Chapter 16: Reverence
Pain tore through Naruto's arm as her watched water separate him and Sakura. He at his attack as the cold water brushed over his sun-heated skin like a breathless wind. The slick, gray shark was nearly 10 times his size, its sharp yellow teeth tearing through Naruto's right forearm. He tried to yell in pain but his voice came out in bubbles and half his air supply. Dark blood pooled into thick clouds before him.
Stupid shark! Get the hell off me!
Naruto tried to yank his arm from the shark's teeth. White hot pain burst into thicker, red clouds in the salty water. Naruto choked; his lungs squeezed. He didn't have much time before he died of suffocation, pain or blood loss.
Fuck you, stupid fish! You've chosen the wrong guy to mess with! I've been eaten by things ten times your size, like hell I'm going to die now!
Through the searing pain, Naruto focused on his right hand, lodged inside the shark's mouth. His chakra thickened and began to swirl around his palm.
RASENGAN!
-
"Naruto!" Sakura grabbed the railing and made to leap over it.
"No, Sakura!" Sasuke yelled down at her. "It'll eat you too!"
"But we can't just stand here!"
"Move!"
Sasuke swiveled the harpoon launcher and aimed down at the water. He could see it, the large, long silhouette flailing just beneath the surface. If he could aim just right...
The spine-tingling feel of chakra radiated from the huge, shadowy creature. A small whirlpool turned on the water's surface, then stopped as abruptly as it began. For a moment, there was still silence. Not even the water dared to breathe.
The ocean exploded. A cocktail of salt water and blood erupted into the air like broken glass, the boat violently thrown to the side. Sakura clung to the rail the salty, blood chunky water rained down upon her.
Chunky?
White hunks of fish meat hailed down upon the boat. Sakura leaned over the edge again.
"Naruto?"
The boy resurfaced, panting painfully. Sakura reached down and he handed her his left hand. She cautiously dragged him out of the water and, to her disgust, noticed the gruesome dismembered head of the shark still clamped firmly around his right arm.
"Think fast, Sasuke!" Yoshitaka cried. Sasuke noticed the dark shapes, by the hundreds, moving quickly in their direction.
"So many?!"
"It's the blood." Yoshitaka flipped a button cover, marked "Emergency", next to the controls, revealing a small key hole. "Sharks can smell it over a mile away. It attracts them like a perv to cheap perfume." He pulled a key off the string around his neck, shoved it in and turned it. "Now hold on tight. I'm getting us out of here." The engine roared beneath them.
Sakura dragged Naruto and his catch across the deck, set the down and proceeded to remove the shark's jaw from her friend. With one quick movement, she tore through the shark's muscles, breaking the upper jaw from the lower and tossing each piece somewhere obscure.
Sakura bent to get a closer look at Naruto's injury, when she noticed something odd. At first, she thought the marks were more injuries, but they were too symmetrical, too perfect. Curly, black marks encompassed Naruto's navel, a central spiral as a hub surrounded by a bizarre ring of writing. She'd seen this writing somewhere before... Sakura reached out to touch it, maybe the black would rub off, but the insignia receded back into Naruto's skin, as though it had a mind of her own. This type of movement, symbols receding into the flesh, she'd see it before as well, on Sasuke. This was a seal...but what for?
Naruto cried out in pain.
"It burns!" He gripped his arm, cringing in pain. Sakura snapped back to the present.
"It's the salt water." She replied, lifting him to his feet. "We'd better clean it out."
She half carried, half dragged him into the small galley, set him down at the wooden picnic table and put his arm over a large mixing bowl.
She turned the wound over and watched the blood drip into the bowl. The shark had torn through some muscle but all the major veins were intact. The only lethal aspects lay in infection. With the combine bacteria from the ocean and the shark's mouth, there had to be something disgusting crawling around it there.
"Hang tight, Naruto. I'll be right back."
Sakura dashed down the hall to the sleeping quarters, grabbed her backpack and darted back into the galley. She sat down next to Naruto and pulled out cotton balls and a bottle of peroxide.
A little primitive, I guess, She thought as she twisted the cap off the peroxide, stuck a cotton ball on the top and turned the bottle upside down, What I wouldn't give for the Konoha Hospital's facilities right now...
"Naruto, this is going to sting a bit."
He nodded breathlessly. He looked a little sick and pale.
Blood loss...
Sakura pressed the cotton swab to the blood encrusted regions of Naruto's arm. She felt his muscles tense up. She secretly stole a peek at Naruto's abdominals. Nothing. The marks were completely gone. What kind of seal could do that...?
Sakura knew a little about seals; they fit themselves into a lot of Medic Jutsu. She'd learned a ton during her part in getting rid of Sasuke's curse too. What was it Jiraiya said?
"Now look, Sakura-chan, seals come in different levels and forms, like jutsus. You start with your basic seal components, bird seals and mouse seals being the easiest, and fit them together in the best ways possible. That, of course, is where the real genius comes into play, knowing which and how many seals to use. This seal..." He pointed at Sasuke's neck, "... appears to be made out of three basic components, but as we have seen, it's a lot more than that; it actually made up of hundreds. Seals that contract, like this one, are the best and most difficult. They also last the longest. They're designed to be tapped into, so they're user isn't constantly putting out excess power.
"Each seal is made up of seal components, like bird and mouse as I have mentioned, and these components in turn are made up of long strings of encryptions tied together in their simplest form. There are many kinds of these components, the largest and strongest being a dragon seal, but the energy required to place one would wear out 10 jounin, so it's rarely used. The largest seal component one person can perform is the elephant seal..."
A flame of understanding lit in the back of Sakura's mind.
An elephant seal! That's where I've seen those marks before! What else did Jiraiya say about them...?
"...and depending on how strong you are you can use this multiple times. In fact, you should. A seal made up of only one of each type of seal component can be very instable. It's better to go with two or three of something smaller than one of something large, but not more than that. Four is really pushing it."
"But Jiraiya-sama, Sasuke has hundreds!" She remembered exclaiming.
"Yeah, but those seals are relatively weak in comparison to a broader scope, so you can use a lot of them without much backlash."
"Backlash?"
"Seals are like equations. They need to balance out. The stronger the seal the higher the price you must pay. Most seals are covered just by the blood you use to draw them, but sometimes... they take a little more..." Jiraiya stopped; his face softened, his eyes saw something in a distant past. He became shaded with the curse of nostalgia.
"Jiraiya-sama?"
"Huh?"
"You were saying...?"
"What? Oh, Never mind! Let's just get this crap off Sasuke!"
"H-hai!"
So what could she say about it? It had at least four elephant seals; whoever sealed it would've had to be beyond genius. Could Naruto do that? Was it a bad idea to think he couldn't? One thing was for sure, something powerful rested inside of that seal. What Akatsuki was after? That power Sakura'd felt in Sea Breeze? She couldn't afford to jump to conclusions.
"S-sakura-chan?"
Sakura glanced up. Naruto was looking at her, worry drawn across his brow.
She's so serious...
"I-it's not deadly, is it?"
Sakura blinked a few times before bursting out laughing.
"No, you'll be fine."
Naruto let out a sigh of relief.
Sakura returned to her cleaning, but stopped. Her eyes glared down at his arm.
Naruto's wound had completely healed.
-
Outside, Sasuke battled recklessly with the sharks. He'd never expected it to be so difficult. With the boat now going three times faster, he had little time to react.
A mammoth beast leapt out of the water in front of him, massive jaws barred. Sasuke wheeled the launcher and shot a harpoon right through the shark's nose. He blinked as flecks of blood spattered his face and the shark rebounded off the hull and back down into the water. A dark shape whizzed by on the right. Sasuke shot at it, but didn't have time to see if he'd hit; another dark shape approached at his left.
This is insane; we're going too fast. He thought as he pierced the shark's dorsal fin. I can't keep up.
Sasuke took a breath and closed his eyes. His veins pulsed with his bloodline.
SHARINGAN!
Sasuke's eyes shot open. The world seemed predictable. A shark was going to appear on his right again. He could see it before the large shadow swept the boats side. The creature moved just as Sasuke expected. He swiftly aimed the launcher and shot the beast sharply in the head.
Yoshitaka's brow furrowed. What was he seeing? Sasuke's impeccable aim had gotten, if possible, better. In fact, it looked like the sharks were jumping into the harpoons, like dogs to a bone. Yoshitaka recalled the other boy. In all his long years as a sailor, he'd never met anyone who had defeated a shark one-on-one. Only a handful of people had survived an attack, and somehow, this loudmouth brat had not only done that but completely destroyed the shark. Who were these children...? Yoshitaka could only imagine what kinds of abilities the girl had.
5... 4... Sasuke counted the remaining harpoons. The sharks had calmed down; they weren't following them closely anymore. He let his eyes fade back to normal and shook his head against the weary nausea that normal followed the use of his abilities.
Yoshitaka pulled the key out and let the boat return to it's leisurely pace.
-
Unaware of the Gates of Hell he'd just opened, Naruto had the best afternoon. Yoshitaka gave him the rest of the day off to recover (Sakura had bandaged Naruto's healed arm anyway. Not because she was in denial, but to thwart any suspicions anyone else might have.), so he sat on a bench, taste-testing Sakura's soup (which was getting radically better) and laughing at Sasuke as his friend pushed the mop over the buffet of salt water, blood and shark chunks that littered the deck.
Who's the better one now!?
The afternoon sank quickly into the dark dusk. The vibrant, stellar technicolor transformed into a deep blue, a complete mirror of the sea below it.
"Oi, we're ahead of schedule!" Yoshitaka hollered down to them. "Come look at this."
Sasuke set down the mop and joined Naruto and Sakura as they climbed to the landing at the front of the ship. They squeezed around the harpoon launcher and stared out over the railing. A large dark strip was growing larger in the distance, a single bright star along the horizon marked Sorano. The wind whipped the trio's hair and clothes and tickled their faces.
"Waaaaaaa!" Naruto hollered playfully over the water as they bounced up and down on the waves. Sasuke smiled, then looked to his left where Sakura stood. Her nose and cheeks grew pink against the ocean breeze. She watched the speck of light but her mind was in another place altogether.
"Sakura...?" Sasuke muttered. She jumped a little.
"Y-yes?"
"You've been quiet since you fished me out of the water." Naruto piped up.
Sakura smiled sheepishly. Sasuke looked sadly out on to the water.
"Are... you still angry at me for using my real name?"
Sakura blinked. She'd been so concerned with Naruto's stomach, she'd forgotten to be.
Sasuke gripped the railing and leaned his hips back.
"To be honest," He continued, "I want Orochimaru to come after us."
His comrades threw him insane stares
"WHAT!?" Naruto cried.
"Well, Orochimaru is the main reason we left Konoha, right?" Sasuke sadly looked out at the star growing larger on the horizon.
"I get it." Sakura sighed. "If he comes after us, we can defeat him and go home, that's what you're getting at."
Sasuke smiled crookedly.
"Well, I know how much you guys miss Fire Country. Sakura, that song you sang in Sea Breeze said it all and Naruto hasn't liked a single bowl of ramen since we left. I know you both want to go back."
"But what about you, Sasuke?" Naruto pointed out. "Don't you miss Konoha too?"
Sasuke smiled sluggishly and blushed. Naruto burst out laughing.
"Ha, ha! You just like a clam, Sasuke."
"A cl-clam?!"
"Yeah, y'know, all rock solid on the outside but mushy on the inside." Naruto punched Sasuke arm playfully; Sasuke grumbled. "Right Sakura-chan?"
No answer.
"Sakura-chan!"
"Huh?" Sakura looked up.
"Man, you're spacey today!"
"Are you sure you're okay, Sakura?" Sasuke asked.
"Oh, yeah, I'm fine." Sakura mumbled. "What were you saying?"
"I was saying how Sasuke is like a clam." Naruto chuckled. Sasuke grumbled again and Sakura laughed.
"He is kind of clammy." Sakura looked Sasuke over. "But I'm afraid you're wrong Naruto."
"Eh?" Naruto was shocked, Sasuke threw him a smug look.
"Yeah, he's a crab."
Naruto burst out laughing.
"What?! How?" Sasuke pouted at her.
"You've got pinchers." Sakura smiled sweetly, grabbed Sasuke's arm and poked his cheek. "Besides, crabs are tastier than clams."
Sasuke blushed.
The city swelled up through the cyan/indigo light, a beautiful painted night sky with all the lights sparkled amongst the buildings. The town reflected upon the glimmering water, radiating with the luminosity of a child's fairytale. Silently, the boat and its passengers snuck into the harbor.
Author's Note: Yay for chapter 16! I would like to extend a hug out to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. A record number of reviews! I feel so loved... :). I hope this chapter lived up to your expectations, I know a lot of people had big plans for it that probably didn't come true.
Yes, Sasuke's Curse Seal is gone! There's a little story behind it, but I didn't think it was important enough to include and I think I gave enough detail about its destruction in this chapter, so don't expect too much more on that level.
"Forbiden Lovers" on Naruto: I'm surprised; no one asked me about why the "Dance of the Forbiden Lovers" doesn't work on Naruto! I mentioned it last chapter, and no one called me on it. If you were curious, it has nothing to do with "Sakura secretly likes Naruto", " Sakura and Naurto are closer than Sakura and Sasuke are", or "Sakura and Naruto are making babies behind the scenes". It's really quite simple. Naruto is a very outgoing, in-your-face kind of person, combine that with the fact that he likes Sakura. Now what do you think would happen if you tried to kiss someone like that. They'd try and kiss you back! In such a situation, Sakura would pull back and the entire technique would be reversed, with Naruto on the offesive and Sakura on the defensive. That's the only reason that technique doesn't work on Naruto. Man, I need to stop with these essays... :/
Next Chapter: Welcome to Sorano! A strange old woman? A bizarre prophecy? But what about the seal?!