Disclaimer: Am I Masashi Kishimoto? No.
Chapter 1: Nightmare become reality
Morning found Sakura on the hard floor of her living room, curled tightly into a ball beneath her blanket.
A tapping at her living room window was what finally woke her from her slumber, and she cracked one eye to see who her visitor was.
Then closed it again tightly. At this ungodly hour, she did not want to see Konoha's number one maverick ninja in his blindingly bright orange outfit.
Naruto opened the window and poked his head inside the apartment cautiously. "Sakura, we're having breakfast with Shikamaru, and then Tsunade has a mission for us."
"What time is it?" Sakura asked, pulling her blanket over her head to block out the bright sunlight.
"About… six o'clock." Naruto said, checking the time with the round, red clock Sakura kept on her living room wall.
Sakura raised an eyebrow. How in the hell did they get Naruto up at six in the morning??
"Okay." She sighed, giving up on sleep. "Give me about twenty minutes."
"Okay! See you at Shikamaru's!" Naruto was grinning; she could tell by the way his voice sounded.
Heh. Sucker. Sakura was a master at falling asleep for set amounts of time. She managed to get another half hour of sleep then hopped into the shower for a long scrub. By the time she stepped out of her bathtub, wrapped only in a towel, they'd sent Ino to look for her.
"Sakura, you missed breakfast." Ino said, trying to sound stern.
"I took a reeeeallly long shower." Sakura said, laughing.
"Like anyone's gonna believe that but Naruto. By the way, Tsunade wants you in her office in ten minutes. Better hop to." Ino grinned cheekily at her friend before teleporting out of the apartment, leaving Sakura to scramble for her mission clothes.
"Today's mission is A-rank." Tsunade began, tossing Sakura the mission scroll. "There have been rumors of Akatsuki in the Land of Earth, and I want you and Naruto to investigate."
"Lady Tsunade, if this is Akatsuki-related, why are you sending Naruto? We don't want him walking right into their hands." Sakura said, avoiding Naruto's shocked gaze to stare steadily at her mentor.
"Because the rumors say that one of the Akatsuki members sighted is using Sharingan." Tsunade didn't need to say any more; if Itachi had been sighted in the Land of Earth, then it was possible Sasuke would show up there in pursuit. In fact, it was highly probable.
"I expect a full report on your return."
"Yes, ma'am!"
With that, the two members of team 7 were gone, eager to prepare for what was probably going to be a long mission.
***
The forest was much too quiet for Sakura's liking. Not a twig moved, not an owl screeched, not one single cricket was trying to tell the temperature with its chirping. And to Sakura, who'd been on plenty of field missions like this, it meant trouble—Trouble that was not entirely unexpected because she and Naruto were currently camping in hostile territory on the way home from their mission. The loyalties of grass shinobi were known to change when more favorable odds showed up elsewhere, thus it was safer to stay under the radar when in Grass Country.
Sakura withdrew a kunai from her hip pouch, preparing to investigate, when Naruto stirred in his sleeping bag.
"Whassamatter?" he slurred, voice thick with sleep.
"I'm not sure yet. Wait here for me, I'll signal you if there's trouble." Sakura bit her lip nervously. What if it was Akatsuki? They were precisely the reason she and Naruto were currently camped where they were, and she had no desire to hand Naruto to them on a silver platter.
Naruto was immediately alert and on his feet. "No way, Sakura. If anyone's gonna check for trouble, it's gonna be me!"
"Naruto!" Sakura barked, her bright green eyes scanning the darkness between the trees. "Shut. Up." She had begun to shake, adrenaline coursing through her veins because she knew—she knew—she had heard a twig snap.
Naruto opened his mouth again and Sakura leveled a glare at him that was so fierce he clamped it shut again quickly.
Sakura made a slicing motion with the kunai in front of her neck to make her threat clear then slipped quietly into the surrounding trees.
It took a minute or so for her eyes to adjust to the pitch blackness enveloping her, but once they had, she still wasn't much better off; the trees and their branches were so full of leaves that it was nearly impossible for any light to penetrate through them and reach the forest floor. Thankfully, however, Sakura had learned—through trial and error—that she could enhance her eyesight by focusing her chakra there; she had also sharpened her hearing and sense of smell by training with a blindfold on for a month with Kakashi, Naruto, and… Kiba.
All her senses fully aware, she climbed the nearest tree and crouched, cat-like, on the lowest branch—which was a good ten feet above her head—kunai at the ready. She scanned the forest floor below and then the canopy above and found nothing out of the ordinary. Positive that nothing apart from a screech owl and several dormice were near, she hopped lightly down.
That was when the twig snapped not fifteen feet away.
Sakura could have written it off as nothing more than forest noise, but she knew better: not long after the twig had snapped, she had heard the sound of crunching leaves, which told her with absolute certainty that she was not alone in the forest.
She approached the source of the noise cautiously, her right hand gloved with the special chakra-conducting glove Tsunade had given her. When she reached the spot—and she knew she had by the scuffed up leaves and torn shred of cloth on a low-hanging branch—no one was there. She fingered the cloth with her ungloved hand and recognized it as a bandage of the sort that shinobi used, and lifted it to her nose. It smelled of fish and ocean spray, something she hadn't smelled before, but something her mind was raising a little red flag at.
Puzzled, she slipped it into a small plastic baggie she normally used when she gathered herbs for Tsunade, and began to turn.
The fish and ocean spray scent was suddenly right beside her, accompanied by a much smaller, sunflower scent.
"Wha—" she began, preparing to slice at the larger of the two beings beside her, and found her wrist in a very large grip.
"Too slow, kunoichi." The fish-ocean spray scent sneered. "Itachi, what should we do with her?"
Itachi?
"Uchiha Itachi!" she gasped.
No. Oh, no. This is not happening. Hoshigaki Kisame and Uchiha Itachi CANNOT be here.
"Let go, Kisame!" she yelled, hoping her use of the man's name would startle him into loosening his grip just long enough for her to wriggle free.
"What the hell? How do you know my name?" Kisame demanded, tightening his grip on her wrist so much that she could no longer hold her kunai. It fell to the fertile forest soil below and embedded itself in the leaf litter by her right foot.
"Ah. I remember. You are friends with the Kyuubi jinchuriki." Itachi said slowly, dark amusement lacing his voice. "Kisame, you would not know her because you and she have never met."
"So she knows me by association with you?" Kisame asked. "And friends with the Kyuubi, no less. So maybe that little blonde brat is around here somewhere."
"A safe assumption." Itachi agreed, "but we should confirm it by asking this kunoichi first. It would not do to attack the wrong person."
Sakura scowled and began gathering chakra into the sole of her boot, hoping Kisame wouldn't notice until it was too late.
Luck was not on her side: Kisame sensed her chakra moving and released her wrist to draw the vastly oversized sword on his back; he swung the weapon down, grazing her arm and leg. Her chakra dissipated immediately.
"I am not sure what she was going to do but, judging from the amount of chakra she was gathering, I am certain it was going to be big." Kisame frowned at her, clearly reevaluating what he had first thought about her.
"Hn."
"Fish-faced bastard." Sakura hissed, ignoring the pain in her arm and leg and surging the chakra into her fist quickly before slamming it into Kisame's forearm. She was gratified to hear the bones snap and his loud swears; before he can retaliate, she gathers chakra into her fist once more and hits him in the chin with an uppercut, effectively breaking his jaw. Now sure that the Kiri Swordsman wasn't going to be much of a threat anymore, she turned to deal with Itachi and…
Found that he had disappeared.
Where the hell did he go? She wondered, sniffing the air experimentally and finding no trace of the only other survivor of the Uchiha clan.
Suddenly, with much flapping and cawing, a flock of crows swooped down upon her and surrounded her, beating her with their wings; then, just as suddenly, they were gone, and Sakura found herself bound head to foot with chakra enforced ropes.
"You dirty—" she snarled, realizing she had been in a genjutsu.
"Where is Naruto?" Itachi asked, one eyebrow raised ever-so-slightly.
"Like hell I'd tell you bastards where to find him." Sakura said, her voice low and menacing.
"Where is Naruto?" Itachi repeated firmly, staring Sakura in the eye. Sakura found herself marveling at the blood-red pools, wanting to obey, needing to obey, opened her mouth and—
WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING??? Inner Sakura screeched.
It was enough to snap Sakura out of whatever jutsu Itachi had her in.
Itachi looked taken-aback for a moment before his face returned to its normal apathetic expression.
"Go. To. Hell." Sakura said, deliberately making each word into a sentence.
Behind her, Kisame guffawed loudly, "Too late, kunoichi, we've already been to hell and back!"
"My name is not 'kunoichi'." Sakura hissed. "It's Haruno Sakura."
"The Hokage's apprentice…" Itachi spoke softly, and Kisame's jaw dropped.
"No fucking way! This little chit is the apprentice of one of the Sannin?"
"Naruto is as well, you will recall." Itachi reminded the older man, scrutinizing Sakura so thoroughly she felt violated.
"True." Kisame conceded.
"Listen." Sakura said suddenly, realizing she was almost out of options. "Leave Naruto alone for the remainder of our mission and come after him later."
It was desperate, and demeaning, but she had no other alternatives left to her. She could only hope they'd had enough excitement subduing her that they might consider her request.
"And?" Kisame asked. "What do we get in return?"
"Nothing. You get to spend that much longer chasing after him." Sakura said quickly, realizing that it wasn't a very good deal for the nuke-nin.
"We've already spent a shitload of time looking for him up 'til now!" Kisame growled. "Do you hear this, Itachi? She wants us to give up for who-knows-how-long and wait for her and the jinchuriki to go on their merry fucking ways when we could have him in our grasp by dawn!" Kisame's face was turning red—or purple, rather—with anger.
"Deal."
"Wha—" Kisame looked more fish-like than ever with his mouth gaping open and closed with disbelief.
""She… interests me. In addition, this could very well work to our advantage." Itachi picked up Sakura's fallen kunai and sliced her ropes.
"Thank… you?" Sakura rubbed her wrists, which were red and raw from the ropes.
"I expect you to pay us back in kind later, Haruno Sakura. Do not forget that you owe me a debt." Itachi said, as he and Kisame disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Sakura remained rooted to the spot, unsure what the hell had happened, then took a long, roundabout route back to the camp just in case the pair had lied and were tailing her. Only when she was sure she'd not been followed did she return to the camp and a sleeping Naruto.
"Some shinobi you are!" She screeched, kicking him lightly in the ribs.
She made Naruto stand watch before she wriggled into her sleeping bag, mulling over everything she'd just experienced.
I… interest him. I'm not sure… if that's such a good thing, coming from him. Sleep finally took complete control of her body, and that night she dreamed she was in a bar full of faceless people who, in spite of their lack of mouths, were still filling the joint with the din of many voices. Her head buzzed and she decided to leave, only to halt at the open door, because beyond it was blackness, as if she'd reached the edge of the world. She squinted, but could not penetrate it; in fact, as she strained her eyes to see, something stirred deep within the blackness. There was the sound of flapping wings and she backpedaled, tripping over the passed out body of a drunk. She fell just as an enormous owl swooped in, and, briefly, she wondered how it had fit through the door, only to realized that the bar was gone and she was falling deep into the void.
---
A/N: Hopefully this makes up for the ultralong time I took writing it?
Bit of dream symbolism at the end for you guys.
In case you were wondering, the moment Sakura sniffed the bandage, she was in a genjutsu.
R&R.
