A/N: This chapter reminds me of The Most Dangerous Game. Written while listening to Johnny Cash's rendition of Hurt on endless repeat. Today's Naruto suspension of disbelief fail: all that convenient shrubbery deep in old growth forest.

Kill Your Heroes

-Chapter Twenty-four-

Aichmophobia (Part III)

Sakura made a silent resolution to herself that if—no, when she survived this battle, she was going to acquire a sealing scroll, fill it with everything she thought she'd need and some she didn't, and carry it everywhere. She'd even take into the bath and tuck it under her pillow at night, if that was what it took to have it with her when it would be really useful.

Like now.

She had her basic kit, because that already followed her around more faithfully than one of the ninken when there were treats to be had, but as she crouched down in a strategy circle with the ninken, she couldn't help but feel that more equipment would be more useful than a head full of mostly theoretical knowledge.

Luckily, the ninken brought a lot of experience to the table. For a brief moment, she'd felt very alone when Naruto and Shikamaru had left, but that had been wrong. She did have teammates, packmates, seven of them, the numbers not so unbalanced as she'd feared.

"We can't risk trying a genjutsu trap, not with a squad this large," Akino murmured.

Guruko nodded gravely. "Unless you can take them all out quickly and cleanly, it'll turn into a trap for you instead of for them. And for us. We're going to have to separate them."

"Hunt, harry, herd, hurt," Bisuke recited solemnly. "We've never practiced this, never hunted as a pack with you, Sakura, so listen. Ūhei, Akino, and Shiba are the fastest of the pack and working together, they can run your average ninja into the ground. They'll hamstring a shinobi and take them down working together, but only Bull is big enough to pull down a man on his own. He's got twice the crush power in his jaws as the rest of us—he can break the big bones in a man's leg." Bull gave a huff of agreement. "Guruko, Urushi and I are primarily trackers, but we can distract and harry an enemy."

Sakura nodded, committing everything to memory. She was familiar with the speed of each of the dogs, had seen several of their tactics in use, but it would be different when it wasn't in play. Sakura could remember clearly that first, terrifying run in Wave, so she saw the advantage of using the pack. They just had to think of a plan that used all their strengths effectively.

It didn't have to be foolproof—Naruto wasn't here—but it did have to work.

Sakura closed her eyes, biting her lip. Eight ninja. Two combat teams. It probably wouldn't be hard to separate them into two teams—habit was a powerful force and very few ninja had much practice on working with a squad larger than four. If it was a small enough threat, they'd likely split into two cells, one to deal with it and the other to continue to their assigned target.

If she was very lucky, they would only send one or two ninja to investigate the split in their tracks, but Naruto was the one with the favor of the cosmos. Sakura would plan for a full team. Whatever her plan was beyond that, it couldn't be time intensive—she'd still need to catch up to the squad pursuing the others before they actually caught them. There were certain distress signals that were pretty universal that might make them turn back, but she couldn't risk that more of the Oto or Suna forces would come investigate.

I must be like lightning, Sakura thought to herself. So fast, so sudden, it's gone before the sound arrives. She hadn't meant it as a pun, but as the thought anchored itself in her resolve, she realized the play on words. When they talk about turning out like your sensei, she thought wryly, crossed her arms across the top of her knees and ducking her head behind the barrier, I thought I'd end up with something more useful than Kakashi-sensei's terrible sense of humor.

[Kill Your Heroes]

Sakura lay belly-down in a tangled patch of briars, in a sort of tunnel created by animal traffic. It wasn't ideal cover, but this deep beneath the iconic, towering trees of Konoha's home forests, briars and their like were the only things with the tenacity to grow.

Her shemagh was tied securely over the lower half of her face, the fabric taut against her cheekbones. She'd retrieved her combat glasses from her pouch—the first time she'd poked herself in the eye with a low-hanging branch when moving faster than the human eye could normally track was the last time, so far as she was concerned. She been more than half-convinced she'd put her eye out. Sleek, sort of cool-looking, her combat glasses sat close to her face and had a narrow rim of some spongy material around the lens edges that she could channel chakra into to create a seal, which she'd done.

Sakura wished for the reassuring warmth of a small body tucked at her side, but for now the ninken were outside the clearing, per the plan. Pakkun was the best sensor of the pack, but Akino had confirmed that a full squad had taken their bait and followed Sakura's trail.

Her fingers dug furrows in the loam as she watched them walk into the clearing, their steps heavy with confidence. Four men, older, with no distinctive uniforms or weaponry. Chūnin rather than jounin. Which makes them still better than you-nin, she reminded herself harshly.

She held her breath as one ninja almost stepped on her fingers, but her genjutsu was apparently proof against their detection. That was good. They'd been almost certain the team had been tracking them conventionally; a good sensor-type would have made her genjutsu as pointless as a paper bag pulled over her head at this range.

Sakura didn't shift, even when the ninja pivoted to say something to his team. A shinobi chooses his moment, she told herself, but the waiting was terrible. She was utterly convinced that the sound of her heartbeat was just as loud to the enemy as it was to her, that the Oto-nin were toying with her, but then one of the ninja placed his foot squarely on one of the tagged packets.

The directed pulse of chakra interrupted her genjutsu, but the tags concealed around the clearing went up with a roar, heavy grey smoke billowing outward, and contained in that smoke was enough airborne capsaicin to make Sakura's throat burn instantly despite her precautions.

It was much worse for the Oto-nin, but there was no guilt or pity for them, not like that silver-eyed nin who'd died in fire. This was her home, the last safe place. And they'd ruined it.

She didn't even have to lunge for the ninja, he'd been that close, just raise up on her knees, knives driving forward into his femoral artery. Not lower in his thigh, as it passed through the adductor hiatus, like the kunoichi, but just below his groin. Her knives were turned with the curve down and angled slightly, like razor-backed fish, slicing through the heavy muscle to open the medial circumflex femoral artery.

He collapsed almost on top of her and Sakura had to twist awkwardly away to avoid being trapped by his weight and the natural snare of the briars. She hissed in a breath as a kunai drew a long, shallow gash along her collarbones and that deep breath burned worse than the wound, but she swallowed down the urge to cough, turning the pain and the fear into movement.

Thanks to Kakashi-sensei and the ninken, she had plenty of experience in maneuvering in heavy briar growth, which was all thorny snares and unexpectedly strong plants. Wherever Sound was, they apparently had less undergrowth—charging forward in these conditions required stepping high and clear, not like the low, soft steps that ninja were trained to use to minimize noise.

Even in the heavy smoke, she could track her opponents by the sound of the cursing, coughing, and tugging on the network of briars. She heard it grow quieter on her left, one of them taking to the trees, but that left two of them on the ground.

Her covering smoke was a double-edged blade—it made it much, much harder to dodge kunai. Two more dug trails on her arms as she swept toward the target farthest to her right. She didn't know how he saw her through the tears streaming from his eyes, but he had a pair of kunai in his hands. He was taller, stronger, but the capsaicin was doing its work, his breathing rasping, uneven, interrupted by violent coughing.

It's hard to fight when you can't breathe.

His strikes were rough, a little desperate, and nowhere near as fast as Raidou-sensei's. He struck at her with both kunai pressed close together, driving them toward the center of her mass, which might have been more effective with his full strength and some momentum behind it. She used her left hand knife to redirect the force of the blow to one side, giving her an opening. Sakura heard another of the Oto-nin coming up behind her and panicked a little, lunging forward even though the angle wasn't right. Her strike along his side wasn't clean, and one of his hands came back and caught her in the jaw, the cold metal ring of his kunai leading the blow.

Sakura lost her footing, the metal slamming into her cheek hard enough to make her teeth break through the skin, and the teeth themselves felt painful and loose, but she wasn't given any time to recover. This close, the smoke made a less than effective barrier and her opponents were trying to end this as quickly as she was.

She shoved chakra forcefully into the soles of her feet, running forward when her cowardly self screamed run away! One knife was sheathed, her hand pitching kunai with chakra driving them whistling through the air, and there was her opening again. Her recovery was unexpectedly quick, judging by the widening of his eyes, and she came low, her shoulder catching the injured nin just below his ribcage only seconds before the knife in her other hand went deep.

Too deep—she felt the tug as he began to fall, knew that she ran the risk of breaking the blade if she'd caught it between vertebrae. She let the knife go, just in time to badly block another strike from his partner and barely twist aside when the other Oto-nin dropped down from the trees.

Mostly twist aside. There was a burning line straight down on shoulder blade, but it wasn't her spine and it hurt less than her face.

And it didn't interfere with her ability to strategically retreat, the smoke having dissipated enough that she could clearly see her opponents again. She used the trees to make it difficult for them to use kunai and they hadn't come more than twenty yards before the ninken made themselves known. Urushi bolted from the underbrush, acting like a living tripwire, the Oto-nin's momentum sending him face-first to the ground. Before he could do more than come up on his elbows, Bull was on him, powerful jaws closing over the back of his neck.

Sakura turned just in time to see Ūhei, Akino, and Shiba burst from their own hiding places, two of them flanking the last ninja and catching his sleeves in snapping teeth, the third savaging the back of one knee. He began struggling wildly, but Akino and Shiba kept their grip and pulled at his arms like a macabre tug-of-war. Sakura heard the fabric of his sleeves begin to give, but her kunai had already caught him in the base of his throat.

Breathing heavily, Sakura very carefully raised a hand to her neck. When she'd twisted, there'd been a sharp jolt of pain and then numbness. Vertebrae out of alignment. Nothing she could do about it, except hope nothing caught when she tried to turn her head. She didn't even try to investigate her cheek.

The ninken didn't wait on her when she doubled back to retrieve her second knife. They would need the time to get as close to the other squad as possible, because while they were fast, none of the ninken could move at shunshin speeds without Kakashi-sensei's assistance.

Sakura had to work to bring her breathing under control, because this would not only be the most dangerous shunshin she'd ever done, it would also be the longest. And the others had been under supervision, in very controlled conditions. Mistakes made at that speed meant shattered bones or worse. Even if she didn't hit anything, if she screwed up the chakra flow that would temporarily increase the speed at which her optical nerve processed input she could potentially be blind for the rest of her life.

Shunshin made for a for strange experience, seeming to expand time and compress distance, but there had been a sharp thrill in mastering it. She just hadn't expected to be quizzed on that mastery so soon.

She took another breath, stilled her quivering. And then she moved.

The chunin had half-turned toward her, so her knife ripped cleanly through his throat, blood slinging in a liquid arc from the edge of her knife.

"Shit," one of her opponents snarled violently as the rest of the team whirled to face her.

"Looks like Akagi's squad dropped the ball," another commented, sounding far less worried than his companion. That worried Sakura, but she was already doubling back on her own trail, racing toward the ninken. They'd hoped the ninja would choose to chase the prey they could see and Sakura felt a brief flare of satisfaction as she caught glimpses of all three when she dared glance back.

That satisfaction turned to pain as three ninja proved too much for her skill at dodging—she had to leap to clear a deadfall and a kunai caught her high in the shoulder. She made a strange, half-stifled scream and landed heavily, but she kept running.

She was getting worried and a little light-headed by the time she heard the ninken set upon the Oto-nin and she turned just in time to catch the full force of a running tackle. The impact drove the kunai set in her shoulder even deeper and this time she did scream, but she also clawed one-handedly at her attacker's eyes and bucked hard enough to throw him off.

Sakura scrabbled upright and found herself almost face-to-face with that nin who'd spoken with such confidence earlier. He was wearing an unnerving grin as he rose from the forest floor, casually brushing off the legs of his pants.

Was there some sort of requirement in Oto's shinobi code that said they weren't allowed to let ninja out of training until they'd convinced them that a kill wasn't any good unless they spiced it with a little fear?

She felt nauseous from the pain and her left arm wasn't working well, though a rough movement as the Oto-nin proved it wasn't only Konoha that knew how to use fire dislodged the kunai. Guruko almost startled her as he charged in, but their opponent was fast on his feet and he caught the small dog hard in the ribs. Guruko yelped as the force lifted him of his feet and slammed him heavily into a tree. A handful of senbon pinned him there and Sakura darted in, trying to make use of the opening, but she underestimated just how good her opponent was.

The broad, wedged shaped blade of the kunai caught between her ribs and she screamed again, but she managed to catch his wrist before her he could pull his weapon free. The scream turned into a warcry and she headbutted him with everything she had left, put all the force in her body into the blow and she heard the sickening crack of his nose giving way. She let go of his wrist to grab at his collar and smash her head more squarely into his forehead and when his dead weight pulled at her arms, she let him drop.

Sakura stood still for a long moments, her vision unfocused and her eyes dripping freely, gasping in air. Then she clawed at her shemagh, yanking it down just in time to throw up everything in her stomach. When she was finished, she found herself on her hands and knees, almost sobbing as she used the fabric to clean away the vomit that had leaked through the long, ragged hole in her cheek.

Her hands went to the kunai lodged between her ribs, but someone barked at her, "Don't pull it out!"

"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts," she keened and struggled upright, stuffing the soiled shemagh roughly into a pouch. She tried to stop her tears, because her ragged breathing made every wound echo pain back at her, but it was beyond her. All she could do was stagger over to Guruko, pulling out the senbon as gently as her clumsy fingers were able. He was breathing, but he lay in a little crumpled heap that she gathered carefully to her chest.

The other ninken gathered around her, the fur on their muzzles stiff with drying blood. Even as she watched, Bull sniffed her downed opponent and then closed his teeth over the shinobi's throat. He gave the body a savage shake before he released him and padded up to her, whining faintly in the back of his throat.

"This is as far as we go," Sakura said softly. "This is where our mission ends."