The Last Ones Standing
Chapter 8
She didn't even know how to record the end in her logbook. She sat staring at the blank page in wonder and bewilderment. Finally, she simply wrote 'End of direction 1.' That sounded so unspectacular, but no words would anyhow convey the euphoria she felt. 'Lattice edge smooth, no visible dimensions protruding forwards.' She added to keep the record comprehensive.
"So how do we come back?" she asked Madara who was roasting deer's meat on the other side of their campfire. They decided a celebration was in place and chose the best parts of meat for this evening. "Do we trace our steps back? Or do we transit one dimension to the side and come back through there?"
"It would be more efficient to follow the once-removed dimensions. We would cover another 427 with little additional effort. And we know Kaguya can change direction of her jumps, so…"
"Don't even remind me that!" Sakura pressed at her temples. "I don't want to think about it right now!" She took a deep breath. "But you're right. We will need to invest some additional time into searches of promising dimensions, but otherwise it's a clear win-win situation. We come back and cover 427 unknown ones in the same time."
"If inhabitable ones are indeed so rare, we can easily sacrifice couple of days for each. This additional two months will be nothing in scale of the time we invest anyhow. It doesn't matter if we will spend 6 or 8 months on this branch."
The meat was great, juicy inside and crispy outside. Worthy the celebration, thought Sakura chewing on it. "You know…" she mused, "at first I was like: 'we know how big this thing is, it's huge, but it has limits.' But now I'm starting to think that finding this one end doesn't really give us any information about the size."
"Why?"
"Because what if we didn't start in the middle?"
Madara's hand holding the meat-skewer froze half way to his mouth. "Good point," he said after a long while, taking a bite. But he didn't look as if he was enjoying the food much anymore. "Actually, it's delusional to assume that our dimension was the middle."
She was sleeping and he was bored. To the next branch they will take all the books they find. He opposed it previously, calling it an unnecessary load, and now he was regretting it.
Sakura taught him playing shogi though. She drew a board in her notebook and cut out make-shift pieces out of paper. She was still winning every game, but he was getting better. To kill the time, he picked up one of the piece – it was getting very worn, maybe he should re-make it.
But it will get damaged again. Sakura mentioned that the real pieces were made from wood. He had time, he thought browsing through the pile of prepared firewood. He could make those pieces properly. Pentagonal, with engravings – he could manage that. And if he finds a piece of wood broad enough in their stock – a board as well.
"It was 427 dimensions away from ours." Sakura was thinking out loud. "Let's say 500 to make it round. If it is average, if it is this way in every direction, then down will be another 500. That would make the matrix 1000 dimensions wide..." She pressed her finger to her lips. "If it is a regular cube it will have 1000 times 1000 times 1000 dimension. This is one billion dimensions! If we keep the speed of 5 dimensions a day, that makes it 200 million days. Which is…" she scribbled a calculation on the margin of her notebook. "More than 6 million months! That is half of million years?! Even if we speed up to of 10 dimensions per day, even if we speed up to 20 – it's still not a scale of human lifetime! We will never make it!"
"You don't know if it will be 500 dimension the other direction. We could as well be on the longest branch."
"Or on the shortest."
"Or on the shortest. One sixth probability for each option."
"Exactly!"
"All I'm saying is that we don't know anything yet. Don't… don't fall into despair. And remember we are moving along the lines of higher probability of Kaguya's jumps."
"Put me under genjutsu."
"What?"
"You've heard me. Put me under this genjutsu that you've meant for all the people. Make me see my happiness."
"I don't think so. Genjutsu is a weapon in the end. It messes up with the brain of the victim."
"Just for a short while. Just to give me something… something positive."
"You know that it can be a downward slope? That you may start wanting it more and more?"
"But you will always be there not to let me go down the slope, right? Just a bit, please. I cannot take it anymore, I feel so unhappy!"
"Alright."
It was warm and sunny in Konoha. Naruto was giggling, half-choking on ramen noodles, but it wasn't preventing him from stuffing his face with more of it. He just told yet another bad joke and was the only person laughing. Kakashi-sensei chuckled politely, over the empty table – he didn't order anything, as usual wary of uncovering his face. When Sasuke entered the stall, he seemed so at ease. And at home. Sakura's heart sped up to two hundred beats per second when he sat right next to her. She didn't know if it was her imagination or if she could really feel the warmth emanating from him. And, then, he leaned to grab the menu and their elbows touched.
"Enough."
She recognized Madara's face right in front of her, but she couldn't see it clearly, everything was blurred. Needle-like pain behind her eyes made her want to curl in fetal position and cradle her head. Her chakra was pulsing uncontrollably, making her sick.
"It hurts…" she complained.
"Does it? I've told you there must be side effects to a genjutsu that powerful."
"How long…?"
"Just a couple of seconds."
Sakura carefully sat up. She closed her eyes and waited for the crazy turbulences of her chakra to die down. "Did you watch…? Can you see what I do in my genjutsu?"
"No. I have no clue what a victim sees."
"Then, how does it work? How do you know what to show?"
"I don't. How should I know what is people's happiness? I cannot design personalized genjutsu for millions of people. It taps into your mind, takes your dreams, your expectations, your thoughts and plans and visualizes them. Using all your memories as a scaffold."
"Meaning I would never see something I have no experience with? I could never, for example, see the Land of Water, if I've never been there?"
"But you know it exists, you for sure read about it, heard some stories. You have a certain image of it. And that image is what you would see. Not the Land of Water how it really is."
They ate something bad.
In a forested dimension, lush green jungle the search was particularly difficult and it took them longer than usual. After a week the foreign plants didn't look that foreign anymore. The fruits were hanging from the trees, they saw insects coming to them. In the end Sakura deemed them safe to eat. They didn't have fresh food for such a long time and it was taking a heavy toll. Big, juicy reddish fruit tastes weird – sweet but with a distinctive note on something very, very unfamiliar. Something metallic. In retrospect that taste should have been a warning sign – if body doesn't recognize a substance then it's probably not something one should eat. But they did, the temptation was too big. And here they were – shaken by violent torsions, with vision swimming from the effects of intoxication. It came onto Sakura first, as she was smaller, lighter. Before she knew she was tripping so hard that she couldn't even focus enough to at least retrieve the substance from his organism. To save at least him. She knew she should but she couldn't control here body anymore. Then came the torsions. Madara held her for couple for minutes, until the convulsions got also him, even though he had forced himself to throw the fruits up the moment they realized their effects on Sakura. But whatever substance it was, it must have been a quickly absorbing one. By the time Madara started to reel and vomit, Sakura was already conscious enough to watch. And watch helplessly she did. Because apparently the next stage of the intoxication was muscle paralysis.
She watched him convulsing in pain and wondered if the toxin worked also on the smooth muscles. If yes, they were going to suffocate to death.
But it didn't. After what seemed to Sakura long hours the effects started to wear off. In meantime it got dark and they had been bitten by probably half of the insects inhabiting that damn jungle. First move Sakura made was batting off some fly that was trying to get into her nose. Second was to crawl to Madara. Third was to cradle his head and start healing his eyes that have already been found by the ants. They couldn't lose his eyes.
Madara was keeping the first watch. Sakura was lying, her back to him. Her mind was circling, thoughts returning to be turned around again and again. About the speed of their search. About the choice of their route. And back to the thought that they maybe they should have stayed closer to their home dimension. Either the way, to speed up the search, she should maximize her chakra output. To maximize chakra output, she should be well rested. She should sleep, otherwise she will be inefficient tomorrow. It will be a wasted day if she's not fit. Another wasted day.
She was so tired, yet her mind was at full alert. She didn't know how long she was lying there but she was sure it was change of watch soon and that thought just added to the litany of things to be aggravated about.
"If you don't sleep, you'll be dead tomorrow," commented Madara.
"I know…" moaned Sakura. "But I can't. I'm too wound up. My thoughts are whirling. I cannot switch off."
"Ha, should have taken sake with us…"
"Probably…" sighted Sakura.
"Don't you have some sleeping pills? Some drug that would knock you out?"
"No…"
"Well… try touching yourself? It redirects attention. And promotes sleep afterwards."
"What do you mean?" Sakura furrowed her brows.
"Masturbation? I can go away, just call me when you're done."
"You're kidding me. I'm here miserable and you're having fun on my expense."
"Not at all. I'll go over there, behind those rocks." Madara started to stand up.
"No. I mean: no, you don't have to go anywhere. And you cannot be serious suggesting that?"
"I'm dead serious. It helps."
"And you know because… What? You do it?"
Madara shrugged.
"When?" Sakura long forgotten temper from good old times of Team 7 woke up.
"From time to time when I keep watch and you sleep. Which isn't that often recently."
"You masturbate next to me?!"
"Would you prefer that I went somewhere and left you unprotected?"
"That's not the point! And great protection you are with your trousers down! Oh, gods, why are we even having this conversation? It's disgusting and it's perverted and I don't want to hear about it ever again!"
Madara raised his hands defensively. "Fine. It was just a well-meant advice."
"And you're not supposed to masturbate in my presence!" Sakura threw one last glare behind her shoulder.
"You don't get a say in that matter."
"Gee, thanks. Now I will never manage to fall asleep. You know what? Let's just pack the camp and move on."
"And what about my sleep?"
"You don't get it. As a punishment."
How could he even say something like that?! Madara was still shaking his head. What came onto him? She seemed so disgusted, and defensive? As if she felt threatened?
In retrospect, he just didn't think it properly through. He just said what he meant. Which was happening around her more and more often – what a peculiar habit was he forming… Almost his entire life long he was always measuring his words, only saying that what he meant for his interlocutor to hear. Words were weapons, wielded correctly ofttimes more efficient than the bladed ones.
Had he thought this through, he would realize that women may perceive this issue very differently. He just tended to forget she was one. He never had female comrade, and that was what Sakura was for him. And not only a comrade - a partner. In certain aspects even an equal one. She might be far below him in terms of battle prowess, but they weren't fighting any battles now. Their mission was very different and her bright mind was equally useful as it was a source of pleasure and surprise. It was, very, very long, or maybe never that Madara encounter an intellectual peer. Well, Tobirama probably was one. Not that he seeked out Senju bastard's company. Madara had to admit that he had a penchant for surrounding himself with those who were lesser than him. It was much more convenient – he didn't have to waste time assessing their ideas – he would know right away they were inferior to his.
With Sakura, he was discovering that ideas coming from another brain can be stimulating. That together one can achieve more than a simply sum of their capacities…
That's why he had hard time thinking about her as of a female. In his time there were barely any female ninja. Sure, if a particularly rare and valuable kekkei genkai had developed in a girl, she would have been trained. And some women were trained as kunoichi to serve later undercover: in brothels, with traveling armies, at courts of nobles. Coin they had earned through their trade was information. Using own clan women to such purposes would equal to procuring. Foundlings and orphans were used for that, forced to earn their keep in any way.
So he wasn't used to having a woman around. And he didn't want to treat Sakura as one. She was much more and much less than that.
She was more – because no matter how the future unravels there will be nothing for him in it. For her though – there could be. If they succeed. If he succeeds.
The best he could hope for himself was giving his all for his redemption. And even if he gives his all, it will never be enough. He can annihilate himself and it won't make up for what he did. There was nothing for him in the future even if they succeed. And even less if they don't. But she, she had a future. He had robbed her of it. He had robbed millions of faceless others as well, but they were just a heavy weight on his consciousness. Their rescue was seeking peace for his soul. And proving to himself that he is in the end capable of doing something good. Even if it was saving the mankind out of the calamity he caused himself.
Her rescue on the other hand… It was personal, painfully personal. She was the one he wanted to see laugh. He had never heard her laughter, but for sure she used to laugh a lot before. He wanted to see her off into her future. She was the only person for whom he wanted something.
She was just so much more. And it was difficult to think of her as of a "woman".
And she was less.
Too brash, too hard, too forward, just not womanly enough. The women he found aesthetically pleasing in his younger days were very different. They looked the part - bodies that promised warmth, comfort and childbearing and not combat. Not an innards-crushing punch in the gut or a chakra scalpel through an artery. Long, long black hair not those strange, choppy, pinkish strands (though he had to admit that the color, as impractical as it was, was growing on him.) Eyes so very black that one couldn't distinguish pupils from irises... That is what he used to find beautiful when he was still paying attention to such things.
Madara fished a carving knife from his pouch. Those shogi pieces were coming out more and more shapely. He should probably re-do the first ones – they weren't quite so regular. He was glad he never told her about his little shogi-project. She would have been constantly on his back, nagging him about the progress. Like this, he could perfect his work.
Madara bent over the piece of wood. Small shavings fell on the ground.
On the second thought, her eyes were actually very interesting - in certain lightings one could see specks of gold in them, in others - they seemed darker as the color of those precious stones he couldn't remember the name of, those that were so favoured on the court of Earth Daimyō. Yet in others lightings – they were of shade of freshly open leaves.
He stopped the knife mid-motion - it surprised and bothered him that he was even entertaining such trains of thoughts as thinking about physical qualities of women. And about his preferences thereof. But it was indeed happening more often recently. And it was happening with intensity that had him resort to most crude methods of satisfying those unexpected needs. He told her the truth, he found himself doing it when he was holding a watch. He didn't even remember when was the last time he had to lower himself to such means. He had spent long decades in his cave, and women were never on his mind. After his first death from the hand of Hashirama something changed in him. As if his plan had consumed the entirety of him and all his life-energy faded away and fall like meat from the bones until only the razor-sharp focus remained. Now, he was reborn yet again, and it felt as if life was back inside of him.
And maybe it was because she was constantly around… Even though he didn't find her particularly attractive maybe her presence was having an influence? He looked to the side – to where she lied, curled up and covered in blankets. After pouting the entire day, she went to sleep, not before shooting him a half dozen of deadly glares. Now she was sleeping and he could only hope that they will simply never talk about it again.
Futile hope. She was on it the next evening.
"What came on you to even touch such a topic with me?"
He knew what she was referring to without further specifications. Now he would need to disarm this bomb somehow. "Because it's normal. A normal, basic human need. For you probably more essential than for me, at this point."
"Why?"
Good, he managed to divert her focus. "Because you're younger. This body," Madara looked down. "If this is really supposed to be from my 'prime' then it is 30 years old or more. At that age it doesn't need as much… attention of that kind. At your age though… How old are you even?"
"Eighteen," she said and, unexpectedly, the corners of her mouth dropped as if she was going to cry. "I turned eighteen a half a year ago…" she added very quietly.
Madara examined her critically. He didn't understand what was she so sad about. But nothing cheered her better up than some goading. "You don't look it. Maybe because you're so small and thin. You look more like a racing goose and less like a woman."
"I'm not small and thin! And racing goose? What kind of insult was that supposed to be?" Sakura banged her fist against the ground. Small cracks traveled towards the campfire and some of the burning timber toppled out of the fire ring.
"Oh, I'm sorry, my mistake," Madara raised his hands defensively. "It is the temper of an eight-year old that makes you seem younger."
"What?!" Sakura tossed a shuriken she was polishing in direction of his face. He intercepted it easily, hooking it at his ring finger.
"Exactly. Temper. And lack of control of it." The shuriken swooshed in air. She dodged. Too slow. One of the blades nicked her leg, just below the line of her shorts.
Sakura smacked her tongue waving her hand over the wound and healing it instantaneously. "So, now I not allowed to get mad at you else I will be proving myself 'immature'? Nice maneuver."
"Exactly." Madara pointed at her with kunai he was sharpening. "Another thing you need to learn – putting your opponent where you want him to be is half of the success in any fight."
"So why did you get upset when talking about your age?" he risked. She wasn't fuming anymore, she had just fallen gloomy again.
"I always thought that turning eighteen will be a big deal. Party all night long, presents, all of my friends together… Now I don't even know when exactly it was. And it doesn't look like I will be celebrating my nineteenth birthday either."
"I feel like coming home. I never thought I would be happy to see your damn burnt-out crest, but I am looking forward to it!"
According to her logbook, they were about to enter the layer four. Sakura was all giddy. She never imagined being happy to see her world in the state it was now, but here she was – stupidly, childishly happy.
The space swirled around them as Madara made the jump.
"Where is the crest?" Sakura looked around. The stones around her were round and blindingly white. No trace of black fire's glaze. She climbed a larger rock. "Where is it?" She pulled the notebook out of her pouch and leafed through it. In the middle of it her fingers started to shake. "Fourth layer was done completely. We should see your marking!"
Madara was standing on another rock, his Sharingan activated. "Maybe we miscalculated. Way there or way back."
"Miscalculated? Do you mean we're lost?! It should be here! It should! I couldn't have made such a huge mistake! What does that mean?" Sakura was going through the page over and over again, her brain frantically trying to supply her a reason, a cause. "Is the structure different than we thought it is? Was it a gigantic mistake to come back along the one-removed dimension?!"
Madara sat down cross-legged on his rock. His silence wasn't helping. There was nothing now that could dam her panic. "How do we get home? Do we end to trace our steps back to the end, all 423 dimensions, and then back again how we came there in the first place? We don't even have enough supplies!"
"Maybe we don't have to. Katsuyu is summonable. Check when exactly did she appear."
Sakura dug in the logbook.
"There were several empty dimensions at what was supposed to be your summoning limit. We summoned her at dimension 349 if you count from the end of the lattice. In 340 from the end, which was the last interesting one we didn't try because we thought we were still too far. In 346, which was supposed to be the limit, we didn't try because it was a void. Then there were two additional voids and I guess we wanted to bypass them quickly and then you tried. Successfully."
"So we don't really know when we crossed the limit."
"No."
"But we know we are within 64 dimensions from the slug world, because you can summon her as well. We can always go systematically about that…"
"That will take us years!"
"Calm down. Or we can go back and pinpoint your Katsuyu's limit. That would give us a clue. Then we can find a plane of the limit and go perpendicular to it… But before we turn back, let's jump once more. Maybe we just made a mistake somewhere."
The next dimension held an endless plane of grey dust. And no crest. Sakura clutched to the last shreds of her sanity.
She could see it bothered Madara as well - he walked around, concentration on his face. He swiped with his foot left and right every second step. Then, abruptly he stopped and knelt. He wiped sand away from something. "It's here! It has been covered." In a blink of eye Sakura was by him, digging her hands into the sand, pushing it aside. She was never happier to see an Uchiha crest in her entire life. Not even when she saw it on the back of Sasuke's shirt.
They had to set up a camp, even though they were so close home. That was only reasonable, she didn't want to come home fainting from exhaustion with the first thing to do being rescuing Madara's chakra system. Also, even though the dimension they were in fit the description of the dimension that was expected to be here they weren't entirely sure where they were, so maybe they would need a detour or two tomorrow.
Now, with her mind clear of panic, Sakura was going through her notebook yet again. There must be something there, something that she missed!
"Come to sleep already," told her Madara from his bedroll. "The sooner you sleep, the sooner we set off tomorrow. You will crack this issue when we're home."
"Just a moment, I just need to check one thing… Or maybe two…" She heard Madara sighting. She was aware he had troubles falling asleep when she was still 'circling around'. But she really only needed couple minutes more... 'Let's count if from the very end once again' She opened the notebook on the page with dimension 427, there where they found the end. 'Alright: 426, 425, 424… Wait.'
"Madara! Madara! I've got it! I found the mistake! How could I have been so stupid! When we changed the route to dimension once-removed-left we stayed on layer 427! And I counted it as 426, because I was so used to the fact that jumping means changing the layer! Now it's clear, everything is how we expected it. The mistake was only in counting!"
She cried - tears of joy, he assumed - when they landed on the beach, and ran home. He was just entering the village when she reached their house already. Madara saw her pouncing and embracing the cocoon on the porch.
"Yoshiko-san! How are you! How have you been?" exclaimed Sakura. "I'm so happy to see you!"
She went rounds around the houses and he saw her checking on window shutters and tapping at roofs, every now and then throwing a comment about things that needed to be repaired. Then she disappeared in the neighbouring house and fell silent for a while.
Until he heard her call him. Her voice sounded unusual, there was a tone in it that he didn't like. At all.
"Madara! Please, come here." She called out again.
Madara entered the hut. Sakura was standing in the middle looking in front of herself.
"Tell me that I'm not crazy," she said not looking at him. "Tell me that you also see it."
"See what?" There was nothing peculiar in the sole room of the hut – an open-fire kitchen, a corner with sleeping mats, a baby's cradle in the middle, a cocoon on a stool by the window.
"The baby!" Sakura's voice morphed into a shriek. "The baby is gone!" She turned to him and her eyes were wide with horror. And deranged.
"What baby?"
"There was one here! In a cocoon! Hanging directly above the crib!"
"Are you sure?" he asked, but she didn't listen, she was already running out. He followed. He found her crawling under the porch of yet another house.
"The cat is gone as well," she informed him. He still didn't quite understand why should he care about the cat, but the pattern that was appearing was indeed alarming.
"Are you sure there was a cat there?" Madara crouched to look into the opening between the planks and the ground.
"I'm not sure if it was a cat. But there was some small animal and now it's gone."
"And do you see traces on the sand? Other than the ones you've just made?"
"I'm not that stupid! I was paying attention! And no, there were no traces."
"And can you come out of there already?"
She appeared with her hair tousled, but her face expression was closer to normal. "Are other cocoons still there? Only the cat and the baby are missing?" asked Madara.
Sakura was walking between the huts, scanning the perimeter. "The dog is also gone." She pointed to the left. "But otherwise everyone's here… I'll call Katsuyu, we need to check if there is someone awake… But why would someone wake up only a baby? A baby from a random fisher village? And a cat, out of all things? And how, first of all?"
He grabbed her shoulder and turned her around. Like a doll, he could turn her around like a doll. "Sakura. I don't think they are awake. The tree was sucking the chakra of the victims, right?" She slowly nodded. Her stiffness was also doll-like. "The baby, and the cat… They probably had very little chakra. It sucked it all and now they're gone."
AN: So, finally some MadaSaku content, lol. I am VERY curious about your impressions.
Please share your thoughts with me! Interaction with readers not only brings me joy, but is also hugely motivating. And from the conversations with some of your I've already drawn inspiration, so, by all means, do speak up!
PS. It didn't even last 4 days and I got a fanart for this chapter! The amazing victoria capo (aka lea fleuret) draw this:
: / / victoriacapo . tumblr post / 616200597144748032 / i-did-te-illustration-to-the-fanfic-the-last (remove all spaces)
To give you some context: his comic is an outcome of the great debate that went on after the translation of Chapter 8 of The Last Ones Standing on ficbook . net (Thank you for making the translation happen kotoffeya28 , and thank you to all my readers on ficbook for their brainstorming and creative input!) The topic of the debate was Madara's masturbation habits and preferences, and if you want to have a good laugh, go to the translation (link on my profile) translate the comments, and die laughing.