Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.


Bathing in Blood

26. The Fall

"So with the greybeard whose son sins

Against the king, and is hanged: he stands

Watching his child swing on the gallows...

He can raise

His voice in sorrow, but revenge is impossible."

-Beowulf

The pink-haired girl gazed at her teammates with placid revulsion, at their crumpled limbs as they huddled in unconscious lumps of horror. Unnatural poses, like paper dolls or abandoned puppets, unwanted and forgotten, thrown carelessly to the ground. A residual aura hung around them in a haze, a pale washed-out cloud the color of murky water. It shimmered with left-behind power, power to control a curse seal and create another.

It smacked of danger.

It reeked of snakes.

Its owner was far, far away. Sakura made a wistful grimace as she looked off into the trees. She'd given up one fight, and a promising one at that, only to find that she'd missed the action anyways.

The forest wove a deceptive cloak of emerald on every side, surrounding the standing girl and the bodies at her feet. But the air itself was vibrating with that energy, that stale after-battle energy like the stench of blood, attracting sharks to the kill. Even now, she could feel the approaching auras, three of them, a trio of pinpricks the same faded, brainwashed gray-green as the reptilian chakra.

With a tinge of pink underlying them, too—they were just kids, just another team on another mission, shouldering the motives of the snake-man without question lest they be persuaded to do so with force. A cruel tactic, but it was effective. These were the kind that would rather live on their knees, that would die on their knees, that would mumble 'thank you' to their executioner.

The most convenient breed for a power-hungry leader.

Surely she could have put them down quickly enough. Surely devotion did not make up for lack of skill. However...could she protect the deadweights at her side while she did that?

...all three teammates...alive...

Her eyes lit up as inspiration struck. They aren't waking up anytime soon, she thought with an open smirk. All the better.

Fingers flickered effortlessly through a complicated series of seals. One hand twirled a kunai. A variation on the Yamanaka astral projection technique, adjusted for someone without a bloodline of her own. She'd coerced a younger, more gullible Ino into explaining it, on one of those girls-only sleepover parties the blonde had been so fond of. No one suspected; quite possibly no one remembered. Who could have looked at the little Haruno child, cherry-blossom locks hiding all except the innocent smile as her friend chattered cheerfully, and seen anything but good intentions?

Slowly, the raven-haired boy rose to his feet, followed by his rival. Blue eyes stared vacantly, zombie-like; red Sharingan wheels frozen and still. Their bodies glowed a soft scarlet. Sakura was in charge now, at long last, the ultimate puppet-master—

And that was when the pain hit her. The pain of two seals aggravated, aggregated into one. She could feel the boundless energy rising as she struggled to keep control, as she fell to her knees. She'd known this would happen; had to happen sometime; why now why now why now—


They'd tied her up.

She'd put up a good struggle, for sure. She'd used so many techniques she remembered from her old scrolls, nearly everything she knew. But she was not used to fighting against forty men at once, forty men who were all shinobi, forty men who were all strong in one way or another. She didn't have Naruto's Kage Bunshin; she didn't have Sasuke's Sharingan. She had a few flimsy mind-jutsus, only useful when fighting one-on-one. So strong, and yet so weak.

don't say that don't say that don't don't don't-

And here she was, bound and gagged and strapped to a chair in a dark room backstage, while the kidnappers partied noisily in the auditorium. She could hear their drunken conversations.

"You score us some gals tonight, Hota?"

"Forget about the gals! Score us some weed! I'm gettin' lonesome for me mushrooms back home!"

"Why bother? We're gonna hafta change base tonight. The little shit that walked in on us—she's one o'them wimpy crazy-ass Leaf genin as go on retrieval missions and such. She's probably let her whole team know about our hideout."

"Weeeed! Weeeeed, I tell you!"

"Whaddaya say we kill the bitch, just to make sure?"

"Whaddaya say we go get some weed, and then kill her?"

"Enough about the weed, Maro. I'll send Nosuke to get you some. When he comes back, we can kill the girl, and then get the hell out of here with the Otsubo brat."

A chill ran up her spine, a small ice-cold insect making a nest at the nape of her neck. She needed a way out of this, and fast. She wriggled desperately in her bonds, working her arms up over her head.

That was when the idea hit her.

With one foot, she nudged her shoulder-bag open. On the top lay the scrolls she'd found in the museum lobby, abandoned by the bandits swearing and laughing on the brighter side of the curtain. She broke the seal of the first one she saw, the one that looked the most forbidding in the shadows, the one with the anciently silver hazy appearance. Squinting, she read the curling lines of calligraphy, and smiled.

This was one of the lesser-known forbidden jutsus. It had been developed, centuries before, as an alternative to chakra. A way to make up for what your genes lacked. A way to level the playing field of shinobi arts. It worked by rewriting the chakra coil system so that physical pain was converted to energy. Energy that could not be detected as chakra could. Boundless energy, directly related to one's endurance.

It sounded impossible; impossibly perfect.

The experts deemed it too dicey, of course, once they knew of the risks. Eight out of ten people would not survive the rewrite, they said. And those that did survive would have to be even more cautious. A single moment of extreme pain could make for their self-destruction. There was only so much energy a body could handle, they said. Better to stick with the devil you know.

Thus, what could have been the greatest discovery in ninja history sunk to no more than a footnote in the official texts. And the people forgot, told themselves that chakra was more than enough, and moved on to greater things.

The pink-haired girl smiled fearlessly, grabbing a kunai with her toes. She brought it up in her bound hands, behind her back, never thinking to cut the ropes, too absorbed in her newfound knowledge to care. The seals on the scroll were glowing red, burning into her vision, as she drew the blade downward in a flash of cold metal. And then she felt it for the first time—the burning, the uncontrollable, overflowing potential. She couldn't rein it in.

So she didn't try.


Sakura clenched her fist at the memory. She'd practiced all the time after that, wrestling for command of the power she both loved and hated. But this explosion of agony...she couldn't prepare for this. After all that hard work, after all that wasted effort, she had to do it again.

Let go.

And if she did let go, what would it mean? Would she be weak for not controlling, or strong for simply having? Did she care?

The hovering image of her mother, beer bottle in hand, glared down at her.

...girls aren't strong, Sakura...

"Shut up!" she screamed in anger at the image. That...isn't...true...

...you'll never be anything but a doll, Sakura...

"Shut up, I told you!" she shouted. That...isn't...true...

Haruno Keiko leered at her.

...you're just my puppet, Sakura...

Frustration.

Despair.

Anger.

And all those, replaced by one word.

Determination.

A sneer reappeared on the pink-haired girl's face. She stood, suddenly calm, looking the ghost of her mother in the eye. She took a step forward.

And let go.