Warning for spoilers: Chapters 180ish-234. Er.. Canon stops on 234 because altering the plot after reading each new manga chapter will kill me. Lol. Spoilers for Episode 101 and beyond.
Chapter 8: Business, As Usual
At the far eastern reaches of the country of the Fire, there was a little nook----a nook like many others, perhaps. It was basically a tiny pocket of space along the coastline of the continent, a corner formed by the thickness of the tropical rain forest.
The tides were currently low and the brackish swamp water that came and went to lap at the torturous, roots intertwined together, at times even up the low lying branches that crisscrossed one another and virtually made individual trees indistinguishable from each other, was nowhere to be seen.
The wind came and went here, came and went with the salty tang of sea air. The vast blue ocean was concealed by both the thickness of the trees and the natural shape of the land, the ever-present crashing of the waves drowned out by the forest's own noises.
Sakura darted looks to her companions, did her best to minimize the movements of her appendages. The team leader, Hyuuga Neji, was still and silent at his perch slightly above her. The blood vessels in his blazing white eyes were distended as he stared at another tree twenty feet away. To her ordinary eyes, the only remarkable thing about that tree was the abandoned nest on one of its branches, but she knew her other teammates were hidden there. Neji was intent on reading the lips of Hiyo Mayana, an eighteen year old jounin. In turn, a twenty-nine year old chuunin named Kuroro Kyou, deaf since age four, would later receive his instructions.
While three busily conferred on how to save their necks from a noose speedily tightening around them, Sakura kept her attention to her environment, carefully looking out for genjutsu attacks aimed to weed them out of their hiding places, watching for sudden movements that could preclude a fierce offensive. For the four days they've been patrolling the coast, little did they know of the platoon of ninja's insidiously surrounding them, thirteen to fourteen of chuunins and jounins intent on capturing locals for information. In such a situation, it was almost better to die in battle—no torture could prolong an agonizing death of a person already dead, at least. Either way, as a corpse or as a prisoner, you would be forced or manipulated into betraying your own village.
They had been trapped by the four-front ambush while patrolling the southern borders of the Fire Country. It was unlikely for the enemy to have turned up there, but they did. It was unlikely for them to have been able to trap a Byakkugan user and his team, but they did.
These ninjas were powerful, intended to extract information from them before rejoining a main mass of warriors. But they, Konoha nins, must manage to evade such a fate, must manage to escape and warn the village of the imminent threat. But how? They were outnumbered. Neji couldn't even confirm a visual on one or two of the enemies.
And still her teammates conferred.
The most trying aspect of impending shinobi battles, such as this, was the nervous wait. Doom was walking her way, mocking her with its careless saunter. Her instincts her screaming for her to bolt, while her senses insisted on perceiving nothing of such danger. Her heart raced, her palms sweated, her guts knotted.... and anxiety started to systematically carve at her tripes, ruthlessly clawing past flesh to get to her heart and squeeze it to the point of bursting.
Sometimes, she'd think she had gotten used to these reactions, that after the initial kick of fear, she would be able to find a center of calm. Right now, Sakura couldn't find that calm. In the end, it would be her who had to execute the plans being formulated. All would depend on her.
Her.
It felt like this, too, years ago. Years and years ago.
She was a child then, but she had been so convinced----still was—that her heart had been broken and kept breaking still as she stared at her comatose teammate.
On that day, she had finally accepted that Uchiha Sasuke was dead, really dead, even though he lay there in front of her, and despite the mass of tubing and medical equipment, he still breathed. Thus, she spoke to him as one would to a corpse.
"You don't like a lot of things," she had been prattling then stupidly. "I noticed that, and well, you did say that the day we first met Kakashi-sensei. Remember that?" She laughed weakly. "And you'll say you don't remember, if you can talk right now, I'd bet. He was late then, too, you know. Must have been some foreshadowing applied by... by... a Lee-san with all his gates open." Again, she giggled. Inanely. "That's senseless, ne? I shouldn't say such things, even figuratively. Lee-san would end up like you, if he opened all his gates: dead."
She paused.
"Lee-san's surgery was a success, by the way. If you're interested at all. It's not like you dislike Lee-san the way you dislike Naruto, right? I know you never liked Naruto. And, hey, I used to not to. Well... sometimes, I don't. He just annoys me sometimes. Following me around—much like how I annoy you. Even so, I thought... I always thought that despite all the fighting you do, despite that rivalry thing----a boy thing I wouldn't understand, I suppose—despite that, I thought you're still friends.
"Then again, how can one do such a thing to a friend?" She stopped, face scrunched up in a colossal effort not to blubber. "How can you do this?"
It was true. There was no denying it.
Three days ago, the five genins sent to retrieve Uchiha Sasuke came back one by one, escorted by medic nins, and sporting brand-new holes and what-nots in their anatomy. Holes! Not that Sasuke made any of them. The Sound nins that had taken him were soundly defeated but not before they pushed his rescuers to their limits and beyond.
Kiba and Shikamaru weren't in such bad states, but Neji and Chouji were still being closely monitored. They were nothing compared to Naruto. Despite his amazingly swift recovery from his injuries, the ordinarily hyperactive ninja was destroyed in ways more than one. He had been reticent, merely slipped between fitful sleep and brief, silent wakefulness, after his initial determination to capture Uchiha Sasuke when he first came to.
But then...
There was no need.
Sasuke had been found a day later by Kakashi and his dogs. There was a reason why there was no third chidori, Kakashi-sensei had said. The cells in the human body could only manage to allow such great amounts of energy to course through in such short periods of time, without long intervals in between usage. Unlike the pills of the Akamichi family, the effects of the chidori on the body was not well-researched or documented. Thus, Sasuke remained as he was when he was found, comatose.
It was very lonely to have two teammates who kept on sleeping. Sakura visited Naruto, too, but she didn't ramble to him. He usually awakened to her voice, but his inattentive stare elsewhere unnerved her.
More often than not, Sakura let him sleep on, sitting at his bedside in silence. She figured he needed the sleep----he did take three of Sasuke's chidori.
Of course, she knew Sasuke used all three chidori on Naruto. It was fairly easy to guess.
Sasuke wouldn't wake no matter how long or loud she talked, so she did so to her heart's content. She didn't try slapping him awake or anything, since he probably needed sleep, too. Besides, she never had such an opportunity to talk like this, with him actually staying put in one place.
The progression of Orochimaru's curse seal was indefinitely suspended by the combined efforts of Tsunade-sama and several medics. His body was trying its best to heal, the Hokage had said. The curse seal seemed to work by pulling one into an accelerated state of metabolism for short periods of time, pushing a certain threshold at each stage, thus multiplying chakra production and pushing physical limitations indefinitely. The possible repercussions were innumerable.
So Sasuke wanted to kill his brother that badly... but what about Naruto? And after the three chidori, did he just leave Naruto because his opportunity to escape had come or because he was simply no longer able to spare strength for such an easy kill?
"Sasuke," Sakura had said then. "I wonder, how long had you wanted to kill Naruto. And why. That time at the rooftop, was that on impulse? Or was that an ambition of yours too? To prove with his body that you are strong? I was so scared then. But I thought it was because of Orochimaru and your brother. I told Naruto that and asked him to take you back. It's my fault he's like that now. Because I'd like to think you're still in there somehow.
"Are you? Sometimes, I lose sight of you. Where are you?
"I can only tell myself guesses and hopes. I can only do that for so long... So maybe I'd let it be. I won't ever expect explanations, rationalizations. You won't give me any, so I won't ask. Really, I won't. Not anymore. I won't."
But then her melodramatic monologue was cut short when he woke up there and then. "Protect the Fourth's isan," he said. And that was that.
That was that.
Apparently, Orochimaru's stronghold was attacked by his former comrades, the Akatsuki. Perhaps, Sasuke encountered members? Who knew? As it was, their target had always been the Yondaime Hokage's isan, heritage. Which, Sakura learned, was Naruto.
So she became one of the ruses to misdirect attention from the Naruto being carried away. It was just her luck that Itachi came to her first, attacked her first. It was just her luck to be able to glimpse the most powerful Kohona nin ever, the man who wrought Sasuke as he was, the ultimate reason why her team had been sundered.
The sharingan was a body part, a part of the eye, a vessel and channel of power. Kakashi-sensei said so, Zabuza the Mist missing nin said so: the sharingan was a hypnotic tool, and it was the genjutsu that fooled the enemy. The mangekyou sharingan catapulted the levels of usable genjutsu, captured one into another reality, a reality purposed to breakdown the opponent's soul.
She had been lucky to survive. She wanted to die at that time, in fact. She wanted to die as she lay there in the darkened hospital room, as she maintained the henge no jutsu that shrouded her with Naruto's likeness, as she saw the looming figure of death himself.
Now, in the present, she could still feel the unspeakable, numbing terror. Even though she had been sedated then. Even though Itachi actually used the sharingan on her rescuers. Even though she lived and Itachi left, did not return for years. Even though she slept through the rest, slept through Sasuke's awakening, slept through Naruto allowing him to escape willingly with a solemn vow to hunt the former to ends of the earth. Each man to his own path... Each woman.
So now, she had to do this. She had to live the path she had chosen. Fear was ever-present, but to lose to fear was unacceptable. So she would not run, even if she could. She would await her enemies, the unnamed ninjas who threatened her village, threatened to reignite the hidden shinobi war that ravaged the 5 great shinobi countries more than twenty years ago. They would come and she would prepare, as she did more than ten years ago, under that pristine white hospital sheet.
But this time, she'd break the enemy. They would break. She and her team would escape. Her village would be warned. This mad descent into a renewed shinobi war would stop.
But until then, she would abide, up this tree, in this mangrove forest.
He knew it. They've dallied too long. Uzumaki Naruto checked his team with a quick sweep of his eyes up front and a brief glance behind him. Kiba led the way with his ever-present partner Akamaru, no longer a puppy. Kaheel and Miranda, both chuunins, brought up the rear and with their combined techniques would surely cover their backs. Uchiha Sasuke raced somewhere beside him. He, too, must know that they've lingered for too long at that eastern farming village. Naruto was waiting for an acid remark concerning his fascinatingly precise forethought, but the man was almost more reticent these days, not exactly brooding, but thinking deep. Not that Sasuke didn't respect his team leader. It was simply their routine, so to speak. Sasuke would insult him, he would bellow indignantly. He would boast, Sasuke would burst his bubble.
There were always silences before storms. Sasuke had been through pretty crazy storms before, so Naruto watched him as carefully as he could, what will all the things he needed to attend to. And Sakura, don't even let him get started with Sakura. The mental health of his two best friends were the last things he'd be allowed to worry about. Heck, his mental health wasn't the most stable right now, either (Iruka sensei called it paronayo or something like that). But he couldn't worry about that either. Or about Neji bent on cracking his—
He was not scared of Neji!
So there.
The past few days left him little time to be scared of the pale-eyed Hyuga (and he wasn't!). Ten days ago, the assassination team returned from the Southern Crack country. A flurry of preparations followed as various reconnaissance groups returned to report the movements of enemy forces. Tsunade-sama thus deployed several patrol groups to the northwest, where the thick forests gradually tapered into plains and the western farmlands, where many invasions tend to occur due to the sheer size of the border to be protected. On the 8th of October, their patrol group stumbled into refugees from a farming village.
Now, Naruto knew he was going to get heat for overstepping his authority. Of course, it was a trap, he knew, the foreign ninja wouldn't have allowed survivors to escape and spread news of their presence—unless they wanted opposition from the Konoha nins. To spring their traps deliberately and return the favor to the enemies was the course of action Naruto chose. He couldn't bear the thought of helpless civilians languishing in the hands of those nameless ones, so he lead his team to the farming village.
Naruto received little resistance from his team, not even from Sasuke, who sometimes seemed to disagree with him for the heck of it. Kiba was actually itching for a shinobi battle, which he got later.
Indeed, a trap was prepared for them in that village. They narrowly escaped the ambush, but reclaiming the farming village took another day of planning and another day for execution.
And now, the twelfth of October... Kakashi-sensei would be ashamed of him.
"A ninja must see underneath the underneath."
Naruto did not see the underneath until a search of the surrounding farmlands produced no signs of the ninja invaders they had driven from the village. Those ninjas incurred serious wounds, and unless someone carried them off, they should be dying there in little pockets of vegetation dotting the fields, somewhere near.
But there was nothing.
When the lone ninja they managed to capture finally broke, he died almost immediately. The mangekyou sharingan was usually useful in interrogations, usually much less messy, but on that day, Sasuke overdid it.
"We've been circumvented," Sasuke said coolly announced, seconds after his captive's eyeballs practically exploded in his face. As Kaheel, the medic nin, scrambled to wash off the goo from the indifferent Uchiha (shrieking about blood-borne pathogens and, "You gotta teach me how to raise somebody's blood pressure that high!"), the rest of the team scrambled to find the tracks at their enemies' wake. For two days now, Naruto and the others had been tracking a six-man team.
That team steadily moved eastward. Yesterday, the foreign group joined with a three other ninjas. Meanwhile, the Konoha nins met a few of their own as well; they were either decimated or dead. The dead they had no choice but to bury quickly. As for the injured...
Well, Naruto and his team planned to split up yesterday to take the two survivors they found back to the village with news. They were attacked, however. It weakened the members too much to risk diluting their forces. Thus, they persisted in trailing the enemy.
Narut knew he had to adjust their intent to maximize the usefulness of their team. He had several suspicions on how the invaders managed to infiltrate the borders without raising alarm. Worse, he knew some of the enemy forces came from the east, possibly via the sea. It's possible that the foreign ninjas were already positioned at strategic points around the village, that they were only waiting for the last of their forces to arrive, that their attack hinged on surprise and speed instead of number
What was their intentions?.
There were too many questions that needed answering. They only needed one person to warn the village after all, and right now, Naruto needed every man he had. They'd have to gather as much information as possible first. The village must already have gotten wind of enemy movements that close to it, but details would be invaluable.
Something was about to happen.
In the fishing village somewhere along the coastline of the Fire country, the idyll heat-dazed noon was rent by the screams of a laboring woman. Elsewhere, while that infant struggled to burrow its way out into the world from his warm, dark sanctuary, a noose steadily enclosed around four people.
Sakura's breathing hiked as the furtive movements came closer and closer. No ninja could be that careless, unless these invaders were arrogantly underestimating them. Perhaps, it was a sort of ruse, a distraction...
Exactly! A distraction. She must not fall for it, must trust her teammates to cover her as needed. She must concentrate on finding the most opportune moment to strike. Time was of the essence.
Movements again, closer this time. Much too close.
Those movements couldn't have been made by a human. It almost seemed like a small animal, a creature that had an ability to climb a tree. The serene water beneath her stirred (yes, the tides had risen now; the ambush had been in stasis for that long). Dark shapes began wounding themselves around the gnarled roots of the partially submerged tree, crawled its way slowly up the thick, wizened giant.
Sakura's grip on the branch tightened. She could not feel anything. Nobody was using chakra, as far as she could tell, therefore it could not be genjutsu. But it could still be a part of the enemies' attack. It could only be a mere animal.
Some sort of a sea snake, perhaps? Some of the most venomous snakes dwelt in seawater, certainly in the deeper parts of the ocean. Why not here at this salt-water swamp? Or perhaps, it could be an insidious jutsu, like Orochimaru's reptilian transformation from more than a decade ago, the time he branded the curse seal on Uchiha Sasuke's neck.
Make up your mind! growled her inner self. We cannot lose!
A kunai. And several shurikens. If that creature got any closer, she would strike. Until then, she must not give away her position. She must not... she must not...
"It's real!" she managed to gasp, as the slithering shadows suddenly gained speed and, at the blink of an eye, shot out to clamp her mouth shut.
Animated vines! They were not genjutsu, they cannot be, for she cannot sense chakra itself, cannot cancel the spell with her own. They were real plants. And they really were throttling her, steadily crushing her thorax, sadistically toying with her as those tendrils encircled her neck, tensing to almost the point of breaking her spine----almost but not quite! It was as if it sprouted sentience...
Suddenly, she was yanked down. Her scream stayed in her mouth as her body obeyed gravity, her stomach violently protesting as she plummeted into the brackish water.
Cold and dark. Impending death. She was losing sensation in some parts of her body, losing awareness of her fingertips, her nipples, the tip of her nose. But she could still hear, even underwater. The sound of clashing arms, the roar of battle.
The ruse worked.
Of course. It was her ruse. It had brought about the opportune moment. It had come.
Blood trickled through the sudden cuts that bloomed on her arms and legs. She ignored the weapons that grazed her, meant to free her from Mayana's elaborate attack. Her concentration was on the series of seals her hands were performing, on keeping the calm that kept her oxygenated state last.
Her belly began to glow, began to contract inwardly as if preparing to implode. The intensity of the ball of light, formerly her navel, began to grow as it gathered power.
The minature sun rose out of the water as it used her body for fuel. That ball still expanded, blinded all. Sakura, who was Sakura no longer, could see the curious tableau that was sprawled prettily on the damp earth of the shore. Hyuga Neji was on the process of landing a gentle-fist attack on a fierce-looking kunoichi, while her comrade's leg froze in a kick toward Neji's head. Two more lay at his feet, writhing. Mayana was holding off a three-fold ambush while another man rushed for her. The deaf Konoha nin had already taken three enemies down and still battled another. Two of the enemies seemed to have decided not to join the fray, for they stood nearby in that tiny split of a second between Sakura's emergence from the water and the powerful release of her genjutsu attack.
Lightning fast, she gathered the threads of her chakra, the labyrinthine web she had entrapped their enemies on, and knotted them. It was only a matter of time before the spell dissipated on its own. Then, it would be up to her team to take advantage of their stunned opponents, to attack mercilessly and escape swiftly.
Meanwhile, she must escape at once. She was extremely vulnerable now, now as she underwent a refractory period that inevitably came after releasing such ridiculously large amounts of chakra that pushed way beyond her limits... Yes, they would escape. They would be able to escape in time to warn the village.
But wait! Something was wrong with that scar-faced Nameless one. Why did his smile seem to be widening? Why did he seem to have gotten closer to her?
Because he was closer.
He had broken the spell prematurely.
And she... why, her stupid legs wouldn't move. They wouldn't even support her! She turned to bolt, but the world spun around her unexpectedly. And the darkness crept at the sides of her eyes and crept closer still, till there was nothing but black.
There was nothing but black.
Like their namesake, the Konoha nins could truly soar with the wind if needed. The team Uzumaki Naruto was leading had covered leagues of the vast forests that covered the Fire country in an unbelievably short span of time. In three days, they had traversed the Southern reaches of the country from inland to the coast, as they trailed the platoon they still followed. It was hard to see through the thickness of the forest, but Naruto could already smell the salt lingering in the winds that periodically whipped through their paths, could hear the rumbling of the not-so-distant shoreline.
Only a few hour ago, Kiba reported the sudden change in the enemy movements. It became distinctly that of a predator stalking its meal.
There was going to be another ambush.
It was almost too late when they managed to catch up with the foreign nins. Naruto barely had time to coordinate his teammates' planned attacks, as they waited tensely for the enemy to move. Fifteen foreign nins had formed a lasso around a Konoha four-man patrol group. Nine against fifteen. It wasn't so bad, and they had the element of surprise on their side.
But then, so did the enemy.
A scream! Familiar. Sakura's.
Naruto leapt past an overgrowth and up a higher branch for better visual, just in time to see a kunoichi, her otherwise conspicuous pink hair hidden in a black turban, plunge to the lapping water with a crash. The sortie had begun.
Naruto was about to join the fray, to see if Sakura was all right, at least, but a firm hand held his shoulder down.
"I don't give a shit, Sas---"
"Wait," the other snapped.
Something was happening. Pulsating light was coming from the water, rendering surrounding murkiness to be a sick green gloss. The halo emerged from the water, drawing everyone's attention with its repulsive, yet entrancing glare.
"The Dying Sun?" Naruto mouthed, stunned. "She has perfected it?"
"Don't look!" hissed his companion.
We're too far, thought Naruto, but did as he was told anyway. A sudden surge of chakra lashed from the intense ball. Naruto felt fringes of the radiation, but he was able to resist the impulse to stare at the source headlong. He knew what that illusory spell held, anyway, having been subjected to it once while it was still in its developmental stages. He had no wish to be devoured by a world dying by fire and ice both.
The following events took place within seconds.
Sakura had already completed her technique when Naruto deigned to open his eyes. She was standing there in the middle of the clearing, was on the verge of flitting off to escape...
Then, that scarred nin was behind her. And she was no longer running but falling.
The spell was broken.
She failed, then?! Naruto's mind exclaimed in disbelief.
No, she did not. Neji and the others had already gained advantage, taking down their stunned enemies swiftly and efficiently. She must have been releasing them first.
But this man, this man broke the spell on his own long before he was meant to.
Sakura did succeed in buying time for her team, but at the cost of her life? And the gamble had almost been unnecessary—if only they, Naruto and his team, had come earlier...
Only two seconds had passed. Never had Naruto felt so slow in his life.
"Cover me, Sas---"
Sasuke was not there.
"Damn it!"
Naruto threw himself then, willing himself to stop the blade that intended to slice through his old teammate. But if he came fast, the blade slithered through the air faster still, the wedge coming closer and closer as the enemy swung back for the killing slash.
A line of silver.
Black cloth and cherry blossoms falling, falling, falling...
The falling Leaf hovered in midair as time froze for Naruto. Blinding sunlight suddenly flashed across her—a ray reflected from a scratched hita-aite headband, perhaps. Then Sasuke was hurtling toward her, too, along side that speeding sword. His arms stretched out, reached out... till the space between their bodies shrank ...till the lone sakura petal could be seen in its graceful descent, alone but for the shadow it was superimposed upon.
Sakura landed in Sasuke's arms as his feet touched the earth, and immediately, his legs tensed for propulsion. Still, the blade came, now heading for the unprotected back of the sole, remaining Uchiha.
But then, Naruto was there, too.
Blood dripped from his armguard, from where the metal dug into his flesh. But his snarling grin promised victory.
Needless to say, Naruto won that fight.
Everywhere else, Konoha nins were subduing the enemies.
"How's the body count?" came Mayana's question.
"Up!" Kiba replied enthusiastically.
"Arg! We need a few alive, people."
Neji came to Naruto then. Naruto was deeply disappointed with that.
"You knew the right me?" he asked as he cancelled his trusty Kage Bunshin no Jutsu.
"You reek," said Neji. "What happened to Sasuke and Sakura?"
"Probably on their way back to the village. What happened?"
"I don't know. She suddenly disappeared."
"Disappeared?"
"The Byakugan. She vanished. No chakra. Like a candle extinguished."
"No chakra? She's alive, though, right?"
"You saw what I saw. She had no reason to be dead or dying."
"Tsunade-obaachan would fix her," Naruto said finally. His voice was splashed with his usual confidence, but he looked up to where his friends disappeared with worry in his eyes.
Konoha Hospital.
After helping Neji's team fight off invading foreign nins, Naruto's team separated from them to inform other patrol groups of the Nameless Ones' ploy. Naruto and Kiba themselves returned to the village after trailing the survivors of the encounter in the mangrove forest. They then talked briefly with Tsunade and reported the movements of the foreign ninjas. Afterwards, they headed to the hospital to talk to Sasuke.
They found him in a lounge by the emergency room. He was sitting there, staring distantly.
"You're welcome, you overconfident fuck," Naruto said as he collapsed beside the dark-haired jounin. "You're crazy, you know that? What if I didn't get there on time? I don't want your blood on my hands, dammit."
Kiba slapped his back comfortingly. "It's because we trust you that much with our lives, oh-great-leader," he intoned. Then grinning, fangs barred, he added. "Right, Sasuke?"
Sasuke shrugged. "She said I'm suicidal," he said vaguely.
"Damn straight," Naruto said sulkily. He shook his head. "How's Sakura?"
"No word yet. Obviously."
"Not obviously. Would you have taken off after finding out if she's okay?
Sasuke chose not to answer that.
Meanwhile, a nurse came to them.
"Excuse me," she said. "You are companions of the young lady, Haruno Sakura?"
"Yeah, yeah," said Naruto. "Is she all right?"
"Her life is in no longer in danger as of now," the young woman assured.
"What happened to her?" asked Sasuke.
"That is what we are trying to find out right now. But for now, I have routine questions. You see, there are certain healing jutsu that are contraindicated for certain conditions. Now, this young lady is twenty-four, for example, and is of child-bearing age. I have to know if she's pregnant."
"Pregnant?" said Naruto in surprise. "No." But the subtle change in Sasuke's bearing hit him like a thunderbolt.
The stare he directed to the man beside him was unreadable. "Then again," Naruto added quietly. "How would I know about these things?"
"But is there any chance at all, you think?" the nurse asked, busily scribbling down notes.
It was Sasuke who answered her.
110904 23:11
AN: First of all, sorry this is late. I'm sure you know about Ffnet being on read-mode only on 11/22.
Lady Light, E-chan Hidaka (I'm glad the role reversal made you laugh), animEvivvErz, silvia, agent vash, trickmaster (luv the rhymes, btw XD), Bittersweet Mika, KakaSaku, regyne, Ayce Shade, NuttyScribbler, joann, Akari-Saxy ( I'm glad you liked the childbirth & sex convo. LOL), Emir, and to all the readers of this fic: thanks for waiting and reading. ) I hope you enjoyed this chapter, too.
Icarus'Song, I won't be lowering the rating of this fic to PG-13 because it still has the potential to have explicit content in the future. Also, some readers might feel awkward reading some parts in the previous chapters, not because of explicitness, but... er, it's an age thing. I remember what it's like to be thirteen and reading something like this. Ahahaha... (Then again, I'm relatively prudish.) I have to agree, though, that this fic doesn't strictly fit the definition of angst anymore.
Analogue Cat, "kami-sama" means "god/gods."
Yoka, on Ino and Sakura's relationship being part of their personalities, I agree with you. )
Well, that's it for now.
Next chapter: 121204 (at the latest)