A/N: We're not holding the exam in Suna for some very practical reasons. This is the first chūnin exam after the invasion, so Suna is still in internal disarray. It lost many of its shinobi, which would have been crippling enough—given what we see of the country, they likely have to import food, which is expensive and goodness knows if Konoha levied trade sanctions against their neighbor for the invasion—but they've also lost their Kage. And according to the manga, there isn't a new one until Gaara takes over. I don't think they would be welcoming foreign ninja into their village, especially as in KYH-verse people do things like hold grudges when people stage an invasion. Regardless of who actually gave the orders.

KYH is drawing close to two thousand reviews, so I'd like to thank everyone again for taking the time to R&R—you really make my day. Though RL keeps me too busy to respond individually to most reviews, I do read all of them.

Kill Your Heroes

-Chapter Thirty-Four-

Toward Better Days (Part III)

[xenophilia]

"O!Nee!San!" Those three gleeful syllables were Sakura's only warning before a pair of arms flopped over her shoulders, a warm body suddenly pressed tight against her back.

That could have been hands with a garrote, was Sakura's first thought as her body instinctively tensed, but then the syllables coalesced. And she relaxed, just a fraction, because there was only one person who'd ever called her that.

"Fū-san?" she asked, craning her head to confirm her guess. Fū's arms slipped from her shoulders as he stepped back and grinned at her, those eerie yellow eyes crinkled up with good humor.

"My day just got twelve hundred percent more interesting," he assured her. "I didn't think I'd see again, onee-san. Did you name your fangs, yet?"

Sakura frowned at him, which made him grin even more widely. "'They're tools,'" he said, mimicking her voice. "Yeah, yeah. No fun, nee-san." His eyes swept over the cluster of her squad: Tatsuo, Shino, Shikamaru. They were waiting outside for the genin to finish registration for the exam, having already finished processing their own entry into the village and having received a housing assignment. "You got a promotion, which is good. But I don't see your team from last time, which might be bad."

He stared at her expectantly until Sakura answered. "It was," she admitted. "Um, your team..."

Fū nodded. "Yep. Still very dead," he replied, which made her cringe. "No promotion for me, though. My new team are chūnin, though. There's one riiigght over there," he said, drawling the word as his eyes sought someone out in the crowd, jabbing a finger when he'd found them.

She's pretty, was her first envious thought, then the ninja happened to shift so that they were in profile—the jawline and laryngeal prominence quickly shifted her opinion to He's still pretty. Given the crowd of boys clustering around him where he was leaning against the wall of a neighboring building, she wasn't the only one who'd let hairstyle and clothing cues lead her opinion. Almost violently red hair was pulled into a high ponytail, bangs allowed to drape in a kind of lazy loop before they'd been tucked back into his hair tie.

A plain, sleeveless black shirt with a high collar, black pants—if that had been the end of what he was wearing, he was still pretty enough to cause some confusion. But it wasn't. His wrists were heavy with braided bracelets—no beads or metal to make noise, but still colorful all the same—and his narrow hips were given the illusion of feminine curves by the wrap skirt he wore. The exterior was black, the inside a rich brocade like a very expensive furisode. The skirt itself was held in place by what looked like an obi, just wrapped rather than tied, the obi itself tethered by colorful obijime, some of these beaded or braided. And it was all in such a masterful coordination of patterns and colors that even Ino wouldn't have had room to criticize.

He glanced over at them and Fū waved, which prompted the other shinobi to unfold himself from his position against the wall. "They look like they're going to cry, Zen," Fū observed, voice quivering with laughter.

"Strange how much I don't care," Zen said. "I get tired of getting chatted up by men."

"Maybe you ought to stop being so pretty," came the glib suggestion.

"Maybe they ought to spend more time honing their powers of observation and less time trying to sound like they have more than two brain cells to rub together."

"Aw, Zen, I'm sure some of them would still talk to you even if they did notice."

"Yes, because that sounds so much more appealing," Zen said, rolling his eyes, which were a warm brown at this distance. "I'll let you know when I'm ready to play to stereotype, just as soon as you prove that the ability to enjoy pattern and color is somehow the exclusive province of women and gay men. Did you need something, Fū?"

"Just to introduce my incredibly not-fun teammate to my much-better-fun friend." Fū raised a hand in a pantomime of a gossiping housewife. "Don't mind him. He gets defensive in front of strangers."

Another eye roll from the much taller shinobi. "Anyhow," Fū said, long sleeves flopping over the ends of his fingers as he gestured from one party to the other. "Haruno Sakura and company, meet Momiji Zen. Zen, meet Sakura."

"And who are you?" Shikamaru asked, his posture not quite casual enough to have not recognized Fū.

"Umehara Fū," came the cheerful reply.

"Is she the reason you were bullying us to take the assignment to play nanny to the Konoha ninja?" Zen demanded tetchily.

"Yep," Fū reported, flashing him a double victory sign. "Nee-san has bite. I promise you'll like her."

The older shinobi sighed. Both Shino and Shikamaru were watching the ninja with purple-tinted hair warily, but Tatsuo was watching it all with a faint smile. "You have interesting friends, Sakura," he remarked when he noticed her looking. "I'm Hyūga Tatsuo," he said as he shifted to come stand beside her. "I'm the leader of this extra security detail. If you're our liaison, it's a pleasure." She knew he couldn't have missed the boy's discomfort, but Tatsuo was much lower-key than the two younger members of Team Seven, without any Kakashi-sensei's apparent apathy. She could only describe him as a comfortable person; in the time he'd been her partner, he'd never failed to make her feel more at ease.

It was a very strange thing, to suddenly realize that while she might not have had all those years at the Academy with him, she'd been on more missions with Tatsuo than she had with Team Seven.

"Are we going to be rendezvousing with the rest of your team?" Tatsuo asked.

"I'm sure they'll show up. Eventually," Zen replied, his tone one of sardonic long-suffering. "They already give you your housing assignments?"

[nyctophobia]

Two days into the exams and everything was proceeding smoothly, except Ino was suffering a severe case of hair and outfit envy. Her first comment on meeting Zen was a less than quiet, "Finally! A man who knows how to take care of himself!," with a pointed look toward her own squadmates. Shikamaru had only sighed, but Chouji had looked hunted.

For now, Sakura sat in opened window, the cool night air playfully tousling her bangs. Her back was pressed against the frame to avoid becoming too much of a backlit silhouette, the other members of her squad and Zen's—the other two members had shown up at the last moment—ranged along the long hall that housed roughly half of the Konoha entrants. Tatsuo stood on the other side of the window from which she sat, but he was silent—they were both listening. There were also guards posted on the roof, but they'd also bear a share of the blame if one of their charges managed to slither out a window and make trouble.

Then, "Smells like rain," Tatsuo remarked very softly.

Sakura hummed an affirmative reply. The air was sweet with the scent of rain falling elsewhere, being driven on the wind that stirred her hair and the clouds whose bellies were intermittently lit with lightning that was distant only for the moment. They'd probably see a summer squall before the night was out, but the prospect of a storm didn't seem to deter the crowds that still filled the street. Unlike the foreign shinobi, whose curfew fell at sundown, the civilians and native shinobi were enjoying the festival atmosphere in the streets below.

The smells and sounds wafting up presented a not inconsiderable temptation to join the fun, which was only exacerbated a moment later as fireworks began to join the natural light display. She wasn't able to see the lake from where she sat, but Sakura was certain that it would be a spectacle worth seeing, the lights reflecting against the flat, glossy blackness of the water, perhaps shedding enough light in the instant before they disappeared to see the distant branches of the great tree.

The village of Takigakure was founded in a caldera of mind-boggling scale, with the residential and mercantile districts clustered along the rim of the extinct volcano. The central portion of the village—its seats of government and military complexes—were located on an island that had been built at the center of a vast lake, in which they'd rooted a tree even more enormous than Konoha's fire beeches in an effort to prevent erosion. Aside from water-walking or a boat, the only way to reach the island was by a bridge that was almost the equal of Tazuna's. The lake was fed from the yearly snowmelt and rivers of the adjourning mountain range, themselves possessing several nice examples of the titular waterfalls, but none so picturesque as the ones that plunged hundreds of feet to the valley floor on the opposite rim of the caldera.

It was in an effort to ignore the spectacle of the fireworks—because, really, she wasn't made of stone and festival food came with a ready-made excuse that it was a special occasion—that she focused her gaze on the wall of the hotel rather than the crowds in the street. She didn't know if she'd have seen it otherwise, though 'seen' was precisely the correct verb. 'Felt' was very imprecise, but there it was. A distortion in the way she perceived the world, that faint wrongness that marked a genjutsu. If she tilted her head just so, she could make out distortions in the air that marked the contours of a body under a chameleon technique.

Very chakra-intensive, Sakura thought as she watched the figure slip from the second-floor window to the ground. In an instant, there was another festivalgoer where the ninja had landed, the transition so smooth in the crowded street that no one looked twice. Sakura waited for others to follow or intercept the shinobi, but as he or she began winding through way along the street, there was no indication that anyone else had seen.

For an instant, she was very tempted to pretend she'd seen nothing. The ninja housed on that floor weren't from her village and weren't her responsibility.

But when seconds ticked past, marked by the tha-thump of her heartbeat, still no one went to retrieve the shinobi. And she couldn't quite sell herself on the idea that they were allowing him or her to run for a reason. Sakura didn't think of herself as a brave person, not even all these missions after Wave. Brave was for people like Naruto; she only ever wanted to make it home. Following orders, following the rules, that was the surest method to make it home even in dangerous times. Chasing after foreign ninja in the dark?

That was asking for trouble.

"What is it?" Tatsuo murmured, having slipped away from his side of the window to stand behind her, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder, his head so near hers that the orderly tha-thump of her heartbeat seemed to stutter.

But the moment was swallowed by the anxiety of the decision that she was about to make. "Second floor," she said in a low voice. "A ninja exited under cover of genjutsu from the window. No signs of pursuit."

His fingers tightened incrementally on her shoulder. "Do you still have a visual?"

"Yes."

Tatsuo straightened. "Sakura's seen someone exit the building. Second floor. We're going to pursue."

"No one else is pursuing?" Zen asked, standing upright from where he'd been leaning against the wall.

"They were under genjutsu," Sakura volunteered.

"And no one else noticed this? Just her?" Zen asked, finely arched eyebrows soaring toward his hairline.

"Sakura's exceptionally sensitive to genjutsu," Tatsuo replied evenly. "I doubt any of your chūnin could match her skill."

Zen looked faintly incredulous, but gave instructions to his teammates to stay behind.

"Lead," Tatsuo said, "We'll follow."

So Sakura pitched herself out the window, her soft-soled boots hardly making a noise as she landed on a nearby roof. She didn't look behind to confirm the presence of the others, because her prey was almost out of sight. Tugging her shemagh up the bridge of her nose to minimize the risk of her pale skin attracting notice, she had a moment's gratefulness to Mariko for convincing her to leave her skirts for activities that involved less midnight pursuits across rooftops. And given how badly her red top had clashed with the dark olive of the standard flak jacket, she'd switched out tops to a deep grey. One day she'd save up enough to replace the chūnin standard body armor with something custom, but right now she was outgrowing shoes, reading through expensive reference books, and sourcing tools as fast as her mission pay came in.

For now though, it was enough to have the reassuring weight of her knives and the knowledge of Tatsuo at her back.

Though they made better time by the rooftops than her target made in the street, she stalked him or her with care. Given the smoothness with which they kept shifting their appearance, Sakura was beginning to suspect it wasn't a chūnin candidate they were following.

Zen's air of skepticism had vanished, his dark eyes tracking the movement of their mark even as they took a moment to wait behind the ridgeline of a roof. Though he or she was being subtle about it, they were checking for pursuit.

"What's in this direction that they could be interested in?" Shikamaru asked.

"The settlement tapers out in this direction, so it turns pretty quickly into forest. But before that, you have the area where we're housing the Suna-nin," Zen reported grimly.

"So far out from the rest of the entrants?"

"Well, the elders thought there would be less trouble if we limited the interaction between Konoha and Suna," Zen replied, shifting incrementally higher on the roof and then signaling for them to proceed. "Maybe they were right to be worried."

"It could be," Tatsuo acknowledged. "But if he came from a second-floor window, they aren't necessarily a Konoha shinobi. At least not one traveling with the main party. We were all assigned rooms on the fourth and fifth floors."

"We'll see," Zen replied. "There," he said, pointing out not another large hotel like the one they'd been staying in, but rather a series of buildings. "Taki's location makes it unsuitable for it to also be the trade center of our nation," he murmured at their confusion. "So, not enough steady visitors needing lodging to build large hotels. We do better with smaller inns."

"Question," Shino interjected. "Just how close are we going to allow our target to get to his target? Would it not be safer to simply interrogate him later?"

"If we could be certain he was working alone, yes. Otherwise, no," Tatsuo replied. "Whoever we're tracking is either very brave or very stupid to be acting alone, if his aim is revenge. He's being even more foolish if the goal is to cause trouble between our villages."

"You think so?" Shikamaru said. "I can think of a lot of ways one shinobi could sabotage our relationship with Suna. We're not exactly on the best of terms, y'know."

"That's odd," Zen remarked.

"What's odd?" Tatsuo asked, rather than attempt to refute Shikarmaru's assertion.

"He's moving toward the forest, rather than the inns," Sakura replied.

"Perhaps the Byakugan should be used to attempt to ascertain his objective?" Shino suggested.

"It's not a pair of night-vision goggles," Sakura replied defensively on Tatsuo's behalf.

"It's fine," the older ninja said. "But she's right to say it isn't precisely night vision. It'll be much easier if I don't try to do this and run at the same time. Go ahead and continue pursuit—we'll catch up."

Zen nodded sharply, then he was off in a soft rustle of cloth. Shikamaru and Shino hesitated a moment longer before following.

"Tatsuo...," Sakura said.

In the uncertain light cast up from the streets below, she could still see the small, wry smile that shifted his lips. "It's only a little pain," he said. But the breath that shifted his shoulders betrayed a far greater trepidation, as did the fine tremor that traveled along the length of the hand that had shifted comfortingly to her shoulder.

He closed his eyes and she felt his breath catch as the veins just below his temples bulged. His eyes snapped open, seemingly searching blindly for things well beyond human vision. A soft, breathy stream of invective punctuated the night and as she watched, a blood vessel burst in his right eye, turning the sclera red. Though she knew that what was causing the blood vessels to burst was far worse than the damaged vessels themselves, it was visible evidence that Tatsuo was hurting, just as his hand trembling on her shoulder was.

Sakura reached up to clasp her hand over his. In response, his fingers tensed against her shoulder, then he released her abruptly, eyelids fluttering shut.

"What part of that was 'a little pain'?" Sakura demanded, feeling utterly useless and sort of wretched because of it. Right then and there, though he'd explained why Tsunade-sama would never be able to attempt to correct the damage to his eyes, Sakura decided that for once in her life belonging to a family rather than an expansive, intergenerational ie would be useful. She would find a way to give Tatsuo back his doujutsu; she'd never be a medic-nin proper, would never serve an internship or residency in a hospital, but she was clever enough to serve this more selfish purpose. Just as she knew that her chances of survival increased if she didn't have to depend on dragging herself to a medic and handling poisons was a stupid enterprise without a solid knowledge of antidotes, she couldn't allow Tatsuo to suffer because she was afraid of making the effort.

She ignored the part of her brain that sneered at that thought, that told her that it was more than just effort, that even if there wasn't a doujutsu involved it would have been an incredibly sensitive injury.

Her demand made Tatsuo smile, pained as it was. "The part where I talk about it to other people. At least it was useful."

"Useful?"

"Our target isn't the only one in the woods. I can't see them well enough to make out detail, but it looks like there are ten others in there with him. I have a rough idea of where they're going; it seemed like they were meeting, rather than seeking something."

"Eleven?" Sakura echoed. "That many?"

"Definitely not genin out to make trouble," was Tatsuo's reply. "Let's catch up to the others."

The rest of the group hadn't gone far—Shino had managed to coax a female beetle onto their target, so they'd been able to trail him from a distance with less chance of discovery.

"Shit," Zen said, with deep feeling. "Eleven?"

"Eleven," Tatsuo confirmed.

Shikamaru sighed. "I guess it would be too much to hope for that they're just meeting for an extra-wild party and we can go back and leave them to it?" A soft sound drew their attention upwards, where the first drops of rain heralded a cloudburst that smote them only seconds later. "So troublesome," he sighed, this time more deeply. "Well, how do we handle this? Numbers favor them, which means that surprise is our best weapon, but since we don't actually know that they're doing anything beyond breaking curfew, we're probably going to have to send a clone while everyone conceals themselves. Then, if they don't disperse, we attack. Anyone capable of a jutsu that would let us send word we might have reinforcements?"

When only silence met him, he said, "I was afraid of that. So, who has the best clone?"

"I believe," Shino volunteered quietly, "I am the most capable of producing a substantial clone that will not be recognized as such. My hives are sufficiently developed to produce two such clones; if you wish to send for reinforcements, I can provide such a service at the expense of my offensive abilities." When Shikamaru shook his head, he continued. "If it turns out that their intentions are hostile, I can also subdue several of the shinobi quickly."

Shikmaru nodded. "All right," he said. "That should probably be our goal. Nonfatal capture. If feasible," he allowed, glancing over at Sakura. Who scowled back at him—despite not having family techniques, or chakra-devouring bugs, or the flexible Jūken, she managed. Mostly.

Paralytic poisons and genjutsu were best, as Sakura was beginning to suspect Tsunade-sama had honed her talents as a medic-nin first to combat things like ruptured organs. Experience was her teacher concerning chakra-enhanced strength; no one seemed to have written anything about it and even if she'd gathered the courage to ask advice from Tsunade-sama, she respected the fact that the Sannin was in charge of the recovery of her village after a major attack after an extremely long absence. Though the traditional alliances between the clans might have held true, the heads of several clans had changed, the internal politics of the village had continued to develop and shift in her absence, and policies and practices had continued to evolve. That was before factoring in the fall-out from the invasion. Sakura did not envy her that monumental task. One day, though, especially if she made jounin, she'd ask. Even if by that time she'd figured it out herself.

Those thoughts were quickly dismissed as the five of them dispersed. Sakura found herself belly-down on a forest floor, not a totally unfamiliar position, but the rain that continued to pound down made it an uncomfortable one. Though it represented an advantage if any of their targets had enhanced olfactory senses like Kiba and provided a visual barrier, it could turn a bit chilly even in warm weather. Also, though she'd taken to binding her long hair back in a fabric sheathe—if anyone grabbed it, the sheathe slid free, sort of like a lizard losing a bit of tail—she still wore bangs to break up the shape of her face. And hair plastered against her forehead wasn't precisely pleasant.

Luckily, Shino didn't keep them waiting long. There'd hardly been any conversation among the eleven ninja, which made Sakura wonder if they were waiting for some sort of signal.

They all tensed in concert as Shino's clone stepped out from behind a tree, lantern in hand. Not as himself—she vaguely recognized a Takigakure jounin—and he demanded, "What are you doing out here? Curfew for foreign-nin was hours ago."

One of the ninja stepped forward, a woman with a low, raspy voice. "I think not. If you want to blame anyone for what will happen tonight, blame Konoha and Suna, who couldn't manage to destroy each other somewhere far away. Or maybe your elders, who agreed to let an unstable foreign jinchūriki inside your borders."

Shino's clone stiffened. "What do you intend to do?" he asked.

"Break the stranglehold of two great villages," the kunoichi sneered. "No one will trust Suna and with Konoha unable to meet demand...well, you understand." And then, without any further warning than that, the attack began.

The kunoichi had whipped out a blade with the rough, functional lines of a machete, which Sakura didn't doubt would have cut bone and flesh as easily as vegetation, but when she slashed into Shino's clone she was met with a black haze of kikaichū rather than blood. Only eyes familiar with them would notice how sluggish their flight seemed, how much the rain interfered with their ability to fly. The lantern the clone had been holding fell to the ground, giving them just enough light to fight by. There was a keening sound as two razor-edged chakrams burst through the brush, one cutting through a ninja's arm with such force only a thin layer of skin and muscle kept it from dropping to the ground.

That would be Zen, interpreting "nonfatal" liberally. She'd wondered what had been hiding in those large, square pouches dangling from the back of that complex configuration of obijime; his melee weapons were the feng huo lun, the paired wind-and-fire wheels. Circular like the chakrams, a quarter of their hoop shape was unsharpened and padded, with an interior crossguard. The other three-fourths had short, flame-styled blades protruding. But Sakura didn't have time to admire his technique—her chosen target had just unfolded an urumi from about his waist.

Like the bastard child of a whip and a sword, it had five flexible metal tongues, each of them sharp enough to slice her open though not enough to cut through bone.

That knowledge was not particularly reassuring.

Unlike the others, Sakura still hadn't come out of hiding. Fingers weaving into a net of intent, she spilled chakra into her channels just so. And when she released it, the ninja froze, eyes trained on the ghost. Others too—it would have been wasteful not to try, but unlike those hireswords on Wave, these ninja found it mostly a momentary impediment. With a silent thought of gratitude to Kakashi-sensei, Sakura shoved off and sprinted forward, the handle of her knife impacting her target's head. He fell with an almost silent thud, Sakura going low to duck another shinobi's blow.

But the battle hadn't devolved into a fierce knot of combat, Sakura noticed with alarm in the scant moments her new opponent afforded her as she fought him and her instinct to end it now!, the view of the forest and her opponents made difficult and strange by the poor lighting. There were stragglers who'd stayed to engage them, but the others were all off and running toward their objective. Gaara, Sakura thought with alarm, having heard of that battle from Shikamaru. Plenty clever enough to draw his own conclusions, he'd shared them with Sakura only after Naruto had been weeks away on his journey.

In part because he had his own suppositions about Naruto himself.

If they have some way of putting Gaara to sleep..., she thought, which made her shout, "Shikamaru!"

"I know!" he snarled back from where he was fending off a shinobi who wasn't giving him any quarter. Almost counter-intuitively, Shikamaru's abilities were severely curtailed on a moonless night like this one. Without a source of light to cast a shadow from his body, he couldn't use it in his family's technique and the light from their single lantern was making for a very poor situation on his end. As was the speed of his opponent.

He must have known how difficult this battle would be for him, but he'd come regardless, when he could have volunteered himself as a courier service. Sakura was struck briefly by admiration of the boy who'd been hands-down the laziest in their class, but she earned a hard kick to the sternum from her own opponent for that microsecond of inattention. As she gagged, Tatsuo's deft fingers struck at the back of her opponent's neck, causing him to sink bonelessly to the ground. His own target already lay defeated, her hair shining against wet leaves.

"Alright?" he asked, deflecting a thrown kunai.

"Really ugly bruise. Be alright when I can breathe," Sakura wheezed, forcing her body to move even as it protested the lack of oxygen. "Need to stop them before they make it back to where the Suna-nin are."

Tatsuo nodded and then he was gone, quick and certain even in the dark and the rain. Shikamaru used the uncertain footing of last year's leaves slick with the rain to finally down his own opponent, then he was moving too. Shino had already vanished into the forest after the fleeing shinobi, but Zen was a flurry of ferocious movement, light catching on his bright brocades.

Sakura wondered at his trouble until a moment's stillness alerted her to strange vibration in the ground. Earth manipulation, Sakura realized, which was hard enough to combat in daylight. With only the uncertain light of a single lantern, it had to be a nightmare. He wasn't her partner; he was a chūnin in his own right and if any of the others got to Gaara they stood a chance of facing far greater casualties than one chūnin. But when something like a hand jutted up out of the ground, clasping Zen's lower leg and gripping, she couldn't unhear the sound of his bone shattering, nor his shout of pain.

Almost before she knew she was moving, the chakra-filled earth was shattering beneath her fist, which brought another howl from Zen as his broken bones were ground against one another from the force of it. Then her shoulder was catching him in the belly as she tossed him up onto her shoulder, not quite fast enough to avoid a spear of earth that tried to drive itself through her ribs. The flak jacket did its work—without the edge of metal to pierce the fabric, it dispersed the force of the blow across her ribs, one of which gave with a sharp crack and an even sharper stab of pain.

Especially when she was bearing Zen's full weight, one hand over his back to keep him from sliding down off shoulders too narrow to do this well, her other arm keeping his skirt from obstructing her. She'd almost mastered her fear of shunshin, but she'd never done it in pitch dark forest, everything slick with the rain still beating down. She didn't have a free hand to pull down her combat glasses; what light there was provided by lightning and it was intermittent at best.

The darkness seemed to draw her awareness close to her body, to the beat of her heart, the motion of her lungs, the sounds of her own breathing made horrifically loud. Sakura swallowed down a sick premonition of pain and then she moved, darting through the trees with no grace but all speed. A rock shifted underfoot and Sakura nearly fell, a warm discomfort blooming in an ankle forced to bear all her weight and Zen's besides at an angle not meant for weight-bearing.

Sakura's plan wasn't to outrun their assailant, who was turning the very earth against them—smaller than Gaara's great sand constructions, but dead was dead—but a brief instance of light revealed a suitably broad tree. Using the hand pressed against Zen's legs, Sakura folded her fingers into a symbol of concentration and left a clone to lead on their pursuer. Flitting behind the tree, she unloaded Zen rather roughly against the bark, fingers twisting nervously into a far more basic chameleon technique than the chakra-draining one that the first shinobi had used. Zen had shifted himself upright, seemed about to do something, but Sakura used her chakra-enhanced strength to press him flush against the tree, hand over his mouth as an indicator for silence.

She was stronger than he was—not overall maybe, but incessant practice had changed and was changing the dynamic of sheer brute force between her and everyone else forever—and being so close was a reminder of that. Sakura didn't know what those first abortive struggles were about, unless he didn't trust that she'd be able to conceal them, but they were easily quelled. Her hand wasn't flush against his lips—people tended to bite when you did that—but she could feel his warm breath feathering against her palm, quick and fast like the heartbeat of a bird. Though it slowed as the sound of pursuit faded.

Sakura cautiously shifted her hand away, though she kept supporting Zen's weight. Listening carefully, she tried to part the sound of forest and rain from a shinobi waiting for them to break cover. "Zen-san," she whispered, turning back to face him, a brief flash of lightning giving her just enough light to see as he shifted his upper body toward her, lips pressing gently against her own.

"That's all the thanks you get," he whispered next to her ear. "Now, go."

Sakura almost stumbled back. Her own lipbalm was the refreshing tang of grapefruit, so the sweetness of strawberry that lingered only momentarily was him. And Sakura could not deal with that just now.

So it was back into the dark, hunting someone who could manipulate the ground she stood on. A patch of moss, loosened by the rain, slipped sideways off a rock, taking Sakura with it. She slammed hard into a tree, rough bark scouring her forearm and the side of her face, though her shemagh protected most of it. With that much noise, she didn't have to worry about finding him.

He found her.

Sakura barely had enough warning and presence of mind to leap away as the forest floor exploded in a toothy maw of quick-growing stalagmites. He didn't have Gaara's fine control, the part of her that wasn't screaming look out, look out! noted. Even the "hand" that had broken Zen's leg had been stiff and rudimentary.

The only recourse was to keep moving and to move unpredictably, his chakra insufficient to simply overwhelm her with the sheer size of a construction. But this made it hard to close, hard to aim. And her broken rib felt like she was being kicked in the chest every time she had to contort her torso to avoid another strike.

Shikamaru's "nonfatal" could wait for another day, another battle. What she wanted was one. Good. Strike.

Baring her teeth unconsciously, she used the shunshin technique to cover ever smaller spaces, ten feet, five, two, seven, her flight as jarring as a housefly's. She almost couldn't see—it wasn't just the dark, but the speed. Rocks shifted, branches tried to tear, and he tried to kill her. But then there she was and there he was and then her knives were ripping into flesh, one in either side of his ribcage, like pinchers closing. It brought her so close it was almost a parody of a hug, and she could feel the warmth of his breath.

And she could feel the interruption of it, when blood flooded his lungs, hear the sound as his body struggled not to drown in own fluids. She did not twist, instead bending her knees so she could drive them up, until she supported the full weight of his body on arms that trembled. From adrenaline, from fear, from relief, even if foam-flecked blood was dripping from his lips onto her nose.

When she couldn't hear him breathing anymore, she lowered him to the ground, kicking the body free of her knives. She stole a moment to wipe her blades clean before re-sheathing them. Looking up from her task, she tried to get her bearings. All her tricks to navigate in the woods weren't working, as she'd disoriented even herself in that last mad rush. She finally had to scurry up a tree and orient herself by the lights of the village.

She could go back, get Zen, secure their unconscious ninja. Shunshin was chakra-intensive and while her physical stamina was fantastic thanks to the ninken, her chakra reserves were more of a work in progress. She was already balanced on the fine edge that threatened to tip her over into exhaustion, where her reflexes would begin to slow and her control would degrade. And for her, who depended on her control, that was a disaster in the making.

But Tatsuo was out there in the dark somewhere. He was her partner, the one who was there. She owed him at least that much consideration in return.

So she was back to jogging through a dark forest, not willing to risk actually laming herself or missing a battle. The silence was unnerving; she didn't think they'd have gone so far she couldn't hear the crash of kunai against kunai. But there was only the rain, softer now, a susurrus in the leaves.

"Sakura?" Tatsuo's voice came, a welcome sound in the night. So welcome, in fact, that Sakura suspected a trap and slunk in a wide arc that would bring her in at an angle rather than straight-on. "Sakura?"

His voice was louder now and Sakura took to the trees, grimacing when crouching sent waves of pain along her side. There was Tatsuo, lantern in hand without a hint of genjutsu, and he had someone surprising with him.

"Tatsuo," Sakura acknowledged as she dropped from her perch, regretting the thoughtless maneuver instantly as it jarred both rib and ankle. "Gaara-san."

The red-headed nin dipped his head gravely in acknowledgement.

"I guess this means it's over?" she asked.

"All but the collection and the interrogation," Tatsuo acknowledged. "As it turned out, Gaara-san has a habit of going out for walks at night. That was what our shinobi hoped to take advantage of. We were making a bit of a ruckus, so he naturally came to investigate. That gave one of our targets the opportunity she'd been waiting for—they'd developed some sort of genjutsu."

"It's similar to the one I use when Shukaku is more of an asset than an annoyance, which isn't often. But they're hardly the first to have tried," Gaara rasped. "I carry stimulants. But with eleven of them working in concert, they might have managed it. If they'd managed to take me by surprise, which is unlikely."

Sakura managed to dredge up a tired smile. "Well, still, I'm glad you're not hurt."

Gaara blinked at her and she imagined if he'd had eyebrows, they might have risen in surprise. He seemed to find the concept strange. "...and you?" he responded at last.

"And me what?" Sakura asked.

"Are you hurt?"

"Nothing that won't heal."