N/A: This is something I've kept saved on my comp for a while, so I finally decided to post it. Man I have too many uncompleted projects still, but I wanted to see the reactions from readers this thing would get. Alternate Universe. Japanese Terms used.
Daybreak.
Sakura opened her drooping eyes as the sun's light pierced through her heavy eyelids. The cold sky shone brightly as the last of the nighttime's shade began to withdraw. She stood there as she watched the colours shining from the illuminating light. She looked to her companions standing across the wide walls, who many of them stood firm and tall though Sakura could see the weariness in their eyes as well. She let out a sigh and closed her eyes as she lowered her head.
Another silent and still night had just passed by.
What was going on? No attacks, no nothing. Everything was much to peaceful then they had expected. Too much so that it was disturbing.
Or was it that she should feel relieved instead?
"Standing on guard all night Sakura?"
Sakura turned around with a weary face and groaned to see a girl from behind. Her long white blonde ponytail flowed in the wind as she stood there, hands on her hips with a smirk of amusement on her face.
"My, my. Konoha's top captain, sleeping on the job. Mattaku, if you ever became Hokage, the entire village would be in ruins right on the first day. They may have made you one the village's tokubetsu jounin, but I still think it was a complete mistake."
"Shut up Ino-pig. Don't make me hurt you," Sakura yawned as she casually turned her gaze back over to the outside walls over the horizon. The sun was already beginning to rise high into the sky. The horizon was becoming brighter.
"Hurt me?" Ino stood back pretending to be threatened, "Ha! You couldn't even lay a scratch on me. I'm just as strong as you are, as well as any other kunoichi in the village!"
"Hai, hai. Sugoi, sugoi," Sakura said carelessly as she rested her arms over the walls and continued to keep watch, "Ino, what are doing here anyway? Isn't there something better for you to do for the village other than come here and tease me? I thought people like you didn't bother wasting time on me."
"Iie, chigau," Ino said shaking her head, now putting on a more serious tone as she joined Sakura by the wall, "Papa told me to keep on watch too. Several jounin have arrived back from their spy mission from the Wind Country bringing back disturbing news."
"What is did they say?" Sakura asked facing Ino with a look of concern.
"The Sand-nin are expected to strike Konoha soon. Very soon. I know that the entire village has been expecting for months already, but still . . ."
"This really is indeed unexpected news," Sakura said finishing her sentence, "I knew it, I guess it was just an instinct that I ordered for more Shinobi to stand on guard tonight."
(Japanese terms listed on the bottom)
"So that's why I've seen you hang around here lately," Ino laughed weakly, "I guess it wasn't because you didn't have a life."
"Those damned Sand-nin," Sakura spat bitterly as she glared down into the forests below, "You never know where they could be hiding. Somehow I have a feeling they're right under our noses this very moment."
Ino glanced at Sakura for a moment then looked away into the forests as joining her gaze as scanned the forest's layer.
"You know Sakura," Ino began quietly, "Ever since they made you an Anbu captain leader, you've been taking the job a bit too seriously."
Sakura paused then turned towards Ino with confused eyes.
"No one's expecting that much out of you," Ino said haughtily, "You may seem a whole lot superior now, but you're still all the same to me."
Sakura said nothing as she blushed then gave a glare as she turned away.
Ino sighed as she went on, "I don't know why they even made you a jounin in the first place. To me you're all brains, not strength. That's why everyone thinks so highly of you. The Hokage thought you'd make a good leader, even though the members on your team are probably stronger than you are."
"Shinobi saying #47," Sakura said as she pointed a wagging finger at Ino, "Strength comes in many different forms. To what true strength is, is for the beholder to decide. Besides, I'm strong enough to face on the best. Survival of the Fittest. Anyways, these men might be strong, but without a level-headed leader to keep them in place, they'd be worthless to use in missions."
"I know that, but that's not what I'm trying to say," Ino protested which made Sakura stop in surprise, "Sakura I know you really mean the best for the village, but don't take this so seriously that you'll jump in without thinking first. You have a tendency to do that you know. The more seriously you take this job; it'll just all get to your head. I just don't want you overreacting so that you'll do something stupid."
The two girls fell silent as Sakura stared at Ino with disbelief. Were these words actually coming out of the mouth of her archrival? This really wasn't like Ino to be acting this way. She had known her long enough for that to be a fact.
"You're scared aren't you?" Sakura asked softly, "The Sand ninja scare you that much."
Ino paused, and then let gave a small sad frown, "Everyone believes that there's going to be a war. A war between us and the entire world."
"I guess so," Sakura sighed, "Konoha's strength is increasing rapidly, and countries are starting to fear us now. Some just want our power. They're starting to make secret alliances between our backs. First the Wind Country, who have been our allies for over a decade already, are joining forces with the Sound. Many of the missing-nin that left our village years and years ago, and escaped our hunter-nins have sought revenge upon us. I'm not surprised if Demons starting attacking us as well."
"The first thing that we've got on our hands right now are those Sand-nin. They're damn strong. One of them could probably take on ten of our best men, from what I've heard," Ino muttered.
"It's their weapons that make them strong. They're weapons are so advanced, they can create powerful jutsus just be using them. I call it rather amazing."
"Ch' well I call it playing cheap. Just by using weapons cuts off their load of training. I bet without their weapons they're just nothing."
"Well, we'll have to see about that," Sakura said, "I've never faced Sand ninja before, which might be a great disadvantage. However I do know of the kind of techniques they use, its just that maybe even all that information's I've learned is a lie."
Ino glanced at her with a disapproving look. But then smirked as she got up from her spot, "Mouchiro kono deko-deko, everything to you always doesn't seem right. I guess the world's not perfect for you is it? Anyways, it's time I began taking watch now, as you said it's a waste of time being with people like you."
Sakura gave a smirk back as she stuck out her tongue, "Whatever you say Ino-pig."
The two laughed as Ino began to leave, when suddenly a sudden flash appeared by Sakura's side. A ninja stood there as it took both girls by surprise.
"Shikamaru!" Ino gasped, "You're back!"
"Nara-san!" Sakura said with a surprised look, "Hisashiburi. Don't tell me you were one of the jounin who were on that spy mission?"
"Hai, hai. I tell you later. Come quick Haruno, something has just happened down by the gates. We've got to hurry," Shikamaru said impatiently.
Sakura exchanged worried looks with Ino as she nodded and the three of them went and disappeared in a flash.
"Damnit the sun's already beginning to rise, we should have been able to take over the entire village just in one night. It's only on orders that they wanted us to strike at dawn. They would have been more vulnerable when they had been sleeping."
Temari turned to face her younger brother as she frowned from the piercing chill. She faced him with a scowl on her face.
"Kankuro! Don't you think you're being a little hasty here?" Temari hissed at him, as she lay low in the undergrowth along with her brothers, "We've arrived at the correct time and place, but we can't start the attack now. Our orders were to wait until more of our Shinobi have arrived. We don't have enough men right now!"
"Relax, I bet the three of us could probably handle it on our own. Leaf ninja are pathetic anyways. We will carry out the first mission starting now," Kankuro replied back while Temari just gave a disapproving scowl.
"It doesn't matter, we don't need any of those meddlesome idiots to help us out anyway. A Sea of Blood will be spilt in Konoha on this day."
Both Temari and Kankuro whirled their heads to meet their younger brother. His arms were crossed casually yet his eyes showed that he feared nothing.
"Everyone will die in this village and the Sand will claim victorious. They shall die, and I will live on. It doesn't matter when we start, it all ends up the same way in the end."
"G-Gaara, but we can't! Baki said to-" Temari protested.
"I don't care what Baki said," Gaara hissed menacingly, "I've already gotten the first stage of our mission completed."
"Already?!" Kankuro exclaimed in disbelief as he grabbed his younger brother's collar in his hands, "You did it, without TELLING US? But why Gaara? That goes against our plan! Now the ninja of this village are going to get suspicious! They'll already know we're here!"
"That's why I said it doesn't matter. They're all going to die eventually anyway," Gaara growled as he brushed the hands of his older brother releasing his grasp. He glared at his siblings with one final look of death as he quietly walked away into the thick forest. Temari watched him leave and let out a sigh of worry. Kankuro grit his teeth as he trembled in anger.
"Chikshou, that just cuts down even more time for us to get ready for the attack. Why is that he always wants to kill something, I should have seen this coming," he muttered as he slammed the bundle on his back onto the ground and sat on the ground.
"I guess we have no choice then," Temari sighed as she sat down beside her brother. She gave him a gloomy look. Under so much pressure and short deadlines, she was sure that it'd be the end of them soon. Gaara was right.
They were all going to die. Everyone.
She never agreed to any of this.
"Temari, go find the rest of our troops and tell them we'll start the second stage. Get everyone to scatter and get them on stand by. They will be ready to attack on signal."
"Hai," she nodded. He paused giving her a queer look.
"Doushta no? You're worried aren't you? About Gaara."
Temari sighed once more but said nothing. She was too easy to read sometimes.
"You used to be never afraid of anything. The big sister who feared nothing. So why are you afraid now Bibi-kun?" he teased.
"Damare," she muttered as she began to walk away, "Who said I was afraid you idiot. No one I've ever faced has beaten me before. I won't loose to lame Konoha-nin."
She could hear him chuckle as her footsteps were trailing away from him. She clutched the fan on her back and closed her eyes. This was all she had left to rely on. Everything else just seemed to far away from her reach. No one understood the way she felt.
"It's horrible. They're all dead, Sakura-sama."
Ino gasped as she clasped her hands to her mouth in shock. The surrounding jounin all wore a grim look on their faces. Sakura frowned as she immediately rushed towards the fallen ninjas sides.
Seven of their best jounin, who just yesterday had kept watch over Konoha, were now lying there plastered in blood soaked bodies. Their pale faces were drained of life.
"An attack?" she asked urgently towards Shikamaru.
"By the looks of it, a recent one," he replied as he crouched down to examine them. Sakura rolled up her sleeves but Shikamaru stopped her, "No use trying to heal them. It's too late now. Not even your sensei, the great Tsunade-Hime couldn't save them now."
"Then you know what this means," Sakura said as she stood up and faced her fellow Anbu team members. They nodded their heads with grim seriousness.
"Masaka!" Ino gasped in terror, "They can't be here already!"
"Looks like they've given us a first-hand warning that they mean business. They intend to kill us all. Konoha is now under war. I guess now's the time that we give our guests a "passionate welcome," Sakura said with a sigh.
"Then let's go kick their sorry asses," one of the Anbu yelled with tears in his eyes, "Those bastards! They killed my best friend! Shiro didn't deserve to die like this! Without any honour!"
"We can't act so rashly because of your loss!' Shikamaru retorted back at him, "We'd all end up killed!"
"Still, this is quite odd," Sakura said as she put a thoughtful finger on her chin, "If they had already killed the gate's guards, why now just attack Konoha head on? They would have been granted free passage into our village without anyone to stop them."
"It could be a sign," Shikamaru added, "It probably means they don't have a lot of Shinobi here at the moment and they're still waiting for reinforcement troops to arrive so that they can start their attack. With fewer men on their hands, they can't do as much damage. But still that doesn't mean we shouldn't take caution. The Hokage-sama must be alerted at once! With Konoha being surrounded by Sand-nin, we'll be trapped in our own village until finally more of their people arrive."
"Which is when their war starts. So this is sort of a delay. Revealing their presence like this so openly seems as though they're waiting for us to attack. Almost as they want to lure us out of the gates to fight them. That wouldn't be safe. They could have already set up traps for us and there might troops waiting to ambush. But still we have to go after them. We can't just sit here and do nothing and wait for death to arrive for us all," Sakura said.
"Ja, what should we do?" Ino asked impatiently, "Konoha's in danger as we speak!"
"I don't know. We have to come up with some kind of plan. Either way it seems like they've got us trapped in the middle. But whatever we do, we can't just go out there and face them head on. That'd just be foolish. We must remain calm."
Sakura whirled her head in surprise as bits of debris began falling from the sky. The outer wall had been struck by some kind of powerful force. But that was impossible. What could the Sand-nin possibly have to make them have the power to do that?
"What the hell was that?!" Shikamaru yelled as he stared at the wall in shock, "They're attacking from the outside?"
Sakura cursed as she quickly leaped towards to top of the wall onto the higher balconies. She glanced over and looked down below to see a cloaked person covering up his or her face. Printed on the cloak was the emblem of the "Suna no Kuni".
A Sand Ninja.
In their hands held an enormous fan, too large to be a normal size. On it was a pattern of three purple stars (N/A: okay so they're circles, but they're called stars in the manga, so I'm going by that). Sakura glared at the fan. It could cause that much damage?
"Leaf-nin! Can you here me? Come out and fight like a true Shinobi. Face us in a fight-to-the-death battle. If any of you Konoha bastards had any pride for your fellow nins, you're troops would have been out here fighting us minutes ago," the person shouted towards Sakura's angered self.
"Sand-nin of the Wind Country. How dare you attack the Walls of Konoha. It is forbidden for you to enter our village. Is the Fire Country not allies with you? Is it passage within these walls what you seek?" Sakura shouted back.
The person laughed, "Stop acting dumb. You know exactly why we're here. So why not just fight us instead? Unless you don't want him back . . ."
"Who's him?" Sakura asked, now becoming very aggravated.
"Why you'll see," the person chuckled as the fingers snapped from beneath that person's cloak. Another cloaked ninja appeared and it was holding the body of a person captive as a prisoner. Sakura gasped to see who it was.
"HOKAGE-SAMA!" she screamed out in horror.
"That's right!" the person shouted in triumph, "Your dear Hokage is now hostage and is our prisoner. We've actually come here to assassinate him, but unless Konoha surrenders to the Sand Village we will spare him. Surrender now cowards, or else your Hokage dies!"
Sakura grit her teeth in anger as she leaped from the wall and landed in a flash of smoke onto the ground outside of Konoha below.
"DAME SAKURA!" Ino screamed out in protest from below, "Don't do it!"
Too late. Sakura was already on the ground and had already fallen for their trap. In a poof of smoke the Hokage revealed himself to be not the dear Konoha-nin, but instead a disguised Sand-nin who had used Henge no Jutsu. Sakura gasped. She cursed to herself. How could she have fallen for this trick so easily? Only an idiot would have been stupid enough to have.
"Prepare to die Leaf-nin bitch," the person chuckled as she flipped over her hood to reveal spiky blonde pigtails, "I knew people like you
Could never survive."
The Sand-nin raised her fan and opened fully with three purple stars revealed. Sakura grit her teeth as she quickly pulled out a single kunai and bent into position ready to attack. The Sand-nin merely laughed as she gave her an evil grin.
"Ninpou: KAMAITACHI!!"
"SAKURA!" Both Ino and Shikamaru exclaimed from outside the gates, as they stood watching in horror at what they saw before their eyes.
TBC?
Japanese Terms used:
Mattaku-geez
tokubetsu jounin- special jounin (in Naruto, Mitarashi Anko as well as other examiners from the Chuunin Exam are of this rank)
kunoichi-female ninja
Hai,Hai, sugoi sugoi- yea yea great great
Iie chigau- no that's not it
Mouchiro kono deko-deko- Of course you forehead-girl
Hisashiburi- long time no see/it's been awhile
Chikshou- damn it
Doushta no- what's wrong?
Bibi-kun- scaredy cat
Damare- shut up
Masaka- don't tell me that…
Suna no kuni- sand village
Dame sakura- No sakura!
Ack god, I wrote this such a long time ago, I have no idea what my plot for this story was going to be. A slight Princess Mononoke crossover, but I can't really remember how it was going to go. I'm just going to have to wing it or think up of something else. Lol, don't get too mad if this doesn't turn out well. I'm not good at thinking of battle plans.
Anyways write your comments thanks.