The reviews have been quite lovely and encouraging. Here's another
chapter, so let me know if you like it or hate it or whatever else you
feel. Oh yes, as for "121".. I'm a gundam wing 1x2x1 fanatic, what can I
say.. GW is my first fandom and well, I can't help but insert them
wherever..
Warning: Most definite OOC now.. maybe some grammar mistakes I have not caught. Bit of violence, insertion of odd interactions.
Fighting Against the Grain
Gai and Kakashi stood back to back, ignoring the pile of corpses littered at their feet as more Sound soldiers rushed at them. They worked in unison, killing the enemies quickly and efficiently, but it was far from quiet work. Gai was too busy bellowing out the number of the enemies that he had masterfully dispatched.
"Ah ha! Fourteen! And you shall make fifteen!"
And then the laughing, followed by the manly yawping..
Kakashi wondered if his fighting partner thought he was in a battle or in a stage production.
'I wonder how the kids are doing,' Kakashi thought as he swiped his kunai across the throat of one of the enemies who stupidly got too close. 'I know this is too much for them, but, they can do this. They have to.'
The silver haired commander of the 121 fought more viciously as he thought of those youngsters in his command. He was pinned here with Gai, and they could not afford to be here, immobilized by these ninjas, while his soldiers were fighting for their lives. Yes, he had hopes that Sasuke and Naruto would get stronger in battle, but he had thought that he would be there to help them through it. Instead, he had no idea where they were, how they were doing.
All he could do was fight the best he could, believe in the abilities of his soldiers, and hope for their survival.
--
Sasuke burst into the clearing with Sakura just behind him, ready to once again jump into a fight. How long he and the girl had run, he had no idea. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, but that did not matter. They were still alive and relatively uninjured, which was more than he could say for all the numerous numbers of the Sound ninjas they had encountered so far. True, Sakura had not helped any, but she had not hindered him much either. She had stayed out of the way when an enemy appeared, making sure that Sasuke could fight without worrying about her. She had kept up with the mad dash pace that Sasuke had set without complaint as well.
Therefore, when they heard a gurgling scream just to the east of them, they had both run towards it unhesitatingly, knowing that someone from their side was fighting against the enemy in a heated battle.
So when they ran into the clearing with weapons out and bodies ready to move in any direction, they had expected to run into a significant number of enemies. Instead, they encountered a sight that was so surreal and startling that their limbs froze from the scene laid out before them.
First of all, there were Narutos. Not one as they had come to expect, but multiples of that blond idiot. Plural.
And they were all fighting viciously, each of them yelling out something that might have been a battle yell or a garbled insult as they threw themselves into action. More miraculous than the fact that Naruto had multiplied was that these boys were actually winning.
Bodies of Sound ninjas lay on the ground, some dead and others severely wounded, and the last two standing seemed to be on the verge of collapse. They were barely blocking the numerous hits that several Narutos were inflicting upon them, unable to go on the offensive due to the sheer number of the blond.
Sasuke watched, his red eyes flaring, as many Narutos gleefully beat up on the remaining ninjas. His Sharingan, his long awaited birth right, saw what Sakura's eyes could not. He could see the flare of chakra around each and every one of the Naruto copies, as if they were all real people. This was not just a replication jutsu they had all learned, because these were real bodies. They were not mere illusions to fool the enemy before one attacked from a blind spot. These bodies had solidity, chakra, and thinking processes, if Naruto even possessed such a trait.
When the last of the ninjas fell, all the Narutos before his eyes evaporated into thin air, disappearing in a cloud of pale smoke, every single one of them smiling triumphantly. Then there was only one left, the true Naruto, his smile showing his teeth and his blue eyes fierce. Blood spotted him in random places, gashes ripped into his uniform bared the tanned skin beneath, and dirt covered him just about everywhere.
'Naruto.. you look.. so..'
Sasuke did not finish that thought, and shook his head to clear it out of his head for good measure. For a moment, he had been so moved, his chest tight and his breath trapped somewhere between his throat and stomach. Why he would have such a reaction to his rival was a mystery and it disturbed him on a level he had not thought possible.
"Yo, Sasuke," he heard the overly self-satisfied blond say, "wasn't that the shit? I am so good, oh yeah."
He stood still while the widely grinning Naruto walked toward him and Sakura. No, not walk, but strutted, his chest puffed out and his arms swinging at his side confidently.
"Did you see, did you see? I kicked so much ass."
The dark haired boy had nothing to say to refute it. Had he not seen it with his own eyes enhanced by the power of his inherited talent?
"I got ten of them, ten!" Naruto continued boasting as he got ever closer to Sasuke, "and I'm still standing. Not such a useless idiot now, am I?"
When Sasuke did not reply, Naruto felt his grin slip a little. Why was the stoic boy even more stoic than ever? The dark haired genius had to have seen how well he had fared against those impossible seeming odds, and he must be impressed with the jutsu he had used to achieve that victory. Why couldn't he at least smirk at him or something, just give him a reaction to show that he acknowledged his accomplishments?
Not that he cared, but still, it irked him that Sasuke had no reaction whatsoever.
"Naruto," he heard a small voice behind the yet unresponsive Sasuke, "what did you do? What was that?"
Belatedly, Naruto realized that Sakura stood there with Sasuke, her green eyes uncertain in her thoughtful face, regarding him with confusion and a bit of disbelief. How the hell had he not seen that the love of his life was standing not three feet away from him, getting closer with every step he took? Why was it that the only thing his eyes had seen was Sasuke, his dark hair blowing in the heated, fiery air as he exploded into the clearing, only to stand there immobile, staring at him all the while?
"You saw, didn't you, Sakura?" Naruto smiled at Sakura through gritted teeth, his facial muscles ticking from the sheer force of it. If Sasuke was going to ignore him, well, he was going to do the same damn thing. The theory was eye for an eye, or something, so it was only fair that he pretended that Sasuke wasn't even there.
"I saw.." Sakura paused, unsure about how to say what was on her mind. Naruto stopped walking towards her and Sasuke then, pausing at a spot directly in front of Sasuke, close enough so that if the blond reached out, he could touch the unspeaking boy before him.
"You saw me. Lots of me. Cool, huh?" Naruto continued with his huge smile, his eyes crinkling from the width that the grin had reached. If he couldn't impress his damned, too-good-for-him rival, then he could at least impress the girl of his dreams.
"I did. They weren't just replications, were they?"
"Right! That was Shadow Replication! Bet you didn't know I could do that!"
Sakura shook her head, her eyes never leaving Naruto's painfully grinning face and she reached out to grab Sasuke's shirt for comfort. This wasn't Naruto, it couldn't be, right? Naruto was supposed to be the worst at everything, barely succeeding where she had excelled. Even during training when he had worked himself to the bone, he had not learned new jutsus like Sasuke or her. He had only been taught the basics of chakra control, something everyone had already learned by heart and he had not even mastered that completely.
That was Naruto that she knew, the failure, the loud mouthed idiot, the one who would always try the hardest but never succeed in anything. This Naruto, the one who had mastered and used Shadow Replication, a jutsu that she knew to be forbidden due to its excessive difficulty and high occurrence of death during learning, she just could not know.
This could not be Naruto.
--
The clean-up after the sudden attack went quickly, the grisly task of gathering bodies and the wounded carried out efficiently in solemn quietude. Not much was said as survivors trickled into the main camp, some of them looking worse than the dead, their faces drawn and mouths silent. The battle had only lasted a little more than an hour, but the casualties were grave, the fifth line having lost more than a third of its numbers. The fact that every enemy agent had been eliminated before they had a chance to break through to Konoha, served only as a minor consolation.
Kakashi rubbed his headband covering his left eye idly, watching the grim scene before him. He was used to this kind of thing, seeing dead bodies of his comrades laid out in bloody repose, but such was war. They had won this day, but the cost was always too high, the price of victory always paid by lives. Yet, beside the grief, was a sense of relief. None of his battalion had shown up in the corpses, which raised his hopes that all of them had survived.
How had this happened? How was it that a group so large had infiltrated so far into their defenses without being detected only to launch an attack at the fifth line? It puzzled him to no end that this undetectable group of more than four hundred ninjas had not bypassed the fifth line to go straight into Konoha. There must have been a purpose to attacking the fifth line. The infiltration had been too successful, too well thought out for it to have been anything other than planned out.
Had they also planned on losing? If so, then why? What the hell was going on anyway?
As he stood in the midst of medical care and body gathering, he saw faces he recognized straggle in from the edges of the tree line. He smiled when Gai, his eyes overflowing with happy tears, bear hugged Lee as he came into the camp limping with Neji by his side. He pretended not to notice how Kurenai's face had nearly broken when TenTen and Shikamaru brought an unconscious Hinata, but laughed at her scathing reprimand to Chouji who had dared to come back dragging Kiba and his dog by the scruffs of their necks. His face mask was the only thing preventing others from seeing his smile when Shino, the boy with even less expression than the rock carvings of the Hokages, cringed ever so slightly from Ino's lamenting account of how she had nearly lost her beautiful hair to all the fire.
However, the ones that he considered as his, the boisterous blond, the stoic genius and the politely cheerful girl, they would not show up, even after the moon rose and the clean up finished.
--
The tiny crescent moon hung in the sky, illuminating very little to the three weary people occupying a small space between two large oaks. The bluish tint of the light gave all of them a harsh look, highlighting the cheekbones to create deep shadows that hollowed out their cheeks. They had no fire to ward off the chilling light, nor did they have food to stave off the hunger nipping their stomachs. What they did have was a tension so thick that it was suffocating them.
They had not chosen to get lost during battle, but inevitably, that was what had happened. Sasuke could not believe that during his speedy dash in search for enemies, he had not taken into account what direction he had run. In fact, with all the adrenaline of battle flushed out of system, he could not clearly recall what he had done to win against the enemies who had come before him. All he could remember with any accuracy was the burning in his lungs, the tunnel vision of his Sharingan, and the feeling that Naruto had evoked.
A small tilt of his dark head brought Naruto into his line of vision. The blond was busy staring up at the sky, his back comfortably against the oak and his feet stretched out before him. He looked as if he was just star gazing, but the glaze of his eyes seemed a million miles away, seeing something that Sasuke could not see.
Sakura shifted next to him, her body brushing slightly against his as she fell into sleep. She could no longer take the tension, the stress from this harrowing day. Everything had happened so fast, yet so slowly, making her head hurt. If sleep was her only avenue of escape, she would take it, if only to wake up in the morning with a better mind set to confront everything she had seen.
When Sakura's breath evened out completely, Sasuke carefully stood, making sure not to wake her. She needed rest, probably more than either he or Naruto, because she was not in the same physical shape as they. It must have been hard on her, running for her life and not knowing if she would ever find safety.
Naruto heard soft footsteps approaching him, but he did not turn his head. Instead, he lowered his head from contemplation of the stars to stare at his hands fidgeting on his lap. He had waited all day for Sasuke to say something to him, but he had gotten nothing. Even Sakura had stopped talking to him after he had told her the jutsu that he had used, the three of them trying to find their way back to camp in utter silence. Now, it seemed that Sasuke was headed his way, perhaps to say something, perhaps to walk right past him to something else.
"Are you injured?" Sasuke asked softly as he crouched next to Naruto, his eyes searching the blond's face and body for visible wounds. Though Naruto had splatters of blood on his clothes and skin, he could not make out any cuts or scrapes. "Did you get hurt?"
Shrugging his shoulders, Naruto snorted and let out a soft chuckle. "What do you care? And why do you want to know now?" Not that he was bitter, god forbid. "Shouldn't you have asked way before?"
Frowning at the antagonistic tone, Sasuke edged a little closer to peer into his surly rival's face. He noted that besides the permanent uniform scars of three lines running parallel down each cheek, the blond idiot looked remarkably unscathed for being in a battle against ten ninjas of high caliber. Sure, Naruto was good, he acknowledged in the silence of his mind, but damn it, he wasn't that good. He had suffered many injuries fighting the Sound, from the stab wounds on his arm to the bone deep bruising from well placed hits. If he had sustained injuries, so should Naruto have, regardless of what jutsu he had used.
"Just answer the damned question." Sasuke pushed the urge to shake the idiot by his rock hard head and tried to reason with him. "You won't be any good if you hide that you're hurt."
So that's what it was. What the hell had he expected, a measure of concern? The damned genius boy had not even given his Shadow Replication technique a cursory notice and he had wanted to hear.. what, worry? From this block of ice that masqueraded as human?
"I'm fine," Naruto bit out as he turned his resentful eyes towards his uncaring rival. "And thanks for caring, asshole."
Sasuke met Naruto's eyes without flinching, his lips pursed in thought. He had known Naruto was fine, but then again, even if the idiot was bleeding out from a sucking chest wound, he had a feeling that his loud mouthed rival would say exactly the same thing.
"Some of this blood has to be yours."
"Yeah, it is." Naruto narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. It was rather disconcerting, the way Sasuke would not look away, the way he kept on looking into his eyes like he could see something beyond the baby blues. "I heal real fast. Always have."
When Sasuke only grunted and continued to stare, Naruto barely suppressed the growl rising in his throat. What, didn't the damned genius boy believe him or something? What was wrong with healing fast, anyway? It was pretty damned useful for a soldier to have healing abilities that allowed minor cuts close almost instantaneously and the major hurts wash away in only minutes. Sasuke could not fault him for that natural ability, could he?
"That is.." Sasuke paused, not knowing how to say what was on his mind. He was glad that Naruto was a fast healer, but he would never say that to his blond roommate out loud. There just was no way for him to say anything to Naruto to express how relieved he was that the blond was really fine and not just saying so to look tough. He could not say any of those things, how could he when he could barely believe it himself that he felt in such a way?
"Look, before you get into a snit, Kakashi said it's my own unique ability, okay? So just lay off, will ya?"
Tearing his eyes away from Sasuke's intense black eyes, Naruto leaned back fully into the tree and crossed his arms in what he knew looked like a defensive gesture. But he could not help it, not when Sasuke had stared at him so steadily with that unreadable look in his eyes. He did not turn his head when he heard Sasuke get up and walk away, back to his place beside Sakura. So what if he preferred to be next to the pretty girl? If he could, he would have taken that spot next to his pink haired crush.
"I do, you know," Sasuke said softly and unexpectedly as he sat down next to Sakura's sleeping form.
"You do what?" Naruto asked wearily, shifting his body to find a comfortable position to keep watch. They still had no idea what kind of enemies was lurking in the darkness, just waiting for them to drop their guard.
"Care."
In surprise, Naruto turned his head sharply to where Sasuke was sitting, trying to see if the genius ninja was making fun of him once more. But all he could see was the shadows that blocked out the pale face of his rival, hiding from him every delicate feature.
--
The nine members of Battalion 121 crouched around the fire pit, occasionally eyeing the rest of the people occupying the camp with them. What they were discussing was a bit daring, more than a little dangerous and definitely against orders. Still, they would talk about this and come to a decision together.
"Kurenai would skin us if she heard us, and she's the nicest one."
Shooting Chouji a glare that could have shattered rocks, Ino tried once more to advance her case. "So what if they told us we couldn't go look for them? We have to, we're a team, aren't we?"
They had been talking about this ever since Kakashi and Asuma had told them that under no circumstances could they leave the camp grounds in search of the missing three of 121. Reasons ranged from the surrounding area still being too unstable for a bunch of inexperienced soldiers to go ranging to they had all sustained injuries that prevented full range of motion. All of it was valid, of course, but what did she care? Her best friend, the one girl who understood her and made her try her best, she was out there somewhere, lost, possibly hurt. What did Ino care that her commanding officers told them to stay put? There were some things in this world more important than following orders.
She was not the only one who wanted to go find them either. She could tell that Hinata, though she said nothing, also wanted to search for the lost three. The shy girl would never voice her opinion out loud, but the way she sat there, her fingers twiddling nervously and worriedly, told Ino's sixth sense that she wanted to go find them.
"It just isn't possible, we don't even know where they are." Shikamaru adjusted his torn uniform shirt with restless fingers as he looked around. Fire-lit faces of his comrades stared back at him, some with reproach, some with agreement. "If we went out without knowing anything, we'd just make things worse."
"So," Ino gave Shikamaru a look so serious that it took him aback, "if we can find a way to track them, it'd be okay to go find them?"
"Damn it, woman, that's not what I'm saying at all." Why was it that women were so damned stubborn about certain things? "You're so troublesome. I don't even know why we're talking about this."
Before Ino could launch across the fire and break Shikamaru's nose, Neji reached out and restrained the blond. They were supposed to have a discreet discussion, not get into a fight that could attract the attention of the entire camp.
"Look, Ino," Neji reasoned calmly, "I know where you're coming from. Believe me. But some things just cannot be done. We have to wait and see if fate was kind enough to have let them live."
"Oh, screw you and fate," Ino hissed, stomping away from the fire and her fellow soldiers, knowing that she had lost this battle. All she could do was pray that the three of them, most especially Sakura, would make it back.
--
Light sifted through the canopy of trees, creating small prisms of rainbows out of the morning due still fresh on the grass. Three people trudged through this beautiful sight wearily, walking in single file with their eyes scanning the area surrounding them. They had started their trek long before sunrise, Sakura being the only one who had managed to sleep for a couple of hours, trying to trace their way back to the camp that had to be in these dense woods somewhere.
Sakura walked staring at Sasuke's back, keeping pace with the taller boy's precise footsteps. Something was still amiss in the air, and it wasn't just the tension left over from the previous day. Something new had occurred while she slept oblivious, something odd and serious enough that Sasuke and Naruto refused to even look at each other.
"Sasuke," she started, unable to stand the quiet anymore, "are your eyes better?"
When he did not answer right away, she sighed, wondering if it was prudent for her to question him any further. However, he surprised her by turning his head towards her, showing her his handsome profile highlighted by the sun.
"My eyes were never bad."
As if that explained anything. She suppressed an irritated huff, knowing that he did not mean to be so cryptic, and waited him to continue. She did not notice that Naruto had walked up closer to her, his ears perked.
"The red eyes were the Sharingan. It's an ability only the Uchiha clan members have."
Sasuke continued walking as he spoke, still looking askance at Sakura. He was sure that Naruto was listening in on this conversation, how could he not with his curiosity and proximity, and he meant to let the blond know as much as ease the disquiet from Sakura's mind.
"It allows me to see all different types of jutsu, and if so required, for me to copy them, elaborate and manipulate them. I thought I didn't have it, because it usually manifests at a younger age than mine, but as it turns out, I do."
Sakura nodded, absorbing the information so freely given. She had never heard Sasuke say so many words at once, unless he was giving Naruto a scathing put-down. More than that, he was talking about himself, something of a rarity from the intensely private boy.
She smiled genuinely, her mind more at peace now that she knew nothing was wrong with Sasuke. If anything, he was even more impressive than before.
Noticing Sakura's relief and the lessening of the worried tension in the air, Sasuke turned his head back to face the front, but not before he caught a look at Naruto's eyes widening at his news. Well, the damned idiot had surprised him the day before by pulling out a mass of emotions from the depth of his being, so it was only fair that he surprised the living crap out of the blond by letting him know of his newly found talent. Besides, with his blond head filled with the information about the Sharingan, he might forget that some things were said during the solitude of the night that Sasuke had not meant to voice out loud or otherwise.
With some time, maybe he could forget it as well.
--
TBC
--
Warning: Most definite OOC now.. maybe some grammar mistakes I have not caught. Bit of violence, insertion of odd interactions.
Fighting Against the Grain
Gai and Kakashi stood back to back, ignoring the pile of corpses littered at their feet as more Sound soldiers rushed at them. They worked in unison, killing the enemies quickly and efficiently, but it was far from quiet work. Gai was too busy bellowing out the number of the enemies that he had masterfully dispatched.
"Ah ha! Fourteen! And you shall make fifteen!"
And then the laughing, followed by the manly yawping..
Kakashi wondered if his fighting partner thought he was in a battle or in a stage production.
'I wonder how the kids are doing,' Kakashi thought as he swiped his kunai across the throat of one of the enemies who stupidly got too close. 'I know this is too much for them, but, they can do this. They have to.'
The silver haired commander of the 121 fought more viciously as he thought of those youngsters in his command. He was pinned here with Gai, and they could not afford to be here, immobilized by these ninjas, while his soldiers were fighting for their lives. Yes, he had hopes that Sasuke and Naruto would get stronger in battle, but he had thought that he would be there to help them through it. Instead, he had no idea where they were, how they were doing.
All he could do was fight the best he could, believe in the abilities of his soldiers, and hope for their survival.
--
Sasuke burst into the clearing with Sakura just behind him, ready to once again jump into a fight. How long he and the girl had run, he had no idea. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, but that did not matter. They were still alive and relatively uninjured, which was more than he could say for all the numerous numbers of the Sound ninjas they had encountered so far. True, Sakura had not helped any, but she had not hindered him much either. She had stayed out of the way when an enemy appeared, making sure that Sasuke could fight without worrying about her. She had kept up with the mad dash pace that Sasuke had set without complaint as well.
Therefore, when they heard a gurgling scream just to the east of them, they had both run towards it unhesitatingly, knowing that someone from their side was fighting against the enemy in a heated battle.
So when they ran into the clearing with weapons out and bodies ready to move in any direction, they had expected to run into a significant number of enemies. Instead, they encountered a sight that was so surreal and startling that their limbs froze from the scene laid out before them.
First of all, there were Narutos. Not one as they had come to expect, but multiples of that blond idiot. Plural.
And they were all fighting viciously, each of them yelling out something that might have been a battle yell or a garbled insult as they threw themselves into action. More miraculous than the fact that Naruto had multiplied was that these boys were actually winning.
Bodies of Sound ninjas lay on the ground, some dead and others severely wounded, and the last two standing seemed to be on the verge of collapse. They were barely blocking the numerous hits that several Narutos were inflicting upon them, unable to go on the offensive due to the sheer number of the blond.
Sasuke watched, his red eyes flaring, as many Narutos gleefully beat up on the remaining ninjas. His Sharingan, his long awaited birth right, saw what Sakura's eyes could not. He could see the flare of chakra around each and every one of the Naruto copies, as if they were all real people. This was not just a replication jutsu they had all learned, because these were real bodies. They were not mere illusions to fool the enemy before one attacked from a blind spot. These bodies had solidity, chakra, and thinking processes, if Naruto even possessed such a trait.
When the last of the ninjas fell, all the Narutos before his eyes evaporated into thin air, disappearing in a cloud of pale smoke, every single one of them smiling triumphantly. Then there was only one left, the true Naruto, his smile showing his teeth and his blue eyes fierce. Blood spotted him in random places, gashes ripped into his uniform bared the tanned skin beneath, and dirt covered him just about everywhere.
'Naruto.. you look.. so..'
Sasuke did not finish that thought, and shook his head to clear it out of his head for good measure. For a moment, he had been so moved, his chest tight and his breath trapped somewhere between his throat and stomach. Why he would have such a reaction to his rival was a mystery and it disturbed him on a level he had not thought possible.
"Yo, Sasuke," he heard the overly self-satisfied blond say, "wasn't that the shit? I am so good, oh yeah."
He stood still while the widely grinning Naruto walked toward him and Sakura. No, not walk, but strutted, his chest puffed out and his arms swinging at his side confidently.
"Did you see, did you see? I kicked so much ass."
The dark haired boy had nothing to say to refute it. Had he not seen it with his own eyes enhanced by the power of his inherited talent?
"I got ten of them, ten!" Naruto continued boasting as he got ever closer to Sasuke, "and I'm still standing. Not such a useless idiot now, am I?"
When Sasuke did not reply, Naruto felt his grin slip a little. Why was the stoic boy even more stoic than ever? The dark haired genius had to have seen how well he had fared against those impossible seeming odds, and he must be impressed with the jutsu he had used to achieve that victory. Why couldn't he at least smirk at him or something, just give him a reaction to show that he acknowledged his accomplishments?
Not that he cared, but still, it irked him that Sasuke had no reaction whatsoever.
"Naruto," he heard a small voice behind the yet unresponsive Sasuke, "what did you do? What was that?"
Belatedly, Naruto realized that Sakura stood there with Sasuke, her green eyes uncertain in her thoughtful face, regarding him with confusion and a bit of disbelief. How the hell had he not seen that the love of his life was standing not three feet away from him, getting closer with every step he took? Why was it that the only thing his eyes had seen was Sasuke, his dark hair blowing in the heated, fiery air as he exploded into the clearing, only to stand there immobile, staring at him all the while?
"You saw, didn't you, Sakura?" Naruto smiled at Sakura through gritted teeth, his facial muscles ticking from the sheer force of it. If Sasuke was going to ignore him, well, he was going to do the same damn thing. The theory was eye for an eye, or something, so it was only fair that he pretended that Sasuke wasn't even there.
"I saw.." Sakura paused, unsure about how to say what was on her mind. Naruto stopped walking towards her and Sasuke then, pausing at a spot directly in front of Sasuke, close enough so that if the blond reached out, he could touch the unspeaking boy before him.
"You saw me. Lots of me. Cool, huh?" Naruto continued with his huge smile, his eyes crinkling from the width that the grin had reached. If he couldn't impress his damned, too-good-for-him rival, then he could at least impress the girl of his dreams.
"I did. They weren't just replications, were they?"
"Right! That was Shadow Replication! Bet you didn't know I could do that!"
Sakura shook her head, her eyes never leaving Naruto's painfully grinning face and she reached out to grab Sasuke's shirt for comfort. This wasn't Naruto, it couldn't be, right? Naruto was supposed to be the worst at everything, barely succeeding where she had excelled. Even during training when he had worked himself to the bone, he had not learned new jutsus like Sasuke or her. He had only been taught the basics of chakra control, something everyone had already learned by heart and he had not even mastered that completely.
That was Naruto that she knew, the failure, the loud mouthed idiot, the one who would always try the hardest but never succeed in anything. This Naruto, the one who had mastered and used Shadow Replication, a jutsu that she knew to be forbidden due to its excessive difficulty and high occurrence of death during learning, she just could not know.
This could not be Naruto.
--
The clean-up after the sudden attack went quickly, the grisly task of gathering bodies and the wounded carried out efficiently in solemn quietude. Not much was said as survivors trickled into the main camp, some of them looking worse than the dead, their faces drawn and mouths silent. The battle had only lasted a little more than an hour, but the casualties were grave, the fifth line having lost more than a third of its numbers. The fact that every enemy agent had been eliminated before they had a chance to break through to Konoha, served only as a minor consolation.
Kakashi rubbed his headband covering his left eye idly, watching the grim scene before him. He was used to this kind of thing, seeing dead bodies of his comrades laid out in bloody repose, but such was war. They had won this day, but the cost was always too high, the price of victory always paid by lives. Yet, beside the grief, was a sense of relief. None of his battalion had shown up in the corpses, which raised his hopes that all of them had survived.
How had this happened? How was it that a group so large had infiltrated so far into their defenses without being detected only to launch an attack at the fifth line? It puzzled him to no end that this undetectable group of more than four hundred ninjas had not bypassed the fifth line to go straight into Konoha. There must have been a purpose to attacking the fifth line. The infiltration had been too successful, too well thought out for it to have been anything other than planned out.
Had they also planned on losing? If so, then why? What the hell was going on anyway?
As he stood in the midst of medical care and body gathering, he saw faces he recognized straggle in from the edges of the tree line. He smiled when Gai, his eyes overflowing with happy tears, bear hugged Lee as he came into the camp limping with Neji by his side. He pretended not to notice how Kurenai's face had nearly broken when TenTen and Shikamaru brought an unconscious Hinata, but laughed at her scathing reprimand to Chouji who had dared to come back dragging Kiba and his dog by the scruffs of their necks. His face mask was the only thing preventing others from seeing his smile when Shino, the boy with even less expression than the rock carvings of the Hokages, cringed ever so slightly from Ino's lamenting account of how she had nearly lost her beautiful hair to all the fire.
However, the ones that he considered as his, the boisterous blond, the stoic genius and the politely cheerful girl, they would not show up, even after the moon rose and the clean up finished.
--
The tiny crescent moon hung in the sky, illuminating very little to the three weary people occupying a small space between two large oaks. The bluish tint of the light gave all of them a harsh look, highlighting the cheekbones to create deep shadows that hollowed out their cheeks. They had no fire to ward off the chilling light, nor did they have food to stave off the hunger nipping their stomachs. What they did have was a tension so thick that it was suffocating them.
They had not chosen to get lost during battle, but inevitably, that was what had happened. Sasuke could not believe that during his speedy dash in search for enemies, he had not taken into account what direction he had run. In fact, with all the adrenaline of battle flushed out of system, he could not clearly recall what he had done to win against the enemies who had come before him. All he could remember with any accuracy was the burning in his lungs, the tunnel vision of his Sharingan, and the feeling that Naruto had evoked.
A small tilt of his dark head brought Naruto into his line of vision. The blond was busy staring up at the sky, his back comfortably against the oak and his feet stretched out before him. He looked as if he was just star gazing, but the glaze of his eyes seemed a million miles away, seeing something that Sasuke could not see.
Sakura shifted next to him, her body brushing slightly against his as she fell into sleep. She could no longer take the tension, the stress from this harrowing day. Everything had happened so fast, yet so slowly, making her head hurt. If sleep was her only avenue of escape, she would take it, if only to wake up in the morning with a better mind set to confront everything she had seen.
When Sakura's breath evened out completely, Sasuke carefully stood, making sure not to wake her. She needed rest, probably more than either he or Naruto, because she was not in the same physical shape as they. It must have been hard on her, running for her life and not knowing if she would ever find safety.
Naruto heard soft footsteps approaching him, but he did not turn his head. Instead, he lowered his head from contemplation of the stars to stare at his hands fidgeting on his lap. He had waited all day for Sasuke to say something to him, but he had gotten nothing. Even Sakura had stopped talking to him after he had told her the jutsu that he had used, the three of them trying to find their way back to camp in utter silence. Now, it seemed that Sasuke was headed his way, perhaps to say something, perhaps to walk right past him to something else.
"Are you injured?" Sasuke asked softly as he crouched next to Naruto, his eyes searching the blond's face and body for visible wounds. Though Naruto had splatters of blood on his clothes and skin, he could not make out any cuts or scrapes. "Did you get hurt?"
Shrugging his shoulders, Naruto snorted and let out a soft chuckle. "What do you care? And why do you want to know now?" Not that he was bitter, god forbid. "Shouldn't you have asked way before?"
Frowning at the antagonistic tone, Sasuke edged a little closer to peer into his surly rival's face. He noted that besides the permanent uniform scars of three lines running parallel down each cheek, the blond idiot looked remarkably unscathed for being in a battle against ten ninjas of high caliber. Sure, Naruto was good, he acknowledged in the silence of his mind, but damn it, he wasn't that good. He had suffered many injuries fighting the Sound, from the stab wounds on his arm to the bone deep bruising from well placed hits. If he had sustained injuries, so should Naruto have, regardless of what jutsu he had used.
"Just answer the damned question." Sasuke pushed the urge to shake the idiot by his rock hard head and tried to reason with him. "You won't be any good if you hide that you're hurt."
So that's what it was. What the hell had he expected, a measure of concern? The damned genius boy had not even given his Shadow Replication technique a cursory notice and he had wanted to hear.. what, worry? From this block of ice that masqueraded as human?
"I'm fine," Naruto bit out as he turned his resentful eyes towards his uncaring rival. "And thanks for caring, asshole."
Sasuke met Naruto's eyes without flinching, his lips pursed in thought. He had known Naruto was fine, but then again, even if the idiot was bleeding out from a sucking chest wound, he had a feeling that his loud mouthed rival would say exactly the same thing.
"Some of this blood has to be yours."
"Yeah, it is." Naruto narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. It was rather disconcerting, the way Sasuke would not look away, the way he kept on looking into his eyes like he could see something beyond the baby blues. "I heal real fast. Always have."
When Sasuke only grunted and continued to stare, Naruto barely suppressed the growl rising in his throat. What, didn't the damned genius boy believe him or something? What was wrong with healing fast, anyway? It was pretty damned useful for a soldier to have healing abilities that allowed minor cuts close almost instantaneously and the major hurts wash away in only minutes. Sasuke could not fault him for that natural ability, could he?
"That is.." Sasuke paused, not knowing how to say what was on his mind. He was glad that Naruto was a fast healer, but he would never say that to his blond roommate out loud. There just was no way for him to say anything to Naruto to express how relieved he was that the blond was really fine and not just saying so to look tough. He could not say any of those things, how could he when he could barely believe it himself that he felt in such a way?
"Look, before you get into a snit, Kakashi said it's my own unique ability, okay? So just lay off, will ya?"
Tearing his eyes away from Sasuke's intense black eyes, Naruto leaned back fully into the tree and crossed his arms in what he knew looked like a defensive gesture. But he could not help it, not when Sasuke had stared at him so steadily with that unreadable look in his eyes. He did not turn his head when he heard Sasuke get up and walk away, back to his place beside Sakura. So what if he preferred to be next to the pretty girl? If he could, he would have taken that spot next to his pink haired crush.
"I do, you know," Sasuke said softly and unexpectedly as he sat down next to Sakura's sleeping form.
"You do what?" Naruto asked wearily, shifting his body to find a comfortable position to keep watch. They still had no idea what kind of enemies was lurking in the darkness, just waiting for them to drop their guard.
"Care."
In surprise, Naruto turned his head sharply to where Sasuke was sitting, trying to see if the genius ninja was making fun of him once more. But all he could see was the shadows that blocked out the pale face of his rival, hiding from him every delicate feature.
--
The nine members of Battalion 121 crouched around the fire pit, occasionally eyeing the rest of the people occupying the camp with them. What they were discussing was a bit daring, more than a little dangerous and definitely against orders. Still, they would talk about this and come to a decision together.
"Kurenai would skin us if she heard us, and she's the nicest one."
Shooting Chouji a glare that could have shattered rocks, Ino tried once more to advance her case. "So what if they told us we couldn't go look for them? We have to, we're a team, aren't we?"
They had been talking about this ever since Kakashi and Asuma had told them that under no circumstances could they leave the camp grounds in search of the missing three of 121. Reasons ranged from the surrounding area still being too unstable for a bunch of inexperienced soldiers to go ranging to they had all sustained injuries that prevented full range of motion. All of it was valid, of course, but what did she care? Her best friend, the one girl who understood her and made her try her best, she was out there somewhere, lost, possibly hurt. What did Ino care that her commanding officers told them to stay put? There were some things in this world more important than following orders.
She was not the only one who wanted to go find them either. She could tell that Hinata, though she said nothing, also wanted to search for the lost three. The shy girl would never voice her opinion out loud, but the way she sat there, her fingers twiddling nervously and worriedly, told Ino's sixth sense that she wanted to go find them.
"It just isn't possible, we don't even know where they are." Shikamaru adjusted his torn uniform shirt with restless fingers as he looked around. Fire-lit faces of his comrades stared back at him, some with reproach, some with agreement. "If we went out without knowing anything, we'd just make things worse."
"So," Ino gave Shikamaru a look so serious that it took him aback, "if we can find a way to track them, it'd be okay to go find them?"
"Damn it, woman, that's not what I'm saying at all." Why was it that women were so damned stubborn about certain things? "You're so troublesome. I don't even know why we're talking about this."
Before Ino could launch across the fire and break Shikamaru's nose, Neji reached out and restrained the blond. They were supposed to have a discreet discussion, not get into a fight that could attract the attention of the entire camp.
"Look, Ino," Neji reasoned calmly, "I know where you're coming from. Believe me. But some things just cannot be done. We have to wait and see if fate was kind enough to have let them live."
"Oh, screw you and fate," Ino hissed, stomping away from the fire and her fellow soldiers, knowing that she had lost this battle. All she could do was pray that the three of them, most especially Sakura, would make it back.
--
Light sifted through the canopy of trees, creating small prisms of rainbows out of the morning due still fresh on the grass. Three people trudged through this beautiful sight wearily, walking in single file with their eyes scanning the area surrounding them. They had started their trek long before sunrise, Sakura being the only one who had managed to sleep for a couple of hours, trying to trace their way back to the camp that had to be in these dense woods somewhere.
Sakura walked staring at Sasuke's back, keeping pace with the taller boy's precise footsteps. Something was still amiss in the air, and it wasn't just the tension left over from the previous day. Something new had occurred while she slept oblivious, something odd and serious enough that Sasuke and Naruto refused to even look at each other.
"Sasuke," she started, unable to stand the quiet anymore, "are your eyes better?"
When he did not answer right away, she sighed, wondering if it was prudent for her to question him any further. However, he surprised her by turning his head towards her, showing her his handsome profile highlighted by the sun.
"My eyes were never bad."
As if that explained anything. She suppressed an irritated huff, knowing that he did not mean to be so cryptic, and waited him to continue. She did not notice that Naruto had walked up closer to her, his ears perked.
"The red eyes were the Sharingan. It's an ability only the Uchiha clan members have."
Sasuke continued walking as he spoke, still looking askance at Sakura. He was sure that Naruto was listening in on this conversation, how could he not with his curiosity and proximity, and he meant to let the blond know as much as ease the disquiet from Sakura's mind.
"It allows me to see all different types of jutsu, and if so required, for me to copy them, elaborate and manipulate them. I thought I didn't have it, because it usually manifests at a younger age than mine, but as it turns out, I do."
Sakura nodded, absorbing the information so freely given. She had never heard Sasuke say so many words at once, unless he was giving Naruto a scathing put-down. More than that, he was talking about himself, something of a rarity from the intensely private boy.
She smiled genuinely, her mind more at peace now that she knew nothing was wrong with Sasuke. If anything, he was even more impressive than before.
Noticing Sakura's relief and the lessening of the worried tension in the air, Sasuke turned his head back to face the front, but not before he caught a look at Naruto's eyes widening at his news. Well, the damned idiot had surprised him the day before by pulling out a mass of emotions from the depth of his being, so it was only fair that he surprised the living crap out of the blond by letting him know of his newly found talent. Besides, with his blond head filled with the information about the Sharingan, he might forget that some things were said during the solitude of the night that Sasuke had not meant to voice out loud or otherwise.
With some time, maybe he could forget it as well.
--
TBC
--