yon.
DEAD AND DYING WERE two very different things—Sakura knew this intimately. Her teachings with Tsunade were not easily forgotten, even in the face of her exile and subsequent disownment as the Hokage's apprentice, and she found herself dragging up the old lesson in the forefront of her mind as she leaned against a tree, grimacing at the pull and tug of her slapdash glue job. It had been simple: if you were dead, you weren't fighting. If you were dying, you could still fight. It was less of a medic's lesson and more of a war tip, but to Sakura, everything felt like war now, even down to the sensitive feelings of betrayal and guilt brewing in her gut. She had suppressed them for over six months, feigning her smiles and faking wellbeing, when her consciousness was trying to kill her with grief. There was nothing she could do now but move forward until she did eventually die, and that didn't seem too far off.
Katsuyu's summoning seal was null and void. Even as she managed to produce some meagre sputterings of chakra that didn't tear the paper, she knew her efforts were hopeless. When she was forced out as Tsunade's apprentice, all of her contracts and benefits were also taken from her. She had thought, with Katsuyu's fondness for her, that the slug might retain her contract with her, as she was a sentient being, but clearly that was not the case. Ultimately, Katsuyu followed Tsunade, and it was foolish to think otherwise.
"Damn." When she reached under her flak jacket to touch the wounds, they came away slick and bloody. The sparse raindrops sneaking through the canopy washed most of it away, but the longer she lingered the more the glue would fail and her wounds would rip open entirely. It was not water resistant, unfortunately, because Kakashi, cheapskate that he was, wouldn't invest two dollars more to get it. She was grateful he'd extended his kindness to her at all, but she had to wonder how he would get along in life, sooner or later, when his life was at risk.
At the thought of her former teacher, her mind drew back to the summoning scroll he'd shoved in her pack. It was probably her only hope of getting anywhere close to the civilian village now; she'd stopped and now she couldn't move much farther, pain paralyzing her lower body when the last of her adrenaline ebbed away. It couldn't be his dogs, but she hadn't known much about the Hatake clan—only that they were nomadic in nature, and that he was the last of them.
Unsealing her pack, she rummaged through the contents halfheartedly, pulling the slender, ornate contract from the second zipper. It was thinner than any contract scroll she had ever seen, barely half a page, and looked far more expensive than Katsuyu's. Someone had gone through the effort to add genuine gold and silver plating to the wooden borders, something she hadn't seen when he had been putting it in her bag, and her eyes caught on the name of the summoning animal, breath stuttering to a faint stop.
Kirin.
She knew the technique, of course, had even witnessed it the one time she had come across Sasuke and nearly lost her life. But she also knew the mythology surrounding the holy beasts, having been present for the few lectures that the academy had presented for entertainment during her lunch breaks. Brilliant beasts of peace and flame, they harmed not a single thing upon the earth, not even the insects upon the ground, and walked upon clouds and slept in the skies. When threatened, however, they were vicious, fierce animals, wielding flames on par with that of the Sharingan's Amaterasu. No one had seen the contract since Konoha's founding—so how had it found a home in Kakashi's hands, and now hers, after all this time?
She swept her bloody thumb across the paper without a second thought. If Kakashi had given it to her, then she was meant to use it somehow. With her contract with Katsuyu gone, she had nothing to protect her if worse came to worse. Nothing in her arsenal would prepare her for being alone like this, on the brink of death, and as the scroll wriggled in her hands and her vision began to blur, she figured even a Kirin who wouldn't harm another without reason was better than nothing.
What she wasn't expecting was to be pulled, mentally, into another dimension.
Sakura felt her body collapse against the tree and crumple to the ground, the last of her glue pulling free and the rivers of blood beginning to flow anew. It was a strange feeling; Katsuyu had never done this to her when establishing their contract.
When she blinked, she was no longer outside the borders of Konoha, but within the realm of the Kirin.
Glistening clouds rolled beneath her feet, flecked with particles of gems and iridescent globules of molten silver. The sky was a pale pink and orange gradient, studded with visible stars, and there, in the center of the clouds and empty realm, stood a Kirin.
Tall and elegant, the divine beast stood before her with eyes nearly the color of watered down blood. A tall rack of deerlike horns rose up above scaled ears, forming the shape of a rounded diamond, and hanging from them, swaying in the breeze, was a pale, bleached length of foot long moss, blooming with dark red flowers that seeped with golden nectar, pooling beneath the kirin's decidedly avian feet. With a bleached skull turned in her direction, those pink eyes trained on her, it looked nothing like any kirin she had ever heard of. Its scales were distinctly serpentine in nature, not dragon-like, as the legends had said, and instead of a brown oxen's tail, a length of razor sharp vertebrae protruded from the curve of its spine, ending in a viciously curved barb not unlike that of a scorpion's. When her eyes drew back to the summon's face, she thought she saw amusement in those eyes, though the skull could not portray emotion.
"None other than I would answer you, traitor of flame," the kirin spoke, the air around them shifting. It was female, a light, tinkling voice that held sultry undertones of a different kind. The sky darkened to a deep red and the clouds rolled, darkening to a deep, impossible blue and purple, lightning illuminating beneath her feet. Sakura stepped backwards, wary, and the kirin laughed. "There is no need to fear me—yet, of course. I had wondered when Sakura Haruno would grace this realm with her presence. It seems you are earlier than I suspected."
"How do you—?" Sakura paused, shifting her hand to her stomach. Instead, she touched bare skin, clear of wounds, and when she looked further, she found she was entirely naked and still felt as if she was clothed. "What do you mean?"
"Kirin hear whispers on the wind, even those like myself." The kirin was suddenly close to her, smelling of blood and flowers and a salty sea breeze. "Do not concern yourself with your lack of clothing. This realm exposes your greatest vulnerabilities. Tell me, Sakura Haruno, what do you wish?"
She swallowed thickly. She knew Kirin could grant wishes—but she had no idea what to expect from this one, who was clearly different from the others. When she hesitated, her mouth open, the Kirin tutted.
"I would hurry." Pink eyes bore into hers, deep and knowing. "Your life drains away as we speak. And think hard—a foolish wish would cost you dearly."
Eyeing the sharp shards of bone protruding from the skull inches from her face, she figured she didn't want to take that risk and find out. "I… wish to live."
"To live?" Evidently, the Kirin was not expecting such an answer. Her tone was slightly confused, but Sakura felt her stomach twist into knots when the beast before her managed a malicious smile, even with a fixture as a skull for a face. "I see. Even at the cost of others' lives? Would you steal the lives of others so that you may live, Sakura Haruno?"
"And if I would?" she asked softly, fear threading through her voice. "What then?"
The Kirin tossed her head, beautiful moss and flowers wafting a stronger scent of blood towards her. "Then we would have a contract. My services and your life for the promise of death—should you wish to live past noon."
"Then…" Sakura paused. She had wanted to end the death she had caused, even if she had only been stopped by being caught, in the end. But this creature, a perversion of a Kirin, in exchange for its aid and her life, wanted more death from her—more murder, more darkness upon her already ink painted soul, and as the faces of all of her victims flashed through her mind, flickers of faint images, their eyes panicked and frenzied as she ended their lives, she found that she wanted to be selfish. To think of no one else but herself, alone and dying in the forest, Sai's mask strapped around her face and the crow's eyes peering out from a dead body. To be selfish, and hold no concern about her lack of medical ninjutsu, to just live, and continue existing. "I accept."
"Excellent." Plumes of vermillion smoke escaped from the Kirin's bone nostrils in a pleased exhale. The beast touched her cold, hard nose to Sakura's forehead, the smoke smelling faintly of honeysuckle and lavender as it obscured her vision and enveloped her body in an impossibly cold embrace. "Let our contract be set in stone. Your wounds will hold until you reach aid, and in return, I must have one life for the extension of my power—your most recent kill will placate me for a time. For each use of my power and length of time you hold my contract, you must take a life; do you understand, Sakura Haruno?"
She squeezed her eyes shut when they threatened to spill over with tears. More death; unavoidable, in the face of her own. "I understand."
"Very well. And so it is done." The Kirin retreated, raising her large head above Sakura's own, flowers drifting from the moss and sticking to her skin, sinking into her shoulders and arms and chest and legs, the petals vanishing into her body. "My name is Yoko. Should you ever need me, spill another's blood and I shall come."
The world warped around her and then she was falling, falling, and startled awake in her physical body, her cheek cold with mud and the rain soaking her to the bone. She pushed up to her knees roughly, noting there was no painful tug of glue, and used the tree to prop herself up as she unbuckled her flak jacket. When she ripped her shirt up, expecting to see her wounds still bleeding openly, she was surprised to find crimson flowers blooming from the wounds, no larger than her finger and growing in clusters, roots holding her skin together tighter than any stitches she could have done. When she touched them, experimentally, they thrummed with her blood, pulsing in time with her heartbeat, and she tugged her shirt back down, nausea slamming into her belly as the realization of the deal she just made settled in.
More death. More lives lost because of her. Sakura brought her hand up and rubbed the mud off of her cheek tiredly. She couldn't avoid it if she tried, it seemed. The best she could do now was get help for her wounds, and go the rest of the way to Amegakure; the war missions would enable her to fulfill the Kirin, Yoko's, death requirement, and then… after that, she wasn't sure. She didn't even know if she would see another day after the war. It was very likely anywhere she went, she would be unwelcome and shunned for what she had done. The news was probably rampant over the other nations now, her friendships ruined with the truth of her actions—even her tentative friendship with Gaara, who only had ever had eyes for Naruto.
Naruto. She zipped her jacket back up and shoved the muddy scroll back in her bag. What would he think of her now? Her crimes had already been bad, and the ones she was about to commit would sully her image further in his mind. He didn't seem to care when it came to Sasuke, but her? She didn't expect to be on the same end of his forgiveness. He had a strange hypocriticism for Sasuke and anyone else, expecting the best from others and nothing but betrayal and death from Sasuke. He would probably kill her if he saw her, or try to work out a reason for why she had done it before it inevitably ended in a fight. She would have to avoid him, if she could, and keep tabs on his location, somehow, though he was miles away in Mizugakure the last she remembered. That had been before she was imprisoned, so he could be anywhere now, following Sasuke's trail.
"Nothing to do about it now, I guess." She took a shaky breath and began walking towards the village, ignoring the odd thrumming of the flowers embedded in her flesh.
Nothing indeed, the delighted cackle of a Kirin agreed, drifting on the wind.
