Summary: Back to plot related stuff. Little Sakura gets an adventure of her own, and handles herself remarkably well.
Notes: Here's chapter 8! And in a rather timely manner even! I probably wouldn't get used to it though.
Sakura grins as she tears down the streets. Ino is just a few steps behind, but she knows the two of them are pretty evenly matched. As long as she doesn't trip, there's no way she can lose. And Sakura won't trip. She's going to be a ninja one day and has already started her training. She's only eight now, but even a ninja in training can't afford to make mistakes.
As she gets closer to the village center, the roads get more crowded. She finds herself weaving between people and ducking under obstacles. She wants to close her eyes and just enjoy the freedom of running, of jumping, of being alive. But first she needs to beat Ino.
That's when she notices the handcart directly in front of her. Sakura's brain freezes. She doesn't have enough time to stop and there are too many people on either side to go around. Reacting on instincts she's only recently begun to acquire, Sakura jumps. The cart's piled high with brightly colored fruits and vegetables, each in their own wooden box. Sakura's toes barely skim the top of a pile of tomatoes as she shoots over the cart. She stumbles a little on the landing, just barely able to keep from falling over, but the cart is in a bit worse shape. The tomatoes she nudged fell off in a waterfall of produce. Sakura feels a little bad about the mess, but she can't afford to stop now. Not when she's so very close to winning.
Sakura can hear Ino try to switch directions to get around the vendor and his loose vegetables. Sakura grins wider. It'll take Ino at least a few extra seconds to get through, which is more than enough time.
Shoving her way through the crowd, Sakura slips into one of the many side streets off of Konoha's main thoroughfare. She'd discovered this path running errands for her grandfather last summer. It was a lot twistier than the main street, but no one really uses it, so it's a lot easier to run through. As long as Ino doesn't follow her in, everything will be fine.
Sakura risks a glance backwards, but she's already far enough down the alley that she can't see the end. For a second she thinks she hears footsteps, but when she stops to listen, they're gone. Sakura shivers a little and starts running again. She's suddenly aware of how empty this street is. For a moment, she thinks she sees a bit of shadow detach itself from a wall, but when she looks again, it's gone. Sakura puts her head down and focuses on the rhythmic pounding of her feet, running one step at a time.
When the footsteps resume behind her, clearer than they'd been before, she isn't surprised. She's only been at the academy for a few months, but that's enough time to learn that Konoha has a lot of enemies. Especially now, with a new Hokage. People say that he's too young to actually be Hokage, but Sakura kind of disagrees. She doesn't know much about Shisui-san, she's only really seen him from a distance, but she knows the Third Hokage would never have appointed someone he didn't believe in. And not only that, Shisui-san really isn't that much younger than the Fourth Hokage was when he was appointed. She's sure the new Hokage is strong enough to keep Konoha safe.
Not that any of that is much comfort now, alone as she is. She's certain now that she's being followed by someone bad. Ino wouldn't have bothered trying to hide her presence and Sakura can't think of anyone else she knows who would follow her. Not like this. As she runs further down the street, her tension builds. She's past the halfway point now, so even if she wanted to, there'd be no point in turning back. Now she can definitely catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye. And she wonders why she's the one being followed, and she's sure that she is being followed. She's just the daughter of a pair of insignificant civilians. She's not important enough to follow.
When she finally sees a human shape on the roof she's not sure what to feel. She's almost relieved to know that her instincts were right, she was being followed, but the mere fact that the person is letting her see him (or her) now is absolutely terrifying. That's the moment she realizes how very serious this situation is. An infiltrating agent must never allow witnesses to live, no matter how insignificant they are. That's why she's not very surprised when she half senses a spike of killing intent behind her. They haven't really covered sensing enemies yet in the academy, but sometimes being best friends with Ino is useful. Ino's father taught both of them way more stuff than the academy evered covered. So it's based on instincts she never even realized she had that has her dropping to the ground in a forward roll even before the sudden stream of flame gets near. Even so, she can feel the heat from it through her clothes. It's almost enough to melt the synthetic fibers of her shirt. One direct hit from that and she'll be dead.
And even before she's on her feet again, Sakura yells the distress code all academy students are taught at the top of her lungs. As soon as she's upright she runs. She doesn't waste time trying to look at her attacker. She knows that she isn't strong enough to fight him and now she must make every last second count. Taking out threats to the village is what ANBU and the police force are for. At first she tries adding some variability to her movement, so she will be harder to hit. But that winds up slowing her down too much. It only takes one near miss to make her realize she will have better luck trying to anticipate and dodge attacks instead of moving at random.
Sakura holds back tears. She shouldn't be the one here, dealing with this. This is what the adults, ANBU, the Hokage are for. This isn't fair. But now is not the time for that. She needs to be strong; she is strong. Ninja do not fear anything. And right now, even though she hasn't graduated yet, she must be a ninja. She needs to make sure ANBU or the Hokage know about this intruder. If she dies, then he gets away free and the whole village could be in danger.
As she runs the world narrows to her and the path. She is dimly aware of her pursuer, enough to dodge his attacks. But if he talks, she does not hear it. All she can hear is the sound of her panting breath as she races through the back street faster than she ever has before. Never has it seemed so long. It isn't until the end is almost in sight that she stumbles for the first time. Her attacker throws a kunai at her foot without releasing any killing intent. Sakura's only warning is the sound of displaced air telling her to jump. As she comes down again, her ankle rolls painfully, forcing her to stoop and barely miss another stream of flame. Sakura hardly has time to whisper a prayer of thanks before she is running again, her ankle throbbing in time with her pulse as she tears down the street.
It's as she's about to round the final bend that the fight turns serious for the first time. Sakura freezes as the very ground lifts up, forming a wall across the entire street. It stands almost two stories tall and spanning the entire way. Perfectly smooth, she realizes there is no way she can scale or get around it. She turns around to face her opponent, keeping her back pressed against the wall. He stands less than two meters away, dressed in black from head to toe. He's even wearing a black face mask. Sakura thinks rather spitefully that it looks dumb. He acts like infiltrating Konoha is so easy he doesn't even bother to fit in. She can feel her whole body shaking, though whether from anger, fear, exhaustion or pain, she's not sure. Maybe it's a combination of all four. Even after she regains her breath, every nerve in her body is ready to spring into action. In her hyper aware state, it feels like she can even hear her opponents heartbeat, as impossible as that really is. Though, that's probably why she's able to notice the presence of a third party first. She can see a child-sized form standing on the roof of one of the buildings, his spiky blonde hair recognizable even backlit as it is.
"Run, Naruto," she yells as loud as she can. If Naruto can tell the Hokage, then it won't matter if she- Then no matter what happens next, Konoha will be okay. "Let the Hoka-" but before she can finish her shout, the enemy ninja launches into action, throwing kunai at both her and Naruto.
"That," says the man, and he is definitely a male, "was very stupid, little girl." His voice is calm without a hint of malice or stress. He walks towards her with perfectly even steps, each one exactly as long as the one before it. Despite his apparent composure, Sakura can hardly breathe underneath the weight of his killing intent. She's barely able to glance back to where Naruto had been to make sure he's gone. In that moment, Sakura realizes she has never truly understood the meaning of the word terror.
The man stops less than half a meter from her and gazes at her face. With his mask concealing everything but his eyes, it's impossible to read any emotion in his actions. His eyes are perfectly blank, not a shred of humanity behind them. For some reason it's this more than anything that scares her. "I was," he says almost reasonably, "going to get rid of you cleanly. No muss, no fuss and no one the wiser of my presence." He looks her up and down before staring at her face again. "Unfortunately, you've made that a bit impossible now, haven't you?" Sakura looks back at him blankly until she realizes he expects a response. Mutely, she manages to nod her head. Every muscle protests the action. "But now that stealth is out of the question," he continues, and she wonders if he's enjoying himself, "you and I have quite a bit more time to... enjoy ourselves. And maybe, if we're lucky enough, we'll be able to take out that new Hokage of yours too. Hmm?" Before she can move, blue wires made out of pure chakra shoot from his fingers and burrow into her skin. Sakura can't help it, she screams. The tendrils burn as the dig deeper into her, somehow passing through skin and muscle without leaving a mark. "Now my little puppet," he says, and now she can hear a hint of excitement in his tone, "let's play."
Sakura stares down as her legs begin to move shakily toward him. She tries to cry out, but her voice won't respond. She can't move her head to look around, not even her eyes do what she wants. Suddenly Sakura begins to panic, but her breathing and heart rate stay the same, it's as if she's just a ghost inside her own body. Her steps are uncomfortably long now, her short legs barely able to stretch far enough. Her ankle hurts more too, and several times it threatens to give out. Her body does wind up falling over, before it reaches the man. Despite the sharp pain of scraped knee and the spike of pain from her injured ankle, she feels a deep feeling of satisfaction. Apparently this man can't control her body as well as he thinks he can. She can hear him muttering words that she doesn't know. And with a sharp jerk, her body shoves itself upright. It wobbles for a moment and almost falls back down, but manages to throw its arms out at the last moment to regain its balance.
As her body nears him, he grabs it roughly. This close, she can smell him. He reeks of alcohol, sweat and bad breath. His gloves are much coarser than they looked. The rough material scratches at her shoulder as he holds her in place. Since she can't pull away from him or even close her eyes, she tries to force her mind away. She ignores the feeling of his large hands roughly skimming over her body, cataloguing every muscle and imperfection. She ignores the acrid stench of him as stares into her eyes and inspects her teeth. She ignores everything.
She can still feel her body moving, but it is more distant. Like breathing, it's something that happens by itself. She can also hear the man speaking to her, but she does not bother to understand his words. Instead she focuses on what she knows. She isn't sure what he used on her. It's like nothing she's ever even heard of. But it must be a technique of some sort. And like Iruka-sensei has told them, no technique is perfect. There must be some way to counter it. She ignores the part of her that says she is only an academy student and does not have the skill or knowledge to escape something like this. She may only be Haruno Sakura, but she is one of the top kunoichi in her class. Even Ino's father, one of the village's best interrogators, said she was very good for her age.
What did the chakra wires attach themselves to? She could feel them under her skin, burning. But she didn't think they were connecting directly to her muscles and just pulling them around. It didn't feel like she was being yanked about, he was actually controlling her body. That meant it had to be connected to her nerves? Or her chakra paths! Nerves were very small. It would have taken a lot more precision to try to hit them accurately. But chakra paths... Chakra ran throughout the entire body and could be used to grant extra strength and faster reflexes. If someone else gained access to it, could it be used to control the body though? She didn't know. Iruka-sensei had never said anything about that. But then, no one had ever said it was possible to use chakra to take control of a person like this. If it was her chakra he was controlling, could she fight it? She knew that disrupting the flow of chakra could stop a genjutsu. Maybe this would be similar? But pain was also supposed to break genjutsu, and falling hadn't done anything. And, Iruka-sensei hadn't actually taught them how to even disrupt chakra yet. That was something they were supposed to learn in a few years. He'd just shown it to them in a demonstration. Not to mention, without control of her hands, she couldn't even make the sign. It had been a stupid idea anyway. How could she hope to fight against this man? He was probably a jonin at least. No one would bother sending genin or chunin to infiltrate Konoha. Still... maybe it was worth trying?
Sakura tried to imagine what her chakra network might look like. It was made much harder by the fact that she couldn't actually close her eyes and her body was moving. It danced through acrobatic routines she could only dream of doing. In this man's hands, her body became a deadly weapon, and the dizzying amount of sensory information was almost impossible to completely ignore. The textbook had shown it as a bunch of blue lines that connected to everything in her body, with a well of chakra in her stomach somewhere. She tried to feel it, but nothing seemed to stand out. Stupid, she told herself. Of course it wouldn't stand out. She'd been born with chakra, it wouldn't feel any different now than it had the day before. She would just have to... find it anyway.
She tried to focus everything on finding and disrupting her chakra. Her anger, her fear, her desperation. She might not control her body right now, or really much of anything, but she could control this. Nothing happened. She felt like crying. She wasn't a ninja, she was barely even an academy student. How could she possibly have thought she could escape this? The horror of watching, of feeling her body move without her control threatened again to overwhelm her.
Then her body was at attention. It stands next to her captor, grasping a knife tightly in its hand. She can feel her captor practically pressed next to her and vibrating with energy. "Look alive," he says, "We're about to have company." Company? Has the Hokage finally, finally, arrived? She isn't sure how long it's actually been, but it feels like an eternity.
Almost immediately after the man speaks, a form drops down to the street in a crouch. Despite having dark hair, this man is not the Hokage. For starters, he's much younger and his hair, even tied back, hangs past his shoulders. He wears an ANBU uniform without the mask, unlike the Hokage's typical clothes, but most of all it's his expression. His eyes are as impassive as her captor's. There's not a hint of the smile the Hokage always wears. The stand opposite each other, and for a brief moment, Sakura is afraid the ANBU operative will kill her to get to her captor. But the moment passes when Naruto's voice yells "Please, rescue Sakura-chan." The ANBU operative doesn't turn to look at Naruto before ordering him to go.
Sakura can't turn her head to see if Naruto obeys, but from the slight change in the ANBU operative stance, she's pretty sure he did. Her captor shifts somewhat and she can hear the rustling of fabric at her side, but no matter how hard she tries, she can't shift to look at him. And it's as if the reality of the situation has dawned on her again. She feels a fresh wave of terror as she realizes that her body is going to fight against one of Konoha's ANBU.
Her captor doesn't seem to notice her distress, all of his attention on the lone ANBU operative. "Well, well," he says, "if it isn't the Hokage's little pet, Itachi." His voice sounds different now, and Sakura realizes it's unmuffled. He must have removed his mask at some point. The ANBU operative, Itachi, doesn't respond. He simply stands watching and waiting. Sakura wonders why he hasn't attacked yet. "I've heard quite a bit about you," her captor continues. "Heir of the Uchiha, ANBU captain at thirteen. Half the world seems to sing your praises. The bounty on your head could set me up for several life times." Itachi continues to watch and wait. "Don't see what they're so impressed about though. You're kinda a one trick pony aren't you? You're genjutsu won't work on me. My eyes are all kinds of screwed up, always have been. No visual genjutsu has ever worked on me." He stops for a moment and shifts, probably trying to assess the impact his words had on his opponent. Sakura wonders if that's why Itachi had been just standing there the whole time. Had they been involved in a genjutsu battle that she hadn't even noticed? "You'll have to try harder than that, if you want to stop me- stop us," he finishes, something very close to glee tinting his words. And then Sakura's body springs into action.
She can feel the rush of wind as her body propels itself at Itachi, her kunai aimed straight for his face. This close she notices his eyes are a spinning red. He dodges at the last second, so she doesn't have a chance to redirect her attack. As her body jumps back at Itachi, Sakura tries again to disrupt whatever form of control the man has on her. It doesn't help, but it does distract her from the battle enough that she loses track of what's happening around her.
She's almost managed to block out the battle completely when Itachi speaks again. "Let the girl go. She has no place in this fight." His voice is calm and surprisingly high pitched. For all that he is older than her and a grown up in the eyes of the village, he isn't an adult in the same way her father is. She wonders for a moment if he had ever felt as scared and powerless as she does. She doubts it.
The man, her captor, continues to taunt Itachi, but he stops responding. The battle almost falls into a certain holding pattern. Her body attacks, Itachi dodges, her captor says something insulting and then repeat. Never once does her captor actually attack. Never once does Itachi try to counter. It feels kind of like an academy spar. Except that her body knows how to fight a lot more than she does. It's predictable until all of a sudden it isn't. It happens so fast Sakura doesn't even see what Itachi does, but one minute her body is attacking him and the next, it's on the ground, not moving. She doesn't really think anything of it until the enemy ninja speaks up again. "Oh come now," he says in clear exasperation. "Don't be like that. It's rude breaking someone else's toys." He emphasizes each word of the last sentence with a punch, shooting new chakra wires out, this time at Itachi. That's when she realizes she's free. She can move her head a little and close her eyes when she wants to. Her limbs don't move much, but they do move. Whatever Itachi did, it freed her. It's the stress, she knows it is. Iruka-sensei lectured them about stress reactions just last week. But still. She can feel that familiar flutter in her chest when she looks at Itachi. The same one she feels around Sasuke-kun. Except Itachi is better in almost every way. And, while she will never admit it out loud, snagging the heir of Uchiha before Ino can would be an amazing feat, especially for a girl without a fancy clan.
Sakura is so absorbed in her thoughts of finally getting above Ino in the village's social hierarchy, and living happily ever after with her fairy tale prince, that she misses the end of the fight. It isn't until the enemy ninja's body falls into her line of sight that she even realizes it's all over. Itachi offers her a hand up, but she's too focused on the body to move. He must notice her concern because after a moment he looks at the ground in front of her and says somewhat haltingly, "He's not dead. I just- we need him alive for questioning. Another squad should be here in a few minutes to pick him up." She nods, somewhat torn between relief that she hadn't just witnessed someone get murdered in cold blood and furious that the person who had torn away her body, used her like a toy, was still alive.
The rest of the day passes in a blur. She winds up standing again while they wait for more ANBU to show up. Once they arrive, Itachi put a mask on at some point, she's not sure where he got it from, but he looks far more terrifying with it. The expressionless wood reminds her too much of the... other mask she saw today. He exchanges some coded phrases. She doesn't understand anything he says, and then carries her to the Hokage's office. Itachi might be one of the most talented ninja in Konoha today, but she can tell he's tired. His body shakes slightly as he puts her down, and he favors his right leg. Sakura wants to apologize for being so much trouble, but can't bring herself to speak.
The Hokage sees them immediately, though since Itachi chose to enter his office through the window, Sakura doubts he had much choice in the matter. After what seems like hours of answering the same questions, he tells Itachi to take her home. But instead of taking her home, Itachi brings her to the hospital. While she doesn't want to face her parents yet, she's sure they would try to make her quit being a ninja, she wants to be in her own room again, surrounded by people who love her. She breaks down crying before she's even been signed in. She can't help it. Everything overwhelms her and no matter what she does, she can't stop. She's crying so hard she can barely breathe. Her nose is running and she knows her face is all splotchy and red. But she can't bring herself to care. She's alive, but the thought of anyone doing that to her again is terrifying. Even the feel of the doctor's hand on her shoulder makes her flinch and cling harder to Itachi. She knows she shouldn't be like this. Ninja don't fear anything, but she's not a ninja yet. She hasn't even finished her first year at the academy. She doesn't even want to think about what she's doing to his uniform. It's probably soaked with her tears and snot. Eventually, he pulls her fingers off his arms and passes her to someone else. Before Sakura can protest, she realizes she's being held safely in her father's arms. And as he strokes her hair and tells her everything will be all right, she finds herself starting to relax. Eventually, she's too tired to cry anymore and she drifts off to sleep.