A/N: I actually re-watched this episode(s). And their password, about striking when the enemy is unaware and asleep had me snickering for most of the battle, when I should have been paying attention. I can't remember a single instance in the entire series where anyone actually does anything remotely resembling an actual stealth kill. Very, very occasionally, they might surprise someone, but as that's usually just the prelude to a four episode long battle, I don't think it counts. The whole idea would seem to run blatantly counter to Naruto's lifeview. And even Sasuke's so bloody dramatic about everything, I can't imagine him doing it either. And Sakura, that's just one of the ninja-esque function of medical ninjutsu that remained forever unexplored by loyal Konoha ninja. Ah, well, good times.
And, by the way, for those of you who still remember this scene clearly, what do you think would have happened had Orochimaru chosen to impersonate Sakura? Because once she recites the password, that seems to clear her of all suspicion in Sasuke's mind. Although I have to say, canon Sakura seems to feel very little fear once she's broken out of the genjutsu. It makes her come off about as clever as a hypocritical bag of rocks, but that's canon for you. But if it didn't have flaws, I wouldn't write fanfiction about it.
Enough rambling. I was transcribing and reacting as I watched, so it ended up like this. Would you prefer I start putting these at the bottom? Though I think they're easier to skip, if such is your desire, at the top where you've got the chapter header to guide your way. Away to the land where snakes attempt to bash their prey to death with their heads.
Kill Your Heroes
-Chapter Thirteen-
Ergophobia (Part II)
Sakura had seen flesh bubble and melt like wax beneath fire before, but she'd never, not even in the wild dreams that followed her first real battle, imagined that someone could just...peel it away, like the damaged skin of an orange. It was strangely fascinating, like most truly horrific things were, and she couldn't have looked away even if she hadn't been so acutely aware it was a bad idea. Sakura knew with utmost certainty she'd revisit this scene in nightmares for years to come.
It had begun with a wind.
She was beginning to suspect that there would come a point in her life where she wouldn't trust any breeze strong enough to raise a cloud of dust or a whirl of leaves without strong evidence that the whole forest was effected, but as this had been a localized event strong enough to raze a path clear of grass and small rocks, she'd been absolutely certain that it was on purpose.
At the first strong gust, she'd immediately taken cover. She'd noted Sasuke-kun, stretched belly-down in the cover of brush, but she'd felt the sting of ryō-sized rocks and had retreated behind the root of one of the behemoth trees that populated the entire forest. Before they'd been allowed to enter the Forest of Death, she'd been under the impression that the area was a forested mountain. She'd had no idea that the swell on the horizon was owed not to dirt and rock, but to trees whose branches you could hold an Academy drill practice on.
So it wasn't so much a root she sheltered behind so much as a thick wooden wall, albeit one with a heavy layer of moss growing on it. It was only when she heard the wind die down that she scurried up the side of her shelter and peeked over, careful to keep close to the tree and minimize her profile. Where they'd been standing only moments ago looked like a blade had sheared a path down the center of the clearing, and she was doubly glad of the protection and vantage the huge moss-covered tree offered.
But even from her new height, she couldn't see Naruto. She hadn't thought the wind had been that strong, but the woods were very dense, which was part of what made navigating them so difficult. It was possible he was somewhere close by, her view simply obstructed. If nothing else, she'd learned to respect his durability. He had a fool's luck and she had to trust that meant that he hadn't been seriously injured.
Sakura thought for a moment her belief was confirmed as Naruto came out of the settling dust, but she stayed where she was. They were taught henge in the Academy not only because it was a useful jutsu, but also because it was very difficult to detect even by high-level ninja. And she'd lost track of Naruto entirely in the brief chaos. She thought it was Naruto, but she also thought it was suspicious that someone would waste the chakra on such an impressive ninjutsu without attempting to remove at least one of them from the field of battle. Testing for chunin or not, no one in this Forest should have the kind of chakra to use it so frivolously.
It could just be an idiot showing off, but she thought there wasn't any harm in letting Sasuke-kun be the one to confront Naruto. If she thought she could circle around behind without being noticed, she might have tried, but she had less than perfect confidence in her abilities.
That was in no little part due to certain ninken, who were either going to give a complex or make her the greatest ninja who ever spent her childhood being literally hounded.
So Sakura stayed where she was, muscles tense, while Sasuke called out a challenge.
And she was surprised at how quickly Sasuke-kun determined Naruto was a fake, flinging a kunai at him. It was the way he dodged that decided her, not his knowledge of the password.
The phrase wasn't long and almost rhymed, and they'd spent a long time honing their memory at the Academy, or at least the kunoichi classes had, so she'd thought Naruto was finally buckling down enough to memorize it seriously. How could he expect to receive and carry messages so confidential they couldn't be written down otherwise? Or even recall complex directions without consulting an incriminating map? She'd had an instant's thought it might have made up, at least a little, for how he'd made it through the first portion on sheer bravado.
Apparently Sasuke didn't share her opinion. And that was a good thing.
"You're a clever one," not-Naruto drawled. "Why don't you ask your friend to come out from where she's lurking? I wonder if you'd accuse her of the same thing. Are you burdened by dimwits or is this one just a special case?"
"Come on out, Sakura," Sasuke-kun commanded.
Sakura did as she was told, sidling closer to Sasuke, who demanded the password from her without ever looking at her. And she, of course, recited it effortlessly back at him.
"And that isn't suspicious?" the stranger wearing Naruto's face asked.
"No. It'd be suspicious if Sakura couldn't recall the password word-for-word. Naruto's too much of an idiot to manage it," Sasuke-kun replied, not hiding his disdain for both the stranger and his teammate. "In his case, it wasn't so much a password as a trap for anyone who might be eavesdropping. And you stumbled right into it."
Sakura wanted to allow this pre-match gloating to lull her into the same sense of fighting for points that she'd enjoyed at the Academy, but the dank, heavy atmosphere of the forest and the blatant aggression of the foreign shinobi that they'd shared the waiting room with kept her on edge. As did the thought that they'd all registered in teams of three, one of theirs was missing, and they had no idea where the stranger's teammates were. Sakura did not want to find herself the victim of being outflanked, whether the stranger was playing for points or blood. All her battles thus far had been won because she'd managed to face every opponent one-on-one. The one time she'd tried for more, on the deck of Gatō's yacht, she'd almost gotten herself killed.
So she let Sasuke-kun handle the conversation.
"I'm impressed. You haven't dropped your guard at all, have you?" the stranger said, Naruto's image wavering and fading.
Sakura was struck first by just how ugly the woman who replaced him was. Her skin was sallow, her eyes had dark bruising beneath them, and her lips were so thin as to be practically nonexistent. And she hadn't tried to correct any of it with cosmetics. But worse than that was what she wore. Sakura wouldn't have guessed there was a woman on the planet who'd emphasize an already non-existent waist with a thick rope tied in a strange sort of bow. Combined with the drab, unflattering clothing, if it hadn't been for the feminine mode of speech, Sakura would have guessed 'man' before 'woman'. And an unfashionable one at that.
Civilian women could get away with doing what they liked concerning their looks, but kunoichi were trained well before puberty how to flatter and enhance their assets. That was one course she was almost certain the boys had no equivalent for. She couldn't imagine Sasuke-kun sitting through lectures and practical exercises on the production—almost like it was a play, with props and costumes and lines, the markers that differentiated docile housewife from whore and everything in between—of masculinity, as she had femininity.
Though, there was no law anywhere that said a man couldn't use feminine speech.
And, man or woman, it didn't matter. Kunai killed, no matter what hands wielded them.
The stranger had been talking as she wrestled with the irrelevant matter of gender and she'd listened to the words, even if she hadn't been focusing on them. "This promises to be very entertaining." Making an elaborate production out of drawing her own scroll out of a pouch, the Kusa-nin made certain they got a good look at the companion character to their own Heaven scroll. "You'd love to get your hands on our Earth scroll, wouldn't you?" she taunted, before she did something that almost made Sakura gag. She swallowed it whole.
Disgusted, Sakura added at least minor body manipulation to the list of the shinobi's skills.
Strange as it was, Sakura wished they'd stop drawing this out. It wasn't like the situation with the Suna-nin. There wasn't going to be any apologies and everyone going their own way. This was just scraping her nerves raw, making her so jumpy that it was going to go beyond honing her reflexes and make her clumsy instead. Once, she remembered being good at this kind of psychological warfare. Not as good as Ino, but then again, no one was. It was a dim, faraway memory now.
But she didn't have the courage to be the one who struck the first blow, so she stayed quiet, willing to follow Sasuke-kun's lead. And, judging by his expression, he was almost as eager to begin the battle as she was, though their reasons were probably very different.
That was when the world went wrong.
She thought she remembered killing intent. She'd thought Zabuza was as bad as it could get.
She'd been wrong.
Sakura had only caught the edge of Zabuza's killing intent. All those times Kakashi-sensei had driven fear into her mind, it was a needle thrusting and this, this was a wedge driven by a sledgehammer. It tore her open like a rotten stump, exposed all her weaknesses, her insecurities, and ripped her apart with a vivid, immersive vision of her own death. The whole world seemed to be washed in shades of crimson pain.
She hadn't realized she'd collapsed to her knees, but she found herself there, trembling violently. It was like those earliest nightmares, where her fear was so great it was a kind of paralysis. She couldn't move, couldn't scream. Just sit and shiver, her breathing quick and gasping, the kind that led to fainting.
It was Sasuke's violent retching that brought her back to herself.
She was always alone in the nightmares. Always. Or as alone as a relentless enemy and encroaching death would ever let her be.
The paralysis of terror wasn't the only thing that followed her into waking. More than that came the chase. She'd run and run and run until daylight broke the cycle and even then not escape that restless need. If their enemy had taken a single step forward, had drawn a kunai, she would have bolted. Bolted without a single thought for Sasuke-kun or Naruto or anything else. It was that kind of overwhelming.
But as she watched Sasuke-kun struggle to pull himself into an unbalanced half-crouch, she realized she couldn't run, not like that. Because she had never seen this expression on him before, his wild, desperate eyes not focusing on his opponent, but seeking her out. Beyond the crushing pressure of the fear of her own death, something tugged at her heart. Sasuke-kun...
What she couldn't know was that Sasuke, in his relentless pursuit of perfection, had created for himself an unexpected weakness. He'd built himself up to never run and because the fear was too great to advance, he could only stand there and quiver.
But she'd been here before.
It was not a comfortable place, it was not a pretty one, it was not the one she wanted to live in, but she'd died dozens of deaths in dreams. In fire, in water, in pain that had lasted longer than the brief, harsh death of a kunai driven deep.
She was getting a little light-headed from her breathing, but she didn't slow it. She knew she needed a plan. Needed to do something more than attack or run blindly. But her cleverness was failing her, stymied by a wall of skill. She could not attack and hope to win, but she didn't know if just running would be enough. Not when their opponent could use abilities like this without any sign of preparation or strain. Whoever, whatever this Kusa-nin was, she wasn't a chunin exam candidate.
Inaction was also death and between going forward and falling back, she would choose retreat. Choice alone wasn't enough, but unless Sasuke-kun came to himself quickly, it might have to be. She didn't think she could carry Sasuke-kun fast enough to escape, not without something to keep the enemy-nin busy. And she doubted her genjutsu would cause this one to do more than blink.
She was drawn from her desperate, fruitless planning by Sasuke's slow struggle to draw a kunai and straighten into something like his usual stance. She'd never seen him fight so hard to achieve so little.
"Very good," the woman praised him. "What happens now?"
Sakura watched their enemy draw two kunai, holding them tauntingly loose by the loops. "Don't worry, I'll make it quick. But I don't have to tell you that, do I? You've seen it with your own eyes. But I must say, how...disappointing."
Sakura saw the enemy draw her arm back. Saw Sasuke-kun, still held firmly in the grip of his fear.
And all her half-formed plans, so painfully reasoned through the press of terror smothering her, vanished.
Her hand darted to her kunai pouch, her wrist snapping out in a perfect release while her legs drove her to the side from where she'd crouched, her shoulder coming up beneath Sasuke-kun's ribs hard enough for a pained wheeze to escape, but she dug her fingers into the back of his shirt and straightened enough to fling herself forward into a sprint.
"So the prey isn't so defenseless, after all," her opponent called after them, the sound of metal against metal telling her she'd parried her kunai.
She didn't stop to make conversation, just ran, using chakra and the odd, slanted trunks to take great hurtling leaps. Sakura's back was tense with the anticipation of a kunai thrown in return, but none came. It wasn't luck, she didn't think when she had room to think about anything but angle and output and kami-sama, what do I do if—, but it was part of the same reason that shinobi had stopped to make conversation before attacking.
Whatever she wanted, she wanted to do it face to face.
She didn't retreat too far, part of her aware that Naruto was somewhere, that that ninja had done something to him, the other reason being that she couldn't outrun their enemy with Sasuke-kun bouncing against her shoulder like a sack of rice.
Sakura expected him to angrily shove away when she crouched down, expected him to assume that extra edge of gruffness that he used to cover his very rare embarrassment, but he just sort of slumped to the ground, eyes still too wide and too wild to even pretend at composure. He was more mobile than he had been, the pain of her bony shoulder jabbing him in the ribs maybe enough to loose the hold of the genjutsu, but he wasn't free of it.
Probably because it wasn't entirely a genjutsu, Sakura thought as she hovered worriedly. Their opponent was simply that terrifying. "Sasuke—," he slapped a hand against her mouth before she could say anything more, his grasp on his kunai tightening.
"We have to get out of here," he whispered desperately. "We have to move."
That was what he said, but he didn't rise to lead the way as he always had before. She caught a flicker of movement in her peripheral vision and she felt her own eyes widen as she took in the sheer scope of the creature staring unblinking back at her with silent menace.
She'd been in survival class mode since they'd passed beneath the first branches of the Forest of Death, so her mind provided information without conscious effort. So beyond the immediate, oh kami-sama, that's a giant snake, there was a stream of information. They lived in a forested, temperate climate. Snakes were a fact of her life and Sakura hadn't thought she'd had any particular fear of them. But, then again, she'd never met one whose head was almost as large as her bedroom.
As she ducked away from Sasuke-kun's hand, she registered, non-native, judging by the shape of the head, nonvenomous, likely constrictor type, but that was all she had time for as she leapt and the snake struck at her with blinding speed. Its teeth were matched rows of backwards curved white pillars that led down into the darkness of its throat, two rows on the lower jaw, and four along the roof of its mouth. And as that mouth closed around her, the thought that she'd guessed correctly about it being a constrictor wasn't any kind of comfort.
But she didn't have time for self-congratulation or regret. She'd drawn kunai as she jumped from the tree and now she used them to anchor herself against the forward momentum that would have had her in the back of its throat. She drove them deep into the roof of its mouth, swinging her feet up so that she could latch onto the ridged ceiling with chakra. Which worked for the moment before it registered the pain and then she was a rock being shaken in a wooden box, except this box had nails driven in it with the pointed ends exposed and the rock was flimsy and fleshy.
It was whipping its head about violently, trying to dislodge her, its size actually a hindrance because she was too small to be forced down its maw by the powerful muscles in its throat. She tried to hold herself in place, but while her arms and legs were safely away from teeth, she wasn't strong enough to hold her core completely steady. Her shirt caught on the tip of one and in her distraction, the next sudden shift saw more than fabric caught.
She swallowed a shriek and stifled the instant urge to rip away, closing her eyes so that she could pretend she wasn't in something's mouth, and waited for the right moment. It came when the snake threw back its head, nearly two-thirds of its massive body rocketing upward, perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Sakura let go and for a moment she was in terrifying freefall, her back to the waiting throat and with no good way to judge distance in the dark, but for just a moment the jaws opened, sunlight spilled in, and she drove in a second set of kunai. This time she was far enough back that she only need to worry about the teeth if the snake dropped its head and she fell forward, but she'd had enough of this. It wasn't nearly as damp as she would have thought, but there was an unnerving smell and her side was warm and sticky and aching.
She shoved off from the roof and landed awkwardly across the presently vertical space at the base of the mouth, just at the back of the tongue. She'd lost her footing and had to channel chakra through her hip instead, but she was sprawled next to her target area and that would have to be good enough. Sakura had tried to remember if she'd been taught anything of snake anatomy, but all she could remember at the moment were irrelevant facts about organ size increase during digestion and it wouldn't help at all if its heart could expand up to forty percent with a large meal. But the brain was protected by bone, the spine by flesh and distance, so that left the front of the throat.
This time, she unsheathed one her knives, longer and better suited for cutting than any kunai. She flipped it so that the curve was angled as if she had a fang of her own and with all her weight and chakra, both hands firm on the hilt, she plunged it down and then tore them through the flesh like she was trying to plow a field. Blood spurted up, soaking her hands, her front, her face, but she only re-dug the trench, the unprotected flesh parting gratifyingly beneath her well-sharpened blade. She worked with frantic energy and because she was no longer dangling, its struggling became less painful and more simply the sensation she'd left her stomach some twenty feet behind.
Then she saw daylight and she followed it, using her knife and her free hand to part the way, slithering free of the writhing mass of snake like some particularly monstrous birth. She hoped it was residual nerve function, but even it wasn't, animals weren't like humans. In the face of devastating injury, they would back down and flee.
Standing unsteadily, she was surprised to glimpse Sasuke-kun. Her sense of time and distance, constrained by the dark interior of a snake's mouth, had made the brief struggle last much longer and cover much more distance than it had. Her breathing settling a little from its ragged pace, she leaped back up the trunk to rejoin him and it wasn't until she went to sweep her bangs away from where they were sticking to her cheeks that she fully realized just how covered in gore she was, her knife still clenched in one hand in a white-knuckled grip.
So it was that she thought Sasuke-kun's look was for her, but when he gritted out, "Behind—," she turned to see something bubbling up out of the snake's head.
Their fight wasn't nearly finished yet.