Chapter 3: Karasu
Its feathers were an inky, seamless black that gleamed under the sunlight. It was a fine-looking crow, she supposed, as far as crows went. Then the crow turned. And the eye that met her was not black, like the one that she had seen before, but a terribly, familiar red.
Sharingan, the Voice snarled.
Strangely, her mind went immediately not to the obvious suspect, but to Kakashi.
"H-how," Sakura stammered, taking a step back. A second later, she was in a world of red, blood dripping at the corners of the landscape, the crow in front of her.
"You summoned me," she heard in her head. The crow gazed placidly at her, but did not open its beak once.
"You've placed me in a genjutsu," she accused haltingly. When she reached for her kunai, she found that her pouch had disappeared.
"This is how I am able to communicate with you," the crow answered tonelessly, "You should be able to break out of it any time—a mild genjutsu like this is nothing for a genjutsu user."
Sakura stiffened. "I'm not a genjutsu user."
The crow's wings flashed out at that and the landscape seemed to explode in a flurry of black feathers. Their heavy, soft brush spilled around her, suffocating her in its sheer volume.
A second later, she could breathe again.
She stood at the exact training field she had been on minutes before. But the colors of the sky and the grass and the trees had become horribly distorted.
"You are a genjutsu user," the crow corrected coolly. "And your perfect chakra control enables you to excel in the field, on par with those possessing dojutsus. I am extremely picky—I would not have allowed the contract otherwise."
Genjutsu? She had been successfully placed her under a genjutsu almost five minutes into the bell test. Admittedly, she remembered an off-the-cuff remark about her possibly being well-suited for genjutsu, but had never been told anything about it beyond that.
"What have you learned?"
"About genjutsu?" Sakura responded, disarmed. "I—I can usually tell if they're there? Who are you? What are you called?"
The crow's wings flashed out again, and she reflexively flinched. However, nothing happened this time. A crow's features were not ones that were especially capable of emoting. Nevertheless, she felt the weight of the crow's burning gaze on her.
"What are your elemental affinities?"
"What?"
The crow's sharingan seemed to grow redder. "Has no one taught you anything?"
Sakura's mouth opened and then closed soundlessly.
The crow flapped its wings and took brief flight, before landing on her shoulder. Sakura turned her head to meet its gaze. Somehow, the crow's voice was louder now.
"Your body does not seem the type to put on significant muscle mass," the creature noted clinically, "But, like my other human, this does not mean you cannot gain strength."
"Other human?" Sakura caught immediately. "Do you have several other contractors?"
The crow cocked its head to the side. It seemed amused.
"One other," it answered. "For how much longer, I do not know."
This bird kills its contractors, the Voice growled. In the genjutsu, however, the Voice's words echoed around Sakura and the crow instead of remaining in her head.
The crow turned on her shoulder. "Interesting. And not true. The contract does not allow it. Do you know what you are?" the crow questioned lightly, seemingly at the Voice. Enraged silence responded to the question.
"No, then," the crow murmured. It met her gaze evenly. "I have carried multiple names. My other human calls me Shisui. If it suits, take it. Or—don't."
Not even a minute of reflection led Sakura to the conclusion that the crow seemed more trouble than it was worth. Tsunade had spoken of the slug as a kind, almost maternal creature—the crow, Shisui, or whatever it was called, was decidedly not that. Perhaps naively, Sakura assumed that could be the end of it. Unless she summoned it, she hardly imagined they would ever meet again; and after this, she decided she was never making those hand signs again.
"Nice meeting you," Sakura muttered, eyeing the space around the crow shiftily. Not. "It's been a rather long day, so I think I'll be heading home now."
The crow gazed back placidly.
"Are you going to dispel the genjutsu?" she asked sharply.
"No," it returned calmly. And the world dripped like melting paint all around her again. Faceless shinobi, dark shadowy forms spilling from the summons's wings, materialized in front of her.
Sakura sprung back in confusion, eyes round as she sought the crow. "What—?"
Even as her body moved, she didn't truly believe what was clearly imminent until it happened. The next thing Sakura knew was a rushing sound in her ears as she went flying back into a boulder. The shattering, mind-numbing pain hit her a second later.
She coughed, blood spilling from her mouth. When she saw the shinobi who had dealt the blow to her solar plexus rushing forward, however, she scrambled into a crouch, arms poised in front of her defensively.
What transpired was less of a battle and more of a glorified beatdown. Each time Sakura thought she found an opening, an opportunity to move from the crouch into a more offensive stance, another shinobi stepped in and beat her back down. Within minutes, every bone in her body felt like it had shattered. With the last bit of her strength, her arms locked tightly around her rib cage and her head. When the shinobi stopped, it took her a long dazed moment to realize they had, so terrible was the pain. On the brink of consciousness, she looked blearily out. The crow was perched above her.
"Training," the crow said coldly, head cocked to the side. "Learn the water release technique properly by next time."
Next time?
When Sakura blinked, she found herself back on the training ground, somehow physically unharmed but aching, still feeling the echo of every one of the injuries.
The next day, Tsunade had scarcely left the training field before it made its appearance. It was more instinct than reason that led Sakura to dart in the opposite direction (though she was sure that reason would have led her to the same course of action as well). But it was too late. By the next blink, she found herself in the same oddly real yet undeniably distorted imitation of reality, the crow perched on a lone boulder before her.
"Did you do what I asked?"
Sakura bristled, unwilling to admit that, yes, she had. In the twenty four hours or so since had last seen the diabolical thing, she had been terrified of being caught like this again and beaten within an inch of her life. She was surprised to find, however, that despite her former fear, anger now dominated.
"I asked you a question," it said coldly.
It seemed anger also granted her a kind of temerity that made her former concerns of self-preservation concerningly null and void. She bared her teeth, ignoring the part of herself—some remnant of her old self—that was mollified by the behavior.
The crow shifted with transparent mockery. "For your sake later, I hope that is a 'yes.' But for now: katas. Yesterday, you demonstrated you knew none."
In the face of this ludicrous charge, Sakura said curtly, "I learned the academy katas."
If the crow had eyebrows, she had the sense that it would be raising one.
One wing lifted nonchalantly and two faceless shinobi misted into corporality in front of her. Throat drying, Sakura took a shaky step back, bravado shaken.
"Go on," Shisui said genially, "demonstrate your mastery."
Break them! The Voice crooned. Kill them, crush—
Not at all correlated to the Voice's goading, she convinced herself, she somehow mustered something considerably like courage but not quite the genuine article. Grounding her heels into the dirt, she launched forward.
Remarkably, the shinobi remained motionless. That is, until the moment her foot was a centimeter from the first's face. Then, a hand lashed out with punishing force and grasped her ankle.
"What do you call this?" the crow called from above her.
Sakura winced at the pressure of the shinobi's grip on her. Gritting her teeth, she bit out, "Mae tobi geri."
"I don't think so," Shisui murmured indifferently. It flapped its wings. At this apparent command, the shinobi yanked her ankle up. Agony burst through Sakura's pelvis, black spots flashing through her vision.
"That," the crow murmured, "is mae tobi geri."
When the shinobi still didn't let her ankle go, Sakura turned a vicious glare on the summon. "Alright. I get it."
"Do you?" Shisui remarked. "Excellent."
With another flap of wings, the shinobi let go. As she brought her leg down, however, it spoke again.
"Hold the position."
She froze.
The crow tutted. "No, no, you let your leg drop. Put it back where it was."
"That's impossible," Sakura grinded out. "I'm not that flexible—"
"And yet your leg was there before," Shisui said unfeelingly. "Move it back."
Aware of the lethal shinobi beside her who could attack at the crow's slightest indication, she released a pained grunt as she strained and stretched her foot a few inches higher. Each inch was a slow, gruesome struggle.
She managed for two minutes. "I can't hold it up anymore. I just can't."
"I understand. You're still weak," Shisui condemned with false kindness. "Why don't have your friend help you, then?"
"My friend?"
"I believe you refer to it as the Voice."
YES! Let me out! LET ME OUT—
"No." Sakura said with dangerous calm.
"No?"
"No."
The crow gazed at her for a long moment, gaze unreadable. Finally, it tilted its head. "Very well. Let's move onto something else then."
Faster than her eyes could keep track of, one of the shinobi left its partner to shunshin behind her. Its hands took possession of her arms and locked them behind her. Sakura let out an enraged cry, struggling to break free.
The other shinobi strode forward almost lazily. An arm's length away from her, it came to a stop and lifted its hand with deliberation. Then, it punched her in the face.
Her entire body recoiled from the blow and a low, guttural whine escaped her lips. When she opened her eyes, she felt disoriented and had to blink several times. The shinobi drew its fist back and planted it in the same exact place, in the same exact way.
Thud.
And that felt like a broken nose—the thought rose above the cloud of pain. Fury set in. "What's the point of this? Are you just going to have that thing punch me until I pass out?"
The crow gazed back without malice. "If that's what it takes for you to learn to take a punch."
Thud.
"Why don't you trying planting your feet."
Thud.
"Lean into the punch."
Thud.
"Can't even stand your ground then, can you?"
Thud.
"You lack a muscled frame to stabilize yourself—"
Thud.
"—your shoulders and arms are too soft now—"
Thud.
"—your legs too thin—"
Thud.
That was the last thing Sakura heard.
When she did return to the land of the conscious, it was with a loud, ugly choked noise. Then, she scrabbled to sit up, angling her head down so as not to choke on the blood pooling behind her nose and into her throat.
"Back?" Shisui greeted her, "Let's review the water release technique."
Sakura kept her head down, but darted slitted eyes up at the crow. "This is how you're going to play this? Every single time?"
"If I need to break you, I will break you. Every single time."
Chapter 4: Unsuited
Over time, Sakura grew accustomed to returning to consciousness abruptly and with little warning. True to the crow's word, each session's end was prefaced by a gruesome beat-down, followed by a lecture or comparatively more benign lesson—every single time.
Fortunately, it was a fact of human nature that one could adapt to and, importantly, could maintain sanity in the face of, any routine, no matter how terrible. No different from the rest of her species, Sakura had grown accustomed to the periods of unconsciousness—had even disturbingly grown to like the brief, mindless rest they provided.
She was greatly unsettled, therefore, when it came to the point that her unconsciousness was no longer greeted by the typical condescending lecture and instead by a kick to the stomach.
After the first unexpected act of violence, Sakura shifted uselessly, trying to recover her stolen breath. Following a second, she managed a strangled: "I…passed…out…what…are…you doing, you...stupid crow?"
The faceless shinobi drove a kunai into her abdomen. Pain paralyzed her so that she could barely even breathe.
Sakura looked up at it, uncomprehending.
"Stop," she choked out, blood bubbling through her lips, "…Did you hear me!? I'm done…I'm done…"
It didn't stop.
She passed out.
When she woke up again, punches rained down on her face until her eyes were swollen shut. There were two figures above her—she could sense their chakra, despite her lack of vision. In moments, she passed out again. Funny. Had she ever thought she was doing a lot of that these days? Because she was. She really was.
When she woke up again with five faceless shinobi mauling her, Sakura wondered—in all seriousness—how it was possible she wasn't dead yet.
I'm still here, the Voice whispered, almost sibilant.
Despite how wrecked her body felt, Sakura's body made a spasm—ever so slightly—at the sound. Strangely, the Voice had remained utterly silent until now. She wondered if it had only been biding its time.
I'll kill them, the Voice crooned, excitement rendering its voice higher than normal, I'll kill them all!
And Sakura—Sakura couldn't hold it back anymore. She screamed until the only breath left in her was a gasp.
The blood of five faceless shinobi soaked the ground beneath her—her own body, in turn, battered and torn, generously deposited its own funds.
Five shinobi. When she hadn't even defeated one before.
And, like before, she remembered nothing.
Without warning, the pain vanished from her body, and Sakura could see again. She looked down to see her body as clean and unharmed as it had been when she had entered the genjutsu.
The line between the Voice and her must have been blurring because when Sakura moved, it was with a mindless need to hurt that she had only ever associated with the other entity. Making rapid hand motions, Sakura screamed and released a gale of fire right where the crow stood. But, it was the crow's genjutsu and, with a flap of its wings, Shisui generated a gust of wind so strong it blew the fire into non-existence.
The crow's mismatched eyes dissected her ruthlessly. "You would use a jutsu that I taught you against me?"
Sakura released an inhuman, ugly noise, chest heaving.
But Shisui was stoic in the face of it. "That thing, what you call the Voice—it represents the splitting of yourself. You are stronger, more ruthless, when you let it possess you. Rejoin the two parts permanently."
"No!" Sakura snarled. "I—I'm not stupid. I'll make use of it when I need to—but I control it."
"That is killing intent, you ignorant child," the crow responded, derision now apparent. "Like most foolish shinobi, you have suppressed it more often than you embrace it, to the extent that you've split your consciousness."
"You—"
"Don't be naïve," the crow cut off coldly, "You're in the wrong occupation if you want to stay a child. Every human being, in their deepest self, relishes violence. As a shinobi, by nature of your cause, you must embody that violence."
"I won't."
"Then you are a coward," Shisui condemned remorselessly, "you are a pathetic, groveling kunoichi, despite the time and effort I have afforded you when no one else would deign to look your way, who shies away from your calling—"
"I won't," she hissed. Bizarrely, Naruto appeared in her mind's eye.
The sharingan in the crow's eye spun wildly. Despite her stony expression, fear pulsed through Sakura as she was certain she would be thrown back into the torture from before.
"You're very different from him," it charged bitterly, finally. "But in other ways—unerringly similar."
It took a second for her to catch on, her eyes narrowing slightly when she did. "You're talking about your other human."
The crow didn't acknowledge this identification. Instead, it cocked its head to the side, appearing disgusted. "Only a fool believes a shinobi's violence can be driven by anything other than blood lust. Don't be a fool."
The crow gave her one last disparaging glance. In the next breath, the genjutsu fractured and she sat alone in the training field Team Seven had used to practice in.
When Sakura's gaze found the boulder next to her, she drove her first into it.
"You can't attack me tomorrow," Sakura told Shisui tonelessly a week later, scrubbing blood from her hands into her clothes. Not real blood, she reminded herself. Her stomach remained steady.
The crow cocked its head coldly. "Oh? Why is that?"
"I need money," she responded. "I need to take a mission."
"Both of your parents are alive."
Sakura's expression tightened, wondering when Shisui had gathered that information. She had never mentioned her living situation to him. "They've refused to fund my shinobi career since the Chunin Exams."
"Very well," it concluded at last, eyes glinting. "I will see you after."
That night, after picking up new kunai with the last of her monetary reserves, Sakura returned home with Ichiraku Ramen takeout in hand. After slurping the noodles, she scrubbed her clothes of any remaining dirt / blood (her own) and folded them neatly by her bed.
At six the next morning, Sakura stood at the front of a long line of shinobi to receive her next assignment from the Mission Assignment Desk.
A chunin Sakura had been handed missions by several times before waved his hand, urging her to step forward. She blinked for a moment at the unexpectedly familiar smile he sent her way.
"I have the perfect mission for you," he confided in her. He reached to the side and seemed to unearth a specific scroll from underneath a pile of similar looking scrolls. "Here you go."
Sakura bowed politely and left the room. Turning a corner, she found a nook and opened the scroll to scan its contents. C Rank escort mission from the Hidden Grass Village to the Land of Wind. Four-man squad. Meeting place at the gate.
Reaching outside, Sakura shunshined to the roof and proceeded to the gate via rooftops to avoid unnecessary traffic. When she reached the gate, she saw three figures—all a few years older than herself—waiting.
The girl was the first to notice her presence. She smiled, sharp features shifting to accommodate the expression with seeming natural ease. Her hair—red—was shorn almost to her scalp on one side and jagged and chin length on the other. She wore bulky, unisex ninja-wear.
"Hey," she greeted, stepping aside to reveal the two figures behind her. The boy to her left was tall and lanky with mop-like brown hair. The boy to her right was shorter, bulkier, with dark brows, and viewed her with an unreadable expression.
Sakura bowed. "I am Haruno Sakura. I will be a part of the four-man squad for this mission."
The girl flashed her a dazzling smile. "Nice to meet you, Sakura-san. I'm Noriko. This here is Reizo—" she pointed to the lanky boy—"and the other one is Torio."
"Oh," Sakura said, a strange feeling sprouting in her chest at the apparent familiarity they shared. "Were you all on the same genin team?"
The C ranks she had sparingly been on had mostly been with other chunin or genin whose teams had not all made the transition from genin rank to above. No one on the missions had known any of the other members.
"Something like that," the shorter boy said. Torio, Sakura recalled.
"We should leave," Reizo announced indifferently. A look passed between him and Noriko and she nodded with a wide smile.
"Ready, Sakura-san?" Noriko asked her, nudging her playfully. Sakura stared.
As they raced through the trees, she felt her stride slowing slightly to match Noriko's, who had chosen to hang at the back.
"Are you all chunin?" Sakura asked.
The other girl hummed back in affirmation. "You?"
Sakura's lips turned down slightly. "Genin. I'm planning to take the next exam, though."
"You'll get there," Noriko shrugged, smiling. "How about the rest of your team?"
Sakura felt her pace falter, but she quickly recovered. "Genin too. They found other teachers, though, so our team has…disbanded."
Noriko didn't react immediately, which took Sakura by some surprise—genin teams disbanding before members had reached chunin level was highly unusual. The other girl must have noticed something in her expression, because she asked, "Do you miss it?"
Sakura stiffened slightly at the question. In the past year, she had come to face the obvious truth that their team had been dysfunctional. At its best moments, Sakura had been on the sidelines watching her teammates push past their resentment to work together; at its worst, none of them had been on the same page, pursuing vastly different goals. And Kakashi—
Her jaw tightened. Tsunade had used her to clean up some file work a few months ago—genin team file work submitted for the Hokage's perusal, specifically—and she had learned exactly what her former teacher thought of her.
Haruno Sakura is unsuited to become a shinobi, she had found written in short, lazy strokes. She lacks the means to either succeed or survive in this field. I have seen some skill in chakra control—perhaps a career as a low-ranking medic-nin, if at all.
Cold, condescending words, hidden all along under a mask of indifference.
Each word had been an unexpected blow to Sakura. She had known her sensei hadn't thought much of her, but she hadn't known he had thought so little. Had he thought of her as an idiot the entire time?
"I don't know," Sakura answered at last, features strained. She and Noriko fell into silence. Her mind continued to brood over the derogatory notes. Naruto and Sasuke had each warranted four pages. She had been given three sentences.
It didn't matter, she found herself reflecting coldly. With blood on her hands, it was too late for her turn back.
Chapter 5: Kill Count
Chapter Text
That night, they made camp about half way between Konoha and the Hidden Grass Village. Torio and Reizo pitched a tent that they would share, while Noriko and Sakura shared their own tent. Torio had first watch, but before that, they sat around a modest fire chewing some meat they had cooked after hunting down a wild boar.
"Nice weather, eh?" Noriko chirped, smiling widely as she bit into her meat with enthusiasm. The dark sky above them was ominously thick with clouds, cloaking the moon almost entirely.
Reizo's eyes flicked upwards boredly. "It looks like it's about to pour."
"Right," she agreed easily. "But it's not raining yet."
She beamed at all of them. Sakura watched on in silence, chewing her meat.
Torio got up suddenly. "I'm off to watch."
"Better you than me!" Noriko called mischievously.
He sent her a glare. "Fucking trees…give me knots in my neck…" He disappeared from view.
Sakura's head tilted strangely at that. "He still gets knots in his neck?" Most academy pre-genin were used to that, and these were chunin.
"Neck problems," Reizo explained casually.
"I could take a look, if he wanted," Sakura offered after a second. "I have some medical training."
"He's had it checked out," Noriko answered after a moment, with an apologetic smile. "Kind of a chronic thing."
Sakura nodded.
"Hey!" Noriko cried suddenly, grabbing her hand. "Let's head to our tent!"
Sakura allowed the other girl to tug her, a little bemused by her actions. The Sakura of a year ago, the one with stick thin legs and arms, the one who had complained about lacking breasts on a regular basis to Ino, would have giggled happily along with her. A self-admittedly gloomier, more cynical Sakura was now struggling to figure out how to not act like a socially inept fool.
They sat down on their respective pallets and immediately Noriko began speaking again.
"So," she said, grinning aggressively, "what's got you down?"
"Nothing," Sakura answered immediately. But after a moment, she revealed stiffly (and how couldn't she, when Noriko had been so nice and earnest the entire time, and when a huge part of her longed for what had been commonplace to her before—the idle chit chat, the confiding of inane complaints and worries): "I guess it's my team situation."
Once again, Noriko looked a little blank but hummed sympathetically nevertheless. "Hm…well, tell me about them!"
At the other's urging, Sakura felt a wealth of emotions she had been bottling down for more than a year rush forth.
"Well, one of them," she started hesitantly, "he used to annoy me. A lot."
Noriko nodded encouragingly.
"The other genin," Sakura began swallowing hard. "I liked him—" the words felt sour now, made her lips twist—"But he left to be with his…new teacher."
"You said 'liked,'" the other girl noted, reaching over to sharpen some of her kunai. "Do you not like him anymore?"
Sakura didn't answer.
"And your team leader?" Noriko asked, easily changing tacks.
Sakura's mouth flattened. "Right. Well Kakashi—"
She broke off when the other girl stiffened almost violently beside her. The kunai in her hands trembled before she swung her head around with an amazed expression. "Your jounin sensei was the Copy-nin?"
"…Yes."
"Da-amn," she sighed, dragging the word out with wide, shining eyes. "Do you have any idea what his kill count is?"
"His—"
"His kill count," Noriko repeated, face hidden now by her hair. "I know ANBU members are supposed to be anonymous, but everyone knows he's an ANBU captain. They talk about him in the chunin locker rooms all the time—in all the gory detail. Still don't know what ANBU mask he wears, though."
"What…kinds of stories?" Sakura asked before she could stop herself. The impending, unexpected dump of information had called forth a dark, uncomfortable tightness in her chest.
"They're horrible, if they're true," the girl murmured. "He's killed a lot of people in a lot of horrible ways. But—" she laughed coolly—"in ANBU, being a monster means you're an ANBU legend. I suppose."
Sakura flinched slightly at her words, but quickly hid the reaction. "He's…that good?" She had always known he wasn't the 'average' shinobi, but…nothing to this extent.
Noriko's voice was oddly thick. "People talk about the kages with respect, but the way they talk about him…the way I've heard it, no one measures up at killing. Not even that Uchiha who murdered his entire clan."
"And he's only twenty-two," she ended with a loud huff. She shook her hair back and a playful expression danced across her face.
He was? In her defense, it was impossible to tell with the mask. Strangely, she had always received the impression he was older. Must have been the magnitude of his condescension.
"How old are you, Noriko-san?" she asked softly.
"Me?" Noriko straightened slightly, "Eighteen."
"Do you want to be a jounin?" Sakura asked, hoping she wasn't being too nosy. But she was also trying to subtly change the topic of the conversation. She…didn't want to talk about him.
The other girl shrugged. "I'm not interested in titles—only in serving my village as fully as I can."
For the first time since she had met her, Sakura found Noriko's demeanor to be entirely serious.
"Anyway," Noriko coughed, strange expression vanishing to reveal another, bright smile, "I bet the copy-nin taught you so many things."
"...not at all."
"Why not?"
"Apparently," Sakura said stoically, "he didn't think I had any potential."
Despite the rain, they somehow managed to make better pace the next day. Or, perhaps, it was because they were less concerned about leaving obvious tracks and were able to forgo doubling back maneuvers that they made better pace.
It wasn't until they were close to the pick-up location that Sakura noticed her temporary teammates begin to act strangely. Reizo, who had been slumped over and lackadaisical until then, suddenly became alert. Noriko as well—whose smile seemed a permanent fixture on her face—grew grim, palming the handle of her chokuto almost anxiously. Only Torio remained just as he had before.
Sakura straightened as well as they neared the small palace. She hadn't expected them to be the type of team that took an escort mission so seriously, but it was a good model to follow by principle, she supposed.
"This is the plan," Torio announced. They were shadowed by trees next to the entrance of the palace. The palace seemed to tower in the foreground, a white and red architectural masterpiece that glistened under the pelting of the rain.
Sakura returned her attention back to Torio as he continued. "Noriko, you enter through the third level, Reizo, the second, and I'll take the ground level. Haruno, you wait at the entrance in case we need to make a quick escape with the princess—keep watch and make sure to misdirect anyone entering."
Sakura frowned. "You're infiltrating? I thought this was supposed to be a simple, uh, pick-up and drop-off."
"We received new intel," Reizo said curtly.
"What did it say?"
She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to find Noriko grinning at her. "Don't worry about it, Sakura-chan. We got this. Just stay here and everything will be fine."
The taller girl nodded at her and then shunshined away, followed shortly by the other two shinobi. Sakura sighed heavily and slumped against the tree, a dark scowl on her face. The water had turned the ground into slushy mud, the thick scent prominent of it nullifying everything else. The scent of dirt in Konoha was much sweeter, she thought arrogantly to herself.
Minutes passed. As she saw civilians near the entrance of the palace, she cast a simple, quick genjutsu that led them astray.
I smell blood, the Voice crooned.
Sakura continued flipping her kunai, gritting her teeth. "You're imagining it."
Maybe. The Voice laughed nastily in her head. It's been so long since I've smelled real blood other than our own.
A crow cawed somewhere behind her and Sakura flinched, gaze darting through the thick nesting of trees. Suddenly, the slight uncomfortable feeling she had been ignoring had ballooned, and she grabbed her kunai tightly.
Something was wrong. When she thought about it—the way Torio, Noriko, and Reizo had acted had not only been unusual; it had also been against protocol. If they had received new information, why had she not been made aware of it? And pointedly, she had been with them the entire time. She would have noticed a messenger hawk.
Torio, Noriko, and Reizo had decided that this mission would require infiltration when the assignment itself had said nothing of it.
That didn't bode well. With this acknowledgment, other odd facts she had previously dismissed began to stick out glaringly. Noriko's lack of shock at her genin team status—as though she was unaware of Konoha's shinobi system. Torio's inexplicable neck pains, though he should have been well-acclimated to perching on trees in Konoha.
Sakura gritted her teeth.
In a flash, she disappeared from the tree and reappeared at the palace entrance. The large protruding roof sheltered her from the rain, allowing the smells from within to permeate the air around her. Pushing the door open slightly, kunai clenched in hand, she entered the grand entrance of the building and stiffened. Dead bodies—guards, she catalogued—lined the double staircase leading up to the second floor.
Bending, she checked the pulse of the first guard. Nothing. All of the guards had been stabbed at vital points—savagely and deeply.
There's more, the Voice chanted, There's more! Go up!
For a seemingly eternal moment, Sakura was overwhelmed by the mindless panic flooding her veins. Terror pulsed through her bloodstream and rendered her limbs immobile. She was an infinitesimal step away from succumbing to her fear—the magnitude of what had happened in the park, of what was happening again, threatening to bury her under an intangible weight.
For a moment, it was almost as though she had. But then, a strange sense of unreality washed over her. She straightened, stiff and nearly robotic, and made her way up the staircase with her chakra suppressed.
As she approached the landing, she could hear the fighting grow increasingly more defined—short, sharp metallic clangs, gasps and cries, abrupt silences.
At the second level, she found Reizo and Torio cutting down both armed guards along with what were clearly civilian servants and maids.
A hand grasped her foot, and Sakura looked down to see a maid with a gaping wound in her stomach. "Please," she gasped, pretty features contorted in pain. She spluttered some blood and passed away.
Sakura's mind was blank—preternaturally calm. And the Voice breathed heavily in her mind, otherwise oddly silent.
She closed the gap between her and the foreign shinobi. Reizo's head snapped up just as she lunged with her kunai, slashing neatly through the tendon in his arm with medical accuracy, rendering it useless. As she did so, she met Torio's gaze and made rapid hand signs with her other hand, casting him under a genjutsu.
Reizo swung at her with his one working arm, hand adorned by bladed knuckles that were charged with chakra. She evaded his blows with ease, body moving instinctively from hours of sweat and blood. Sakura had been trained by a crow with a sharingan whose shadow shinobi moved a lot quicker than these nin.
"Who are you?" Sakura interrogated lifelessly, kunai flashing through the air. When they met flesh, it was at strategic locations designed to cause heavy bleeding that would weaken him but not kill him—she still needed him to speak.
Reizo gazed back at her coolly. "You were supposed to wait outside."
"So that you could kill me at the end," she interpreted.
"You're not the only one who has been lying, Haruno," Reizo accused, lips peeling back to reveal bared teeth. "You're no genin, are you? Was the Hokage onto us from the beginning?"
He made rapid hand signs and barbed, metal chains exploded from him. One rammed into Sakura's side, causing pain to lance through her. With fierce concentration, she maintained the genjutsu on Torio and wove her way through the chains with ruthless efficiency. In seconds, Sakura stood a foot from him and her kunai sank into the older boy's throat.
Like a knife through butter, the Voice moaned, orgasmic pleasure laced through its voice.
The dying shinobi choked out a curse and blood. It landed on her face.
Blood. Real blood.
Sakura reached up to wipe it away with a trembling hand, gaze unseeing.
But she snapped to attention when her head collided into the wall beside her with brutish force. Sakura's eyes flashed open, regretting the moment of carelessness as she found Torio's livid form in front of her.
He was a block of muscle as he came at her with powerful jabs and kicks. If one of them landed as intended, the muscle and bone underneath her skin could easily crumble. But Torio didn't know what Sakura's seemingly insignificant muscle definition belied.
Blocking both arms with a raised forearm, she concentrated chakra into her left hand and planted it in the other boy's chest, right between his ribs, right in front of his heart. She felt the flesh and bone bend beneath her knuckles, felt bone crush into his heart, felt the squelch of blood exploding from the rapidly beating muscle.
Like an oversized rag doll, he crumpled on himself and slid to the ground.
The remaining alive on the floor whispered their fervent gratitude to her, watching fearfully all the while in case her mission was to attack them too. But Sakura paid them no attention. There was one more left—on the third floor.
Closing her eyes and channeling chakra into her ears, she heard panicked cries in the northwest corner of the third floor and set off. Dead bodies lining the hall of the third level blurred past her, a gory landscape, and she reached at last a large pair of brass doors—the entrance, she guessed, to the princess's living quarters.
There was no time for subterfuge or a covert entrance. She slammed the doors open and attached herself to the ceiling, knowing that a shinobi's first instinct would be to send shuriken and send them low.
As she gazed down, she found a scene that matched the level below in brutality. Ladies in waiting were strewn all along the grandiose room, their blood painting the walls in an uncaring pattern. The only living civilian left was a dark haired, beautiful woman with tearing blue eyes. Poised at the smooth, unblemished arch of the princess's throat was the razor-sharp edge of Noriko's chokuto.
"Sakura-chan," the redheaded shinobi greeted almost pleasantly.
"Noriko-san." After a moment, Sakura dropped from the ceiling and landed in a crouch, straightening quickly.
The grinning girl looked at her with curiosity. "If you had waited outside, there was a chance you could have survived this. Now, I have no choice."
Sakura's lips tightened. "If you're going to kill me, can't you at least tell me why?"
Just kill her, the Voice raged, prowling restlessly in her mind.
Noriko tilted her head, eyes flashing. "Because I hate Konoha. And when the Mizukage offered me this mission, I took it gladly."
Noriko's chokuto flashed through the air as she raced forward. Sakura ducked, missing the first swipe just barely. Twirling the kunai in her hands, she maneuvered them to block the sharp blade of the thin sword.
"What has Konoha done to you?" Sakura asked, steeling herself for the next swing of the blade. Anger and—no, no, it wasn't there—anguish bled into her tone; against her will, her numbness was beginning to fade.
Noriko was strong. Much stronger than the other two shinobi had been. And she had thought—Sakura had thought they had been friends. Unbidden, an irrational, childish hurt stung in her chest.
"You should ask your copy-nin," Noriko hissed, lashing out with her foot. Sakura felt her pulse spike at the moniker and forcibly cloaked herself in impersonal detachment once more.
That would explain why she had been oddly knowledgeable of Kakashi alone.
Sakura's kunai crossed under Noriko's blade, locking it in place. "And how exactly did he hurt you?"
Noriko yanked herself back with a dark laugh. "I've never met him before."
Sakura's lack of comprehension flashed across her face. At the back of her mind, she considered how to end the fight quickly without putting the princess at risk—ninjutsu was useless here. And Noriko had yet to make eye contact, unfortunately wary of genjutsu. She was forced to step back again, side stepping the other girl's deadly swipes.
"I fail to see why we're here, then," Sakura snapped, "if he did nothing."
Noriko's face contorted into something almost inhuman with the force of her immense anger. She gave a dark, tortured laugh. "Nothing?"
Sakura's smooth rhythm of feint then lunge faltered at the sight of the other girl's face. Her eyes were wet, shining with rigidly kept back tears, lips twisted in a vicious snarl.
"He murdered the woman I loved."
Following this confession, the savagery of Noriko's kenjutsu increased tenfold. "He left her body there…to be eaten by the vultures...a hole in her chest…they couldn't touch her…I couldn't touch her…because her body was so charged with electricity…"
Sakura's body was on autopilot now, avoiding the weapon mindlessly while her mind processed the words confessed to her. A year ago, she would have bent over with nausea at this revelation.
"Her face was charred off," Noriko whispered, tears streaming now openly. "She was an ANBU captain, and he mowed her down, one out of a hundred, as though she were nothing."
"I'm sorry," Sakura said softly. She feinted again and lashed out with her kunai. In the other girl's grief, she managed to sever a vein in her leg. She would lose all feeling in it soon.
"Your apology means nothing," Noriko raged, speed decreasing as her body succumbed to the wound. She mustered a garish, sad smile. "I liked you, you know? I was going to tell them to let you live. But then you told me you were his student."
"I can't let you live, Sakura-chan," she continued, "You understand, don't you? I have to kill you—for her."
The Voice was spitting fury in her mind, bemoaning how long it was taking, how little blood there was, but Sakura ignored it. Turmoil broiled within her. Organ traffickers and faceless genjustu shinobi and—Noriko. It—it wasn't a matched set.
Noriko released a war cry that sounded more like a wail of grief, driving her blade to the left and then switching midway to slash it diagonally to the right.
Eyes stinging, Sakura felt the edge of the chokuto to bite into her shoulder. If Noriko had been uninjured and calm, this would have been suicide for Sakura. But with one leg numb, Noriko was slow to muster the force to pull it back.
Sakura grasped the blade and used the wall to kick off, wrapping her legs around the other girl's neck. Hanging upside down—finish it, finish it, the Voice urged—she dragged her kunai upward from stomach to chest. Deep; dangerously deep.
With a thick squelch, Sakura pulled the metal weapons out and pushed off of her. She tied the other girl's hands together to prevent her from forming any hand signs and then stepped back. Noriko buckled to her knees, looking down at her wounds in seeming shock.
"Here," Sakura commanded the princess urgently. "Gather your necessary valuables in that"—she pointed to an embroidered messenger bag sitting on the bed, half-filled probably from previous packing—"we're leaving now."
Nodding shakily, the princess ran to her dresser to gather a few small objects, a pouch of money, and a change of clothes, and placed them in the sack. Sakura bent to lift the princess so that they could jump through the window, thus avoiding the carnage decorating the levels below, but they were stopped by a sharp command.
"Finish it!" Noriko demanded.
Finish it, the Voice echoed remorselessly.
Sakura paused, then straightened. "You'll survive," she clarified, in case the other girl thought she had been left to suffer a slow death. "As soon as you work out that knot and get to the nearest healer, you'll be fine. But I can't promise you won't have breathing problems from now on."
Yet, her words only seemed to enrage Noriko more. The anger quickly fractured. "I can't live like this," Noriko panted, breath hitching with hysteria, "I couldn't even kill you. How will I be able to kill him, when she couldn't? Just finish it. Let me see her again."
Sakura's face was numb. Her hands no longer felt like her own as she gazed at them—in consideration? She couldn't. No. She bent down again to pick up the princess.
She made it to the window this time.
"If you have any respect for me," Noriko hissed, forcing her to stop, "if anything I said to you or was for you in the last twenty-four hours meant anything to you, you will do it. You owe me that much."
Let me out, the Voice breathed. Let me do it! I'll do it for you!
Sakura wished she had left without listening. Her fingers trembled around the princess's slim legs.
"Don't make me beg," Noriko choked out.
Sakura let out a low, almost inaudible whimper. Then, slowly, she put the princess back down and turned. Noriko looked back at her, brown eyes wide and agonized. The other girl's features relaxed as she read Sakura's decision on her face. Had she thought the smile natural on Noriko's face? Sakura could see now that it had been forced the entire time.
It was Sakura, not the Voice, who stepped forward, angling her kunai to slash across the other girl's throat. She stopped when Noriko spoke with soft urgency.
"Not like that," the Mist nin rasped, "With the chokuto. It was hers."
Sakura picked up the fallen sword and held it directly above her heart.
"She also had green—" were Noriko's last words.
Sakura plunged the sword down with chakra-induced strength to make the blow quick. The marble floor below her cracked. Noriko was dead immediately. The princess let out a soft cry from her position at the window. Sakura spared her a short glance, before pulling the chokuto out from the body beneath it.
She held it in her hand for a long moment. Sakura didn't pause to consider her actions. She pulled the scabbard from girl's waist and sheathed the sword, before swinging it over her shoulder.
She picked up the princess and then leapt through the window.
Sakura carried the princess—Mako, she was reminded—a considerable distance with the sunlight that was left. When nightfall halted their journey, with the princess's monetary resources, a henge on herself, and a change in clothing for the princess (purchased from a vendor several villages back), they stopped to spend the night in an inn.
"Take a bath," Sakura told Mako stiffly. "I'll go down and get some food for the both of us. I'll leave a bunshin here to watch over you."
The young woman nodded at her, face still pale from what had happened earlier in the day. Understandable—in less than ten minutes, she had probably seen her closest companions get mercilessly killed.
Sakura made her way down the wooden staircase to the ground floor: a functional pub that served both alcohol and food. Her footsteps landed heavier than usual to suit the henge of the stocky, brown-haired man she donned (two civilian women traveling alone drew unwanted attention). When she reached the pub, she found it decently populated. She walked to the wooden counter and ordered two bowls of white rice and vegetables.
As she waited, a woman with grey lines in her hair sat down on the platform at the front of the pub, koto in her lap. She seemed unaffected by the jeers of the inebriated in the pub and began strumming the strings of the koto. The voice that emerged was older than the woman looked—thick and cracked. "In search of new lands, I build a new house. I thatch the house with reed stalks, gathered neatly in bundles."
Sakura's brows furrowed.
"I wish to dress my children and loved ones… in the one kimono that I own. As for me, I will wear vines… that I plucked deep in the mountains."
Without warning, Noriko's dying face flashed through her mind. Sakura turned away from the singer immediately. She pointed at the premium sake the pub owner advertised and swallowed it in one go. She coughed violently afterward, but even that wasn't enough to drown out the next words.
"The light of the full moon shines down, illuminating the world with its divine light," the singer crooned, "When my lover sneaks in to visit me, I wish that the clouds would hide that light just a little."
"It's a folk song called Obokuri Eeumi," the woman beside her sighed, gaze fixed on the singer. "She sings it every week."
Sakura's expression was blank. She gathered the bowls that had just been placed in front of her and left the counter to go back upstairs.
She had thought, foolishly, that the crow had beat the tears out of her.
As though ignorant of how it had started, the rest of the mission passed without a single hitch. Sakura delivered the shaken princess to her betrothed in the Land of Wind the next day and immediately began travelling back to Konoha. Without the princess's finances, she spent the nights in trees and left a bunshin to keep watch. It was the sort of isolation she needed, though, to pretend that what she had done would sit right with her one day. One day—when Noriko's face would be but a blur in her memory.
Her isolation was disturbed half way back by the crow's appearance.
(One moment, it was endless green before her; the next, she was in the ever-familiar world of red and black feathers that Shisui most often chose for its genjutsus.)
"You should have noticed they were foreign earlier."
Sakura's shoulders tensed at the implication in those words.
"Were they even shinobi from the Mist?" she asked tonelessly, a storm brewing unseen. "What a story: an eighteen year-old girl's lover killed by my former jounin captain. A resulting, mad quest for vengeance, only to end in failure and tragedy."
"Oh, she was real. They all were." The crow flapped its wings. "The only genjutsu I applied was to keep that infiltration team from discovery by the ANBU and getting you on the mission."
Sakura's chest burned. "Why did you do it?"
"To teach you a lesson," Shisui returned indifferently. "As always."
Sakura stared down at the crow. Could it kill her if it wanted? No, she remembered, the contract prevented that. Everything the crow did was in the name of teaching her to survive, well within the limits of the contract. A terrible, humorless joke.
She yanked her gaze away, face tight.
"Bring the chokuto with you tomorrow," it commanded.
"For a seemingly eternal moment, Sakura was overwhelmed by the mindless panic flooding her veins. Terror pulsed through her bloodstream and rendered her limbs immobile. She was an infinitesimal step away from succumbing to her fear—the magnitude of what had happened in the park, of what was happening again, threatening to bury her under an intangible weight."
