, at the very least, she would need to rest for a while. Her eyes grew heavy, and she fell down next to Haku, bracing herself against the simple outcropping he had leaned against himself.

Danzo… Shimura? Her mind wondered as sleep overcame her.

Who… is that?

And then her consciousness faded.

End Chapter 31

Yo.

Once more, Gaara's learning and then de-learning in the span of a single conversation. At this point in the story, Shukaku was too present, and Gaara's mental state was far too volatile, for him to really be thinking straight.

Naruto brings out the clumsy boii, because I think he's funny and extremely under-utilized in fanfiction.

Haku and Ino are rescued by a member of Root, and Danzo's plan to retake the city begins.

In other news, I will be taking a quick, 1 week break.

I won't lie about the purpose or anything. I'm just getting a bit burnt out from writing this every week. Going to use the time to relax and plan the next upcoming arcs, but, if I may give a quick hint, they will all be focusing much more on Naruto and Sasuke's friendship than this arc did. I apologize for branching off from the point of this story as much as I did these past few chapters, but I swear there was a reason!

Anyways, see you in two weeks!