Choice:

A Terrible Splendor

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Author's Note: Whoooo, another chapter! I hope you guys all like it. There isn't a lot of action in this one, but the next couple will feature a big fight between our lovely Saku-chan and the big bad Orochi-kun. Who'll be the victor? Only I know, for now! Hope you enjoy.

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Act VI: Bitter Tears

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Sakura woke up slowly.

Her eyes gradually opened, getting used to the cloudy haze of the hidden sun above her. After a moment, she realized that the foul smell that was in her nose was the stench of the graveyard, and the taste in her mouth that made her tongue thick and her eyes water wasn't any taste at all, just nervousness and angst. She sat up in stages, pushing with her arms and scooting her legs back and looking around her blankly. Neji was sitting some distance away, his hands resting on his knees, meditating in his usual fashion. To her left, Shikamaru was resting peacefully, a hand on his chest, another resting near hers.

She took his hand with hers and rubbed it against her cheek, wanting to wake him up. His eyes fluttered open, and he sat up, smiling. He wrapped his unoccupied arm around her waist and kissed her fully on the mouth, sending electric shocks through her body. She giggled as he released her, focusing on his twinkling, dark brown eyes. The sparkle of purple in them shone at her.

Her hand ran down his neck till it reached its base. She looked at it and gasped. The curse seal! She looked back at him. He was Orochimaru. His cruel gold eyes flickered at her surprised face, and the grip on her wrist was tight, vicelike. She looked frantically towards Neji, wanting to scream for help, but she couldn't speak. Neji was keeled over, kunais stuck in his side, Kabuto smirking next to him.

Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi were running for her. They would help. Suddenly, a giant snake burst from the ground, the kanji for 'sickness' on its back, and dove at them, killing them all in a giant swoop. It turned and started eating its tail, consuming itself until there was nothing but a sickening purple void. Sakura looked at it, feeling sick, and opened her mouth in a silent scream.

She was screaming.

Screaming.

Scream-

"Sakura!"

A sharp pain shot up her arm from her wrist, and her eyes snapped open, the jade orbs reflecting extreme fear. She looked around blindly, head whipping from left to right, until she caught a vision of an unmasked Neji to her right. He was gripping her wrist tightly, and she realized that the screaming was coming from her mouth. She stopped immediately and panted, cold sweat beading on her oversized forehead.

Neji looked at her with concern, kneeling down. "Sakura, what's wrong?" He was frowning, lines etched between pale lavender eyes.

She put a hand on her mouth, trying to control her breathing. She was hyperventilating, and she felt her heart trying to pound its way out of her chest. "N-nothing," she managed through her fingers. "Just a bad dream. Where's Shikamaru?"

Neji, still looking extremely confused and concerned, gestured to her left. She turned her head, and he was laying on the ground, exactly as he had been in her dream. But this time, there was no kiss, no warm smile and grasping of hands. Shikamaru lay still as a corpse, eyes closed, skin pale, fists clenching on and off. Sakura looked at him for a long time, chest heaving slowly, eyes filling with bitter tears. The curse seal had spread throughout his body, twining around his limbs like some sort of sick tattoo. Sakura touched his head lightly and frowned. Fever. He was in the first stage. She felt sick to her stomach.

Something warm was pressed on her face, and she started in alarm, but it was only Neji, gently rubbing a warm rag over her face to clear it from the tears and dirt. "Sakura, you need to focus," he said sternly but gently, moving the cloth to her hands and rubbing. "This is our fifth day, and Shikamaru's first. We only have two more after this for all of us. We need to focus. The only way we can cure Shikamaru is if you study the first body more, and you can't do that if your mind is on him."

Sakura took a deep breath, thankful for Neji's sense and care. "Arigatou. I'll start on the body now. Alert me if there's any change in his condition."

She stumbled towards the first corpse, tying her mask tightly in an effort to grasp some sense of normalcy. The mission came first. If she succeeded in this, Shikamaru could be saved, could be cured. She took up her usual sitting position next to the body and breathed in deeply another time, pressing a gloved finger onto a decaying arm.

Again she felt the chakra flowing through her body and the corpse's, and again she felt the startling difference between the two, the horrible silence of the body she was touching. Ignoring those forward-pushing thoughts, she delved further into the body, expanding her chakra to the neck once again. She collected it all there and examined the curse seal, the horrible blackness that had given her such pain. There was no sign of it outside of the blackness itself. There was only one way to find out what it was... and that was to go inside of it again.

Bracing herself for the pain, she let her chakra dive into the blackness. Pain wracked her entire body, and it was all she could do to keep the chakra swirling and examining. Her chakra's 'eye' saw a swirling void of purple and black, a decaying, deathly alive thing. It seemed to be sucking in on itself, swallowing itself. What was going on? It was extremely smaller than it had been the day before, and it was growing smaller by the second as her chakra touched it.

The void swallowed itself completely, and the pain stopped.

Opening her eyes in surprise, she looked at the corpse's neck.

No curse seal!

It had... disappeared! It had eaten itself into oblivion!

A flash of her dream entered her mind's eye: the snake, devouring itself.

The snake with the kanji for 'disease' on it.

A swelling of joy rose in her chest, and she leapt to her feet. "I got it!" she whispered in excited happiness, feeling like she could kiss the world. "Neji!"

He was already halfway across the field, incinerating bodies with a fire jutsu. His head turned sharply when he heard her cry, and he ran towards her with extreme concern, worried that something was wrong again. "Sakura, what is it?"

She flung her arms around him. "Neji, I got it!"

"N-nani?" His voice was incredulous, and he pried her arms off of him. "What do you mean? You got what?"

"I have it! The answer!" She twirled, her pink hair flying from the masked face. "The seal isn't a curse seal!"

"Sakura, are you sick?" he asked anxiously.

"No, I'm perfect!" She laughed and pushed down her mask so Neji could see her eyes, clear and sparkling and bright. "It isn't a curse seal... it's the actual disease itself!"

"What are you talking about?" Neji asked, feeling her forehead.

"Neji, stop!" she protested, pushing his hand away. "Look, it's simple. Curse seals feed off of chakra, right?"

"Hai. Right."

"And this doesn't feed off of chakra, right?"

"Aa. So?"

"Neji, the only way a curse seal is a curse seal is because it feeds off of chakra. If it doesn't use chakra, it won't survive. Didn't it puzzle you that the chakra levels were intact, undamaged, but the seal thrived on?" Without waiting for an answer, she pressed on stubbornly. "It was in my dream, Neji. The disease... I went into the seal again." He started, looking angry.

"Sakura, I thought I told you not to! You were in extreme pain the last time you tried that, and-"

"Neji! Shut up, I'm still talking!" She smiled at his taken aback face. "Anyway, the rottenness inside it... the horrible decay, you remember I told you about it? It was some sort of purple-black void that kept on sucking into itself, getting smaller the whole time. After a couple minutes, maybe only two, it disappeared completely!"

He pushed down his mask, as well, frowning. "How does that work, then? Why doesn't it kill itself the moment of contact?"

Sakura looked at him thoughtfully. "The curse seal spreads throughout the body almost immediately. I bet that if I tried to chakra-search Shikamaru, I'd be in a lot worse pain... it'll be throughout his body. It takes far beyond the three days you're given to live to kill itself off."

"So how will we cure Shikamaru?" Neji asked. "It's impossible. You've found the root, but not the cure."

Sakura shook her head. "When I submerged my chakra into the neck, it went even faster, faster than I even imagined. With enough chakra, Shikamaru could be healed within an hour."

"But we don't have that much chakra," Neji said in a disappointed tone, looking at her pityingly, "and we can't go back for Naruto's Kyuubi-enhanced chakra, and there's no one here that has enough. Ours combined wouldn't do any help, either. We'd need a third person, at least, and there aren't any shinobi around here."

Sakura looked up. "No."

"What?"

She bit her lip, staring at him determinedly. "There are shinobi around her. A couple. One especially."

"Sakura, who-" Neji stopped. He looked at her disbelievingly. "You can't possibly be serious."

She ran her tongue over her top teeth, frowning. "I've never been more so. Orochimaru has chakra... enough to help us heal Shikamaru, anyway. We don't even have to use Orochimaru. Tsunade taught me a jutsu... we can kidnap Kabuto or something, take his chakra, and use it."

Neji put a hand over his mouth, rubbing it slightly. "That's way too dangerous."

"Oh, and you have another solution?" She looked at him with a frown intensified.

He looked at the sky, sighing a whistling sigh through his teeth. "No, but Sakura... we're talking about sneaking into Orochimaru's lair, knocking out one of the best shinobi in his little empire, sneaking him back out, all without being seen. We can't do that, not without being caught or killed."

"Maybe you can't," she countered, "but I can."

He looked at her with an expression akin to puzzlement on his face.

She sighed. "My specialty is Genjutsu, isn't it?"

He nodded slowly.

"I can make it seem like I'm not even there. I'll use a Henge no Jutsu. We kunoichi were trained from an early age to be someone we're not." She smiled slightly.

Neji was silent, staring at her with pale eyes.

"It can be done, Neji." She looked at him, pleading. "Please. For Shikamaru."

He sighed heavily. "You don't even know where to go."

She looked at him bravely, determined. "I don't have to."

"What do you mean?"

Sakura smiled wryly, sitting down. "Chances are, Kabuto or another lackey is listening to us right now, Neji. Orochimaru wanted me in the beginning, and he knows he'll get me in some way in the end." She paused, looking slightly sad. "I can strike up a deal with him. Battle him, even. But we need that chakra, Neji. You need it, I need it, and Shikamaru needs it the most. Without this chakra, he's... he's done for."

Neji, on instinct at her answer, scanned the trees with Byakugan. Nothing, surprisingly. But she was probably right, anyway. Orochimaru would lead her to his location in the end. But that could also lead to death. "Why am I not going, again? I can protect you, help you."

"Neji, this isn't about me, okay? We've been through this, dammit, I can take care of myself enough to do this for Shikamaru. I don't have enough energy to cloak both of us, Neji, and you need to stay here and watch Shikamaru for any changes. If you go in, the orders will be to kill you on sight. If I go in, Orochimaru will want to see me, at the very least. We can't have you killed... we can't take that chance."

"And what if you're killed?"

Sakura said nothing for a moment, mouth working to form words. She cleared her throat, her mouth feeling suddenly very dry. "If I don't get back by the third day for him, start to go home. It means I was wrong, that they'll be going after you next. Start to go home, and when Shikamaru dies..." She swallowed, trying to regain control, for her voice had begun to waver. "You'll never make it home in time, not after waiting till is third day. If Shikamaru dies, try to carry him to Konoha and have a funeral there."

He nodded, stroking her hair. "I will, I promise."

"So many promises," Sakura said hollowly, looking at him. "You'll keep this one?"

"I'll keep this one."

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Sakura rummaged through bags, taking out various supplies while Neji prepared their lunch. She slipped kunai and shuriken into her pouch and stuck a looped bundle of wires into her belt. She slipped on a plain black jacket to keep out the cold that came with every morning's fog and tucked bandages, ointments, and various herbal remedies into a medium-size pouch that she pinned to its inside. Her ANBU katana took its usual place at her back. Sighing, Sakura ran a hand through her pink locks, surveying the bleak landscape. This would probably be harder than she thought.

Neji handed her a rice ball and some water and she nodded her thanks, sitting next to the various knapsacks. Shikamaru rested not far away, a cool cloth on his head, an assortment of medical supplies littered around his sleeping form. Sakura looked worriedly at him and took a bite of her rice, chewing carefully.

She swallowed. "Okay, Neji. Re-cool the cloth every half hour. When the seal is fully spread, he'll probably get a worse fever and start vomiting. Make sure the cloth is cool, and feed him two of the pills in the green bottle every three hours. Make him drink some jasmine tea with the herbs in the blue container and a little rice, but nothing else. On the third day, with the genjutsu-"

"You'll be back by then," Neji interrupted, his face leaving no room for argument.

Sakura didn't look him, seeming very interested in her feet and the food in front of her. "While I'm gone on the third day, just try and comfort him as much as possible. Try to cancel the genjutsu, though I'm sure it won't work with a simple jutsu like that. Try to wake him up from it, if you can, though I don't think that'll work, either." She breathed in deeply. "Just take care of him, okay?"

"Sakura, relax." Neji shook his head slightly and smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "We'll be fine here. Finish eating and get going. Day five will end sooner than we'd like."

Sakura nodded and stuffed the rest of the rice in her mouth, packing the rest of her bare essentials. On second thought, she reached for a certain scroll, tucking it safely into her belt. Standing, she reached up and took off her hitai-ate, tying her hair in a tight ponytail. Her bangs fell out, and she tied the protector on her forehead, covering as much of her face as possible. She adjusted her cat mask and sighed, slinging her small bag over her shoulder. "I guess I'm off now."

Neji stood, placing a brotherly hand on her shoulder. "Good luck."

Sakura hesitated for a moment, half-turned away, her mask revealing nothing. She bit her lip from within her hiding place, sighing silently and casting a hidden look towards Shikamaru. "Domo." She smiled slightly, though he couldn't see it. "You, too."

Neji nodded his thanks, and she took off, leaping off the ground and covering it in long strides, deciding not to take her path through the trees like she usually prefered to. She gripped her hand tightly around the string of her bag and adjusted her hitai-ate with her other hand, taking an especially spectacular jump and clearing a patch of dangerous-looking moss.

Struck by a sudden feeling of confusion, Sakura stopped. Where in all the hells was she going, anyway? There was no way to find Orochimaru. She must have been crazy to even suggest this idea. What was I thinking? she wondered angrily, looking around, feeling completely lost. Where am I going? There's no way to get there without a map, or a guide, or... or anything! I have to go back. I have to help Shikamaru any way I can, and getting lost is certainly not going to get him better.

"Lost, little girl?"

Sakura whipped her head around in the act of turning at the semi-familiar voice, anger rising quickly. She stood her ground, hand resting lightly on her katana. "I'm not a little girl anymore," she snapped.

Kabuto smirked, pushing up his round, shining glasses with his index finger in a trademark gesture. "True, very true. It's nice to see you, Sakura-chan."

She hated it whenever anyone but Naruto called her that. "Shut it, Kabuto. What are you here for? You've obviously been following me. Nice chakra masking."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, cherry blossom." He leaned casually on a tree. "In fact, I haven't been following you. I was about to just go and check up on you, Orochimaru's orders, when I spotted you heading my way. Tired of Nara?"

Sakura stiffened visibly, the hand on the katana tightening into an angry fist. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, I suppose that as a corpse he's not a very good lover, is he?"

He smirked at her rage.

She was quivering with fury. "You... you sick bastard! That nin... he was... he was a bunshin, wasn't he?"

Kabuto looked mildly surprised. "You figured it out already? Smart girl. A bunshin of Orochimaru's. He had me escort it to you to dispose of the strategist."

Sakura let out a noise in the back of her throat that sounded somewhat like a stifled, angry sob.

"Now, now, cherry blossom, don't get uptight. It had to be done." Kabuto stood at attention now, on alert for any sudden movements. "Lovers are always a problem with Orochimaru's future helpers, aren't they? First you pining after Sasuke-kun, now that Nara loving you... It's a pity."

"Future helpers? Why the hell do you think I would help him, that snake bastard?" Sakura asked furiously.

"Language, my blossom, language." Kabuto's smile curved smugly. "You're so like your mentor, dear Tsunade-sama... she almost healed Orochimaru in the promise to get her loved ones back, remember? I think the ill boy in question will persuade you. You've come all this way to get extra chakra, I suspect, haven't you?"

Sakura stood silently.

"Well, you won't get it until you see Orochimaru. It was clever of you, terribly clever, to figure out the cure to the disease, but that will only work with one person, won't it? How to cure the rest of the world? And how will you do it all in time?"

Sakura froze. Why hadn't she thought of that? Her elation had made her careless.

"Hai, I know, you hadn't been thinking of that at the time, not when the cure was so very close, were you?" Kabuto said telepathically, quirking his head and giving her a happy little smile that made her want to punch him. "All those questions, cherry blossom, and more, can be answered by our dear Orochimaru-sama, and you know it. So why don't you just back down and let me take you to him? It was what you were after, anyway, wasn't it?"

The pink-haired jounin looked away for a moment, then gave a rattling sigh that seemed to shake her whole being. "Fine. Take me to him."

Kabuto seemed ecstatic that she'd agreed. "Wonderful! Just follow me, Sakura-chan. But remember, no attacking, or you'll never find your way, ANBU member or not. We cover our trail well."

"I can imagine." She scowled, but followed dutifully as Kabuto leapt into the trees, starting the journey to Orochimaru's lair.

To the cure.