Examination: Team
Kiba didn't wait to see what happened to the clone he'd left behind, and instead did his damnedest to put some distance between himself and the black pyre of what remained of his best defensive jutsu.
The clone probably wouldn't draw Sasuke's attention long. Even if the sharingan wasn't already capable of discerning between the real and the fake, Akamaru's absence would have been a strict tip-off, since he wasn't about to ask his dog to stick around when he was escaping himself.
So he ran, hard and fast, legs cutting shallow divots in the dust with every step, and at the same time forcing his breathing to slow enough that he could find his girls by scent. He didn't like the notion of possibly leading the Uchiha back toward them, but worse still was the thought of what would happen if his decoy attempt didn't work.
The girls were doing their best to hide in the grass, and they started to rise as he approached. He slowed only enough to get them moving again, and then the four of them were sprinting into the dusk together.
"What's the plan?" Haruka said, drawing in close. Kiyoka had a look of pain etched into her face -- he didn't think she'd ever lost so many of her bugs, and if the shock she felt was anything as bad as how he felt whenever Akamaru was inevitably injured, she was going to be quiet for some time.
"We are retreating the hell away from here," he said.
"I think I got that," she said, and coughed to catch her breath. "What else do we do?"
He didn't blame her. This was not exactly a tactical withdrawal, this was getting the hell out asap, and they'd never been in this position before.
"I can lay down some genjutsu," Nanami offered, "Maybe throw this guy off."
"Save your stamina. It won't work on him anyway. Remember how I said people died? Well, that was him, and he's way above us."
Akamaru barked and howled in warning, a mere second before the plain erupted in fire, a wall of orange flame stretching across their escape. Drawn in stark, wraith-black contrast to the conflagration behind him, Sasuke stood against that smoking curtain, waiting. Confusion and fear rose from his team, and Kiba felt his stomach fall.
"How did..?"
"Sorry, girls. Looks like we're not quite fast enough."
"Fast enough to keep us chasing you longer than necessary," said a new voice, and Kiba wasn't sure if he was pleased or dismayed that there were more people in this trap he'd stumbled into. Ino tapped him on the elbow, to let him know she was there without making him turn to find her, and he could feel the scuffle of her arriving team pulling up and joining his.
Sasuke stood still as Akamaru paced back and forth protectively in front of their group, evaluating them with a cold, clinical detachment.
"I saw the mess you left back there, and...holy shit. Is that who I think it is?"
"Yeah," Kiba said, and his mouth was dry as he spit into the grass. "Yeah, that's him."
Ino bit off a curse.
"We ran into one of his clones earlier...I guess he was trying to do two things at once."
"Well, he's got us now. There's no direct route to safety at this point. I was hoping to tie him up long enough for my team to get away, but I don't think that's possible any more."
His team was whispering with Ino's, sharing information, trying to figure out among them what was going on.
"The only way out is through, then," she said, "How do you like fighting dirty?"
"Whenever possible."
She leaned in, and spoke as low as possible.
"If you can hold him still for a bit, I can..."
"Absolutely not," Kiba said, and gave her a dark look. He couldn't sanction that. "Not in the open, not with him watching. It's too risky."
"I don't see we have a choice. We have nine including Akamaru, Kiba, and even if I miss, I think you can hold him for three minutes. That's all we need."
"Ino..."
He hated it. He was sure it was the worst plan he'd ever heard in the entire course of his career, but at the same time it was probably the only one that could possibly work.
"He'll just wear us down, Kiba. His clone gave me a pretty good run for my money, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be running if you thought you could take him."
Kiba snorted, and the dust in his mouth cracked as he ground his teeth. Sasuke hadn't moved yet, letting this drag on as ash billowed into the sky and blotted out the first stars.
"Three minutes, huh?"
She turned to look at him, and her face was calm despite the growing caution in those pretty ice-blue eyes.
"Kiba, I trust you. I trust my team, and I trust yours. I know you can do this. It might be the only shot we've got."
He didn't like it, but she was right. The best he could come up with guaranteed at least half of them would die -- and while this was pretty much an all-or-nothing deal, there was at least a chance they'd all make it. This was his family, his team, his pack, and damned if he'd let himself die before they were safe, S-class criminals or not. And hell, it'd be a shame to let down his favorite drinking buddy.
"Alright," he said, and snapped his fingers just loudly enough to draw his team's attention. Sasuke drew his sword in anticipation. "Kiyoka, you're on area suppression and detection. Nanami, you're going to stick with Ino-sensei. Keep close to her at all times, attack when she attacks, pull back when she pulls back. Haruka, you're long-range support, take your opportunities, but no risks and do not for the love of all that is holy...do not close your range."
"Dai, Takeshi, you're with me," Ino said in turn. "Be prepared for plan nine, watch for it. Hideo, you're with Uzumaki there. Like he said, stay the hell away."
There was no go signal, no countdown, no prompting, and Kiba was glad for the practiced efficiency of both teams as he split himself into four and surged towards the Uchiha in a terrible quartet of wailing tornadoes. Sasuke finally moved, only to be met here by a barrage of shuriken, and there by falling kunai, and he danced between them as though oblivious to the danger they presented.
Even as the dust rose in the bowl of hell his clones were stirring up, he ran on foot, kunai in one hand and tucking one of the cinnabar energy pills into his cheek. He had a feeling he was going to need it soon.
There was a squelch in the dust before him, suggesting Ino had somehow managed to muddy the ground ahead and Sasuke was just beginning to notice, and then he was in the cloud. His eyes and ears were nearly useless in the chaos, blinded by the choking grey dust and the rising gale of his clones, but his nose still worked perfectly.
His instincts clicked and he lashed out, blind but aware, and this time his blade was the one barely parried, inches from Sasuke's face. He let his momentum carry him, his left arm hooking around behind his opponent's ribs with a satisfyingly meaty thump, and his follow-through flung Sasuke face-first into the small mud patch.
To no avail, though, because Sasuke had turned on an elbow, landed on his feet and lunged forward again, forcing Kiba to duck down and away. Still, the look on his face had almost been worth it.
Kiba slid to his left, away from the tip of the sword that threatened to gut him, and his own block was painful and awkward but he twisted his hip against it, and stabbed at Sasuke's face, palm open and claws out.
Another near miss, and the animal in him groaned with disappointment and thirsted for blood. He remembered the dead Itoh's determination and effort, the first time he'd dragged the poor kid out to the bar after he'd joined the teaching jounin. It was hard to believe he was dead, but he was, and he fed his animal the outrage and let the fire rise in him. The thought of Itoh's team, empty-eyed and staring up at the savannah sky multiplied it tenfold.
Time slowed in the dust storm even though every strike and counter fell faster than the one before it, a flurry of exchanges beyond his ability to keep score. He fell into the flow, the vicious rabid rage. His muscles ached but he felt nothing more than a comfortable numbness. His heart pounded, no louder than a murmur. His chest burned, no warmer than a candle.
He snarled, fangs bared, and snapped at the hand Sasuke had carelessly left dangling by his face after the last block, the smallest fingers just brushing against the wet enamel of his teeth. The click of his canines echoed with the percussive riot of Akamaru's jaws as he dodged in and out of the dust, harrying their shared prey in moments of inattention.
Shuriken and kunai rained down around them, and muddy hands groped and reached for Sasuke's feet, all vying for his focus while Kiba held him at bay. For a fleeting, microscopic second, Sasuke seemed almost off balance, perched on one foot to avoid the clutching mud and warning off Akamaru with a backhand recovery. The bloodlust took him, and Kiba lunged from all fours, fangs out and claws bared.
Kiba landed inside the circle of Sasuke's arms, wrapping his own around his ribcage and burying his nails in his back. His fangs dug into the base of Sasuke's neck around his windpipe, and Kiba pulled. Flesh tore, blood sprayed, and then nothing but the taste of ashes and decay as he spit out the remains of a burnt out stump.
There was a new scent on the wind, forty meters to the south-east where Kiyoka's bugs were madly spraying a rotten-cabbage warning pheromone into the air. Without thinking, he turned, spun, and his gatsuuga shot from the occluding cloud with a ballistic inerrancy, trailing smoke in the whirlwind of turbulence behind him, almost landing on top of Sasuke's new position.
"Cheh," Sasuke said.
"What's the matter?" Kiba said, taunting. "Had enough of me already?"
It was empty bravado, but if it gave him a moment to breathe, that was great, and if it gave all the genin that little boost to give everything they had and everything they didn't know they had yet...well, it was worth it.
Ino's voice whispered close to his ear before she and the kids following her darted away to a new position.
"Remember, you have to keep him still for this to work, Kiba."
He sniffed, wiping sweat and dirt away from below his eye. She wasn't trying to be snide or insulting, he knew, and it was an apt reminder not to let himself get too carried away.
"Yeah, I know. I'm trying. Three moves, promise."
He wasn't too sure if he'd be able to collect on that, but an idea had come to him, and it was genius, if he thought so himself. It would require a hell of a lot of effort and coordination, but if Akamaru was up to it, so was he.
He sent out the clones again -- the dust seemed to work, limiting just how how much warning the sharingan could give -- and this time he threw up a thick wall of clay behind his target so he couldn't escape. The gatsuuga was such an old technique of his by then, but it was effective, and fast, and if it ever hit it was guaranteed to really mess a person up. He locked onto Sasuke's scent and flew in amid a new flurry of attacks from the genin.
He crashed through the wall of packed dirt as though it weren't there, Akamaru's own gatsuuga a millisecond behind him, and they looped around again. Just to his left, Sasuke had pulled out his chidori and knocked away enough of the wall with his lightning to dodge.
"Dammit!" he shouted, and he tossed out even more hand signs, drawing up more chakra than before, and summoned the Gates of Rashomon again. How they came to be, or how they repaired themselves he didn't know or care, but now they stood tall behind Sasuke.
He and Akamaru both launched into the gatsuuga at the same time.
They were close, extremely close, considering the gatsuuga's near-instantaneous acceleration. Sasuke still moved aside with contemptuous ease, this time intending to let Kiba smash himself against the Gate.
But Kiba was still locked onto his scent.
Sasuke had exactly zero time to react when Akamaru crashed into Kiba, annulling most of his rotational energy and slamming him with ungodly force sideways, straight into Sasuke.
Kiba braced despite the incredible, explosive pain in his ribs and the gashes Akamaru had unintentionally left across his hips, and the crunch of his right elbow and then his left knee colliding with the side of Sasuke's head as he spun was perhaps the sweetest sound in the world.
He struck the gate himself with so much force his vision grayed out and he was thankful he'd landed on his back rather than his head. As he melted off the smooth, diamond-hard surface of the Gate's doors, he noticed that Sasuke was still standing.
He'd dropped his sword, though. Sasuke staggered two steps, hand moving to the blood oozing from the side of his temple, and Kiba struggled to his feet, his legs jelly and his knee on fire. Akamaru stumbled over, tripping on his paws, but he managed to get a weak grip on one of Sasuke's thighs as a pair of muddy hands wrapped around his ankles.
Kiba found something that looked kind of like his sense of balance and picked it up anyway even though his fingers weren't responding yet, and wrapped his arms around Sasuke from behind, holding his arms up and safely away in a full body lock.
"Do...do it, fuck!" he screamed, his voice raw and he could feel blood spray with the spittle. "Do it now!"
Ino finished the hand signs, a long sequence miles away more complicated than the last time he'd seen her possess someone, and her body crumpled into the waiting arms of her students.
Sasuke struggled slightly in his grip, still disoriented, and Kiba felt the first flushes of victory, and then wracking pain as thousands of volts arced through his body. He convulsed, helpless, and Akamaru yelped and let go, his mouth burning.
"Ino?" he said when his vision cleared, still half hoping.
"No," came the cold reply.
OoOoOoO
Trees flashed by, branches reduced to a flickering cinema of shadows against the setting sun, and Neji jumped from bough to bough without any visible effort. Shino followed close behind, and they covered ground at a prodigious pace as they wound their way through the familiar depths of the forest that dominated the southern part of Ho no Kuni.
They hadn't stopped once since they'd passed through the village's main gates earlier that morning, and he was wired with the pre-emptive rush and whatever they put in those energy pills to keep a man running far longer than he was ever meant to.
Shino had gone through about twice as many, as his bugs apparently got a little excited and chewed a little more than their share of chakra if he was forced to carry on as they had. If it caused his partner any discomfort, he didn't show it, and Neji supposed that if Shino wasn't complaining there was probably no need for him to worry.
On the other hand, he was getting tired, and he had to fend off the occasional yawn while willing the lead from his limbs.
As much as he hated being torn from his plans with Sakura, he had to admit this was terribly important and Shikamaru had been right to request urgent and immediate assistance. What had happened to those teams was not only a tragedy -- even genin were hard to replace -- but it was an affront as well, and whatever coward had decided to take up picking off the young and the weak deserved whatever punishment Neji could devise.
"Shikamaru is waiting for us," Shino said, abrupt as he usually was. "Sabaku no Temari is also in attendance."
"Understood."
Neji was in some small way jealous of just how far Shino's awareness could reach, communicated along a chain of small, inconspicuous insects. Still, the further out he sent them, the longer the delay. A message originated ten kilometers distant could take as long as six minutes to get back to him, so while extremely long distance scouting was possible, it was also problematic. A distance of one kilometer translated to a delay of about thirty-six seconds, and Neji's instantaneous ability was better under those conditions.
Still, they were both used to scouting duties and between them they could probably cover a fair amount of ground in this search.
When they arrived at the border outpost not long after, it was Temari who greeted them because Shikamaru was still ambling to the gates, unhurried as usual with an empty mission pack in one hand and a bunch of stuff under the other arm.
"Welcome to the desert," she said. "I'd like to get going as soon as we can, but this bum here is going to tell you what he's figured out so far since he's not ready to go yet."
Shikamaru scratched his forehead and blinked, then put his pack down and resumed tossing things into it.
"Yeah, right," he said, and then began explaining what they'd found at the kill sites and how the pieces fit together. How Shikamaru had ultimately made the connection to hair and eye color he could never guess, but Neji had learned not to question his inspirations.
"Basically," Shikamaru said, fiddling with the straps of his bag and double checking for his essentials, "it came down to those two things.
"Color is usually a hereditary thing, except in a few weird cases of mutation like your wife," he continued, shrugging at Neji's cautioning look. "So if our murderer is discriminating based on hair, he's looking for a genin whose ancestry he probably knows, because he can discard most of the people he meets based on that criteria. He's looking for black hair, or at least dark hair, and that's a dominant trait, so he can be assured that whatever genin he's looking for is going to have that colour.
"Almost the same with the eyes. He checks the hair first, and then immediately eliminates the genin with the wrong eye color. Again, looking for dark eyes, another dominant trait. But as we well know..," and here, he gave Neji a significant glance, "...the eyes can carry some pretty powerful built-in weaponry.
"So why test genin, and here of all places?" he said, and ticked off his index finger. "First, it implies that he has a rough idea when and where his target was born, or else he'd have to find a way to cover the northern borders up to Iwagakure and those guys. So, the child was born somewhere in the east, and not Sunagakure itself."
Shikamaru yawned into his hand, and then ticked off the next finger.
"Next, and probably most important, he's looking for genin that have had some experience, and they've just gone through the toughest ordeal of their careers to date, in most cases. So he's expecting something to have changed during the exams -- or else why not intercept them en route before the exams started?"
"On top of that, he's being very thorough about checking the eyes. All the dark-haired murdered genin, the ones he tested, all had bruising on the face, on their cheeks and foreheads. He's taking a very good look, so chances are good he's looking for an eye-related bloodline."
He stopped, and turned his pack over to hoist it onto his back with an exaggerated grunt, and Neji felt a restless urge rising in him. Shikamaru clearly wasn't done with his explanation, but he was taking his damn time.
Apparently thinking the same thing, Temari thumped Shikamaru on the head, and while he complained about it under his voice, she took over.
"Long story short: this lazy jerk and I did a bunch of work on sorting out visas for travel through both our countries for this exam, so we had access to the complete list of examinees. There are only two students this year from any clan or family in the east known to have eye-based techniques, but both families are generally known to have coloured hair or eyes different than what this guy is looking for. There's more to it but this is going on long enough as it is. So, the conclusion is that whoever our murderer was had to be looking for an orphan from a dead clan."
Shikamaru sniffed, rubbed his nose and finished.
"Basically, it's like this: there's only one recently dead clan around here with any surviving members old enough to sire a child in this age group..."
Neji and Shino came to the conclusion at the same time.
"Uchiha Sasuke."
"You got it," Shikamaru said. "Someone's managed to misplace an heir. Given that this person is looking for the child, they don't really know where that child ended up after birth. And since no one outside of the higher echelons of our village could possibly know the Uchiha was still alive or where he went to since he was officially reported as dead after that fight with his brother, I doubt anyone else could be our culprit. I want to head back towards the kill sites, because chances are good he's still skulking around there waiting for more teams to come back."
"Just as a precaution," Temari said, "we've redirected traffic to the south for now."
Neji shrugged, and Shino nodded in assent. It seemed a good enough plan, and he didn't have any better ideas.
To be honest, in that moment he wasn't exactly thinking about the tactical ramifications. Temari and Shikamaru led the way down the slope into the valley, and while he kept his guard up, he couldn't help but wonder how this news would affect Sakura.
Assuming they could find Sasuke, and defeat him. He had no doubt they could accomplish the later, although just how decisively remained to be seen. The sharingan was powerful and dangerous, and once upon a time he'd wanted to see how he and his personal mastery of the byakugan stacked up as a foolish point of pride.
But there were bigger things at stake now.
"How is it," Temari said, "that you've let a missing-nin go for over...how long has it been? Twenty years?"
"Almost," Shino said.
"That's a hell of a long time for a rogue ninja to be on the loose. Is he really that good, or do you guys just not care?"
"He killed his brother, supposedly," Shikamaru said, "although there weren't any witnesses besides another Akatsuki member."
"Other than that he has been largely benign," Neji said, in a sincere attempt to defend his village. "There were other priorities at the time, and it is hard to find someone who is not actively drawing attention to themselves. That has changed."
"I'll say it did, he's back in grand style."
Which was true. No one had heard anything about Sasuke since the Akatsuki had collapsed...he'd simply vanished. And because he was just a deserter and not really a criminal, ANBU and its hunter-nin had devoted precious little effort to uncovering him. There were other targets more intent on fomenting rebellion, murder, theft, and an endless list of other crimes.
But for whatever reason, the prodigal was back, and as Temari had said, he'd spent the last of his credit with Konohagakure and the rest of the ninja world. Kumogakure and Otogakure would be yowling for blood or repercussions soon, seeking vengeance for their dead. Tsunade would need a head to show them, and that was now his duty.
He still felt profoundly sorry for Sakura. Her image sprang to mind, curled up in pain and mourning, and it hurt him. He'd rarely seen her truly upset, and she was generally cheerful enough to make the very notion seem alien and unlike her. She got angry rather than succumb to tears in most cases, a far cry from her younger days, but he worried. She treated sorrow in the same way as all her other emotions, and that was in the extreme.
Even putting aside the old, emotional wounds she was bound to have that he would not understand, at the very least he understood the significance of being a part of a team. It had taken him more time than it should have, but there was an understanding and an unspoken bond that formed between any group of people that fought, and lived, and even died together the way a cell did.
More than he would admit, he missed working alongside his old team mates -- they'd stayed in the ANBU when he'd left -- Lee with his dependable enthusiasm, Ten Ten with her motherly caution, and the way the three of them could tear through opposition without speaking or even signaling each other.
And for all the grief he'd put Lee through, and for all the ridiculous garbage Lee had spouted back at him, they'd been the only family he'd been able to turn to when he'd been at his worst. The first people who could see past his juuin and the anger that had consumed him, and were patient and tolerant enough to put up with it.
He was fortunate...no, he corrected himself, Sakura was unfortunate to have acquired and then lost a teammate even stupider than himself.
They stopped somewhere in the darkness, and the thin, gnarled branches of a copse of trees formed a flimsy roof against the dim light of the moon. Shikamaru and Temari took first watch, as they'd had the opportunity to sleep during the day, and there was a low buzz as Shino let fly a small cloud of his sleepless, ever vigilant beetles.
The wasteland was cold at night, bitten by desert winds with the same intensity as it was baked by the sun during the day.
Neji unfurled his blanket and wrapped it around himself, hoping he'd be there to comfort her when Sakura found out they'd had to kill the Uchiha.
OoOoOoO
Hinata had not heard a word from Sakura since they had left the village behind.
They were taking a short rest, about as much of a stop as they could afford, considering that they were hours behind the team they were meant to reinforce. It also gave them a chance to review the scrolls Tsunade had given them, and Hinata had already skimmed through hers, abusing the byakugan to read it three lines at a time without completely unrolling it.
"That's...that's good to know," she said, and while it was the breeze that made her shiver, she was fairly sure her new knowledge was perfectly capable of provoking the same reaction. "Even so...I'm not sure I feel ready."
Sakura looked up, distracted.
"Yeah," she said. "I suppose this is good to know, assuming it is him."
"I've never known Shikamaru to be wrong," Hinata said, and Sakura flinched visibly.
"No. No, he usually isn't, Hinata, but I still can't...believe it. Sasuke might be a lot of things, but he isn't a monster. And Shikamaru doesn't really know it's him. Maybe it makes sense, logically, but no one's seen him yet."
In a way, Hinata also wished she was right.
"I just want everyone home safely," she said, and she could see their faces swimming among the shards of her memory. Kiba and Akamaru tossing each other around a field, teeth grinning and tongues wagging; Haruka trying and failing again and again to set a log on fire until she got it and passed out; Neji with his tutorial patronizing as they traded blows in the courtyard; Shino and the stoic silence that bespoke a supreme confidence. She needed to see them again.
And if they risked their lives on a regular basis, it wasn't every day she knew what they were up against, and it wasn't every day that it was anywhere near this bad.
"Me too," Sakura said. "We'll see them, soon. They'll come back, they have to come back."
Sakura flicked the cap off her water bottle and drank, but she was slow about it and hesitant in her movements.
"Sakura...what if it is him? What will you do?"
"If it is..," she said, barely a murmur, and she looked away, eyes drifting into the forest, "...I want answers. If he's done all this, I want to know why. Even if there is no reason good enough."
"You know we'll probably have to fight him." Hinata gave her scroll a little wave. "And all this. We might not be able to find Neji and the others before we find him."
She hated what she was saying, because it wasn't like her to doubt those around her, especially not a friend, and especially not one as old and as good as Sakura was.
"I just...I need to know you'll be there for me. I won't be able to do this myself."
She looked back, and Hinata caught just the barest sliver of a sullen anger peeking out from behind her melancholy, a glowering ember in a gray morass.
"You won't have to," Sakura said. "If it's not him, then that's no problem. And if it is...then he'll have to go through me."
"That...that means a lot to me."
Sakura sighed, and there was injury on her breath.
"I...haven't ever told anyone this," she said, the hurt leaking into her tone, "and I'll never say it again, Hinata, so don't tell Naruto, please. I've...never actually forgiven Sasuke for what he did to us. I know it's not healthy...but I can't."
"It's safe with me, I promise."
"No matter what, he isn't getting away again. Not from me. Come on, we should get going. We're still far away."
Sakura stood and brushed herself off, tucking her bottle back into its strap. She made some seals and touched her eyes, invoking the basic night-vision jutsu everyone learned in the academy. Hinata didn't bother, merely leaving her byakugan active, already used to navigating in the ghost world of outlines and grey scale it provided her.
In all but the worst case scenario, she knew Kiba, Shino, and Neji would survive somehow. They were competent and tough, and had always been. She worried most for Haruka, who was still young to her job, a work in progress, and still vulnerable. It did not help her peace of mind to know that it was specifically genin cells that were being hunted down and destroyed.
The cascade of questions and fear was endless, and though she tried not to dwell on them as she followed the sparking golden glow of Sakura's chakra through the forest, she couldn't avoid them.
As much as she loved Haruka, and as much as she knew Sakura did as well, there was still only one person who could rightfully claim to love her most, and that was, without a doubt, Naruto himself.
She remembered well the day the girl had come shrieking into their lives. Naruto had run into her near the hospital -- she'd been visiting Hanabi, who'd gotten careless -- and he'd recruited her right away to help with some kind of medical emergency. She'd been confused and flustered but had followed him anyway, until they'd run into Neji with the baby in his arms.
Unlike everything else Naruto had ever done in his life, his decision to adopt Haruka was not done on impulse. She remembered meeting him the second time, again at the hospital, and again after she'd been to see Hanabi. Dark circles had ringed his eyes, and he'd still been wearing the same clothes he had the day before. She hadn't even been sure he'd seen her and her shy little wave until he stopped in front of her and asked her point-blank if she thought he'd make a good father.
She remembered stammering out that of course he would, and listed off all the things that she very secretly loved about him. She remembered, and it would be criminal to forget, the smile that had gradually crept across his face before he'd clapped her on the shoulder, thanked her, and stormed into the maternity ward to demand custody.
She'd had to tell him it didn't work that way, that there was paperwork to fill out and people to talk to, and he'd been confused and frustrated by all the bureaucracy until such time as he actually pulled it off a week and a half later.
The rest was history.
Naruto had proved her blind faith well-placed, and he'd justified it every day he spent with his daughter. He'd weathered the scrutiny placed on him with good cheer and she doubted there was another girl in the village who'd had a better upbringing.
At the same time, she'd made good on her promise to help, filling in during his absences, teaching the girl how to be one, and making sure that she was being fed more than just instant noodles.
Hyuuga Hinata, heir to unfathomable wealth and status, and kunoichi of a noble clan, was kissed for the first time in the hallway of a small apartment while she was carrying soup to a sick little orphan girl.
But the Uchiha had always been there, lingering unseen in the background, and she knew he still dreamed of finding him and mending him, rehabilitating him so they could be brothers once more.
It was a consuming obsession, and she was secretly, selfishly ecstatic that Naruto and Haruka had been brought together -- Haruka was an anchor, holding him back from the promise that he held dearest, holding him in a safe harbor. Keeping him in Hinata's reach, keeping him close to her.
She knew she was guilty...guilty of using him, guilty of hoping he'd bring deliverance for her and her clan. She loved him, truly she did, but she needed him too, needed him for a mercenary purpose. She would have given anything for a simple romance, for the innocent dreams of the girl she'd once been...but she didn't have that option any more.
She had her own reasons to prevent the Uchiha from escaping. She needed to cut him out of the world, eviscerate Naruto's dream so her own would have a chance to flower. She'd been granted this opportunity, and as much as she despised herself in that moment for feeling the way she did, so too did she revel in it.
Nothing good could come of this, she knew. There were no possible outcomes between Naruto losing a brother, losing a daughter, or both.
"Sakura?"
"Mm?"
"I was just thinking...Naruto would have wanted to be here."
"I know," she said, sliding across the top of another wide branch before launching into another leap. "I'm not looking forward to telling him."
"I was thinking the same," she said, wanting to let it all spill out, to confess and be forgiven for her selfish desires, but she didn't. "I hope he can forgive me."
I hope you can forgive me too, she wanted say.
Sakura's short burst of laughter was bitter and hard, an ugly, animalistic sound in the darkness.
"I wouldn't worry about that," she said. "He won't blame you. Especially not you."
"He'll blame himself, too. He still does...and I can't bear to see him like that."
"...so do I, Hinata. Sometimes."
"Why? You didn't...neither of you ever did anything to..."
Hinata leaned to one side to avoid a low-hanging branch, and just caught the end of a short shake of Sakura's head.
"I wish it were that easy. We loved him, you know. In different ways, but whatever. You find excuses, you find reasons. Little things you did, or didn't do, or that you think you should have done. If only we'd tried harder, if only we'd said this, or..."
Hinata found a point of reference, buried in her memories. She'd done all manner of things to win back affection, or even just to have her presence acknowledged in her own house. How often she tried to get people to look at her as something other than weak, despite the seemingly insurmountable hopelessness that had taken up residence in her heart. How pathetic she must have seemed, railing against a system that expected perfection from the word go.
She knew better, now. People changed but slowly, and they had to be willing. She was lucky Neji had found himself, lucky that Hanabi had listened to her and seen her way.
"I understand," she said. "It stays with you, doesn't it? And it eats away until you can let it go."
"It does," Sakura said, and she fell silent again.
Hinata didn't say any more.
OoOoOoO
Ino knew she'd failed the instant her mind separated from her body.
In the fraction of a second between the time she'd finished the last hand seal and the sweeping darkness that threw itself around her every time she used a possession technique, she'd glimpsed the aura of burning lightning enveloping her target and realized to her horror that there was no way it was going to connect.
And it was all her fault.
She'd wasted all of Kiba's effort and now she was probably going to die.
In the slow, ethereal darkness of what she'd come to know as limbo, she had all the time in the world to reflect upon her mistake, and she couldn't help but to dwell upon it. It was a just punishment, assuming there wasn't an afterlife in which she could continue to castigate herself for all eternity.
She'd gotten greedy.
There were two total possession techniques that she'd learned. One, the most basic, could be triggered with a single, rapid seal. With it, she could occupy a target's body, force them to do whatever she chose. It was a heady rush, an unparalleled power trip, but it had its drawbacks. If her host was injured, so too would she be.
The second technique was much more involved, more sophisticated, more baroque in its complexity, but the time, effort, and chakra that went into it paid off with profound consequences: injuries were not transferred. She could act with impunity, even forcing a person to inflict fatal wounds upon themselves at no risk to herself.
An assassination technique, and one she rarely used both because she rarely had the time or the security to use it.
She'd gambled. She'd lost.
The temptation, though! Kiba had done such a brilliant job, she'd not seen it coming, hadn't realized just how disoriented Sasuke had become until Kiba had him completely locked down. She'd known she had all the time in the world, all the time to guarantee victory, to put down the errant Uchiha for good, to make certain they'd all escape.
She'd delayed just a little too long.
That infinitesimal flash of electric blue prophesied death for them all, and she wished she could tell them all that she was sorry. Sorry she'd left Kiba in the lurch, injured and desperate, trying to protect six genin, a big dog, and her own immobile ass. Sorry she'd left her team and his in the lurch. Sorry she'd squandered their faith in her.
But despite that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, she still had faith in them. She'd trained her team and knew they were excellent, Kiba's was impressive...and Kiba had never, ever, let anyone down. He wasn't a genius, he wasn't the strongest, or the most determined, or the bravest, even. He was reliable, and that was good enough.
While she was quite literally out of her head, there was really nothing she could do. It was like swimming, like diving into the lake and letting yourself sink beneath the surface, falling into the cold, weightless void of the water.
She had three minutes, like holding a long, suffocated breath. She could drown in here, in this emptiness, lost forever in the space between souls and the bodies that anchored them to the corporeal world. She could feel the pull of her body, groping in the dark, a sightless drooling imbecile, knowing it had lost something but not knowing what.
Her momentum diminished, if it could be called that, and she began her agonizingly slow return. At least her body still lived, though she could say nothing of those waiting for her.
Around her strobed the minds of the others. She was too far to touch, to know what they thought, but what they felt bled into limbo. There was panic and fear, cold condescension, and hell-bitten fury. They stormed in and out of her awareness, swirling past as they maneuvered around each other, and every now and again the chaos was punctured by pain.
She was so close now, so close to herself, impotently wishing the process was faster as she struggled her way home...and found it.
Coming back was always disorienting. Jagged shards of sensation clashed, colours mixed and sounds echoed as her brain fought to reconcile its environment with its owner, and under these conditions it was a harrowing experience.
Pain blossomed through her as she rolled across the grass; she realized she'd been kicked. And then, as she turned over and her eyes blinked and refocused on the long, shining blade lifting out of the dirt only a foot or two away, she realized she'd been saved. Her hearing finally resolved as she was picking herself up and trying to make her fingers work again, and she could hear Kiba shouting and an irregular clicking in the background.
He was cursing and taunting, both at once, doing what he did best: being an irritating as hell son of a bitch.
"...cking smells, huh? Can't fool the nose, can you?"
He was weaving around, turning this way and that, head bobbing erratically with every pronounced sniff. He was blind or at least unable to trust his sight, but still fighting, and there was a glazed, uncoordinated look in his eyes.
She hauled herself up onto her hands and knees, and she recognized the friendly hands of her boys helping her upright. Nanami flickered into her field of view, laid her palms on Kiba's back and tried to dispel the illusion placed on him -- twice, unsuccessfully, since it was too much for her. He was bleeding profusely, she noticed, his jacket torn, where he'd been slashed twice, and his clothes glistened down to his knees in the firelight.
He had other injuries too, she noticed, a gash across his left forearm and burns across his right shoulder where the sleeve had gone missing.
Ino's eyes finally came into full focus, and she found the source of the mysterious clicking at the same time it stopped; Akamaru was jumping and dodging through the grass, a snake in his jaws. He shook his head hard, snapping its neck as he lashed it through the air before darting in to try again with another of the dozens that pursued him.
Her feet wouldn't respond fast enough, and Kiba spoke again before she could stop him and tell him to wait.
"Gotcha," Kiba said after a sniff, and cracked his neck.
It must have been the first time in minutes, because there was a hungry gleam boiling in eyes. He hunched down and his torso flexed, wringing more blood from his wounds, and the gatsuuga made itself heard again.
She shouted a warning, but it was too late and it was lost in the sound of the wind anyway.
Downrange, Sasuke took two steps forward, uninjured besides the trickle of blood making its way down his face and the slight limp in one leg, and he watched as Kiba sailed harmlessly past. There was something calculating in the way his red eyes shifted away from the howling storm of the gatsuuga and settled on a point not far from where Kiba had started.
Her blood went cold.
Kiba came out of his final spin to find Sasuke waiting for him, sword drawn. He didn't have to stab or slash, he just stood, bracing the sword against Kiba's landing, and Ino shrieked as it carved a long spiral up the length of his entire body.
He crumpled into the ground, silent.
Akamaru smashed a snake into the ground and howled, and she saw more snakes rear up in the grass, keeping him away from his master.
The shock drove strength back into her limbs. She moved on reflex, lashing out with a left-handed brace of shuriken as her right pulled a kunai into a backhand grip and she lunged.
Sasuke spun away from the shuriken and pushed her attack to the side, shrugging her off. Blood -- Kiba's blood -- showered off his sword as her weapon glided along its edge. Not to be denied, she slipped forward and kicked.
She didn't miss, either, but the floating sensation of her foot pushing through air where Sasuke's head appeared to be was an immense frustration.
"Shit," she said, teeth grinding together, and she forced a purge of her chakra. Already she was being harassed with illusions, and from the apparently haphazard pattern of the genin's attacks, she wasn't the only one.
"Takeshi! See to those cuts!"
He wasn't doing much good wasting energy on fruitless attacks anyway, and she took up a position just ahead of his body. If Sasuke wanted to finish him, he'd have to go through her. Kiba had earned at least that much.
She found Sasuke at standoff distance, at least, what she presumed was him, and just to be sure she purged herself again. You just stay there, she thought, pulling another two kunai. She wrapped them in chakra, and she knew the seals she was making betrayed her, but she threw them anyway.
Kiba had shown him unyielding defiance and she was not going to do any less.
As the kunai angled in on him, Sasuke moved a little at first, and then more he realized they were changing course to converge on him. Ino grinned; surprise widened his eyes a little when a near miss cut through more than just his sleeve. Just a nick, but a good start. If nothing else, it meant maybe his insight wasn't quite as good as she'd assumed. Maybe he was still reeling from the hit he'd taken. Maybe he didn't realize she'd learned to play a little with the wind and not just the water.
It was still hard trying to do this without looking at him, trying to avoid looking into his eyes.
He put some distance between himself and the pursuing kunai, and then wasted all three with a single fireball in spectacularly efficient fashion, stripping them of her chakra and dropping them lifeless to the ground.
But he was closer now. She cleared herself a third time just to be sure she wasn't chasing a ghost, and attacked. A graze...just a graze, but the point of kunai slipped across the top of Sasuke's back before he'd quite realized she was there, or even that fast. He turned to meet her, sword rushing up from below, and she blocked it.
Her palm lashed out at shoulder-height, her nails a foundation for the blades of wind that sprang from them, and she raked them through his face. Skin split, bone splintered, and deep lacerations fissured through him where she cut.
A wry smile sprang to her lips, and she knew she'd been had.
She knew partly because the clone faded into a cloud of dust, partly because she was suddenly aware of Sasuke's presence behind her, and partly because of the two and a half feet of hardened steel that protruded clear through her stomach and the surge of electricity that swept her mind clear of anything but unrelenting agony.
She wasn't sure what to think as she staggered and listened to the echoes of her scream. Sasuke pulled his sword free, and a second wave of pain lanced through her. She fell first to her knees, wondering why landing in the gravel didn't hurt as much as it should have. She wondered if she was bleeding internally, because there wasn't nearly as much blood as she thought there should have been. And then she tipped over and rolled.
Somehow, Kiba was still conscious, and she met his eyes as Sasuke stepped over her and advanced on Takeshi, who'd still been trying to stop him from bleeding.
"I'm sorry," she mouthed, only to realize he was trying to say the same.
Takeshi was frozen, torn between staying with Kiba and running for his life, and Sasuke reached down and lifted him by the face as though he was only so much garbage.
She couldn't watch.
She heard Takeshi cry out and run, amid the crackle of flames, and she forced her eyes open again. There was fire, new fire raining down on the Uchiha, short bursts of it. Sasuke dodged and then somehow moved directly into the next flaming hailstone and winced for the first time as it exploded against his chest.
"Get away from them!"
Haruka ran between Sasuke and Kiba, punctuating her words with quick, vehement thrusts of her kunai. For some reason, Sasuke just wasn't dodging as well as he should have been, and Ino found herself puzzled.
Sasuke moved aside just one more time, and then he dropped his sword and wrapped both hands around Haruka's neck, lifting her. Impossibly, Kiba's hand closed around a fallen kunai and with a last desperate burst, he stabbed at Sasuke's foot.
Sasuke avoided it without even looking. He seemed frozen, staring at Haruka as she kicked at him, cursing him to hell and back again, but Ino's eyes were locked on Kiba's hand, ever defiant with his middle finger raised in a salute of hatred until he lost consciousness.
If he could do it, so could she.
Despite the pain, she wrenched her left arm out from under her useless body, pressed her thumbs to her forefingers, and let her mind fly.
There was a fleeting moment of uncertainty as she drifted through limbo, and then she felt the connection form. She stared down, sharing Sasuke's sight, and dropped Haruka out of shock.
Haruka's irises, black since before the first day Sakura had asked her to baby-sit, had become a vibrant crimson, and there were a handful of black points flying circles around her pupils. Somewhere behind the brick wall she'd slammed down between herself and Sasuke's mind, she could hear incredible, endless screams of rage.
OoOoOoO
"So which one is snoring?"
Temari gave Shikamaru a sly little smile and even the near-total darkness couldn't hide the amusement in her eyes.
"Neither one," he said, and he wondered if the tree she'd picked to sit against was as lumpy and uncomfortable for her as it was for him.
"If that's not snoring, then I don't know what is."
"I can barely hear it," he said, dropping his voice a few decibels to remind her she should probably do the same.
"So you concede someone is snoring. Which one?"
Shikamaru finally glanced over his shoulder. It was probably Neji, he figured, sitting against another tree with a field blanket over his shoulders, his head inclined just far enough forward to impede him from taking breath easily. Shino, oddly, was laid out like a board, hands folded over his belly, communing in silence with the ground. He looked like a corpse, but if that was how he was comfortable, so be it.
"Let them sleep," he said. "It's our watch."
Neji looked as though he was having enough difficulty sleeping well as it was, and an amused Temari was probably the worst variety because she was utterly merciless when she wanted to be irritating. He wouldn't wish her on anyone, much less Neji who was well known to be extremely irritable under the right circumstances.
"You bore."
She picked up a pebble and her body shook against his as she threw it into the distance, and it pinked off of something hard before fading into the night.
"Alright," she said, and sighed perhaps too melodramatically to be entirely sincere, "you're not biting tonight, which means you really are worried. It can't be that bad, can it?"
He didn't answer right away, and she jostled him in the ribs with an elbow.
"Well?"
"Can't say either way for sure," he said quietly, still trying to remind her to keep her voice down. "Although that's not what I'm thinking."
"You know I'm not going to be happy if you make me guess at this all night."
He didn't answer right away, lifting his eyes back to the speckled dome of the heavens. There were so many stars in the wilderness, in this realm so almost completely devoid of habitation.
He knew it was the lights that chased away the stars. People feared the dark, lit their fires and cowered in the tepid light they could build and understand. They forgot how unutterably huge and profound the universe was while they hid away from it and pretended they knew everything they would ever need to know.
It was an easy mistake to make. Even out on this open plain the horizon circumscribed what appeared to be a vast area. Some people, those few who herded here, might never leave that circle their entire lives. But on the whole, it was an infinitesimal fraction of the universe.
He'd made that mistake once, assuming he could quietly slink away into his own corner and live unmolested by the world, but the world came to him anyway. It had a tendency to do that.
Asuma had tried to teach him there were things bigger than himself, and Asuma had died before he'd entirely realized it. He'd regret that forever.
"This is bigger than it looks," he said. "There are consequences here for a lot of people. I don't think we can afford to fail at this."
"Of course not." Temari chucked another stone into the night, and he never heard it land. "If we don't get this guy, Oto and Kumo are going to be tripping all over each other demanding the right to go looking for him themselves, and we'd be hard pressed to deny them given how over-stretched both our countries are at the moment. They'll be asking for all kinds of concessions neither of us can afford."
"It's not just that. That, we could handle. It's...largely internal."
"It can't possibly spark an internecine conflict. You said it yourself, the Uchiha are a dead clan."
"No, nothing that overt. It's...subtle, but it changes everything."
Temari let her head tip over to bounce off his skull. She didn't pull it away.
"You worry too much," she said, and there was still curiosity in her voice, but she left it unsaid. She'd decided whatever he was worrying about fell too far out of her jurisdiction and was forcing herself to leave it at that, he knew.
"You don't worry enough."
"Dumbass," she lied.
"Bitch," he lied.
Her sandy hair scratched against his neck and he tried not to notice too much.
"So," she said, a jaw too delicate for her words moving against his shoulder, "how do we kill this bastard? You've thought about it, I hope."
"Ugh." Shikamaru felt a headache coming on, although he was probably just projecting. "That's the problem."
"Sure is. So? Remember I really don't know anything about this guy."
"He's fast, clever, and his blood-line's terrible -- if I remember right, he can see chakra and anticipate movement, so anything short of total surprise and we might as well not have bothered. You're not exactly subtle, so you're either going to be bait or relegated to support."
Temari bit him on the shoulder because she couldn't be bothered to move the rest of her, and he winced as her hair got in his eyes.
"I can too be subtle. I remember reading one of your reports about this once, it was incomplete and really kind of useless."
"You just made my point, you know. It's not well documented, no," he said, scratching idly at the stubble that had sprouted up over the last two days. He'd forgotten to shave and it was getting annoying. "At least we have some experience dealing with it; he's not the first in that family to go rogue. Kakashi added a lot to that file, too. In any case, we should be able to do it with the people we have here, now."
"How so?"
"We can keep him contained, force him to go places he doesn't want to, and keep him in close combat with Neji. If at all possible I'd like to keep Shino completely under wraps until he can surprise him and suck him dry. The biggest problem is genjutsu, really, which is why I'd like to get the jump on him."
"Assuming we can find him," Temari said. "This is a big place, and even if he is still hanging around here waiting for more teams to come through, we still have hundreds of square kilometers to comb through."
"That's why we have those two."
Temari moved, finally, turning to face him. His arm had been falling asleep, and she knelt on one knee, propping her chin on the backs of her fingers. In the starlight, she was defined more by the shadows that outlined her features, but their eyes met anyway. She liked to be face to face when they were talking business.
"Even with those two we're going to be out here for a long time, Shikamaru. You know just as well as I do it takes days to find even regular bandits. It took us months to pacify this place once the alliance was formalized and trade opened up. I mean, even this Uchiha guy and his crazy eyes missed the Kirigakure team on that first day."
"None of them had black hair, and he doesn't have telescopic vision like the Hyuugas do anyway. He's not completely indiscrimi...wait."
There was something else, another assumption that had lead him astray. He'd made the same mistake again, drawn limits around what he imagined was the entire world, missed a step. It was such an easy mistake to make.
"That's what we forgot," he said, frowning. "We assumed from the start that those teams ran into a missing-nin who murdered them."
"...that's still what happened," Temari said, picking her words slowly, waiting for him to finish thinking. "Even if he is from your village."
"Yes," he said, "but we never revisited that assumption. I never stopped to think about it again, even after we figured out that he was looking for specific genin."
"So?"
"Temari, he was looking for very specific people, and he found them out here. Even with a good pair of binoculars, I'm not sure you could pick out hair colour reliably in the day, and you said your outpost was reporting flashes in the dark."
"He found three teams at night, kilometers apart from each other."
She fell back to a full kneel, resting her entire weight on his right shin, a hand over her mouth as she thought it through.
"He must have tracked them then," she said as she finished working it out. "They all had to report in at the outpost so we'd know they'd left the country. I signed them all out. But it was night, and even if we can all see in the dark when we need to, I'm not sure it would be good enough for reliable tracking unless he's an absolute expert."
"Even if he were," Shikamaru said, holding up three fingers, "that's three teams. Kilometers apart. He had to have followed them."
"They all passed through within a half-hour of each other. Clones, you think?"
"He's good enough his clones would be hard to detect. And, if the surprise was complete, the clones might have been enough to take out some of those jounin, especially if they weren't paying complete attention. There is supposed to be a truce on, after all."
"He was within at most binocular distance of the outpost and I didn't even know he was there. And we probably passed right by him when we went out to investigate..."
"We're in the wrong place," Shikamaru said, sitting up straight. Temari's eyes were dark and the murderous spark in her eyes lit and flared. "He went right back to the outpost after he was done to wait for the next round of dropouts."
"And we sent them on a detour, hours south of here. Oh, gods."
She stood and strode over to where Neji and Shino were still fast asleep.
"Get up!" she shouted, and they were on their feet in combat stances before Shikamaru had finished dusting himself off. Temari had mentioned Ino's team had passed by the checkpoint already, the last time she'd called in to the outpost for an update -- and that meant that his own terrible underestimation of the situation had put her and her students at risk. Not to count Kiba, who he'd already failed once before.
"We're in the wrong place," he said, sighing with the weight of the revelation. "He's been following the teams right from the other border, which means we're at least three to four hours out of position."
Neji was slow to stand down, but gradually the veins around his eyes diminished into his skin.
"Then we need to get moving," he said, unflappable again, letting his sense of professionalism take reign once more. "As soon as possible."
"You've not had a chance to sleep," Shino said, covering his eyes with his sunglasses despite the darkness.
"I'll be fine," Temari said. "Like I said earlier, we got to sleep most of the day already."
"Like she said. We need to go, now."
OoOoOoO
It was bedlam.
Sakura and Hinata touched soil for the first time in miles outside the front gates of Konohagure's little border fort, and they hit the ground running. It was thanks to Hinata's byakugan that they'd had any kind of advance warning, and a pair of synchronized clicks announced a their medical kits being unstrapped as they burst through the gates into a worst case scenario.
Between Akamaru's desperate howling, the shouting of the resident medic trying to keep things under control, the genin screaming in fearful encouragement, and the wailing of those who'd already lost their cool, neither of them had any good idea of exactly what was happening.
"Sitrep!" Sakura said, her voice a harsh bark underlined with the confident imperative of a commanding officer, and it grabbed the medic's attention immediately as she and Hinata came through the door.
"Two trauma cases," he said, hands still glowing green with chakra as he tried to close what were absolutely some of the most heinous and extensive wounds she'd ever seen on any one person. "Massive lacerations, major blood loss here. The other, she just fainted. I was hoping she'd hold out but she's got one of the genin working on her now."
Hinata identified the patient before Sakura could make him out.
"Kiba!" she yelped, sharing the same anguished timbre with Kiba's hound, who was pacing fretfully outside in the courtyard, clearly wanting to help but aware he'd only get underfoot. "Sakura, I've got this."
She let Hinata go, and turned to find the other patient, covered in blood and laid out on another table.
"Oh, gods," she said in a halted breath, and she was kneeling on the bench, medical bag already half open. "Ino, honey."
"She's still...she's still breathing, ma'am," the genin said, a boy with dark hair, and she could tell from the way his shoulders shook and his breath hitched that he was panicking. "I healed her! I know I did, and she was okay and now I don't know what to do!"
"Alright, you did fine," she said, trying to keep her voice as smooth and calming as possible while she double checked her friend's breathing. "It's going to be okay, now can you tell me what happened?"
She was already checking Ino for injuries, her hands running down the sides of her body in search of open wounds. Ino's pulse was thready and weak, but she was still alive and still kicking if only barely. Her face was draped in blood, her long hair stained dark and stringy with clot, and there was something wrong with her eye, but that could wait if she'd been conscious earlier.
"Sword," the genin said, trying to keep himself from falling apart and succeeding only a little better now. He put a hand on her upper abdomen. "Here. But I closed the wound! Like she showed me!"
Sakura let her hands skim over the rest of Ino's torso. She'd been bleeding there, too, and her body was wet with it, but as the genin had said, she no longer had any open wounds.
Her fingers probed the spot the genin indicated, and Ino's belly was hard and swollen.
"It's internal, sweetheart, she's hemorrhaging," she said, finding her gloves, "I got this."
The genin watched in awe as she extended a scalpel of chakra from two fingers and cut back through the same hole he'd already sealed. She worked quietly, giving him instructions, giving him hope and doing her best to share her feigned serenity.
Ino's liver was a bit of a mess.
Whatever sword had pierced her had cut nearly straight through her body, thankfully missing her spine and aorta by little more than a few centimeters. Only a few minor arteries hadn't been spared. But where it had failed to kill her immediately, it made certain that she would have died not too long after.
Not only had it cut clear through her, there was burning, and Ino was fortunate that whatever fire or lightning had hurt her had also cauterized a fair amount of the damage. Not all, but clearly enough to bring her this far alive and, apparently, keeping Kiba stable all the while.
"What's your name?" she asked, all the while sucking the black, bile-stained blood out of Ino's abdominal cavity with a short piece of sterile rubber tubing and a steady flow of her own chakra.
"Takeshi. Nakajima Takeshi," he said, and he looked uncomfortable with his assigned role of holding apart his teacher's abdominal muscles.
"You're doing fine, Takeshi."
In the end, she had to cut out what remained of the three left-most lobes, and then cauterize and seal the vessels that had fed them. Maybe one day Ino would thank her for helping her lose a couple of pounds, but today wasn't going to be that day.
When she was done, she sucked out what blood remained in the wound, and shook some antibiotic powder over everything. She helped Takeshi do a somewhat more elegant job than he'd done the first time around, and they were both gratified to feel Ino's pulse strengthen, if only just a little. Rules of triage dictated that Ino's eye would have to wait for now.
She left Takeshi in charge, asking him to keep a very, very close watch on her condition. Ino still needed blood, but she was out of immediate danger, and Kiba was still in worse shape.
The local medic had been reduced to pumping Kiba's heart for him and helping him breathe, all while Hinata frantically pulled together the profound, bleeding gashes on his limbs and tried to close them. Chakra alone wasn't enough for injuries this severe, and she'd resorted to old-fashioned needle and surgical thread. She worked wordlessly in segments, from the deepest cuts to the surface, and she was going as quickly as she could, but Kiba was still bleeding out.
He had burns, too, burns inside the cuts, meticulously applied and Sakura realized that Ino had ordered them to help control what bleeding she could. It would complicate recovery, no doubt, but it was saving his life. She hoped it wouldn't cost him his arms, but that was something for the hospital to worry about later.
For now, she merely fished a hand into her own bag, changed into a fresh pair of gloves, and got to work.
In the end, they managed to get them both somewhat stable. Kiba's wounds were closed, but they'd need major reconstruction and probably some of the powerful, life saving seals she didn't have access to here.
If Ino's liver was a mess, her right eye was worse.
It had been healed, a little; sealed was perhaps a better word, since it looked like Ino had done what appeared to be a rushed, half-assed job before gluing her eyelids shut over it.
It was grotesque to look at, and it was clear her eyeball had been perforated with a vertical, inch and a half gash through the centre of her iris.
"What did you do, Ino?"
"She...I don't know. She did that thing where she goes in someone's head, and when she came back it was bleeding everywhere and she was screaming."
Ino coughed, and Sakura had Takeshi hold her head still and hold the eyelids back while she worked. He couldn't look, and she didn't blame him. There wasn't much she could do at this point besides try to reconstruct its overall shape so it wouldn't have to be excised...but Ino was going to lose sight in this eye.
"Best I can do," Sakura said, in a low voice, sealing the eyelids shut again with the same kind of chakra bandage, and fashioning a patch out of gauze to keep it protected. "Whoever you did this to, sweetheart, he's hurting."
Outside, Hinata was helping the garrison rig up a basic sledge and lashing it to Akamaru, who whimpered and paced on the spot, paws lifting and falling with nervous energy.
"I know you can understand me," Hinata said, softly, staring into Akamaru's bright black eyes and the flicker of the customs house lights reflected there. "You need to carry them home, okay? Can you do that?"
Akamaru whined and licked at Hinata's face, and Sakura could only assume it was a yes. For her part, she was busy strapping her patients down as carefully as possible, with the chuunin medic's help, and Takeshi's as well.
Ino coughed again, and her remaining eye fluttered open.
"Sa...Sakura?" she said, tentatively, as though she couldn't believe her sight. Her normally melodious voice was a horrid croak.
"It's me." Sakura took her hand carefully, reassuringly. "It's me."
"Wh'r's Ki...Kiba?"
Her pale eye flashed in its socket, trying to look around despite the restraints Sakura had imposed on her body.
"He's not out of trouble yet," she said, honest. "He's...in critical condition, but if he gets home fast...he might just make it. I'm sending the medic here, the garrison team, and the Nakajima boy home with you, and all the appropriate blood from the local stash. It's the best I can do."
"Th...th...tha..."
Tears welled up and spilled down Ino's cheek, smudging the blood and marring its morbid coat with a lighter trail.
"I know. It's okay. I'm going to put you under now, okay? You need to rest."
Ino's hand tightened on hers with unnatural strength for someone in her condition.
"W...wait... It...was...Ss...Sas...ke," she finally groaned, and Sakura couldn't find it in herself to disbelieve anymore. "T...took...h's...his fuck'n eye."
There was a proud, sad little smile ghosting on her lips, and Ino's hand relaxed, tacit permission for her sedative.
Sakura injected her with her own tears preparing to cascade. Her best friend wasn't ever supposed to be this way, and the worry that had quietly hounded her since they'd left Konoha was cut with the guilt that she'd worried almost as much that Sasuke was responsible for this as she'd worried for Ino's safety.
Akamaru took off into the night with his escort, his injured, and a mournful look, his usual loping run replaced by a smooth, even trot. Every step looked as though he wanted to move faster, but he was doing his best. A small voice she knew well made her look back.
"What about us, Hinata?"
The remaining genin stood in the courtyard, just as badly stained with blood and shock written on their faces. Haruka had her face buried in Hinata's back, arms wrapped around her waist as tightly as possible.
There were the other two girls from Kiba's team, not far, holding on to each other with the same desperate strength, and it looked like Haruka had just left them. The two other boys from Ino's team sat near each other, one of them pulling up grass and tossing it away with an absent look on his face. They were clustered together by team, little families leaning on each other for support in their own ways.
"Is anyone else injured?" Hinata said, loosening Haruka's arms just enough to turn around and hug her back. They all shook their heads, and Sakura couldn't help but pity them. It wasn't every team that went through a trial by fire this intense, and they were still children after all.
Hinata went on, her voice soft but immensely strong, a crutch for them to lean on as they found their own strength.
"Then what I need you to do is to follow them. Your new mission is to make sure they get home as quickly and safely as possible. They're counting on you. Do you understand me?"
One of the boys got shakily to his feet and nodded ever so slowly.
"Y...yeah. Right. Come on, Dai."
The shorter girl on Kiba's team, the one Sakura liked because she was normally such a little spitfire, took a hesitant step, and started pulling the Aburame girl behind her.
"Kiyoka...Haruka...let's go."
"You won't be followed," Hinata said. "I promise. Sakura and I, we'll make sure you won't be."
"Hinata...Aunt Sakura..." Haruka reluctantly let go of Hinata, and took a step back into the arms of her team mates. "He's dangerous."
"We'll be alright," Sakura said, although she wasn't sure she believed it. "Go home with your teachers, okay? We'll see you when we get back."
"Be...be careful," Haruka said, and the light from the building caught her eyes as she turned ran out to follow Akamaru and the injured with the rest of her team.
Sakura found herself speechless.
Uzumaki Haruka had the sharingan.