The waiting has come to an end! Thank you for being so patient with me. Reading your reviews has helped me a lot with getting through the last few months, so this is my pre-holiday-or-whatever-promises-free-days-gift to you! I hope you enjoy it :-)
Beta'ed by NightsBlackRose13, as always.
Interlude: Orochimaru
There were a number of enemy shinobi at the command center, but not as many as he had expected. Yoshina and the other Konoha shinobi seemed to have the situation well under control. It was merely a matter of dispatching a handful of his snake summons, strategically placing half a dozen kunai and barely a touch of taijutsu before it was quiet enough to demand a report.
"Enemies are Iwa nin for the most part, the rest are presumably Ame nin, though it has yet to be confirmed," Yoshina announced. She looked mostly unruffled, with merely her glasses sitting slightly askew on her nose. She rectified that quickly. "They breached the perimeter within one hour after you left the camp. Points of attack were focused on Command Center and the hospital. Command Center is under control again. However, we lost contact to our people at the hospital."
He frowned internally.
He had just sent the Uchiha girl there. It occurred to him that there was a high probability that she would encounter problems that she wasn't yet prepared to solve.
And, more importantly: Hime's little brother and Sensei's son were there, too. His mind told him that the chances of both being unharmed were exceedingly low.
For a moment, his chest went unbearably tight at the notion of accepting what his mind was presenting him as most probable.
He pushed it away. He had no time to waste.
"Secure all sensitive information and prepare them for transport. Signal the retreat – this camp is lost to us. Our priority now is to make sure to get all the survivors out of here and leave nothing behind for our enemies."
Yoshina nodded. "Where are we retreating to, rikushou?"
The camp closest to this one, Camp Same, would not be fit to handle the reproduction of the antidote. None of the other camps were. That was the reason why Camp Sakana had existed in the first place. But Camp Same, with Hatake Sakumo as its commander, would have to do for now.
"Camp Same. Make sure the Diversion Team receives the information."
Yoshina saluted. "At once, rikushou!"
He didn't linger to watch her giving orders to the shinobi around. Instead, he reached for one of the empty message scrolls in his breast pocket that he had prepared with a layer of chakra-sensitive ink. A couple hand seals and a few precious seconds of concentration caused the needed characters to appear on the paper. He then proceeded to bite down on the tip of his right thumb and slammed the hand with the bleeding finger on the ground.
"Kuchiyose no jutsu!"
A small, white snake with a bright red streak that followed the length of its back appeared in a cloud of dust.
"See that this message reaches the hands of Hatake Sakumo, and his hands only," he instructed. The snake obediently opened its jaws wide and swallowed the scroll. He took a precious second to watch it wriggle away before starting to move towards the field hospital.
He encountered and dispatched three squads of enemy nin, two Iwa and one Ame, before a series of rapid explosions with considerable fire power shook the ground underneath his feet. Judging by the shock waves, the epicenter was close to the hospital.
The chances of finding Nawaki and Regashi alive were rapidly degenerating. He didn't know why he'd been holding out hope at all. It was foolish. Had been, from the start.
He would have to be the one to tell Hime and Sensei.
The heavy downpour of rain and the darkness made it difficult to look further than a few feet, so when he was finally close to the open space in front of the hospital tents, it wasn't an image that made him stop in his tracks and fall into a defensive position – it wasn't what he saw but rather what he felt that made his hair stand on end.
Because there, right at the spot where the hospital tent used to stand –
Sweat, not breaking out during the fighting but here instead –
Labored breathing –
IaMgOIngtBbeCrushEDeXtinguisHedERASED
And then it was over.
He blinked, once, twice, only to find himself on his knees, his hands dug into the mud, the rain hammering down on his back and his whole body shaking, breath still coming in short rapid pants. Through strands of his dripping wet hair and with the help of lightning zapping through the heated air he could see a lone, tiny figure standing upright in the middle of a ring of corpses. The electricity seemed to gather there before quietly dissipating and leaving the scene in darkness again.
He got up.
His legs felt disgustingly weak and it cost him a tremendous amount of energy just to move forward. His body was screaming at him to turn around and get away before the danger returned, that there had been something unnatural and deeply disturbing happening just moments ago, but his mind –
His mind.
It told him that he needed to know.
That what he had felt was something he had never experienced before. That it was beyond what he could easily explain. That it was unique.
And so he moved.
With every step he took, the certainty grew that whatever that technique had been had come directly from the figure still standing motionless in the rain. It was only after he was directly in front of her, though, that he realized – it was the Uchiha girl.
She was paler than before, blood running down her cheeks, her aura noticeably different, and her eyes –
Red iris, strange black arcs reaching out from the pupil before abruptly bending back to their origin and a bizarrely fractured sclera – what happened to her sclera? –
Those eyes were something else. Something powerful. Dangerous. Beautiful.
They were magnificent.
His arms moved on his own, reaching for the swirling pattern of blood and coal. A calmness had settled over everything, the rain, the wind, the fizzling electricity and there was nothing beyond his fingers and those eyes, that power, undiluted and potent unlike anything else.
Until she blinked and turned away on unsteady legs.
Just like that, the connection was broken and sounds rushed back with the force of a flood returning to the dry beach. It had become quite hectic in the few moments that he had spent entranced, and now he realized that Konoha shinobi were swarming around, carefully circling the space around the corpses and the girl. They jumped even further away when she started screaming and doubling over.
His hands were still outstretched from before and it didn't take active thought on his part to step forward and grip her waist. She went boneless as soon as he caught her and with that, the spell was well and truly broken.
His rational mind snapped back into action as he laid her down to perform a quick check. The green glow of his medical chakra was not as steady as Tsunade's but it would do for a first diagnosis.
The scan revealed several minor injuries, but more importantly, dangerous physical as well as chakra exhaustion. While he could treat the former himself, the latter could only be resolved with proper rest and medical monitoring. He clenched his jaw.
"There might still be survivors in the rubble, rikushou. Your orders?"
He lifted his head to see Yoshina standing right next to him, posture set in an immaculate stance and appearance looking minimally ruffled. He didn't know when she'd arrived at the scene, but he was grateful for her professionalism nonetheless.
"Fetch a couple medics who can take care of her," he instructed with a wave at the Uchiha girl's still form. "You, help me dig through the hospital tent. If there's someone still alive, they'll be there."
And if not, I'll know at least.
He stood up and headed towards the massive heap of dirt and soil underneath which the hospital tent lay buried. Up close, he realized with no small amount of irritation that it was bigger than anticipated. Additionally, the rain had soaked through completely, giving it a muddy consistency. It would be difficult for any survivor to breathe through all that.
Finding Hime's brother and Sensei's son was going to be a matter of finding the right corpses.
He hated himself for thinking that.
"This is going to be difficult," Yoshina said. "I am not sure how my skillset can be of any help here, but I am of course still at your disposal." She was again standing beside him, looking at him for orders. Always the perfect second. It was a shame that her abilities were not more versatile.
His gaze went back to the problem at hand.
He'd once fought against a doton user who had been able to break the ground into slabs the size of tatami mats and proceeded to throw them around. Different from then, the earth here was already broken up into too small pieces. But if he could press the bits together and create slabs, it would be an easy thing to get them out of the way. He would have to let his chakra seep evenly into the earth, give it an adhesive quality and attach the slaps to chakra threads.
It would take an enormous amount of concentration and control on his part, contrary to when he was fighting the enemy nin.
Nawaki and Regashi's faces flashed before his inner eye.
Things that were necessary needed to be done, no matter the cost.
He started to pump his chakra into the rock and dirt, spreading it like a finely woven net until it covered about half of the heap. Imagining the feeling of the soles of his feet sticking to tree bark, he separated individual quadrants from the net and made their content stick together by virtue of his chakra alone. Beads of sweat were rolling down his temples and mingling with the rain as his breath grew heavier, the control it cost him to pull off the feat straining him to his limit. But slowly, ever so slowly, hand-made slabs of rocks began to lift into the air where he gave them a push that flung them wide away.
Time ceased to have any meaning as he worked away, fatigue threatening to overwhelm him with every passing second. He soldiered on, though, silent images of Hime and Sensei hovering before his inner eye and demanding him to bring back something. Anything.
Spread chakra. Make quadrants stick together. Fling them away. Repeat.
He slaved away for what felt like hours when finally, finally, the heap was gone.
Yoshina had moved in immediately after enough of the debris had been cleared away to start looking for survivors. She and a helpful of other shinobi were moving over the space, checking still bodies and sealing them away in storage scrolls.
He knew too well what that meant.
He shook his head once to get rid of the dizziness and began to move through what used to be the hospital tent himself. Unlike the others, though, he didn't stop to check random bodies. He moved and moved until the weak glinting of light caught in crystal caught his eye.
He looks unscathed. Quite peaceful, actually.
That familiar hair, a honey two shades darker than Tsunade's. The baby fat on his cheeks, merely lacking their rosy tint.
He kneeled down beside the corpse that had once been the little brother of his teammate. The closest thing to family he had.
He'd known Nawaki since the boy's day of birth. His literal first steps. First words. First training.
And now he knew the day of his death.
His fists clenched at his sides.
How was this fair?
His hand moved towards the Shodai's crystal.
He knew the answer, of course.
Closed around it.
It wasn't.
And gently loosened it from Nawaki's neck.
Nothing in shinobi life ever was.
He slowly stood up from his crouch.
Tsunade would appreciate getting it back.
His hand went searching for one of the storage scroll in his hip pouch to seal the body away, but his fingertips stilled as soon as they touched one.
Nawaki looked relaxed, entirely unruffled by the rain or the heap of rocks that had been crushing him just minutes ago. It was easy to imagine the perpetual rosy tint on his cheeks or to imagine a slight up and down movement of his chest. It was easy to imagine him just as being asleep.
His hand fell away from the pouch.
There were other people coming to collect the bodies. He still had to find the other one.
He turned away from the still, small body and slowly made his way to the other side of the hospital, eyes scanning the ground for that last familiar face. It didn't take long.
Where Nawaki had looked peaceful and merely asleep, Regashi clearly had suffered pain. His lips were slightly parted, his brows furrowed and the skin ashen, bloodless – and it was easy to see why: his entire lower body was mangled beyond recognition, bones shining through blood and torn tissue and sticking out in angles they were not supposed to. Had the boy lived, he would have never been able to walk again.
For the second time, he sank to his knees beside the corpse of a person he considered family.
Unlike Nawaki, Regashi didn't carry something as distinct as the Shodai's crystal with him. There was nothing for him to bring back but the entirety of his broken body, so there was no point in lingering. It was useless and helped absolutely nobody.
And yet, he couldn't move away.
He just kneeled. Lingered. Stared.
Useless.
He was just about to end it, stand up and walk away when he heard a soft gasp.
He whipped around instantly, eyes wide and fixed on Regashi's face. He waited with baited breath, the sound of his heart pounding loud in his ears, not yet willing to believe what easily could have been an illusion.
One second passed.
Another.
Another.
And Regashi's chest moved, ever so slightly, to let a second gasp pass his lips.
Time seemed to double its speed as Orochimaru instantly threw himself to work, checking vital signs, stabilizing within his limits and calling out for medics.
Later, he couldn't remember what had happened the few seconds between his discovery and the sight of Regashi being carefully strapped onto a gurney and hurriedly transported away, but what he felt was enormous. It made him feel light-headed and out-of-sorts, which he strangely didn't mind.
Relief.
That his lingering had not been wasted.
That at least one of them had survived.
That he would not have to bring Sensei the news, too.
Just – relief.
)()()(
"See that the injured are taken care of! They have utmost priority! Sakana-Medics? Good, follow Mitsuhashi, she'll show you the hospital tent."
He could hear Hatake Sakumo's firm, commanding voice over the noise that their arrival had caused moments before the man in question spotted him and came over.
"Orochimaru-san!" he said, eyes alert and hard lines set around his mouth. "I'm glad to see you've arrived safely. The message you sent has been greatly distressing, and seeing the state that the survivors are in now only adds to that. What happened?"
He gave his report in a clipped voice and concise words, detached from what was happening around him and focused at the same time. Hatake asked several more detailed questions which he all answered in the same fashion. The whole conversation didn't take longer than ten minutes and he was about to leave at Hatake's silence after a string of questions, thinking that it signaled the end, when the man opened his mouth again for a last question.
"Do you know what happened to Uchiha Etsuko?"
Ah, yes. The girl with the fascinating technique.
He remembered well.
"Her condition was critical when she was transported away. Total exhaustion."
He heard a sharp intake of breath.
"She might not make it. Now excuse me – I have to send a report to the Hokage."
He turned around and left the man standing. He wasn't called back.
)()()(
Reporting Officer: Orochimaru
Registration Number: 002300
Rank: Jounin, Commander of Camp Sakana
Subject: Emergency Report
Concerning the attack at Camp Sakana
Perpetrators: Iwagakure nin; Amegakure nin
Death toll: 12 Konoha nin, list enclosed; about 25 enemy nin
Injured: 4 Konoha nin, 2 critical
Result: Camp Sakana and its medical facilities destroyed. Antidote lost. Survivors moved to Camp Same.
Detailed report enclosed.
Commentary: […] Genin Uchiha Etsuko has displayed the use of unknown techniques of remarkable power. Usage heavily detrimental to her health however. Recommend close monitoring that needs to be continued should she survive, especially with added unstable mental condition. Individual mentoring with a capable jounin instructor should be taken into consideration. […]
[On a slip of paper, tacked onto the back of the report:] You've always wanted me to take on a student, haven't you, Sensei?