AN: Hello people of the internet. Wyvern from Team Scrimshaw here! We are back again and happy to present the latest of our list of Commissions, the first one requested by a Discord member no less. Shout out to you, Weise!

AtW: Well, this is our fifth commission. After this we have the voted upon chapter of OWIM (if you subscribe at the 10$ tier you can vote, once a month, for any of our personal stories to receive an extra chapter). We also might be posting a few things over on Questionable Questing… so yeah, be looking for that.

CW: This one is a bit interesting for us. We used to write Naruto before we delved into the Worm Fandom, so it was quite nostalgic to mess around with these characters again. Hope you guys like it!

Now then, onto the reading!


Suffering and Elegance - Chapter 1


Alone.

Sakura was alone.

Team 7 was alone.

Alone when that freak attacked them. Alone when their scroll was burnt to ashes. Alone when Naruto and Sasuke were beaten. Now it was just her.

Just Sakura.

Weak litle Sakura who thought herself so clever with her traps and book smarts. Only they didn't work. The other genin were too strong and Sakura was only one girl. She couldn't fight them when they blasted through the rest of her set ups.

Couldn't stop then when they started hurting her teammates.

Nobody came to save them.

It was only when the Sound Nin's foot came crashing down into Naruto's face that she finally screamed.

"No! Please! Stop!"

The girl holding her laughed, pressing the knife helding against her throat just deep enough to draw a trickle of blood. Sakura tried to fight back, tried to struggle, but there was nothing she could do. Her scalp was screaming in pain, the other shinobi were laughing, and she… couldn't… do… anything.

Sasuke twitched, almost like he knew what was happening, and her heart soared.

And then crashed when one of them planted their sandaled feet smash into his head.

"Fucking Uchiha. Self righteous mass murdering cunts. Should have been wiped out completely. But it makes sense that even the best of you spoiled, holier than thou, spoon fed weaklings would screw up even that."

No one was coming to save her.

No one was coming to save them.

There was no way they were going to survive.

As the woman holding the knife to her throat began to push down, sliding the blade across skin and muscle, something changed. Her mind flickered, shutting down for a second, before starting again. And in that single second of infinite time everything changed.

'Throat is slit. Pain indicates the carotid is cut. Knife is too shallow.'

Fingers twitching, they dropped down to her kunai pouch, teasing out three of the blades.

'Slow heartbeat. Avoid blood loss. Blade will catch on throat cartilage.'

Because she would not die here. She would not die here. SHEWOULDNOTDIEHERE!

Passing the blades between her hands, channeling a sliver of chakra into her body to empower her movements and increase her resistance, she positioned herself as best she could. Zeroing in on her targets, waiting until the enemy kunoichi's knife caught on a piece of cartilage, she coiled like a spring.

And lunged.

'Only one chance. Will survive. Will save Naruto. Will save Sasuke.'

Snapping her arms out, so hard that she could feel muscles tear, the blades flew true. The kunoichi screamed a warning and shinobi reactions meant they reacted quickly. But not quickly enough. One turned just in time to take a knife to the eye, dropping even with the snear still forming on his lips, and the other managed to get his arm up just in time to block the knife.

And that was all Sakura needed.

Her personal tormenter flinched, rearing back to drive her knife down into Sakura's eye. The pink haired kunoichi sent her blade up first. She was faster.

The grip on her hair went slack and, grabbing the girl's body by the leg, she threw the already cooling corpse at the surviving hostile, her muscles screaming as she forced more and more of her pitiful reserves of chakra into them.

But that was enough too. When he sent out an air bullet to blast through his comrade's corpse, she was there, ducking under and around the spray of gore, as two bunshins came into being to her right. Sure, they were a weak technique. Sure, anyone with a lick of sense would see through them. Yet her enemy had neither time nor space to think. Starting at the fair end of the line, he blasted through first one, then the other.

Then, right as he turned his hand on her, Sakura leapt.

Twisting as much as possible, heart pounding in her chest, blood spurting out of the knife wound she moved.

And he missed.

Burying her kunai in the enemy's chest she hit the ground, tumbled, and came to a rest. Her leg was screaming where a divet had been chewed through the flesh, her arms screamed from where her muscles had torn, and her throat was leaking red, red blood onto the ground.

'I will not die.'

Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

In agony, in torment, she flipped over, crawling towards their medical bag.

'I will save Naruto.'

She fished out a needle and medical thread, whimpering when she confirmed the injury was shallow and the damage minimal.

'I will save Sasuke.'

Daubing it with medical paste, to keep herself from bleeding out, she sewed the cut closed, whimpering and feeling fat, ugly tears roll down her cheeks. Somehow, when her fingers dipped and moved they were steadier and more sure than they had ever been in her life. Through the haze of pain and terror she acted with precision. Almost like a machine flawlessly moving from one action to the next.

Her eyes roamed over her downed teammates.

Fortunately the sound genin hadn't done more than rough them up.

Too eager to play with easy victims. The thought they might have raped her crossed her mind before she dismissed it. They were harmless now. And she had a team to patch. Swallowing one of the soldier pills their sensei had insisted they bring along she set her jaw and got to work.

A bruise covered the side of Naruto's head, her eyes catching the slowly purpling of the color as she laid him down. Gods, what would she give for ice or at least some cold water. She dabbed some of the leftover cream over it.

Perhaps she could make a poultice?

Moist earth and mud could be… acceptable substitutes.

Sasuke's situation was more dire. The beating didn't help his fever. She could feel his skin burn beneath her palm. It wasn't normal. Had that grass ninja injected him with some sort of poison when they fought earlier?

'That mark wasn't there either.'

Instinctively she knew it to be unnatural.

Mind running through hundreds of possibilities, some she'd never considered or heard of before as she bandaged the boy's arm.

Not broken.

Barely.

He would be feeling it for a while yet.

But that curse needed to be gone.

Standing up, and almost face planting from exhaustion, she walked over to dead and dying sound nin. The girl was obviously out. She was dead, dead. So was the hostile who had a knife in his eye. It was almost amusing how he was still smirking in death. But, and this was a big but, the last one was alive. Sakura deeply, deeply hoped what she was about to do was a good idea.

Dragging him over next to Sasuke, she took the time to make sure her… donor wasn't going to bleed out in the middle of the procedure. Then she laid out her tools. Gauze, knives, needle, thread, healing paste - what little she had left, and packing.

It was strange.

Sakura normally wouldn't have the nerve to even attempt this.

Nevermind playing doctor in the middle of a dangerous forest filled with enemies, she was about to do it with the one person she held the most… affection for out of her peers. There was a small disconnect somewhere.

The voice inside her wailing and retching at the thought of what she was doing.

And the calm, even encouraging, voice whispering to her what she needed to know.

How to properly remove the affected skin.

How to keep the unnatural stain of corruption attached to the skin she'd removed. Something about the transfer of energy through nerves in higher dimensions. Words she understood but couldn't explain.

Only act upon them.

The kunai were sharp, perfectly so as they'd been bought brand new by her parents, and Sasuke's skin split like an overripe cherry. A flicker of his chakra was coiled around the seal mark but it was vastly overwhelmed by the corrupt, sickly energy that already reached out and tried to ensnare her. Still, cutting the skin away wasn't enough to banish this dark energy.

No.

That's why she needed her foe.

Cutting away the exact patch of skin from his stomach, she kept the parasite… sated with her own energy until, just as suddenly, she had it sewed into the new host. When she poured her own energy into the wound, the Oto nin's body tried to fight back, creating a connection. Creating a path of least resistance it began infesting the dying boy but somewhat lost the sense of Sasuke to it.

She hoped this would work.

Because now she was oh so carefully cutting away the bite mark shaped tattoo on Sasuke's neck, her heart crying out when he whimpered in his sleep. She almost gasped when, for a second, her hand wavered and thought she could have nicked something important. But, when there was no sudden surge of blood, she brought the knife back around and continued.

Just as before she kept the cursed skin alive.

Just as before she cut away its new resting place.

Just as before she forged a new connection to its current host's body.

It wasn't enough to totally purge the changes in Sasuke's body and she was seeing symptoms of major internal changes as well. Packing the wounds, wrapping them up, and sewing the transplanted flesh to her victim. Because that was what he was at this point.

She screamed when the oto nin's eyes popped open, three tomoe spinning in black eyes, his mouth splitting open to roar. The other boy's body was already warping and changing, popping and tearing and splitting noises coming from him. Thankfully, before he did whatever he was going to do, her reflexes over road her thinking brain and she drove a kunai into his skull.

Then she slit his throat down to the bone, sawing through the flesh.

Then, when she saw a twitch, she drove a knife between his ribs through the heart.

And then his lungs. Just to make sure.

Checking Sasuke's bandages, she couldn't help but take a moment to just stroke his cheek. In a way, she had hurt him. Nothing in her training or education or even stories she'd heard told her what to do. But this niggling little voice had pushed her to cut. And so she did. Right now she could only hope she was right.

What came next was Hell on her. The soldier pill was starting to wear off and her body was in a bad way, even Inner Sakura was staying mostly quiet, only once tempting her to peek at Sasuke while he slept. She shut that down hard.

Instead, she got both boys back into the hollow tree. Keeping them together to preserve body heat, she then dragged the dead enemies away from their makeshift camp. There was too much blood to truly clear away, though she turned over dirt where she could at least bury it a bit, and it didn't actually bother her when she stripped the three, took their scroll, their clothes for bandages, and supplies.

Even the dead foreign girl, handling her guts only made her slightly pale.

Soon, though, the clearing was quiet.

The signs of battle were… mostly gone.

All that was left to do was clean herself up as best she could, minimizing the risk of a giant predator attacking them was vital right now, so Sakura forced herself to go through the motions.

Apparently the foreigners had some supplies with them in the form of water canteens. Not massive ones, but enough. And finding a few edible roots and berries she grabbed those too. Actual survival training had been one of her worst classes but she had memorized the book.

Clean, if wet, and hurting in ways she didn't know she could, the pink haired kunoichi wanted to collapse again. To just give up and let sleep claim her. But that same whispering voice in the back of her head pushed her. It hurt too much to do more than take small sips and swallow the small, bitter berries whole but she choked them down.

After that she got both of her teammates to do the same. The water, that was, with both boys guzzling down the rest.

Sakura knew they needed more… but more would have to wait. Because her vision was starting to go at the edges and it was all she could do to stay standing. So, crawling over next to them, spooning Sasuke, something she normally would have celebrated if she was brave enough to achieve but right now only craved for comfort and warmth, she managed to fall asleep on a pillow of mostly clean clothes.


"Sakura, it's flaking off."

She nodded, not responding. Just the day before Naruto would have jabbered on, if only just to fill the silence, assuming he wasn't complaining about carrying Sasuke. Now, she just slowed down a little, bumping his shoulder with hers. Not hard enough to make him stumble and possibly drop their teammate, but exactly as hard as the voice in her head told to.

He smiled, a thin and wan thing, and a little bit more mud crumbled off his cheek.

"We should reach the halfway point soon. Once we get there I'll check your injuries again. See if I need to do something."

Strangely enough, Sakura found Naruto's company to be enjoyable for the first time.

Seeing him and Sasuke nearly get killed had a way of… sidelining the silly little grievances she had with the blonde.

And everything was better than the silence.

The small voice in the back of her mind wondering whether her patients… teammates would make it through. Whispers telling her how she could have done it better, faster. How she was lacking in practice.

In many ways, it reminded her of how things were before she met Ino.

Gods, did she feel stupid now.

'Nearly dying has a way of putting things in perspective, I suppose.' Though she could have gone without the trauma of having to kill two other people and then doing something to a third one before killing them too.

Sakura was shaken.

She was terrified.

She… just wanted to be done with this part of the exam.

And thus they continued marching, as quickly and quietly as their injuries and hunger and exhaustion allowed. If nothing else, she was no stranger to hunger and neither was Naruto. Frankly, Kakashi-sensei and his tendency of withholding lunch was finally serving a purpose now.

Other than wishing he had actually trained them more, some small, petulant part of her insisting that none of this was her fault and she bore no responsibility for it, Sakura found she was genuinely thankful for all the seemingly pointless things he'd made them do. The exposure to cold and heat and hunger and… bugs. She was awful about bugs and just thinking about all those eyes and mouths and legs made her stomach flop around.

'Though, now that I think about it, a couple extra arms and legs could be useful an-'

Sakura stumbled.

Where…where had she learnt that?

Even now she could see the shape of the human body, could envision every cell, fiber. and nerve as it came together within her mind's eye to form an image of the world's most complex puzzle.

Only it was already solved.

And there was a burning, pounding need to… improve it.

That's when her head started pounding. An unfamiliar pain, as if something cold and rough has stabbed the sides of her head. She almost stumbled and fell from the suddenness of it.

"Sakura?"

She shook her head.

"I'm okay, just a headache."

The blond nodded, though he didn't look assured.

"We can stop for the night. Don't think anybody's up at this point."

Sakura wasn't so sure. They couldn't rule out the possibility that other teams might be camping around the tower, waiting for those too injured and tired to put up a fight. Like they were. And then take their scroll. Or worse.

Like that snake freak.

The thought of him brought out a sudden flash of anger.

He attacked them, destroyed their scroll, and beat up Naruto before biting Sasuke. But why? She hadn't really figured out what that bite mark was. Only that she managed to remove it because it was fresh.

Because the taint hadn't spread.

Removing the affected area hadn't been enough either. It was only because the Oto nin had been there, had been so desperately clinging to life and willing to accept something he knew would bring him power, that the transfer had worked. In fact, that little voice was already beginning to whisper to her how things could have gone wrong. And how everyone in that clearing could have - should have - died.

Her only hope was that whatever was in that mark hadn't slipped into Sasuke's body. She'd have to conduct so many experiments and tests to figure this one out. Gather data. Perhaps find other victims. Or even simply see if she could replicate it herself, all the better to have first hand knowledge of course.

The gap in knowledge cannot be allowed to remain.

Icy pain lanced through her brain.

This time she did stumble.

"Sakura!" She heard Naruto call out.

Hands bracing against the forest floor, the pink haired girl could do little else but ride out the waves of pain and nausea as her vision warped and flickered, small spots of light dancing within her sight.

Almost like stars.

"That's it. We're stopping for tonight."

She wanted to disagree, but knew that if she opened her mouth to speak she might just spit up what little she had left in her stomach. Instead, she could only watch as Naruto set their black haired teammate against a nearby tree before pulling her to sit besides them.

"Sorry." She finally spoke.

He shrugged.

"It's alright. Was getting tired anyway."

His smile became mischievous.

"Sasuke probably should lay off whatever he's eating. Man, he's heavy."

Sakura probably should have scolded him for making light of Sasuke's situation. But couldn't help the small giggle that bubbled to the surface. Of all things they went through tonight… from the attack earlier to them nearly dying.

"You're really gonna whine about having to carry him?"

"Least I can do." He sniffed, looking to the side. "Lazy jerk shoulda have woken up already. I got beat up too."

"Yeah." Her hand touched his cheek, checking that he was still warm but not flushed like he had been. "Speaking of, let me check your injuries." Despite his blushing and stuttering, Sakura's fingers probed his yellowing, mostly healed bruises, double checked what she suspected been originally quite badly broken bones, and even confirmed most of the nicks and scrapes he'd been littered with were just gone. "You know what Naruto, I think there's something going on here."

Shrugging, he looked away, trying to pretend he was wearing something other than a tattered mesh shirt at the moment and that his crush wasn't practically tickling him.

"I've always healed good it-"

"Well. Or quickly. But no, this is more than this." She tested his ribs again, which she knew had been bruised, and only got a snort of laughter from her teammate. "Hey Naruto, when your chest first got hurt, how bad was it?"

"Ehhh… four out of ten?"

This time Sakura rolled her eyes.

"Describe it to me you dummy."

Flushing, he nodded sheepishly and complied.

"It hurt to breathe, I thought something had come loose and I could feel a grating sensation. Also, all my breaths were super shallow! Like I couldn't actually take a deep one, you know?"

That… sounded almost exactly like a set of badly broken ribs. Badly broken ones. The kind that maybe puncture a lung and definitely have associated internal bleeding. And sure shinobi healed faster than civilians, but that was just ludicrous! On top of that it occurred to her just how little she'd actually paid attention to her teammate's histories and ability sets. Because, now that it occurred to her that they were probably either going to fail or going to die, maybe that would be useful information.

"Naruto, we're going to need to have a long, pointed conversation about just how fast you heal. But for now, can you do that clone thing again? Maybe set up some traps, find us somewhere to curl up for the night. I'll change Sasuke's bandages."

What passed was fifteen minutes of wishing she had moor tools, more supplies, more time, more training, more everything. But the boy she'd been crushing on was no longer in danger of bleeding to death. Only at risk of infection, pale, a bit clammy, and suffering from the lingering effects caused by the magic hickey that had been inflicted by a random snake woman turned random snake pedophile.

Maybe they should just give up?

Wait out the rest of the exam or head out.

Sakura couldn't help but feel guilty about it. After they all passed through the first phase, it felt cheap to chicken out in the second one, after Naruto stood up to the scary scarred proctor and screamed for everyone to hear that he wouldn't give up.

What kind of teammate would she be if she tried to convince him to go back on his word?

If they weren't giving up, then that meant passing the exam.

Which meant they were headed for the tower.

"Hey Sakura." Looking up, she was a bit confused that there were now four of him and they were all pale. "I think there's something you should see."

Nodding, she followed behind, taking her turn to carry Sasuke - even if it was a close thing. The journey itself was still a quick one and, when they came to the clearing Naruto was leading them to, it didn't take long for her to recognize the stink of rotting meat.

"Gods. What happened here?"

Sitting Sasuke down again, and leaving Naruto to watch over him, she poked around the blood spattered clearing.

And almost wished she hadn't.

The main show was the massive clump of sand. 'Well, sand and entrails.'

Using a kunai to move pieces out of the way, she found that it had been an implosion. That is, someone had covered a group of human beings head to toe, more or less, in sand… and then crushed them. Violently applying pressure so that the sand reduced them to a slurry of chunks. It spoke of the cruelty of such a technique that scavengers had avoided picking over the remains. But their loss was her team's gain.

Not only had this team collected multiple scrolls, but they had two copies of the one her team needed. One considerably more bloodstained than the other.

Wrinkling her nose, she dug them out as best she could, trying to ignore the rotting bits of people she had to flick off them, and wrapped them up in scraps of the Oto nin's clothing. If only so she didn't have to touch the stained pages directly. Any other salvage just wasn't worth having to dig through the sand and blood.

And she definitely wasn't hungry enough to start considering other humans as a solution to her hunger.

'I wonder, would they be better cut longways or shortways? A slow cooking process might actually work pretty well considering the shape of the human ribcage.' Shutting down that train of logic, Sakura very skillfully pretended that she hadn't gone grey and that her hands weren't shaking.

Because she was anormal, sane human being.

And she was not considering the best way to cook a human being.

And all she wanted to do was get back to her comrades and give them a hug. Maybe find somewhere warm and dry to sleep tonight. Possibly even make it to the tower tomorrow. After all, they had both scrolls. Any other combat or interaction was superfluous. They had a mission to complete.


"Someone's there."

She almost stumbled when Naruto spoke, but Sakura managed to keep walking.

"Can you tell who they are."

Really, she hoped they, whomever they were, couldn't hear their whispering. But the simple fact of the matter was that Sasuke had only woken up a few times and, even then, only for short periods of time. If this was an ambush then they were screwed. And the only thing she could hope to do was buy Naruto enough time to escape with their team mate.

"They smell… snakey."

Sakura's eyes widened. Cutting a significant look to Naruto, he gave a small shrug as if that told her everything. Because it unfortunately did. The person who claimed they were Orochimaru was capable of changing their faces. Understandable for an infiltrator, but the thought that the missing nin from Konoha was dicking about with a genin exam was absurd. Aside from the fact he could have just kidnapped whomever he wanted, this was clearly something more complicated - and likely convoluted - and they were in no way well positioned to handle it.

"What are the odds this is just part of the exam?"

Naruto looked at her like she was an idiot and, unable to resist the habit, Naruto flicked him in the forehead.

"I'm serious you idiot! What's Kakashi always going on about?"

"About how he sees too much pussy but never gets enough play?" Sakura wanted to hit the blonde again before admitting that, yes, their sensei was a massive pervert whose every excuse revolved around black cats and read pornography in public. Aside from only having one eye, it was probably the most immediately identifiable thing about him.

"No." She rubbed her head, trying to ease the massive headache she was already starting to develop. "I mean about looking underneath the underneath. Do you think there's a chance that this is all some overly complicated test to see whether we stay on mission or report a possibly more dangerous intruder to the officials? What… what is the actual test here?"

"To be fair, I don't think the snake pedo was more dangerous than that sand kid. If he was the one that left that clearing… like that, then, well…."

Trailing off, Naruto managed to communicate a greater degree of unease than even the pink haired girl expected. After all, he'd taken her killing the Oto nin in stride. Even used some clones to give them a proper burial. But if that massacre had truly gotten to him, then she had to admit to herself this was likely to be trouble.

"All right then. What's your plan?"

Dumbfounded, Naruto gave a visible double take. This time it was Sakura's turn to give him an indulgent smile, actually reaching out to pat his shoulder.

"I'm serious. You're the best at coming up with ideas on the fly. Even better, they actually seem to work out half the time. So I'll let you make the call here." They hadn't stopped walking, but they had moved closer to the deeper underbrush. "Whatever you think is best, I'll hear you out."

"Uhhhh. Well, I'm not sure-"

Cutting Naruto off before he could blush and waffle, the pink haired kunoichi simply shook her head.

"Naruto. I trust you."

Something came over him. Like a cross between regret, melancholy, and a fierce, burning determination. After a moment he nodded his head and visibly racked his brain.

"Well, the way I see it, we're in no condition for anything fancy. And splitting up is out of the question. So I'd say bunshin and henge combo would be our best bet. If only because it would give us time to move. You have the rest of those soldier pills, yeah?"

She handed over half of what they had left without comment.

"Well." He gave her one of those blinding smiles. "No time like the present."

What happened next was a blur of chakra and movement that, in the moment, she didn't quite grasp. Not as her mind tracked the pathways through her own body as they lit up. And, most definitely, not when a hundred Narutos, a hundred Sakuras, and a hundred Sasukes popped into being - a cloud of smoke covering the forest path. Dashing off into every possible direction, they bodily threw themselves over blockage and debris and cleared every obstacle possible.

Sakura and her teammates simply remained where they were, having transformed into a small rock, and waited until they saw a dozen copies of a man wearing what almost looked like Kabuto's uniform from before the test.

But there was no way it could still be that pristine… there was no way he could have smelled like the man that attacked them. 'Not unless we've either stumbled on a conspiracy or part of the test.'

"I don't think he's around anymore. We should get moving."

Naruto's words rang true.

"Yeah. Today is the last day and it's definitely already into the afternoon." Sighing, Sakura held out her arms. "Take out a pill and let me take Sasuke for a bit. I have a feeling we aren't safe yet."

There was, after all, the chance that their watcher was remaining just out of sight. Waiting for them to do exactly what they were now. But if that was the case there, quite simply, was nothing they could do about it. Either they moved now or failed the mission. And standing around, even hiding, was no guarantee that they'd actually remain unfound.

'It's better to stay moving.' Grunting as Sasuke's weight settled on her back, she began to put one sore, aching foot in front of the other. 'This way we at least have a chance of passing. All we have to do is reach the tower, report that weird snake guy, maybe mention Kabuto might be dead or worse, and turn in these damn scrolls.'