A/N: Not edited, because I've written two chapters in four days and am feeling gleeful and posting recklessly. Writing in a new fandom gave me enough energy to come back to this one. It helps that writing Ochako is so, so much lighter and more playful than this.

Kill Your Heroes

-Chapter Sixty-Seven-

The Sun Also Sets (Part II)

"This have anything to do with our freak visitation? Or mass hallucination or whatever the hell that woman was," Anko asked. "Looked like she was saying something to you, but damned if I could make it out."

Sakura briefly described what had been said to her even as she used a combination of jutsu and chakra-enhanced strength to open a passage into the tower.

"So, there's maybe someone or something out there worse than that bastard who turned death upside down and inside out? That's just fucking fantastic," Anko-san snorted. "That just makes my day. I mean, who doesn't what to have a seal on them that functions because of some sleeping goddess decided she'd rather not wake up to deal with her own shit? The second we're done slaughtering this city, I'm out."

"Also, her warning was very annoyingly vague," Neji-san contributed as he preceded them.

"You're not wrong," Sakura muttered. "Neji, see anything that'll let us deal with the terrors of today instead of whatever else is out there?"

"There's someone three floors down," he said. "Judging by the equipment around him, it seems like it was some sort of life support system that failed when Hatake-senpai took out the power. His chakra, though—it's monstrous and strange and the frequency keeps shifting. Whoever it is, they're dangerous and beginning to move."

Sakura hummed thoughtfully, reaching out her own senses to detect the daunting lifeforce that felt—well, she lacked the sort of experience with sensory skills that would have come with being a real sage, but this man's energy was like a star on the brink of collapse. Fragile, but entirely capable of destroying them all even with his death.

"We gonna bust through the floors?" Anko said with a grin in her voice. "Drop in and say hello?"

"No. We're linked together," Sakura said with a smile that was all teeth. "We're just going to step through."

"Sakura," Kakashi-senpai said sharply, "don't tell me you're going to try to take us though. Especially without an anchor."

"Trust me, senpai," she replied, "if you could sense this guy, you'd know that I can't miss."

"Have you ever taken anyone through with you?" Sai asked.

She didn't reply, reaching out to snag senpai and Neji before anyone had time to protest, flashing back an instant later to bring the other two through, landing with her feet spread wide, tail scraping across the floor and talons catching at the tiles as she anchored herself.

Her knives were in her hands as she faced the terror she'd sensed. It was a man—the husk of one—his bones grotesquely pushing up against his skin and his back bristling with black metal.

She was not Naruto.

There were no questions. No conversations. No accusations.

Just the charge, her genjutsu shredding around him like a hurricane through tissue paper, dead eyes meeting hers as she leaped—and found herself slammed to the ground like she'd been struck by the hand of a god. The sound that escaped her wasn't human—it was the snarl of a struck beast, but this animal had allies and they swept in where she fell.

Sakura ignored the grind and crunch as her ribs shifted and set with the chakra that burned through her blood, launching herself forward. She left one knife where it lay so that she could signal to the others and they shifted their strategy according to her orders, Neji falling half a step behind so that the others could open the way for him to seal their opponent's chakra.

They closed swiftly, the frail body in front of them their only saving grace against the ominous and overwhelming force of this man's chakra.

She couldn't imagine what it might have been like to fight this kind of monster in a healthy body.

As it was, he moved like an old man and hit like a typhoon, each twitch of his skeletal fingers producing some new jutsu. In moments, a great gout of fire—produced without breath, but instead with a complex fold of his fingers—had scorched away half of Anko's uniform. Scales bubbled up out of her skin like blisters, white in the dark of the room, but she didn't so much as flinch.

"Son of a bitch!" she roared as she struck, but her attack landed on air that had solidified into a shield.

Sai, who hadn't run forward, who'd instead leaped back to give himself space, hit him with a rush of crows that obscured Sakura's leap, which put her above their enemy and perhaps the shield that had foiled Anko's attack. She used two jutsu almost simultaneously, the floor closing up like the jaws of a beast while teeth of air snapped shut above it.

Both stilled centimeters from his skin, but as the air jutsu dissipated, Neji was there to fill the space.

Only her dragon eyes allowed her to track the movement of his hands, Kakashi-senpai coming from nowhere to restrain their opponent's hands as Neji sealed his tenketsu.

"It's not working!" he shouted in warning. "I can't seal him."

Another blast of air sent them hurtling for the walls, but Sakura managed to catch her footing on the ceiling, using her tail to help launch herself toward the red-haired menace.

He tilted his head back and his ringed eyes locked on hers.

The beast that appeared between them was mostly teeth, and those teeth tore through her shoulder, smashing her against the ceiling and trying to crush her.

"Taichou!"

"Sakura!"

"Hag!"

"Don't you dare let him kill you, kid!"

I won't. There was chakra spilling up out of the sea in her belly, a wild hot wave of it, and it felt like something in her forehead cracked open when she roared.

The sky—she could see the sky and the moon looking down on them. A huge chunk of the tower had been blasted away and with her hyper-attuned senses, she heard the creak and shift of the upper floors as they began to topple forward now that wasn't enough wall to support them.

"Get out!" she screamed and her team scattered. Sakura launched herself at her fallen knives, throwing one into the sky with enough force it was a star falling up and snatched it before it could begin to give in to gravity.

Her feet settled on solid air, eyes straining as she searched for signs of her team. She saw Sai first, billowing black clouds bearing him up as birds circled him defensively. A flash of red-gold in her peripheral vision proved to be Neji's wings beating in strong, sure strokes. Kakashi-senpai hadn't gotten as much height, but he appeared to be freely using wind-style attacks to control his fall before landing atop the remains of the tower. Anko was already there, the shredded remains of her uniform clinging to the white scales that now covered much of her body.

So was their enemy.

As Sakura's nictitating membrane drew across her eyes, golden light flared in a lower window before Naruto burst out of it, glowing like the sun and rising freely in the air as Gaara-sama's sand poured out of the building, bearing him aloft. Sasuke was only a step behind, with Itachi following closely, sprinting up the side of the building.

"Fearmonger," Sakura shouted, "withdraw! Leave this battle to them."

As ineffective as their own attacks had been, the other group would need to make use of their most devasting jutsu—some of which would put their allies at risk as well as their enemies if they kept too close. Not that she really thought Sasuke would hold back for fear of friendly fire, but there was no need to make this difficult for the other squad.

"Eh?! Sakura?" Naruto asked in surprise as his gaze shot upward.

Sakura blinked again, properly this time, because aside from the golden corona of chakra that covered him, Naruto was overlaid by a hazy image like the ghost of a genjutsu. It was a man in white, wearing a bandana around his forehead and small sections of hair bundled on either side of his face. Something shifted on her forehead, less painfully than last time when it had felt as if her skull had split open and the image disappeared, but not before she noticed that there had been another man in white overlaying Sasuke.

Sakura let herself fall, landing in a crouch beside senpai, taking in the shocked expression on their faces—it occurred to her then that none of them had seen her in this form before—before leaping toward another building, tail snapping behind her like a banner. She sensed her team falling in behind her.

The battle wasn't finished yet.

[Kill Your Heroes]

It took three days before Tsunade-sama accepted Amegakure's surrender.

It hadn't taken them that long to crush the will of the village—that had happened within hours of their assault—but it had taken their shinobi that long to regroup sufficiently as to offer it.

"What do you mean you lost track of Nagato?" Sakura asked flatly. She'd since been briefed on the identity of the man they'd encountered in the tower, whose description they'd lacked because Itachi had never met the mysterious leader of Akatsuki in person. Given his physical condition, Sakura could see why he'd chosen not to reveal himself to the power-hungry S-class shinobi under his command.

"Hey, hey, it's not our fault!" Naruto protested. "We had him—we really did, Itachi will tell you!—when some weirdo in a mask teleported in and took him."

"It was Tobi again," Itachi clarified. "The man either masquerading as Uchiha Madara or, possibly, actually Uchiha Madara. Whatever the case, his Sharingan technique makes him extremely difficult to track and we were unable to pursue."

"That man was as good as a corpse anyway," Sasuke added gruffly.

"A corpse with an extremely valuable doujutsu," Sakura retorted acidly. "He and Zetsu attempted to retrieve Itachi's body after your battle with him as well; it's highly unlikely that they haven't got a plan for it."

Sasuke's scowl said that he knew she was right, but that he wasn't going to admit it.

"Some of my sand had already settled in Nagato's clothes when they took him. I've expended a great deal of chakra during the last three days, but once I've had time to rest, I should be able to track him," Gaara volunteered.

"For now, though, we have a victory," Tsunade-sama said sharply. "We did what we set out to do. Amegakure has fallen. The power of Akatsuki is broken. All this while incurring remarkably few casualties on our side and doing so with only the assistance of Suna. Our forces will withdrawal by afternoon and return to Konohagakure immediately, so that no one gets any bright ideas. They might have been unwilling to help, but the other Great Shinobi Countries will certainly feel threatened by our actions here. Especially yours, Fearmonger."

There were only two members of her squad present—Kakashi-senpai and herself—for this informal debriefing, which included Gaara, Naruto, Sasuke, Itachi, and Jiraiya, but she felt gazes turn toward her regardless.

"Yeah. That was something else, Sakura-chan." Naruto said with only a fraction of his usual enthusiasm, one hand gripping his opposite sleeve and his smile stilted. She was certain that using genjutsu like that, rendering the enemy helpless and denying them the opportunity to fight back, violated some part of Naruto's strange chivalric code. She was actually more surprised he wasn't vocally outraged about it, but maybe he too realized that he'd rather it be a one-sided slaughter than a proper war.

Or maybe it was just that he'd done as much growing up as she had and not everything he thought spilled immediately out of his mouth.

"Right now, Gaara is the only one capable of tracking Tobi, but we won't let him risk following him without the support of Konoha shinobi. Witch and Hound are the obvious choices for this. Haruno, Fearmonger was formed under your leadership and you performed flawlessly in that role during your time here, but Hatake has superior experience when it comes to tracking, so he'll be in charge of the Konoha contingent for this next mission."

"I don't have any objections to that, ma'am," Sakura asked. "Is Fearmonger being officially dissolved?"

"You have my permission to do so. You can send home any of the members who'd like to return; the others are free to accompany you. You will be joined by Naruto and both our Uchiha, because whether he's actually Uchiha Madara or not, your target is certainly dangerous." Her lips compressed into a thin, unhappy line. "I won't pretend that it's going to be an easy fight, even if you are able to locate him. Zetsu, who remains at large, may or may not be accompanying him. I'm sorry to send you on another S-class mission so soon, but this is necessary if we're going to have any chance of attacking him before he decides to strike back at us."

"Don't you worry, Tsunade-baa-chan. We'll get him," Naruto said gravely, slamming one fist into his palm.