When Sakura awoke, she was first dazed at the sight of the man next to her, sleeping with such a serene aura. The quietness of the morning made it natural for her to lay her eyes only at the Uchiha, whose body was facing her direction. Shisui's face up close soothed something inside her; it was free from anything unsettling.
Somehow, an interesting thought came into play in her mind. She mused at the realization that this was the first time she had awoken to and seen a sleeping Shisui, despite the several nights she had spent with him. In her overnight stay at his house, she had awoken to nothing but crumpled bed sheets. In her three-day ship ride with him to Tinland, she had never once seen him go to sleep first or wake up later than her.
Sakura rose from the bed and extricated herself from the cushion, careful not to bring the sleeping Uchiha to wakefulness. She slipped into the shower room with a pack of clothes, rinsed the sweat and grime away, and clad herself in her outfit for the day.
Last night, it had been Shisui and Sakura's mutual decision to finish the mission today. While the Yamanaka Clan, the mission requesters, had specified a mission duration of four weeks, Shisui and Sakura thought that there was no need for such a lengthy amount of time if they worked to the best of their abilities.
After seizing the luxury to freshen up, Sakura made her way to the bed, musing about the most powerful way to pull her mission partner from his deep slumber. Her mind was left to guess the most likely reason that he was sleeping for a longer time than usual.
Mayhap, it had been a drawback from his efforts to keep her drugged self at bay the other night. Certainly, she had given him enough reasons to think that it was a good idea to keep his eyes open for hours on end. Even now, guilt still weighed in her chest, but if there was any bright side that she could focus on, it was the fact that her body had completely eliminated the toxins with Shisui's initial aid and her medical ninjutsu.
Sakura glimpsed the dozed off man once more. She was standing at his side of the bed, facing his back. With a reluctant sigh, she tugged on his blanketed shoulder, slightly increasing force for every second that passed. "Shisui, wake up," she said and repeated at each attempt to shake him off from his state of drowsiness.
Bending her body over to take a closer look at him, she observed the slow and regular rising and dropping of his chest. He's really tired, she mentally told herself.
The blame could not be pinned on him. Even if he had not slept tight the other night, she still managed to keep him awake throughout the rest of the day until evening, giving him reasons to stress himself out and physically exhaust himself.
The taxing hours that Shisui had to endure had not been a mere day for him to simply tolerate. Sakura realized that ever since he had taken care of her ill self, all of the things he had willingly born with were done for her sake. He had shed some sacrifices for her wellbeing.
His actions were enough to let her know that he cared, but last night, he let her feel everything in the passion and intimacy that they had shared.
Although Sakura had had her share of inklings of whatever their relationship was and could be even in their early encounters, everything still crashed into her as a shock. She had been aware that Shisui could possibly develop romantic feelings for her based on his acts of selflessness. Yet, she still could not believe that he looked at her in such an endearing way.
And it just felt good.
However (and she cursed that even in magical cases like this, there were still "howevers"), there was a lack of ease that settled in her. Shisui had made it apparent to her that he, at the very least, was attached to her romantically. Yet, she wondered about the depth of his feelings.
They had not known each other for a long time. Shisui did not know many things about her. Social conventions made it near-absolute that a something as complex as love required a long time to surface.
However, there was something about the way he looked at her last night that held its own league of profoundness. It was as if he had already come to witness the faces of Sakura that made her human, that made her her—someone worth cherishing beyond romantic interest.
And for her part, she had not exactly made her own feelings visible last night, even if she had pulled him into a kiss, even if she had let the course of their intimate act deepen from a simple gesture. And her hesitance to be completely honest with him was mostly driven by her lack of self-awareness.
Honesty required knowledge of the truth, but grasping the truth required certainty.
And even after her efforts to reflect, it frustrated her to realize that she was still not certain about her own feelings.
She knew, she really knew that she held strong feelings and affections for Shisui. But her mind was littered with questions—what if she realized that her feelings for him did not sprout of something that could be love, but actually concern? What if her feelings for Shisui were stronger than her romantic feelings for Sasuke just because he held his health and well-being to be more important now? And if, in the future, she were successful in her goal to heal him, would the emotions she carried for him still be the same and still be stronger than what she had for Sasuke?
What if she simply cared for him?
Guilt crept its way onto her chest, as she recalled the way she pulled Shisui into a kiss last night. She remembered the way she thought that her self-awareness did not matter in the moment they shared last night, holding onto the idea that, at that moment, she had her eyes only for Shisui.
She feared that if her questions were answered with the truths she would not desire, her spur-of-the-moment act last night would just be a mistake.
Sakura disliked the idea of leading someone on. She could not bring herself to hurt Shisui, because, at the very least, she knew that she held deep feelings of care for him. And the Uchiha was not emotionally dense; he would soon realize the confusion that housed her chest. Anyhow, Sakura needed time to understand herself and she needed to be honest with him no matter what.
Even if it was utterly difficult.
And now that they had shared a passionate kiss, what was going to happen next? How were they going to act around each other?
What the hell are we now? she mentally shrieked.
Her thinking space only filled echoes of nervous stutters in response to her own question. Hence, she decided to focus on the mission at hand, their mission in Tinland.
And maybe she should focus on her mission at the moment, which was to put an end to her partner's deep slumber and snap him out of whatever dream he had been dreaming.
And yet, a single look at the raven-haired man's handsome face blessed her with the sudden urge to touch his face. Her eyes did not miss the beauty of his facial features: his chiseled jaw, his straight yet somewhat broad nose, his soft-looking lips...
And his unique long eyelashes that held every ounce of perfection.
And so, guiltily, she caressed the dark and thick lashes, admiring the shape of his eyes as well.
Snap out of it! Sakura scolded herself, reminding herself that this was a war against Shisui's sleepiness, not her inappropriate tendencies.
As Sakura attempted to tug on his shoulder in a quick jerky manner, her eyes did not miss the way Shisui's lips curved into a smile for a brief moment.
The feigned breathing. The feigned eye-shutting. The damn idiot had been awake this whole time.
"Stop messing with me, you idiot!" Sakura shrieked at him as she invested more force into moving his body to and fro.
Shisui opened his eyes and said, "Okay, okay, stop doing that!"
With eyebrows furrowed, Sakura ceased the shaking and gritted her teeth at him. "Why didn't you just wake up? I'm an idiot for falling for your act!"
"If I hadn't done that, you wouldn't have been able to do whatever you were doing with my eyes again," he retorted as he sat up to face her with a playful smirk on his face.
"Wha-I did no such thing!" she yelped, as if denying a crime committed. It had been a long time since Shisui had pulled his flirtatious side on her. And now, Sakura just wanted a way to conceal her face effectively, because her cheeks seemed to admire the color of her hair.
"And you really have to blush?" the Uchiha challenged her with a knowing grin.
"You're delusional!" the kunoichi replied in an instant, transparent with the tinge of desperation in her voice. She shifted her line of sight to a spot next to Shisui's face (as long as it wasn't his face) and told him in a firm tone, "Anyway, get up now. We need to continue our mission."
Her order, however, was greeted with pure silence.
Realizing that there was no change in his movements, Sakura annoyedly turned to him again, summoned her brute strength, and attempted to pull him out of the bed with one of his arms.
Yet, however monstrous her strength might be, Shisui's speed was still unrivaled.
As soon as Sakura had glued her hands onto the sides of his shoulders and before she could apply her chakra, Shisui had pulled her down to the bed with him, grinning at the way she toppled over his body.
"Wha-! What the hell are you doing?!" the poor kunoichi screamed as red streaks tinged her cheeks. The expression marked on her face had fallen when she had been struck with the realization that her face had dug into his exposed neck. In an instant, she tilted her face upward with leaf green eyes basked in seethe and shame..
"I don't think there's anything wrong with what I'm doing," the man below her teased with such ease much to her chagrin.
"What's wrong is that we have a mission and you're nowhere near prepared!" Sakura uttered with Inner Sakura on the verge of possessing her. "And here I thought you were dutiful to missions."
Raising his eyebrows in amusement, Shisui surrendered to the bickering of his partner, "Fine, fine. I have one question though."
His body was still lax much to the Haruno's glaring disapproval. Expectantly, Sakura stared at him, impatiently waiting for his words so that they could get moving.
Shisui bit his bottom lip from smirking and then proceeded to ask, "Are you blushing due to anger or due to embarrassment?"
Of course, it did not come as a surprise to him that his question was answered with a slap.
Waves of golden specks of light bathed the pavement of cobblestones. Against the lit path, shadows of townspeople walking about stood. The hustle and bustle demanded each walking civilian to pay great heed to his surroundings lest they got lost in the crowd.
While the busy streets were dangerous for naive children and helpless elders, the chaotic scene was a perfect sight for Sakura, who was trying to ease her way into camouflage.
She had masked herself as a civilian and colored her hair black with the help of a transformation technique. She and Shisui had decided to focus on different tasks. With the list of herbs that she had written down based on her examination of the drug sample, she was going to get her hands on any hints that could lead her to more information about the doctor. On the other hand, her partner intended to directly interrogate the bartender, whom they had thought to be an accomplice.
While Shisui had gathered some pieces of the doctor's background on their first night in Tinland, the pair agreed that it was simply too unreal for him to have obtained such data easily. If the doctor used illegal means, then it was improbable for him to disclose personal information to the public. This meant that he could be creating a facade to ease his way in his deals with people.
Shisui had gathered intel that matched Tom's background, the name and physical features, especially. Regarding the clinic address that he had gotten, he and Sakura had paid the said clinic a visit only to, unsurprisingly, see a regular clinic that was closed. With this, they had drawn out the possibility that the doctor could be using Tom as his own public image. After all, why would someone risk his business by openly collecting women from a public place?
A few hours ago, Sakura had gone to different markets where the herbs that composed the drug could be found. With the hopes of catching people and activities that arose to her suspicion, she turned to people after people and asked them where the herbs could be found. Most of the herbs were found in a few herb markets in town. Much to her tough luck, her sensory skills had not caught on any questionable happening that was indicative of involvement.
However, even when she had checked all of the herb markets in Tinland, there was one herb on her list that was not sold in any of the places she had gone to. Xennyl, the herb that only grew under extreme climate conditions, was not present in Tinland, and that, she had expected. The drug chemists could have extracted it from other regions.
Yet, Sakura had still bothered asking countless sellers for information on where the herb could possibly grow in town. After a number of futile attempts, her luck brightened when a herb seller told her that she had come across a hearsay, indicating that it grew along the borders of Tinland. With that, her recollection projected an image of the scene before the bay she had run off to after her fight with Shisui. She vaguely remembered that she had seen a small island that had a weather that was different from the mainland's.
Her excellent memory had served her. And currently, she was walking along a crowd of people at the bay, figuring out a way to get to the island without signaling civilians that there was a crazy woman who defied the laws of Earth by running on seawater.
Staring into the horizon, she could make out the small covering of brown that contrasted the blue green waves around it, tinted in gold and a slight touch of pink. Much to her dismay, the boats that sailed from the dock were on a path that was directed opposite to the island.
So, she could not go directly to the island without a boat. Running on seawater would cause a commotion among people who believed that ninjas did not exist. She doubted that it would cost an insignificant sum of money to have shipmen send her off to that area specifically. Casting a genjutsu to conceal herself would take a tremendous amount of chakra as well.
And she simply did not want to soak herself by swimming underwater or transforming herself into some coconut seed dispersing off to a tropical island for germination.
Thank Kami-sama that her chakra nature was water.
Ever so slowly, she made her way to the dock unnoticed, calmly observing the boat that was still in the process of loading a mass of boxed supplies in preparation for sailing. She needed to get into the boat somehow. She could not transform herself into any man who looked like he was going to be part of the trip, since it entailed the risk of arising confusion from the rest of the crew, making them think that their shipmate had some sort of doppelganger. Perhaps, she could turn herself into a random man and just leave the rest of the task to her talking.
Behind the pile of boxes, she performed a henge, turning herself into a heavily built man with brown hair and green eyes.
In the most casual manner she could pull off, she joined the other shipmen in carrying the boxes to the boat. Even though she was efficient in the task with the aid of her superhuman strength, questioning glances were still sent her way from a few men. Unfortunately, one dared to be vocal.
"Excuse me, who are you?" a tall buff man with orange hair questioned her, causing her to halt in her tracks while still holding two boxes.
"Rio, Sir," she uttered in a deep voice, not bothering to make up a first name and hoping that the muscular man would not ask further.
"Rio? Jack told me nothing about a new shipman with such a name," he raised.
Sakura did not know who this Jack was, but she could certainly hold onto the inference that he was in charge of the crew management.
"Sir Jack didn't? He told me that I would be helpful in the loading work," she forced out a lie, maintaining the manliness in her tone and silently praying that her countenance was believable enough for the older adult.
An intense gaze of scrutiny was aimed at her when the broad-shouldered man narrowed his suspecting eyes. He then averted to the two boxes she was still carrying, probably wondering how in the hell she could lift two dead weights on her own. A sigh then blew out of his lips as he plucked himself out of his reluctant thinking. "Make it quick, son. The boat's about to go. Screw up and I'll throw you out into the sea."
After nodding and giving a typical "Yes, Sir", Sakura went back to loading the packages, carrying only three boxes at a time. She could carry more than she did, but she did not want anyone to think she was a shinobi.
Minutes later, when the anchors had been drawn back and the plank had been pulled into the dock, the boat then set sail for its little voyage, the destination of which Sakura had not the tiniest clue about. All she knew was that it was going north and that she would have to throw herself onto the water when the island would be directly at their east, although hundreds of meters away.
Just when the boat was about to make its turn, Sakura, who was standing at the right side of the boat and hiding behind some piles of boxes, then climbed up on the gunwale before swooping down into navy blue yet slightly gray waves. Upon landing the underside of her sandals on the chaotic surface, she swiftly channeled chakra to her feet to let herself stand atop and then crouched down to avoid getting caught by any man on the ship.
Rio was a new member of the crew. Certainly, no one would notice him.
Sakura then clasped her hands together and formed a series of hand seals, raising a high mass of waves behind her. Her bent legs straightened and she made a run toward the island, all the while making sure that the waves covered her back and sides as the sight followed her on her tail. That way, she would not be seen and anyone who happened to have his eyes on her area would just see a roll of raging water making its way to wherever.
As Sakura neared the piece of land, she mentally took note that it looked smaller even up close. Heck, it compared to the size of half of Team Seven's training ground. Inner Sakura sent a prayer of gratitude to Kami when she had registered that the island's weather shared that of main Tinland's, just fine and far from harsh. When her feet had landed a step on the shore, she noted that the presence of light emphasized the green covering on the ground.
Xennyl, Sakura thought to herself.
All of a sudden, alert rang in her mind as her senses picked up the presence of another person. No boat set the course of its voyage to this place, so how come there was someone?
Her sensory reports told her that this presence had a touch of familiarity to it. With her superior analytical ability, it came without question that the only other person on the island was the man who had spiked her drink, Tom.
It was not totally a coincidence, of course. After all, Sakura did intend to check out the source of herbs with the goal of meeting some of the accomplices behind the crime. For all she knew, Tom could have gone here by illegally turning to private boats so that he could harvest some herb of rarity.
With an island of insignificant size and with her heightened senses, Sakura took relief in the fact that they were the only two people on the island. The man's location was somewhere at the heart of the land, deep into the trees.
Masking her chakra and strengthening her stealth, Sakura made her way to the pinpointed location and saw the familiar chestnut brown hair that belonged to a man who was kneeling down on the ground, plucking pieces of herbs with his back facing the woman.
Today's my lucky day, Inner Sakura chanted with sparkling eyes.
Before she was going to launch herself at him, Tom's slouched back bent even more and his arms trembled hard as if to desperately maintain his overall balance. Heavy groans escaped his lips as his body collapsed to the ground of herbs underneath him, paralyzed by the pain.
Medical instincts took over Sakura's judgment and so, she did not stop to think when she rushed over to the man's side and checked on him. The first thing that caught her worry-filled eyes was the violet bruises and long cuts that marred the skin all over his body. The bruises appeared to have formed from a heavy beating, but the long cuts looked familiar.
And it hit her. The cuts were markings of a scalpel, one that was used with chakra.
If Tom were the doctor, she could not come up with a reason that explained why he inflicted such damage on himself and did not bother to heal himself. The bruises did not also add to the picture.
Perhaps, Tom was working for the doctor they were looking for. There was a high chance that Shisui's and her hypothesis was correct. Furthermore, they would be battling a skilled medical ninja.
Sakura pinned the man on the ground, pushing him down with an amount of force that was enough to lock him still but not too hard to worsen his injuries. To save herself from chakra depletion, she undid her transformation technique and revealed her true physical appearance to Tom, causing his eyes to widen in shock.
"I know you! You're that girl from the bar!" Tom shrieked, his voice getting sharp and coarse. He struggled to break free from her hold, wincing in pain when Sakura pressed harder onto his joints. She grimaced, disliking his hateful expression when he confidently thought for a moment that he could beat her just because she was a woman.
"Don't make this hard for yourself," she coldly uttered, poking some pressure points on his chest with chakra-laden fingers and leaving him immobile.
"What do you want?!" he barked at her face, his eyes getting more and more hateful yet helpless by the second. Sakura felt disgusted with herself for letting her medical instincts overtake her momentarily. This man did not feel any pinch of shame from attempting to kidnap and sexually assault her.
"Who are you working for?" she firmly questioned, taking out a kunai from her pouch and shoving it to his neck.
"I'm not an idiot to just give something away," he replied, the fear in his voice contrasting his message. His eyes widened when the kunoichi dug the sharp edge of the kunai to his skin, lightly reddening the surface but not letting it bleed yet.
The man, whose eyes were still glued to her hand, immediately took back his words, "Kazuya Kagami!"
"How are you related to him?"
"I'm his facade." Tom gulped hard. "He's new here in town and I help him with things here."
Tom then explained that he was pretending to be a physician and that he had secured a fake license while Kazuya Kagami conducted his operations in the shadows. When Sakura gave him a distrustful eye, he reluctantly added that he was given by the medic-nin the task to collect women and have sex with them in exchange for money and pleasure.
"I swear, I don't know what he wants from the women," he reasoned, earning a glare from Sakura. Tom was a rapist; no amount of excuses would justify his wrongdoings.
She questioned him, "And how is the bartender involved?"
With a tiny bit of hesitance, the man surrendered the fact that the bartender, Aran, was the distributor of the drug that Kazuya had formulated. It seemed that Tom had little clue about the schemes of the illegitimate physician, but Sakura pressed on her luck and continued to throw other questions at him.
"Where is the scroll?" Sakura said as she tightened her grasp on him.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Tom responded with a puzzled and fear-filled look, as if he was thinking that his lack of knowledge could kill him.
Sakura, determined to extract as much information from him as she could, shot, "Then where is this Kazuya? Where can we find him?"
"He's not in town. He'll return tomorrow," he said with a trembling voice. Tom proceeded to give her specific directions and details pertaining to the location of his base. All of a sudden, his face paled. "Please don't let him know that I told you anything! Please! I'll quit!"
Sakura examined the bruises and cuts that smeared over his flesh, realizing that he had been abused by Kazuya. Mayhap, it had something to do with his unsuccessful operation a few nights ago, when he had failed to kidnap her and even got drugged by Shisui. The next day even proved to be a challenge for him, when Sakura had snatched the spiked drink and fooled him with a transformation technique.
Yet, even if he had been a victim of Kazuya Kagami's punishment, she could not empathize with him, a rapist. He deserved a cold seat behind the bars for treating women with such cruelty.
So she gathered chakra to one of her fingers and poked a spot on his chest, knocking him out.
Alcohol had always been Aran's dearest friend. The bar, in spite of the flood of music and chatters, had always brought a ray of peace to his being. Despite the animated mist that the place seemed to uplift, it cheered up his old soul to see dancers and drunkards smiling and getting loud in the name of loneliness.
And he found solace in that fact.
Ever since his only daughter had passed away due to a disease, the vivid colors that splashed around the bar seemed to dull into gray. The loss of light in his life had stripped off a fraction of his sanity and glued in a bit of desperate hope.
Hence, when a sable-haired man roped him and dragged him to a dark room after he had opened up the bar, he clung to the voice within him that had long told him that this time would arrive. This was the day that he would be questioned for his madness, for the way his grievous insanity trampled on the innocence of other people.
He would surrender.
"Kazuya Kagami," he responded to the man who stood before him without a single ounce of reluctance. Somehow, the truth rolled off smoothly out of his tongue—he gave away the illegitimate physician's identity and address, and when he was returning to town.
Shisui eyed Aran in slight disbelief, still in the process of registering the fact that he was willing to cooperate. His deep sunken eyes told him that he had lost something dear and that, somehow, he had been waiting for this moment for the longest years, as if this moment was inevitable.
And his heart twisted—he had thought it necessary to inflict pain on him earlier.
Fortunately, his rationality never left his mind.
"How are you involved?" he asked in a dead tone.
"Kazuya gives some drugs to me. Without my boss knowing, I spike the drinks and give these to men who want the easy way with women. They drug the girls," Aran explained quietly, not once sparing a glance at Shisui.
"And Tom?"
"When a man is done with a girl, Tom takes her to Kazuya to clean up the man's crime. Sometimes, Tom does it to girls himself," the bartender replied.
Shisui's blood reeled in anger as he swallowed the idea that Tom could have done such twisted things to Sakura when she was caught.
Aran finally took a look at the quiet Uchiha. He did not miss the chaos in his eyes and so he voiced out what had still been left unsaid, "I don't know what they exactly do with women. I just distribute the drugs and get all of the money for selling them."
The hollowness in the bartender's face served as a hint to Shisui. It told him that, while the tied up man was surprisingly cooperative, he had not yet dropped the biggest truth.
Hence, Shisui spoke to him in a deep voice, "You're not just doing this for the money."
At that moment, Aran stared at him, perplexed. He shifted his weight slowly and dropped his gaze on the hard and cold floor.
He opened his mouth, paused, and then confessed in a shaky voice, "Kazuya promised the revival of my late daughter."
Shisui knit his eyebrows at his response. The reanimation of a deceased human could only be done through Edo Tensei, which had been long declared as a kinjutsu by the creator himself, the Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju. As of the moment, the only one in the shinobi world who had viciously taught himself the forbidden technique was the rogue ninja, Orochimaru.
In addition, even if this Kazuya was capable of performing the jutsu, this fact would have little to do with the abduction of women.
He gave the bartender a steel look. Aran, in turn, somehow understood the meaning behind his expression with no question. He said, "The revival will be in a month. The baby will be due by then."
A human birth experiment.
It was then that the Uchiha felt a tight squeeze on his conscience.
He had learned from his experience in ANBU that information coming from the mouths of enemies could not be totally relied on until there was enough evidence. Yet, it pained him to just know that Aran was spitting out deep and dark truths just from looking at his hollow eyes.
Evil could only take away so much of a person's humanity. People who were caught up in its depths could only have been victims of unthinkable circumstances. And for Aran, he only wanted to a glimpse of his little daughter's innocence again.
But he knew that the end could never justify the means.
It took every ounce of Shisui's willpower to crouch down to the man's level and tap a spot on his roped chest, rendering him unconscious and immobile. He then clasped his hands together to perform hand signs, marking a teleportation seal on the lying man's body.
He straightened his legs as he rose again, obliterating every guilty thought in his mind and summoning his inner strategist to come up with a plan to blow the next room's drug packets to destruction.
With a blaring suddenness, he felt the insides of his head burn as his vision dimmed.
A few hours had breezed by before eve had finally fallen. Prior to that point of the night, Sakura and Shisui had met up at their pension unit to prepare for the infiltration mission with the information they had exchanged with each other.
Based on Sakura's intel, Kazuya Kagami would have his return on the following day. Hence, she and her mission partner intended to infiltrate the physician's actual base tonight with the objectives of mapping out the whole hideout, retrieving the Yamanaka's forbidden scroll, releasing experimental subjects, and gathering certain items for useful intel.
As jounins, it was ingrained into their instincts and common sense that it would be a mistake to let their guard down. They were thoroughly aware of the possibility that Tom could have fed them with inauthentic information. Should the target criminal return tonight, they would have to draw out their lethal weapons on their sleeves.
The entrance of the base scratched Sakura's memory with a scrape of familiarity. The setup, colors, and atmosphere were visually comparable to that of Orochimaru's hideout, which Team Seven had once infiltrated on an A-rank mission.
The base was located directly underneath the location of Kazuya's fake clinic. It was an underground hideout—the entrance resembling a maze-like tunnel with fireless torches hung at the sides, inviting darkness into the scene.
With a startling motion, Shisui turned to face Sakura and connected the palms of his hand, swiftly displaying a sequence of hand signs. The kunoichi was about to question the sudden act until a set of kanji characters inked on her right forearm.
"I marked a teleportation seal on you," he said with much conciseness. "I'll go find the scroll. You free the women."
Sakura could not help but catch the tone of authority in his voice. Although he was assigned as the team captain for this mission, she could not quite find it in herself to dissociate the impartial and dutiful shinobi from the man who had softened up to him last night.
She minutely examined the Uchiha who had his eyes dead-set on the path ahead of him, recalling the last time she had misjudged him as someone who regarded her as inferior. This time, he had appointed her a critical task not because he wanted to do her any favors, but because he relied on his sound judgment as a captain who aimed to guarantee the success of the mission.
Releasing the women from any binding equipment would be easy, especially with the kunoichi's unrivaled strength. However, what she needed to focus on was the objective to store up as much chakra as possible in case there were a number of experimental subjects whose conditions required immediate medical attention.
Still set on studying the male shinobi, her eyes caught the mild tremor of his hands—his fingers tensed, as if the blood coursing through them were about to burst. As if able to see her from his position and read her mind, Shisui inserted his hands into the pockets of his pants.
The medical ninja hesitated briefly before she willed herself to raise her jittery thoughts, "Did anything happen to your eyes?"
For a quick moment, there was an absence of movement and sound from his direction, as if all of the blood running through his body had been robbed of its life. Shisui, however, managed to shift his body to look at her with a small smile, saying, "Nope, I'm fine."
The curve on his lips widened and his countenance seemed to lighten up. He gave out a soft chuckle, rested a hand on top of her head, and ruffled her mop of pink hair. Sakura could not feel any indication of tremor from the hand atop her head.
"You're too serious, Sakura. Relax a bit," he teased. Sakura repaid his gesture with an unfriendly scowl, saying, "I'm still this team's medic."
"I know, I know, but seriously, there's nothing to worry about," Shisui reassured her, widening his eyes to show her the healthy colors of white and pale red from each orb's sclera and veins.
The natural shades of white and red were enough to convince the medical ninja that Shisui's eyesight was in a normal condition, or at the very least, it had recovered from a grave occurrence.
Yet, beneath the eyes' surface laid an unfathomable mask of emotion, of a thought, as if there was something about tonight's mission that bothered the strong and skilled Uchiha. For one silent moment, his eyes seemed to be bent on feeding her nothing but lies. But Sakura, upon hardening her scrutinizing gaze on the laughing man, was able to catch a tinge of dread.
"Sakura, I can sense your malicious intent, but we're still on a mission," Shisui teased with his signature smirk, snapping her out of her cold, hard thinking and causing her to glare at him.
She knew that Shisui was dutiful and serious when it came to accomplishing the mission's ultimate goal and perhaps, her idle staring told him that they were wasting precious time. Even though they had shared a relatively close and intimate bond, a mission was still a mission, after all.
However, the pinkette could not deny the possibility that he simply did not welcome the kind of attention she had given just now.
In Sakura's search for the female prisoners, she had applied chakra to her eyes to enhance her sense of sight in the total darkness. She halted her tracks when she had passed by a room that piqued her interest as a medical ninja.
With a wave of guilt exerting massive force on her, she hesitated before entering the room, weighing potential advantages and risks that could slam against her judgment. The room had appealed to her with its setup that resembled that of an ancient library.
Tall wooden cabinets loomed over her with a great height, housing a ton of hardbound books and scrolls of varying thicknesses. One quick glance at the spines of some was enough to let her know that the materials were medical volumes that contained complex and advanced subjects, many of which were found in her shishou's library and some of which were not.
The medical textbooks that were a stranger to her eyes appealed to her curiosity the most. She landed her hands on a few materials, feeling the dust clinging to her skin.
The kunoichi knew that she was supposed to release innocent prisoners, but her mind was suddenly occupied as soon as the title of a hardbound book trespassed her brain—The Science of Ocular Prowess.
Her heart halted its beating when she had mentally read the title, knowing full well that the reading material did not exist in Konoha. The revelation drew her line of thinking to her ultimate mission, which was to restore Shisui's eyesight to a perfect condition. Her chest clenched as she tightened her grasp on the edges of the book's cover, intending to seal it in one of her scrolls.
Before she could make another move, she felt a cold presence approaching the room.
With sharpened ninja instincts, she readied a kunai from her pouch as her body did a complete rotation. Her eyes met a tall, lean man who was clad in a black shirt and navy blue pants, with a long white coat draped over his body. The white coat closely reminded the kunoichi of the ones they wore at Konoha's hospital, but she then scratched the comparison, remembering instead that it almost looked exactly like the coats scientists wore.
So this is Kazuya Kagami, she thought.
Even in the darkness, Sakura's vision could capture the grayness of his hair, the wrinkles etched on his face, and the amusement in his dull blue eyes.
The man took a step into the room, causing Sakura to tighten her hold on her cold kunai.
"You must be from Konoha," he spoke, thinning his lips. Sakura was wearing her regular shinobi attire without the headband and she figured that he would know that fact especially since he had stolen a valuable scroll from one of the village's high-standing clans.
Truth be told, while Sakura did not let her guard fall, she had not deemed the physician's return highly probable. And with her encounter with him now, it was a blessing that she had not yet gone to free the imprisoned women, as healing those in critical condition would greatly deplete her chakra.
Kazuya slightly frowned at the kunoichi's silence, a display of disinterest. Nevertheless, he continued, "I knew Konoha would dispatch a team soon. I just didn't know it would be tonight."
Sakura had no exact idea why the man had returned to Tinland so soon and she was certain that Tom had told her the truth. Mayhap, external circumstances pressed their way onto the physician, forcing his return.
With another moment's worth of silence to greet him, Kazuya drew closer to the kunoichi, making sure that the distance between them was still wide enough. As a medical ninja, he was not one to easily underestimate shinobis; he was the opposite of foolish.
The male ninja tilted his head to the right as he showed the woman one of his light grins. His lifeless eyes landed on the textbook that she was carrying on one hand, informing him that the woman was also a medical ninja. The grin on his face grew a little wider upon registering her intentions prior to their meeting. "How about a bargain?"
Sakura, whose mouth still blocked the exit of any syllable, pressed on her silent demeanor, waiting for whatever the enemy had to say next.
Kazuya resumed, "I've been working on a chemical solution for a year now, but I just can't get the mixture right. You're a medical ninja yourself, aren't you?"
For the first time since the man had entered the room, Sakura let her voice be heard, "What are you getting at?"
The male medic-nin's face gleamed at her inadvertent decision to reply. "I'll give you that book and all the other vials you need if you help me on this one. Perhaps, you have an important case?"
Images of a raven-haired Uchiha mentally flashed before her. A violent force tightly clutched her heart as her thoughts made way for a horrifying recollection of that time they had gone out on a date, when he had dangerously collapsed to the ground. Her expertise could not console her with any lie—deep down, she knew that blindness would be inevitable for Shisui if she did not take action soon. She was hardworking and determined, but her desperation also sought for the easy way out.
She would do anything for him.
Fortunately, sound reason overtook her thinking space. Inwardly, she took some time to cool her head. She did not need more worries to drag her will. She needed to face this situation with a clear head.
Sakura was the opposite of stupid, and she knew that Kazuya was luring her into a trap. He might have shown caution when he approached her earlier, but he was definitely underestimating her intelligence and integrity with his bargain. For all she knew, she could simply get the book for herself after defeating him.
"Kazuya-san," she called, causing the man to grimace at the way she pronounced his name. "I did not come all the way here to be fooled."
The woman's striking determination did not seem to waver Kazuya's composure. Perhaps, he was just testing her gullibility to entertain himself. Either way, it irritated Sakura to see his grin turn into a mischievous smirk.
"I expected as much," the man said, "I could just add you to my collection for my next experiment."
Pink eyebrows furrowed when Sakura registered his words. She recalled the fact that this man had been sexually assaulting innocent and vulnerable women for twisted, selfish purposes. Her blood boiled in rage at his blatant undermining of her dignity as a woman.
Just what is he planning to do with all those women?!
"What exactly are your intentions?" Sakura hissed as she dropped the book on the floor and tightened her hold on the kunai on the other hand.
"I have no reason to tell you," Kazuya said in a light tone, as if to tease her.
Sakura readied herself in a defensive stance, anger coursing through her. Inner Sakura bellowed in her stead, "You're going to regret this!"
In one swift motion, the man bent his knees and clasped his hands together, creating an open square with both hands' thumbs and index fingers. He closed one eye, extended his arms and pointed his hands at the kunoichi, his open eye staring at her through the open square. Sakura's curiosity in the man's jutsu shifted into alertness when it dawned on her that this was a strikingly familiar technique, one that had been used on her before.
Mind transfer technique! He must have mastered that jutsu from the scroll, she growled in her head.
Wasting no time, she ran to her left side and threw a kunai at him, aiming specifically at his side. The man effortlessly dodged the sharp weapon and followed the kunoichi's direction, his hand sign still directed at her.
Sakura pivoted her feet and ran to the right side, going back to where she had been earlier. She pulled out another kunai and threw it at the other side of the enemy, who was still targeting her with his hand sign. Kazuya simply dodged to the other side, intensely focused on capturing her with his jutsu.
It was only when the flying kunai was in level with his head that the corner of his eyes caught the familiar seal attached to it. With barely enough time, he swooped down to the front as the sharp weapon carried a bang of an explosion.
She had fooled him into thinking that her throws were mediocre—not even worthy of divided attention.
Sakura launched herself at the fallen enemy, sending a massive kick to his back. Much to her annoyance, the man had rolled to the side just in time to avoid her deadly blow, her heel meeting the floor instead. The man wasted no time in getting up as soon as he witnessed the ground rumbling around them and the hole created from her foot's point of contact.
As soon as Kazuya got up on his feet, he faced Sakura and flashed a sequence of hand seals with a pattern that the kunoichi was not entirely familiar with. The beginning of the series looked like it was an Earth Style technique, so she channeled her chakra to her fists, preparing to smash through any mudwall.
In a flash, Kazuya broke the series of hand movements, formed the same square that his hands had formed earlier, and aimed at a shocked Sakura.
The kunoichi had been tricked into expecting a straightforward attack. Cursing under her breath, she attempted to pivot away from her position to avoid getting caught, but all of a sudden, her will was met with hazy darkness.
Kazuya blinked and then regained his vision of the external world, the first thing to greet him was his own body laying on the floor, unconscious. He was now the puppeteer of the opponent's body. The life of the female ninja, whatever her name was, was merely attached to his strings.
He propelled the body into motion, walking toward his original form resting on the ground. Crouching down, he maneuvered the human puppet to fish out a vial from his own body's pocket.
The vial was filled with poison that he had formulated, which meant that only he had the antidote as well. Kazuya could safely drink the whole bottle and still ensure his own body's safety; he could heal himself as soon as he would return to his own consciousness.
The male grinned to himself and gulped down the contents of the glass, immediately feeling the parasitic entrance of the dense solution in the woman's body. Kazuya was absolutely aware that he was poisoning a medical ninja, and maybe an experienced one at that, but he gambled with his confidence in the fact that only he had the antidote.
When one-third of the liquid had been consumed, a searing pain seemed to quake in his mind and bits of darkness stained his vision. At the next second, total blackness swallowed his vision and he was faced by a monstrous image.
In front of him stood an enormous size of a woman who exuded a devilish aura, her eyes storming with a rage he had never felt before. The woman, who was growling at him with such a threatening force, was a gigantic version of his female enemy.
"GET OUT OR I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!" the woman roared, her breath coming out as a violent rage of wind against him.
Kazuya had never encountered such a challenge ever since he had learned the Mind Transfer Technique and he knew he would meet death if he left his own body rotting from the poison.
"SHANNARO!"
The screaming woman lifted a heavy arm and aimed to smash his little form with a splat, but Kazuya ended his foolhardiness and undid the jutsu.
Sakura awoke to a clenching pain in her gut. Her head was filled with a cold weight from her collapse to the hard floor. Saliva escaped her parted mouth, bubbles forming along the fluid's fall. She could taste a tinge of something metallic in her own mouth.
Blinking hard, she mustered the strength to get up on her feet, but her body was unwilling to cooperate. She trembled, her motions getting more and more violent by the second. She looked up to witness Kazuya who was standing up and injecting himself with a solution from a vial.
It then hit her that she had been preyed on with a poisonous solution.
Fuck, she cursed inwardly.
She breathed in a thick amount of air and cleared her head. The situation limited her options—there was no way that she could heal herself without an antidote. It was far too late to purge; the solution had already invaded her system. The poison was different from the drug she had consumed a few days ago. This solution was not formulated to stir her hormones, but to kill her.
She could either snatch a vial of antidote from Kazuya if he still had any to spare or try to use the jutsu she had still been trying to perfect. She had created this technique on her own, but it was nowhere near flawless yet. Sakura bit her lip, recalling her training a few weeks ago and how her attempt to perfect the jutsu led to chakra depletion, which forced her body to black out in the rain—Shisui had to look after her in his apartment then.
Seizing a vial of antidote from Kazuya bore a small chance of success. Her attempt could also be proven futile if the opponent actually had none to spare. Hence, Sakura decided to take a risk, choosing the option that actually guaranteed elimination of the poison. Seeing as Kazuya was still recovering from the effects of the poison and Mind Transfer Technique, she still had enough time to save herself.
Shutting her eyes with fierce determination and concentration, she channeled her body's primary source of chakra to collect pools of the poison inside and transfer them to her fingers. Ever so carefully, she managed to gather them near her fingertips without deteriorating any strand of flesh.
She positioned herself in an offensive stance and released dark green chakra strings from her fingertips the same way ninja puppeteers did. The poison that had invaded her system was now eliminated through the chakra strings, which were glowing dangerously.
Kazuya disposed the antidote vial and briefly examined the kunoichi's jutsu, inwardly impressed at how she was still physically able to stand up and fight.
Sakura wasted no time and lengthened the poisonous chakra strings she had released, aiming the glowing lines at Kazuya. Still suffering from the side-effects of the Mind Transfer Technique, he barely dodged each poisonous string. One touch could rot his flesh again, even if he had just taken the antidote.
The male medic-nin ran to the side, evading the poisonous chakra strings still flying after him. He attempted to throw senbons aimed at the kunoichi's neck, but she merely ducked with unwavering concentration.
With the enemy's evasiveness, Sakura concluded that he was not an offensive attacker; Kazuya was not a fighting shinobi. He was a medical ninja like her, who was accustomed to silent and medical ways to kill.
As such, the glowing chakra strings only managed to strike the inanimate objects around them. Inner Sakura roared at his quick evasion; Sakura's chakra strings were running out of poison due to the futile blows. She furrowed her eyebrows in stubbornness and ran after the man, chasing him into a corner of the room. Quickly, the deadly chakra strings from her fingertips wrapped around his body, burning his skin.
However, her glowing strings had run out of poison to carry, which also meant that her body had completely eliminated the dangerous chemicals from her system.
"Shannaro!" Sakura screamed as she launched herself instead at the captured man, aiming her chakra-laden fist to his face. As the kunoichi did so, her hands stopped releasing chakra strings for the sake of efficiency, giving Kazuya enough time to dodge the blow by stepping to the side.
The woman hissed as her fist dug an arm's length too deep into the cracked wall, struggling to extricate her arm from the hole. With the physician still at her side, she used her free leg to kick his hip, sending him to a point that was at a considerable distance from her.
Kazuya smirked triumphantly, ignoring the pain from his fractured hip and seizing the chance to cast another jutsu at her. He fastened his hands together, performing yet again another pattern of hand signs.
As soon as Sakura had removed her arm from the wall, golden chains confined her body from out of nowhere, rendering her immobile. "Damn it!" she shrieked as she mustered her brute strength in an attempt to break free. However, every chakra she summoned seemed to drain from her body—the sealing chains absorbed any amount of chakra she used.
"With that strength and jutsu of yours, you have quite an exceptional level of chakra control," Kazuya remarked with a grin. "But you made the mistake of refusing my offer. Don't worry, you'll make a great experiment subject."
Sakura fiercely stared at the man. She never liked being made a fool out of.
"It's pointless to try anything," Kazuya said, noticing her facial expression from her attempt to sense her partner.
The physician took a small scroll from his coat and opened it, its length much more than one would expect from an initial glance at its size. He bit his thumb, marked the surface of the scroll with blood, and performed a jutsu, revealing two vials. One appeared to contain the same antidote from earlier, and Sakura's inference was proven true when Kazuya drank the solution. She figured that he needed it again after she had attacked him with her poisonous chakra strings.
On the other hand, the second vial housed a solution that was familiar to Sakura. Observing its darkness and density then hit her—it was a pure solution of the drug she was forced to consume a few days ago.
Kazuya was going to drug her to make her an experimental subject.
Shannaro! she inwardly yelped.
Sakura knew that she could rely on her 100 Healings to effortlessly summon godly strength, but she did not want to resort to her ace in such a situation. For sure, she could still find a way to get herself out without expending a large amount of chakra.
Perhaps, she could alert Shisui with her chakra.
She realized that Kazuya had masked his chakra carefully; hence, it would be difficult for her partner to get the idea that she was with the enemy.
The chains drained her reserves and this would decrease her chakra's intensity to a sensory ninja. However, the low intensity of her chakra could fool Shisui into thinking that she was simply at a far distance from him.
She could also try to increase its intensity so that Shisui could sense her, but Sakura then decided against the idea, realizing that the chains would just absorb her energy.
Perhaps, it would alert him enough if she made him think that she was dying.
And so, with her graceful control, she spiked her chakra on and off before completely masking every bit of her body's chakra.
It had taken Shisui some time to locate the Yamanaka's scroll of forbidden techniques. Room after room, shelf after shelf, dust upon dust—the enormous underground base was a maze in itself that presented a narrow window of clues for the Uchiha, although superior in intelligence.
Fortunately, he had found what appeared to be a mysterious lair from the far end of the base, housing strangely shaped test tubes of various sizes. Even more, his luck was anything but fading—his eyes had instantly caught sight of the missing scroll, which was resting atop a long table at the center of the room, half-open. Perhaps, Kazuya had lowered his guard and left it open after using it. With an extra dose of caution, Shisui had verified the authenticity of the scroll by checking its contents before keeping the material in his own sealing scroll.
Afterwards, his sight did not catch amiss the papers full of scribbles lying around the table. With his analytical abilities, he had examined the contents and concretized what seemed to be Kazuya Kagami's specific ambition.
The Uchiha learned that the male medical ninja was a rogue shinobi from Kirigakure, who left to illegally test a medical theory through a forbidden jutsu. He studied to develop a jutsu that was familiar with Edo Tensei. His plan involved creating exact copies of people, dead or alive, by implanting a specific set of DNA on human embryos. Setting up the DNA for the physical appearance was easy, but the DNA for a human being's personality could not be extracted by merely taking out a piece of hair or flesh.
Shisui noted that Kazuya had stolen the Yamanaka Clan's forbidden scroll, which contained the secrets to their forbidden jutsus, one of which involved the extraction of the human mind's DNA. After all, the Yamanaka Clan did not only specialize in cognitive abilities, but in neuroscience as well.
The raven-haired prodigy recollected the fact that this Kazuya had been abducting and drugging women, which Sakura could have been a part of. He grimaced at the idea of vulnerable women being drugged to ease the process of impregnation and use the human embryos for experiment. It sickened him to think that Aran, the bartender who only wanted to see his daughter, had been a victim of this medical ninja's ill ambition.
At present, Shisui was traveling at a great speed toward the center of the base in order to locate Sakura's chakra. This way, he could get to her easily by using his transportation skill to immediately reach her side when he would be at a practical distance from her.
Sharpening his senses, he felt a weak signature of familiar chakra, which he knew belonged to Sakura. Perhaps, she's at a far distance? he thought. He then increased his speed.
All of a sudden, he sensed the weak flickering of the same chakra from a great distance, minutely fading until it was completely gone.
Panic coursed through him as he cursed under his breath, "Fuck." He knew that he could not allow emotions to grapple with the soundness of his judgment, but it frustrated him to think that something grave had happened to her to cause her energy to be dormant.
Expending an amount of chakra, Shisui enhanced his teleportation jutsu by widening its range's diameter. In a flash, he performed his shunshin and landed in what seemed like an old library.
Sakura widened her emerald eyes at the sight of her partner, partly because he arrived out of thin air and partly because she was relieved to see him. Shisui's eyes were layered with the same kind of intensity he had shown her when they had been in a fight, but his fierce gaze was targeted at the man in front of him.
With an unrivaled speed, the Uchiha threw a flare of shurikens at the surprised man, marking different points around his body and pinning him onto the wall.
He then turned to Sakura and casted a foreign jutsu on her, unbinding her from the draining chains much to her awe. After all, she had never known that Shisui had expertise outside the areas of shunshin, doujutsu, elemental ninjutsu, taijutsu, and bukijutsu.
"Are you alright?" Shisui asked, a thin wave of relief flashing through his eyes at the sight of her standing in front of him. His countenance blanched at her empty silence, as she was still in a state of emotional disturbance due to his unexpected arrival.
The Uchiha took a step closer to her and lifted his arm. He reached for her right cheek and gently pressed on it while looking fixedly into her eyes. "Sakura, are you hurt?"
The kunoichi pulled herself from her idiotic stupor and blinked back to reality. "Uh, yeah. Thank you for coming." She mentally strangled herself for blurting out something so dumb.
The pair shifted their attention to the man who was still trapped onto the wall due to an unfavorable slowness of reflexes.
As a medical ninja, Sakura abhorred the idea of taking away someone's life. However, the brutality of reality washed away that small tinge of hope she had always carried, hope that the ideal shinobi world wherein people did not have to face death for the love of peace existed. As she had accomplished more and more assassination missions, she also buried her empathy-stemmed emotions deeper and deeper into her heart.
But she never got rid of those feelings.
The kunoichi glanced at Shisui, her mind wandering off to a bubble of curiosity. He was older than her and more experienced with missions. On a darker note, she knew that any experience in ANBU was gruesome in its own way. The warm and playful Shisui she knew might have gotten used to his hands stained with blood already.
Hence, her mind was reeling off countless questions that all stemmed from a single thought: why didn't Shisui hit Kazuya's vital points?
The prodigy was an efficient and dutiful shinobi: he disliked wasting time and energy in accomplishing an objective. She doubted that he intended to finish him off with something more aggressive, especially since she had given him the false idea that she was dying.
The most logical answer was that her partner needed to extract more information from the enemy. Perhaps, it involved Kazuya's real ambition and plans? But what if he had already known his plans? There was no need to be unnecessarily comprehensive about the information gathering.
Perhaps, Shisui abhorred the idea of killing?
Sakura thoroughly searched his face for answers, but the truth behind his countenance was guarded with a cold, empty, and lifeless mask.
She caught something red oozing out from the corners of his black eyes.
Blood!
His body quivered lightly, as if he was forcing out much of his strength to combat the tremor. His impassive eyes narrowed, remaining fixed on the enemy he had pinned on the opposite wall with his shurikens.
"Shisui! Your eyes!" Sakura called out to him, immediately coming to his aid. She stood in front of him frantically, her hands reaching out for his face.
She was about to cover his eyes with glowing chakra when the Uchiha wiped his eyes clean and tilted his face down to address her with closed eyes and grinning lips, saying, "I'm fine." He took a step back to widen the gap between them.
"Look at me," Sakura said.
At first, there was no movement from the Uchiha, but Sakura called him out again, "Shisui."
The man slowly opened his eyes to look at her.
Only that he wasn't.
Shisui was staring into space, his eyes directed at her cheeks.
He couldn't see.
The kunoichi's heart was wrung out of its peace at the very truth revealed before her. She had not seen Shisui activate his Sharingan in the past few days, and this only served to indicate that his eye condition was reaching a more severe degree.
"Don't move. Don't use your chakra. Don't fight," Sakura whispered to him, her voice somehow breaking but getting firmer. She knew that Shisui was an exceptional shinobi; he could still put up a good fight without having to rely on his sense of sight. Yet, it stirred Sakura to cling to the fact that any little activity from the Uchiha could result in a state as grave as a blackout or a coma.
"Sakura, I need to fight," he insisted, his tone impassive.
"You can't!" she shrieked at him. The shrillness of her voice startled the onyx-haired ninja, the sharpness conveyed as a mixture of anger and desperation.
Just then, Shisui's eyes widened at the sound of a metallic object gliding through the empty air in front of them. With great speed, he wrapped his arms around the waist of the woman in front of him, whose back was facing the enemy's direction. He leaped to the side, bringing Sakura with him.
Sakura then snapped back to reality. With the long time she had been standing and talking with Shisui, Kazuya, who was still pinned to the wall, had prepared to attack yet again with a different jutsu. This time, metallic chains as thick as a tree with a sharp blade on the end had flown out from his body toward their direction. Kazuya had intended to impale the distracted woman through her back. Fortunately, Shisui had sensed the weapon's movement.
The moment the pair had landed on the floor, Shisui felt a throbbing pain in his head. Darkness clouded his vision and his body froze in its place. Masses of weight seemed to fill his head more and more; he felt like he was lured into unconsciousness.
The same sound of metallic chains swooping through the air entered his ears. His mind told him that it was coming for his uncovered back. His mind told his body to dodge with his normal reflexes.
But he could not move.
And then there was the sound of blood gushing out.
Onyx eyes increased in width. The pain in his head throbbed harder, but he fed it with ignorance. Color returned to his vision, but he gaped in horror at the sight before him.
Sakura had pushed him down to the floor, letting the enormous sharp blade pierce through her abdomen. A large hole formed on the bloodstained spot as the blade passed through her body and allowed the entry of the metallic chains. Heavy pants escaped her mouth, followed by coughs of dark and dense blood.
"Don't fight!" Sakura desperately screamed upon hearing the sound of Shisui getting up on his feet.
But Shisui paid no heed to her pleading.
Pure rage surged through his thoughts, his blood boiling and shutting down each word that his rational side fought so hard to feed him. His eyes glinted in blood red, tomoes rapidly spinning in circles before shapeshifting into a four-point pinwheel.
The Mangekyou Sharingan met the mocking eyes of the one who had impaled Sakura, as if it was furiously scraping all of the orbs' life.
Kazuya, who finally managed to extricate himself from the wall and stand up on the floor, sneered with light contempt as he witnessed the famed Sharingan. "You can't kill me with that."
All of a sudden, the physician felt a loaded mass stirring in his guts. He collapsed to his knees, groaning and gagging in agony. His face weighed down and met the floor as he desperately tried to vomit out a flock of… crows.
Every vicious-looking bird that he gagged out perched atop him and shrouded his body, feeding off snippets of his skin.
The Uchiha flash-stepped to the spot behind the man who was held captive in a gruesome and ill genjutsu. He brought out his long sword from his pack and mercilessly pushed the sharp tip deep into the dazed man's neck, cutting through his jugular vein.
Kazuya Kagami stilled into a cold bloody corpse and crashed down to the hard floor.
"Shisui!"
The voice cut him off from his murderous daze. All hell that had broken loose within him turned cold as his crimson eyes reverted back to black and his sense of awareness heightened at the realization that he had just brutally ended the life of the man before him. He retracted the sword, let if fall, and gaped at the sight his vision was perfectly seeing—blood tainting his hands.
That was when a pair of arms encircled his waist.
When he stiffened at the contact, the hold around him seemed to tighten.
"Shisui."
The softness of the voice seemed to wash away the impurities in his mind, all sickening urges that cursed his blood. His body did not relax one bit at the calling of his name, but his head was cleared of monstrosities.
He then snapped out of the trance-like state, panic growing within him as images of an impaled Sakura shot its way through his thoughts. He made a complete turn, prepared to allow the entry of horror, to see the same pink-haired woman, but with the indigo diamond on her forehead radiating a foreign power and black markings spreading across her skin. Her abdomen was covered with the torn cloth of her red top and there was no hole nor wound on the area.
"It's my Byakugou seal. My cells self-regenerate," she explained, noticing the look in his eyes.
Sakura was about to scold him for such rash behavior despite his eye condition and then heal his eyes, but Shisui wordlessly pulled her into a tight embrace, to her great surprise. She could feel the slight tremor of his body, and she was not certain whether it was an effect of his eye condition or a remnant of his psychological outrage.
There were so many questions that littered in her mind. How did his eyes manage to regain their vision? How was he able to use the Sharingan without his eyes bleeding? How did he awaken his Mangekyou Sharingan? Why did it seem like he was averse to killing?
Why did Shisui feel like an entirely different person just now?
She could not help but think that she needed to finally, finally raise the discussion of her decision to heal him, to voice out the truths that had been soaked in silence all this time.
Yet, there was something different in the way Shisui was acting now and it felt like a surge of truths about his life was itching to unravel itself, but Sakura felt like those were the truths that must remain in the silence.
In the darkness. Never to be touched.
Author's Note:
Hello, guys! I'm sorry for the late update again. Actually, I have been trying my best to focus but I was hindered by the writer's block, especially since writing action stories isn't really my thing.
IMPORTANT NOTES:
-As for what happened to Tom, Aran, and the women, just wait for the next chapter.
-I edited Sakura's perspective from the last chapter. To clarify things, Shisui does love Sakura, because Uchihas, by nature, just really love deeply. Sakura, on the other hand, is still confused. I think it's unrealistic to have her easily move on from Sasuke and then love a man whom she isn't really familiar with yet. Personally, their relationship needs more buildup so I'm going to give you that.
-The jutsu Sakura used here with the poisonous chakra strings is the one she was trying to perfect in Chapter 4.
-I think this story will reach 25-30 chapters? I already have a plan in mind.
-I reread the first few chapters and God what crappy writing! Forgive me, but I'm going to focus on continuing this story.
-Guys, I "manipulated" Shisui's age. I made him 21, the same age as Itachi, even though he was a few years older, because I just felt like it.
-In the next few chapters, I will focus on their characters and more buildup. No action. Thank God.
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Shameless plug: I wrote a SasuSaku one-shot entitled "Ajisai".