I've been looking forward to writing this chapter for ages. But, as a warning, this chapter is really fucking bleak. It's where most of the negative tags come into play and it contains a lot of angst. Like I said previously, if that's not your thing, leave now. Other than that, enjoy.
CHAPTER 12
Insanity
Inside the room were three cells, two of which were empty. The third one however contained two people. One of them was sitting in the shadows at the back of the cell, the other was curled up on the floor, whimpering in untold pain. Ino stepped closer to the cell to see who was whimpering. She looked down on him, and gasped. "Sai!" she called, "Sai, what happened to you?" But he didn't answer. Instead, the man sitting in shadows spoke up. "Damn you!" Sakura gasped. It was Sasuke. "DAMN YOU!" he said again, "Isn't it bad enough that you took his two most precious things away from him. Now you're impersonating his girlfriend AGAIN! YOU SICK BASTARDS!" Sakura stared at him in surprise. "Sasuke," she said, slowly approaching the cell, "What happened to you?"
But this turned out to be a mistake. Sasuke got up from where he was sitting and rammed into the bars of the cell. Now they saw why he couldn't tell who they were. He had a blindfold across his eyes. "HOW DARE YOU!" he roared, trying to reach for them through the bars, "DON'T YOU DARE IMPERSONATE HER! DON'T YOU DARE! IF I COULD SEE YOU WOULD BE LITTLE MORE THAN STAINS ON THE WALL!" Sakura was on the verge of tears when she heard this. To get him to stop his tirade, Sakura carefully slipped her hand through the bars and pressed her palm against Sasuke's cheek. A gesture of affection that only the two of them knew about. Sasuke stopped talking immediately and gasped. He put his own hand against hers, as if checking to see that it was real. "S-Sakura?" he asked, disbelievingly. "Yes," Sakura replied, tears filling her eyes, "It's really me Sasuke. here, let me take the blindfold off."
But as she reached for the blindfold however, Sasuke leaned away from her. "No!" he said, "Trust me, you don't want to do that." "What why?" Sakura asked. Sasuke sighed. "They didn't give me the blindfold to prevent me from seeing," he told them, "They gave it to me to stop the bleeding." "Bleeding!" exclaimed Sakura, "What bleeding? I can heal it." "No, I don't think you can" Sasuke replied, before lifting the blindfold slightly, to reveal empty sockets where his eyes should be. Sakura gasped and her hands flew to her mouth. When Sasuke put the blindfold back on, Ino asked, "But, what happened to Sai?" Sasuke sighed again. "They found out he sent a message to you" he told them. "How?" Ino asked. "They came in here and impersonated you," Sasuke explained, "Sai didn't buy it however. He said that you didn't talk the way they were. But he stupidly added that you couldn't have gotten his note so fast. But that was what they wanted to find out. Once he told them that..." Sasuke trailed off after that.
"What did they do?" Ino asked worriedly. As if on cue, Sai turned around to face them. "I...no...?" he said weakly, "Is... that you...?" Ino looked down on him, only to see what they did to him. Sai's hands had been cut off. When he and Ino locked eyes, he sat up slowly and tried to go over to her, but movement was too painful for him. "Sai stop!" Ino told him, "You're just going to hurt yourself!" Sai stopped and lay back down, wincing horribly. Temari and Hinata watched this reunion with growing anxiety. While it was good to know that Sai and Sasuke were alright, the visible lack of Naruto and Shikamaru was concerning. "Sasuke," Hinata began, "Do you know where Naruto and Shikamaru were taken?"
Sasuke looked in her general direction. "As a matter of fact I do," he told them "Naruto has been coming up here every time they're moved. He does this with a Shadow Clone. I keep telling him not to because he'll just completely drain his Chakra, but he never listens. He said he'll keep doing it until someone arrives to save us." Sasuke looked really bitter at that. "Currently he and Shikamaru are down the same hallway, just in different rooms," he went on, "To get there, you need to go down this hallway until you find a flight of stairs. Take them and go down three floors. Once you've done that, you follow the hallway that the stairs join with until you reach a junction. Take the right hallway, then turn left at the next doorway. In that hallway you'll find them. Naruto is in a room labelled "Extract" and Shikamaru is in a room marked "Shi"."
Temari and Hinata stared at him. "How did you remember all that?" Temari asked. "Naruto's clone came and told us this yesterday" Sasuke replied. Temari turned to the other three. "You two stay here and see if you can heal them," she said to Ino and Sakura, "Me and Hinata will go and get Shikamaru and Naruto." They nodded and as Temari and Hinata ran off in the directions Sasuke gave them, they heard a loud bang as Sakura broke down the bars of the cell. The two of them ran down the hallway as Sasuke instructed. Sure enough, their was a staircase leading down. They took it at a run, skipping every second step in order to get their faster. Temari had never felt more scared and excited. She was scared to see what they'd done with Shikamaru and excited that she will finally get to see him again. They followed Sasuke's instructions to a tee and sure enough, they came across a door labelled "extract". Hinata smashed it in and ran in. Temari kept going until she found the door marked "Shi". She didn't even bother pulling her fan out. She just kicked it down and ran in. And what she saw in there broke her.
Shikamaru was strapped to a metal table lying almost vertical against the wall. He was unconscious and looked horrible. His once strong build was now little more than a leather-bound skeleton. He was topless, and had multiple stab wounds on his arms and lacerations across his torso. His eyes had sunken, and dry tears surrounded his eyes. "Cry-baby" Temari choked out. Then she undid his restraints and he fell into her arms. She wanted to hit him for making her worry so much, but instead she held him close and sobbed into his shoulder for roughly three minutes. Eventually, she knew that if she stayed she'd be caught, so she stood up and propped him up on her shoulder. When she did, something fell out of the pocket of his trousers. Temari bent down and picked it up. It was the ring he had proposed to her with the month before. The sight brought fresh tears to her eyes. She took the ring out of the box and slipped it onto her finger. She'd show him when he woke up.
When she left the room, she saw Hinata doing the same with Naruto on her shoulder. He looked only slightly better than Shikamaru. He was just as thin, probably due to the overuse of his Shadow Clones. But he had much less lacerations and stab wounds than Shikamaru did. Judging by how Hinata was only just leaving Naruto's room now and that she had the signs of crying, she was doing the same as Temari. The two women dried their eyes and carried the two men along the hallways, going the opposite way that Sasuke described to them. Eventually, they reunited with the others. Ino must've run off and found Sai's hands, because she was just finishing reattaching them to his stumps. He was unconscious. Judging by Ino's freaking out, it was most likely from blood loss. Sasuke was standing propped against Sakura's shoulder. Judging by her annoyed expression, Temari could assume that she was unable to find his eyes.
"Oh good you found them," she said happily when she caught sight of the two other women, "Now let's get out of here." Ino picked Sai up in his arms, which was very easy due to how light he'd become. Sasuke leaned heavily on Sakura's shoulder since he couldn't see. But as they headed towards the exit, a very familiar voice called out behind them, "I'm afraid you can't take them. I still have need of them." At that moment, ropes and wires flew out of the walls and tangled themselves around Naruto and Shikamaru. The women turned, and became face to face with the ex leader of the Land of Silence, Gengo. It seemed prison had not done the man any favours. His once handsome face had become haggard and raw, his calm expression had become one of insanity and malice. He had clearly lost his mind.
Temari and Ino suddenly realised why they recognised the robes. They had been fighting against the Enlightened Ones the whole time. "You!" Temari yelled, "What do you want with them?" Gengo smiled maliciously. "I see you recognise me, that's nice," he said, his voice having lost any and all sanity it once had, "As for why I need these two, I want to break apart the Shinobi Alliance, and make us Shinobi the ones who rule. To do that, I will need the power of a Jinchuriki, specifically the Tailed-Beast." Hinata gasped and held onto Naruto tighter. "As for Nara," Gengo went on, "I needed his brains. His genius would've been invaluable to my take-over. So I tried to put him under a genjutsu. But it didn't work. His will was too strong. I tried torturing him to break him, but in the end, all I ended up doing was drive him mad." This time, it was Temari's turn to gasp. She looked at Shikamaru, still unconscious and tangled in ropes. When she brought him back and he awoke, if what Gengo said was true, would he be able to recognise her/
Gengo obviously saw the distraught look on Temari's face, because he doubled down on this. "Yes," he said gloatingly, "We installed listening devices into the room where we cast genjutsu because over the last week or so I've seen his lips moving. When we heard him talk, he talks to himself about flowers, food, guests and long white dresses." Temari gasped. Shikamaru hadn't gone mad, he'd been talking about his hopeful wedding with her in order to resist their genjutsu. She glanced at the ring on her finger at this. Gengo noticed and grinned. "Or maybe," he said, "He was planning his wedding to you? How adorable. It just means that his will is too strong to control. So how about I use him to demonstrate what our new weapon does. Powered by Uzumaki's Chakra of course."
At that moment, Gengo raised his hands to reveal Chakra threads. Using those threads, he yanked Shikamaru and Naruto out of Temari's and Hinata's hands. All they could do was watch as the two men were pulled through doors that opened in the walls, then shut behind them immediately. "Why do you want to demonstrate it on Shikamaru?" Temari demanded, tears falling from her face, "He isn't nearly as useful as Naruto and Sasuke to you!" "On the contrary," Gengo replied, "I need him more than I need Uchiha. All I needed was his eyes so that the weapon would be as powerful as possible. Sai was supposed to be killed that day, but I grew rather fond of him when he worked under me, so I couldn't kill him. Nara however destroyed my entire operation in the Land of Silence. Because of him I was locked up. If it hadn't been for Takisha I'd probably be dead by now. But because of Nara, I don't have my resources or influence anymore. So I can't allow him to live, I hope you understand."
Temari clenched her fists in anger. "You bastard!" she yelled as she pulled out her fan, "I'll kill you, you son of a Bitch. I'LL KILL YOU!" She blasted him with her fan, but Gengo just used his Chakra threads and folded the tunnel in on itself, protecting him from harm. "I've got to hand it to Takisha," Gengo commented, "He's a very good teacher. But anyway, I've got work to do. I'll let you keep Sai and Uchiha if you're able to escape here. Good luck, I hope to see you when I have what I desire." And with that, he rearranged the tunnel so that he was separated from them, but revealed several Enlightened Ones standing where Shikamaru and Naruto were pulled through. But when the walls finished moving, they charged.
Temari braced herself for a fight, but Sakura grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the exit. "NO!" Temari yelled, struggling against her. In the corner of her eye she could see Ino wrestling with Hinata. Sai was slumped safely over her shoulders. "Let me go. I'm not leaving here without Shikamaru!" "You remember the conditions Kakashi-sensei gave us?" Sakura told her as she pulled her away from the cloaked Shinobi. "I don't care about that!" Temari roared, hot tears were falling freely down her face, but she ignored them, "I just want Shikamaru back. Go on without me, I'll catch up!" "It's too dangerous!" Sakura yelled back.
She was having difficulty both guiding a blind Sasuke and trying to keep Temari from running off. Eventually she gave up, reached into her bag and jammed something into Temari's neck. "I'm sorry" Sakura told her. Before she could respond, the world began to spin. As she slumped onto Sakura's other shoulder, she could see Sakura throw a needle to Ino and watched as Ino jammed it into Hinata's neck. As Temari fell into blackness, she said one last thing. "Shikamaru, no."
So that got really bleak, sorry about that. I was in an awful mental place when I came up with that, and had no idea how to change it so that what is now. I hope you enjoyed nonetheless. Now, see as for how they're going to save them. You'll just have to wait and see. See you then.