Yo, yo, yo!
Here for your (usually) weekly dose of weird Naruto fanfiction!
Without further ado, I think you understand by now how this works by now...
Chapter 38: Fight and Flight
"Yo… you hangin' in there, Sasuke?"
"Hah… Never better, you?"
Naruto felt like he was dying, which he thought was pretty fair, given who the two of them were fighting. Still, not like he could admit that. His misplaced pride wouldn't allow it.
"Nah, I'm fine. Gotta say, you don't look good, sure you can keep up?"
"Heh," Sasuke must've known that he was just egging him on, it certainly wouldn't have been the first time. However, it didn't seem like the boy cared much at all, for he rose to the bait a second later, a wide smile on his face. "Pretty sure, we've gotta drag this old hag back to the leaf village anyways."
"Oi! What the hell did you just call me!?"
"Y'know, the one time you lose your cool, and it's against the most easily offended Sannin."
"Most easily offended?" Sasuke's eyebrow rose. "You called Jiraiya's toad a frog yesterday and he screamed at you for a solid minute."
"I know!" Naruto's mouth split open, an almost evil grin on his face. "It's my favorite thing in the world."
Sasuke stared at him.
"You have odd hobbies."
"You two coming at me again?" Tsunade questioned them, yawning into her hand as she scraped at the dirt below her with her toe. "If you're just giving up then could you hurry up and say it? I need a drink to make up for having to deal with this."
"She's definitely kind of an asshole, though, I agree." Naruto nodded.
"Kid, you are real lucky you're twelve."
"I'm fairly sure that was a threat." Sasuke pointed out.
"Of course it was a threat!" Tsunade confirmed. "We're fighting."
"Lady Tsunade," Her retainer groaned out disappointedly. "Please don't threaten small children."
"They started it!"
"That does not make it better."
Naruto lightly tapped his friend on the shoulder, getting the boy's attention while Shizune had the woman distracted.
"So, eh… we're probably not winning this."
"It does seem like that."
"In that case, want to try something?" Naruto asked his friend with a mischievous grin on his face.
"You tell me." Sasuke muttered quietly. "Do I, Naruto?"
"Well… maybe? I was thinking since we know we aren't winning this, we might as well try some of what we've been learning the past few days."
Sasuke seemed to consider that, tilting his head from side to side as he weighed his options.
"I suppose we could. I'm assuming you'll be using this… Rasengan, where I'll be using my new Genjutsu?"
"The word using implies that we might actually succeed." Naruto smirked. "We'll be attempting our Jutsu's, I don't know about you, but… I think I'm usually pretty alright at learning this stuff, but the third phase of this thing's been giving me hell!"
"The third phase?" Sasuke laughed quietly under his breath. "I haven't even gotten my Genjutsu to appear in any fashion."
"Oh, really?" Naruto was actually a bit surprised. Generally, Sasuke was quick about these things. "I just kind of figured you'd already have it."
"Well, if I did, you'd know it." The boy smirked. "I've been trying to cast it on you, after all."
Naruto glared at the boy, completely unsure of how to feel about that.
"I'm going to choose to take that in a positive way, in that you know I'd be fine with that, and not the negative way of 'Trying to kill me with a Genjutsu'."
"I don't think you can kill someone with Genjutsu." Sasuke rubbed his chin. "Then again, Itachi might be able to manage something like that…"
"Hey, Brats!" Tsunade shouted, pushing her retainer back out of the arena as the woman continued to complain. "If you're coming, then let's go! Otherwise I'm done!"
"You surrender?" Naruto asked hopefully.
"No, you surrender."
Naruto and Sasuke both briefly paused.
"How does that work?" Sasuke asked. "I mean, if you're the one leaving, then shouldn't you be the one who-"
"Because I'm stronger than you." Tsunade answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "If I choose to stop fighting you, I win anyways."
Naruto wasn't sure what the math on that particular calculation was, but at the same time, he also realized he couldn't exactly argue with the woman either. They'd been the ones to challenge her, one of the legendary Sannin. If she no longer wanted to humor two Genin…
"Ok, not sure quite how that works, but fine, I guess." He turned towards Sasuke. "You ready?
"As I'll ever be. Can't say I'm terribly confident in this, though."
"Yeah, same here."
"Formation?"
"I'll go up front, you follow up."
Sasuke nodded, putting his head down and beginning to focus hard on getting his Genjutsu to respond. In that moment, Naruto charged forward, summoning two shadow clones to flank him on his approach.
Tsunade was fast, almost scarily so for a fighter who Jiraiya had, in the middle of their fight, called a walking tank. Supposedly, that should've meant she was slow and deliberate, but hit hard if he left himself open. Unfortunately, it seemed that slow for a Sannin still meant you were among some of the fastest ninja's alive.
He couldn't exactly stop, though. They'd still decided they were going to drag Tsunade back to the leaf against her will, and he was itching to try out his new Rasengan. It wasn't a fully formed thing, but he was hoping, just how Sasuke and Sakura had learned mid-fight, that he could somehow master the Rasengan if given the right push.
He formed his chakra the way Jiraiya had taught him, spinning it along the imaginary tomoe on his hand, until it began to take the spherical shape he'd seen. He watched as Tsunade's eyes widened ever so slightly, and he bit back a satisfied smile. It felt good to impress someone of her level, even if it was only for a moment.
His right clone charged in first, dipping underneath her opening strike and trying to raise a kunai into her guard. The weapon was batted aside without much effort, and the clone disappeared only a moment later. Once more, Naruto hadn't even really been able to see what had been done to it, other than… that it was no longer present.
He charged in, partially formed Rasengan swirling in his right hand. His left clone was just behind him, ready to follow up in case he failed.
He never even got the chance to try. Instead, the very ground beneath him cracked open.
"Wha-!"
He fell forward, his Rasengan impacting with the ground beneath him and causing a small explosion of air and chakra. It wasn't at all like Jiraiya's example, where the man had carved a path through a full tree like it was made of butter. Still, right now, he had other concerns.
He turned back behind him, and shouted out for his friend.
"Sasuke, look-"
"Little late, brat."
Sasuke had his hands raised in surrender, Tsunade's finger on his right breast, threatening to split the boy apart like she had the ground beneath them.
"Alright, that's that." The woman lowered her finger, sighing. "But really, Jiraiya. The Rasengan?"
Naruto looked over towards Tsunade and Jiraiya, the latter of whom wasn't making eye-contact with the former.
"You know that Jutsu can only be used by you and the fourth, it's far too advanced to be teaching to some little kid."
Naruto bristled at the comment, his eyebrows drawn down in anger. He made to stand, but found his right leg was actually rather stuck in the fractured earth. He pulled for quite a while, and by the time Sasuke walked over and helped him out of his hole, Tsunade was just about to leave.
"H-Hey!" He interjected hurriedly. "Who says I can't learn to use the Rasengan!?"
"Huh?" The woman, flanked by her retainer, turned back around, wearing an oddly blank look on her face. "That's the Fourth Hokage's magnum opus, kid. Not just anyone's going to be able to use it. Especially not some Genin who looks about as green as the leaves stuck in his hair."
Naruto found that there were, in fact, quite a few leaves stuck in his sweat matted hair, and he rather embarrassedly pulled them out, trying to ignore the way Tsunade's retainer, Shizune, didn't look at him, in some misplaced effort to spare his pride.
If anything, it only further trampled it.
The two women turned back around, and without much ceremony, a quick goodbye to Jiraiya notwithstanding, they began to walk away. Naruto couldn't accept that, however, and found himself stepping forward, teeth clenched in anger.
"Well, I've already gotten this far, haven't I!?" Naruto shot back at the woman, folding his arms over his chest. "I bet I'll have it done so fast; you won't even know what hit you!"
Tsunade stilled at that, causing Shizune to turn towards her with a curious expression. She asked the woman something, but whatever the question was, it went ignored as the Sannin turned towards him, eyes almost shining.
"Oh? Then, how about this, kid…" She spoke, walking towards him with a confident grin on her face.
"Shall you and I make a bet?"
/-/
Something felt off the moment Sakura opened her eyes.
It wasn't the wave of exhaustion that hit her, or the fact that Anko was already awake, surveying the room with her eyes narrowed. It wasn't the fact that their faucet, a tiny, crappy thing that more than lived up to her ideas of a prison bathroom hadn't been turned off all the way, and dripped steadily into the sink, creating a pattern of unsettling noises.
It wasn't even the complete lack of noise aside from the ones they were making. At the very least, she'd gotten used to that over the few days they'd spent here already.
It was the way the wall's seemed to watch her, seemed to follow her every motion with some invisible, unseen eye. It was the way her senses flared, screaming at her to dodge, to attack, to defend herself.
Her instincts screamed that she was in danger, and she had learned to trust them over the course of the last few months.
"Sensei?" She turned towards Anko, watching as the woman walked towards the right wall, lightly pushing against it with her hand. "Do you-"
"Sh." Her teacher spoke without any amusement in her voice, and instantly, Sakura was silent.
Anko made a single hand-sign, before, with a motion so quick she nearly missed it, the woman's hand shot into the wall before her. The stone crumbled around her fingers, but the limb was out before it could be collapsed upon. She hadn't come out empty-handed, either.
"Ah." Anko spoke quietly, gazing down at the small device in her palm with a minuscule smirk. "That's really bad."
"Sensei?" Sakura asked, feeling the bubbling nervousness inside of her begin to boil. "What's-"
"Do you have anything here that's essential to you?" Anko asked suddenly. "Anything at all?"
"Uhm… no, but-"
"C'mon, then." The woman gripped her hand, pulling her along at a breakneck speed as she pushed their door open. "We're going. We'll get those brats from the sound village and get the hell out of here."
"Sensei, was that device-"
"Yeah, it's one of the audio recording devices I was worried about." Anko bit down on her lip, actually managing to draw a small stream of blood. "I didn't… fuck… I didn't catch it last night. I'm sorry. This is all my fault."
Sakura couldn't see how that was possible. If anything, it was her own stubbornness, mixed with her willingness to push herself beyond her limits, that had gotten them into this mess. Her teacher would've caught such a measly trap, if it weren't for her having to worry about her idiot of a student.
She relayed as much to the woman, but Anko merely shook her head, continuing to pull her along with that same guilty expression on her face. It took a moment for her to go back into her master's words and pick out a few that confused her.
"Wait, you're alright with going back for Zaku and those guys?"
"Kid, I know you well enough by now to know you wouldn't let us leave without them. Instead of arguing and wasting time, I'm just going to concede the point." Anko's smirk was, this time, quite a bit bigger, even if it was still burdened. "Besides, I've kinda' grown to like those guys."
They exited out of the cramped halls, and into Root's main corridor. She was about to voice her own agreement to the woman's statement, but before she could, she noticed a glint in the corner of her vision. Such a thing wouldn't have normally set her off, but it was approaching them at blinding speeds, and tied to it –
Anko had tackled her before she could even truly comprehend the glowing paper bomb tied to the end of the knife, and the two of them flew from the crosswalk, diving through the air as the explosion went off behind them, scattering bits and pieces of the walkway atop the two of them as they rolled to a landing some twenty or thirty feet down, landing on another, almost identical bridge.
This time, they were not alone.
The men from earlier who'd been interrogating Kin stepped forward, followed by a few ninja in masks, flanked them on both sides.
"We'll ask you once." The one Sakura remembered as a Yamanaka spoke up from their right. "Come quietly and we promise we won't hurt the girl."
"Oh?" Anko shot back, smirking in that overly-confident way she did when she wanted to mask how she really felt. "And you're not even going to include me in that list of unharmed people?"
"You've been compromised, Mitarashi." The other interrogator, the one who'd had control of the Aburame bugs, took a single step towards the two of them from the left. "You have to be dealt with no matter what."
"Ah, I see, I see." Anko right hand shook, though not in fear, as the people around her must've thought. Sakura knew the woman enough to see the way her bottom lip quivered, to see the way her eye twitched.
A raw fury, unlike anything she'd seen from her before.
"And just what would you be doing with my little student here? If I might ask?"
"That's none of your concern." Fu said with an apathetic shrug, drawing his tanto from behind him and pointing it towards the two of them. "Hand over the girl and she'll survive."
"And you honestly think I'm dumb enough to not try my luck at getting the two of us out of here?" Anko asked, the smile dropping from her face as the temperature in the room fell a few degrees. "I highly doubt you're going to kill her just because she chose to resist. You people were always far too pragmatic for holding a grudge like that."
Neither of the two said anything, which for Sakura was as clear a sign of admittance as she thought they'd get.
Anko grabbed her arm, pulling Sakura into her body in a protective gesture as the squads on both sides moved forwards at once. Briefly, she pondered whether or not they would actually meet their ends in such a horrid place.
A moment later the bridge they stood upon groaned under some sort of pressure, and everyone on it looked down, where below the structure, a complicated system of tree roots were snaking their way along the bottom, running around until they constricted the entire piece.
"Fall back!" Fu shouted to his squad, flickering from their bridge and onto another some fifty feet in the distance.
The Aburame followed suit, giving his squad the same signal and disappearing, falling back out of sight.
Before the two of them could make to run away, the bridge gave out beneath them, spilling them out and into open air. Anko grabbed ahold of her, clutching her tightly to her chest as the roots darted towards them, gripping the both of them at once and pulling them towards wherever they'd originated from. She mentally prepared herself for a fight, before remembering that there was only one person on the planet who was able to wield the First Hokage's lost art.
She sighed as they were set down beside him, panting slightly as she turned to the Anbu with a small smile.
"T-Thanks, Tenzo."
"Don't worry about it." He spoke calmly, walking onto the bridge with his hands still drawn together, not dropping his guard in case he needed to cast another Jutsu. He looked up towards Anko with a serious expression. "You need to go."
"We're aware." Anko answered, stepping past him and dragging Sakura along. "But there're some people we need to get first."
"If you're referring to the trio from the sound village, then they're coming." Tenzo signaled with his finger, pointing back towards the opening in the wall behind him. "I found them being attacked by a few lower-rung Jonin. We managed to eliminate them, and then tracked our way up here. When I felt your chakras under duress, the one with the spiky hair told me to go ahead and worry after you two first."
Anko barked out a sudden laugh, evidently rather amused.
"Did he now?"
The sound trio's movements were the first things they heard, about five or ten seconds before they emerged onto their rickety bridge, still covered in tree-roots from before.
"S-sorry we took so long!" Zaku panted as they finally caught up. "One of those bastards ambushed us from behind… nearly got Dosu… we managed to shake him off, though."
"Yeah, and I lost my gauntlet for it!" Dosu held his arm up, showing off that he did not, in fact, have a gauntlet on it any longer. "Man, if I find that kid again I swear to everything I-"
"Yes, yes, thank you Dosu." Kin sighed out, before seeing Sakura's confused expression, and explaining. "It was that Sai kid from before. He attacked the three of us. We're pretty sure he's still back there, too."
Tenzo nodded, stepping forward.
"Anko, I'm assuming you don't know the way out of here by heart?"
"Heh, you assume correctly."
"You've no qualms with me taking point, then?"
"None at all." Anko spoke with a small smirk on her face. "Lead the way, Tree-man."
"We're going to take the fastest route out," Tenzo ignored Anko's comment as he signaled them all to move forward, pointing into the gap on the opposite side, which led into more corridors. "And hurry, those two from earlier, Torune and Fu, aren't Danzo's right and left for nothing."
They rushed through the complicated mess of corridors, fighting off the occasional ninja who came their way, although as it turned out, even a highly trained Anbu wasn't much against Tenzo and Anko's combined strength. Whereas Tenzo was a moving fortress, constantly sprouting nigh unbreakable structures from his hands and body, Anko was a whirlwind of shadow and death, never in one place for longer than a moment.
Her snakes shot out from within her sleeves, biting into as many ninja's as her partner brought down with his wooden onslaught.
Sakura and the sound trio tried to help where they could, but it was clear after the first or second attempt that they were more getting in the way than anything. They'd elected instead to watch the rear, holding up decently well against their pursuers, who were surprisingly few, despite what Sakura had expected.
As they made their way out of the tunnels, and back unto the winding bridges in the central corridor, Tenzo held his hand up, and they stopped immediately, waiting for the man to give them another signal.
"We're cornered. They've been pushing us forward for a while now. Damn, that'd explain why their pursuit was so halfhearted." The man let out a small huff of frustration, likely with himself, before standing up and cracking his neck. "If I'm right, then they'll ambush us the second we exit out of this tunnel, and if we try and go back, them we'll be met with an explosive trap that will cordon us off inside of the tunnel."
"Then what do we do, sir?" Sakura asked, feeling just the smallest bit afraid.
"Anko, I'm going to have you and Sakura go first. You're the ones they want, but ultimately, you two on your own are also far faster and harder to catch than the four of us-" Tenzo gestured to himself, and the sound trio. "Will be. Avoid capture while I get these three out of here, and then I'll circle back around to help get the two of you out as well."
"There's a chance that's unnecessary." Anko argued quietly. "I say we brute force our way out as a group of six."
"That's great in theory, and if they truly aren't planning for that, then it's the best play we could make." The man agreed, before gesturing with his head towards a small glint off in the distance. "But I think you can see that that's not going to happen."
"Anti-personnel traps on the larger exits…" Anko laughed quietly. "They planned on separating us from the get-go."
Tenzo hummed his agreement.
"Alright, I get it. I don't like it, mind you, but I get it." Her teacher turned back towards her, her smile tilted slightly too much to one side, signaling how fake the expression truly was. "Sakura, we're going to have to hold on our own, got it?"
Sakura wasn't really sure how she felt about that, given that the last time they'd tried to break out on their own, they'd been swarmed by about fifty guards.
"I suppose I don't have much of a choice, do I?"
"You do, actually." Tenzo spoke. "You could come with me instead, while Anko plays decoy. It would be the same general thing, and I'd go back for her afterwards."
Sakura shook her head without even bothering to consider the idea.
"I'll stay with her." She declared.
Her teacher gave a small breath of laughter at that, as if completely unsurprised, and yet still happy to hear it.
"Well, loyal to a fault, if anything." Tenzo spoke absently, turning towards the sound trio and nodding resolutely at them. "Alright, you three, with me. We're breaking out in a hurry, so stay safe behind me, but keep up."
"Got it!"
"Alright, kiddo." Anko took her hand, giving it a light squeeze as they stepped up to the entrance. "We're going first, drawing their attention, and then booking it."
Sakura nodded, returning the gesture with her own hand as well, before standing and stepping to the side of her teacher. A moment later, Tenzo held his hand up, raising only three of his fingers, then two. Finally, he held up only one finger, and then, on the last count, he pointed the whole hand towards the entryway.
There was a brief moment of chaos as Sakura and Anko charged out of their small tunnel, running and jumping down to another walkway some twenty feet below. They heard shouting and panicked voices as multiple root members immediately tried to surround them.
"Above! They're splitting formation!" Fu shouted out, landing in front of the two of them. "Torune, you take those ones, I've got these!"
"Right!" The Aburame called back, breaking off and jumping from bridge to bridge, following Tenzo's mad dash towards the exit with a silent fervor.
Anko held her hands up towards Fu, discharging a few snakes that coiled around in the air, though they were all cut at their necks by another Root Anbu, who'd cast a simple air-based cutting Jutsu.
"Alright, now begins the hard part!"
Anko made a few quick hand signs, before slamming her palms into the ground below her. She didn't utter a word as the ground heated up, reaching an almost unbearable temperature before the stone began to melt away, and the bridge collapsed.
Fu and his squad jumped backwards, avoiding the heated area as if it were contaminated. Sakura had never seen the Jutsu before, but evidently these people had.
"C'mon!" Anko shouted back to her, taking her hand and dragging Sakura into her arms, before taking the both of them with her as she jumped into the newly formed hole.
This fall was further than the last few Sakura had gone through, and she had to admit that she wasn't exactly loving the sensation. She let out a tiny scream as Anko raised her left hand, and a dozen or so snakes shot out of it, wrapping around a nearby bridge and using it as a pendulum to jump forward, landing inside one of the tunnels that surrounded the main corridor and taking off at high speeds.
"If we're lucky, which we probably aren't since we never seem to be, then we lost them."
"Wow, way to inspire confidence."
"Not my fault our luck is terrible." Anko argued, stopping at a corner and setting her down. She looked around it, and, after seemingly determining that the coast was clear, signaled for Sakura to go ahead.
"I fail to see how it isn't at least partially your fault." Sakura fired back, sticking as close as she could to the woman as the two stepped into a small room in the middle of the hall. "I can't possibly be dragging around all of the bad luck."
"Meh, I think you could." Anko brought her hand to the wall, breaking a small hole in it and releasing a snake into the hole. It slithered through, hissing quietly as it climbed into the inner-workings. "Give me a second, I need to pay attention to this."
Sakura nodded without a word.
It took perhaps thirty seconds for Anko to finish scanning the room. By the time she finished, she breathed a small sigh of relief.
"No camera's here." Anko revealed, stepping into the space and beginning to form some hand-signs. "I don't think we'll be able to hide forever, since they've still got some of the world's best infiltration and tracking ninja's here, but at the very least, we can buy ourselves a good twenty or so minutes."
Anko gestured for her to come over, and Sakura followed.
"What's the plan, then?"
"I'm going to use a fairly high-level Jutsu to meld our appearances with the wall behind us." Anko pointed with her thumb. "It's just a camouflage Jutsu, so it's not like it's going to be unbreakable or anything like that, but at the very least, anyone below Jonin here isn't going to be able to find us, and I'd like to think I could hide us from a few regular Jonin as well."
"There are people below Jonin rank here?" Sakura asked, actually a bit confused about that. "I kind of figured this was an elite organization."
"You wouldn't be wrong to have figured that, to be fair." Anko finished out her series of hand signs, before, with a flick of the wrist, she slapped her hand against the wall behind them, and then once more against hers and Sakura's foreheads. "One second, let this take effect, and then I'll explain."
Anko held her hand up, forming the symbol 'hare' before she spoke the final line.
"Hidden Jutsu: Striking from Shadows!"
There was an odd sensation in Sakura's stomach. It felt a bit like she hadn't eaten in several days and was suddenly feeling the effects of starvation all at once. It lasted for a good five seconds, before she let out a loud gasp as the feeling ended.
"What was that?" She tried to ask, but her voice was odd, different in some way she couldn't quite tell. "Wait… whoa…"
"Heh" Anko's confident voice sounded out from beside her. "A little Jutsu I came up with for longer infiltration missions. It's a fairly simple camouflage-based attack Jutsu."
She felt something on her arm, despite the fact that she was only just now realizing she was buried in the wall they'd been standing against just a moment prior. After a moment, she realized it was Anko's arm, lightly poking and prodding her.
"Ok, you're right there. Good. I was pretty sure, but I just wanted to check that I hadn't accidentally launched you like fifty feet into the canyon or something."
Sakura's eyes widened slightly.
"Was… was that a possibility?"
"Well, technically, I'd never actually used this on anyone more than just me before, so… It could've happened?"
She glared at the woman, despite being unable to see her.
"Every time I think you care about me; you go and say something like that."
"Hey! I do still care about you! I would've been able to get you out!"
"Yes, yes, thank you, master." Sakura muttered under her breath. "So what's actually happening right now? Are we actually in the wall, or…?"
"Technically yes, but also technically no." Anko admitted. "It's the only earth-based Jutsu in my arsenal, but basically, it makes a perfect us shaped indent in the wall, which we then climb into, and then I seal the exit. Well, I mostly seal the exit. Obviously we need to breath but…" Anko's voice trailed off. "Y'know what, how about you just trust me when I say it probably won't kill us?"
"What do you mean 'Proba-"
"A-Anyways!" Anko stuttered out, pausing for a moment in a show of hesitation that was completely unlike her. "As I was saying before, the reason there are people below the rank of Jonin here is because of the kids they train."
"Wait, there are kids here?"
"You saw that Sai boy, right? Yeah, he's not the only kid who's been robbed of the chance of living a normal life around here, and as much as I'd like to say he will be, he probably won't be the last, either." Anko sighed, a weary, heavy thing that distorted somewhat from reverberating through the wall around them. "Kids are trained practically from birth around here… not actually, Danzo doesn't have some weird pregnancy policy or anything, but he picks kids up from just about anywhere he can get his hands on them."
Sakura shook slightly, feeling an odd wave of fear settle over her, before dissolving a moment later.
"Anko Sensei, did you-"
"Feel that? Yeah." The woman let out a tired sigh. "We haven't been spotted yet, but they'll find us here soon. Just a matter of time with them."
"So… what's the plan for when we get out of here?" Sakura asked, wanting to use the time they had to clear away some of her doubts. "I mean… I get the whole 'Rebel against evil dictator' thing, but, like, what exactly are we doing?"
"The basic plan is rather simple, honestly." Anko admitted. "We break out of here, gather up a small army once Jiraiya gets back with Tsunade, and demand Danzo's surrender. If he doesn't, we rip his roots out of the ground by force."
"That sounds weirdly symbolic."
"It kind of does, I agree. It's not the most glorious plan in the world, but we can't very well serve a Kage who's working with the person who killed the last one, now can we?"
"We definitely can't." Sakura agreed.
"Ah…" Anko paused suddenly, and though Sakura couldn't see her, she could guess that the look on the woman's face was one of intense concentration.
"Did they find us?"
"Yeah." Anko spoke without any hang-ups, having fully expected this to happen. "Careful, they're not going to go easy."
"I know, trust me." Sakura spoke with a small smile. "I've dealt with quite a lot of people trying to kill me in the last few months."
"Heh, I can't help but think that's probably not something to be joking about, but whatever."
Anko grabbed Sakura's hand, pulling her, along with herself, out of the stone wall they'd been sat inside. As they emerged, it felt like they were breaking the surface of the water after having been dove beneath it. It wasn't entirely uncomfortable, but it wasn't exactly something she'd sign up for either.
When her eyes adjusted a moment later, they were stood in front of two ninja that Sakura recognized.
"Sakura Haruno." The doctor she'd named Ra spoke simply, offering her hand out to her. "We will offer a different proposition. Surrender to us, and we will spare Anko's life."
"Please comply." Sai voiced out from beside her, taking the mask off of his face to reveal deathly pale features, almost completely white in their complexion. "This need not become a battlefield."
Sakura did, for the briefest of moments, consider simply giving herself over to them. If it would save Anko's life, then maybe, just maybe she should –
But no, I couldn't. Sakura smiled, closing her eyes, and bringing her hands together. Even if I tried, Anko would just put herself in harms way to get me back out, and that would only serve to put us at a disadvantage.
In that case…
Sakura opened her eyes once more, breathing out her worries, her doubts, her fears, and hesitations. She focused entirely on the battle before her, prepared, above all else, to survive.
Those two would never forgive me if I didn't. She thought with a smile. Though…
I hope wherever they are, they're having a better go of it then me…
/-/
Naruto sighed as he failed once again to form the Rasengan in his open palm. It wasn't the actual formation that was giving him trouble, after all, there were far harder things than manifesting chakra in your hands.
The real hard part was control.
"Hey, Naruto?" Sasuke called from just in front of him, where he'd been trying to put him under a Genjutsu for the past three hours. "You making any progress?"
"Not really." Naruto admitted. "You?"
"Depends. Do you feel like you're under an illusion?"
"No?"
"Then no."
Naruto nodded at that, focusing hard as he tried to force chakra into his palms. A moment later, he fell backwards, the force of a chakra-based explosion knocking him backwards. It was becoming harder and harder to control the dwindling supplies of chakra inside his body as the day went on.
"Naruto?" Sasuke asked him suddenly.
"Hm?"
"Do you think we maybe should've stayed in the Leaf Village?"
Naruto's eyebrows drew down.
"Where's this coming from?"
"Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I was there to save you from Itachi and everything, but…" He trailed off for a moment, before he sighed, and then continued. "I guess I was just worried about Sakura. I mean, she accidentally learns the Wood Style, and then she and Anko went away for training, and I… I'm just worried something's happened.. Like… what if she needs our help?"
"Yeah, I kinda' get you." Naruto admitted, sitting crisscross on the ground just before the boy. "But at the same time, we gotta have faith in her, y'know."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it."
"Besides," Naruto spoke with a wide, sunny smile.
"I'm sure everything's going totally fine."
End Chapter 38
I mean… there's jinxing it, and then there's that, Naruto.
Not much to say this week, other than that this story will, once more, be taking a week long break. Nothing major's happening, but combining working on this with wanting to work on a bunch of other projects really does eat into my time a lot.
Rest assured, I'm certainly not stopping this story, even if it does annoy me from time to time.
OK, more like all the time, but you get what I mean.
Oh, right, just to clarify, Tsunade made the same bet with Naruto that she does in canon. Nothing's changed in that regard. I didn't show it because there'd be no point, it would've just been the same exact thing.
See you in two weeks!