Examination: Self
Despite the fact that they'd only had a paltry few hours of sleep, Shikamaru thought Neji and Shino seemed no worse for the wear as they raced through a warm, windless night. Which was good; a strategist could only do so much with the tools he was provided, and while Shikamaru knew he was uncommonly good at making do with what he had, he had in his possession this moment some prodigious tools.
Not that it made their already accelerated pace any less urgent, and not that he was particularly confident about his chances at keeping a healthy margin for victory. Uchiha Sasuke was no slouch, and given he'd been on his own for such a long time, was no doubt well adapted to fighting on his own against stiff odds.
Shikamaru had a hard time conceiving of an outcome without injuries, and any scenario he could come up with where they all -- he, Temari, Neji, and Shino -- came out unscathed relied far too much on sheer chance for his comfort. He much preferred dealing with absolutes: facts and figures, established patterns and known quantities.
Even so, between them they carried more ability than was usually seen in any given team of ninjas, unusual in that all four of them were typically leading their own teams rather than united into one. He'd called in the big guns, and Tsunade had provided...and this knowledge made him fear all the more for Ino and her team.
The realization that Sasuke had been following teams right from Kaze no Kuni's border and assaulting them in a place where they could not reliably receive timely backup had driven a cold lance of ice into his chest. The facts were stark in their simplicity: Ino was wandering out here, in the dark, with three genin, one of which had black hair. She might as well have painted a bulls-eye on her chest labeled 'Apply Chidori Here'.
There wasn't much room for chance.
"Still worried about your old team-mate?"
Temari's words scattered between exertions as she slid through another dusty landing and gathered her legs beneath her for another jump into the darkness.
Shikamaru didn't say anything, but Temari nodded in the self-satisfied way that indicated she knew she was right.
"I won't tell you not to think about it, because you will," she said, "I will tell you I'd honestly rather have you thinking about what to do with us when we find him."
"I am," he said, although he knew it didn't sound too reassuring.
At least Chouji was probably safe. Temari was still getting radio reports from her outpost, and they'd trickled away as the last of the teams who'd failed the second round reached the border. Chouji's team hadn't ever arrived there, so they were probably still in Sunagakure preparing for the final round...which was infinitely preferable to the situation Ino was now in.
Even though she could be loud, irritating, and nosy, she was still Ino, and that made her among one of the most caring friends a person could have. If she meddled in your business, it was probably because she was trying to fix your problems. Or else she was digging up gossip she could hold over you later, but that usually didn't happen unless you made her angry.
Kiba was out there somewhere too, and Shikamaru's nearly eidetic memory provided details that did little to assuage him. There were two genin on his team, and though one was very clearly an Aburame born, he doubted that would stop Sasuke from homing in on the other.
And Uzumaki Haruka was an adopted orphan.
"Neji," he said, and he almost missed the reply to the air rushing in his ears.
"Hm."
"Wasn't there some kind of story behind the way Naruto ended up adopting your niece?"
"Yes. Sakura performed a cesarean on a wanderer who'd been bitten by a snake in the Forest of Death. I assisted her in the delivery, but Naruto was there as well. Why do you ask?"
"Did you ever find out who that woman was? I seem to remember you wanted to go through the archives around that time."
Neji shook his head, hair twisting behind him.
"No, we had no previous records of her existence. She may have been a foreigner, though. Sakura suggested she might be from Nami no Kuni. Certainly a civilian, I recall her chakra system was not well developed at all."
A foreigner. It wasn't particularly useful information, but compared to the list of exam participants he'd read through, albeit quasi-legally through Temari, it placed Haruka among a small subset of examinees of unknown or questionable origin. It wasn't exactly as though their papers stated such in explicit terms, but he'd compared the bingo book -- and Suna's, something else he wasn't supposed to have access to -- to the list of genin and the vast majority of them were from known ninja families.
Neji looked thoughtful, and he turned on his next leap, bounding backwards so he would face Shikamaru. Temari let slip the beginnings of a warning for Neji to watch his step, but realized just as quickly he could, in fact, see through the back of his head. She mumbled something about him showing off.
"The strangest thing I remember," he said, arms crossed over his chest, "is her eyes. She'd been trying to gouge them out, I thought, and Sakura told me the autopsy confirmed that. They suspected genjutsu was involved, as well."
That didn't mean much, unfortunately.
Neji turned to continue on forward, mild discomfort showing on his face with his latest step, but another flicker of thought creased his eyebrows beneath his hitaiate.
"No, I apologize. The strangest thing...Sakura very nearly saved that woman. We both felt that her life had been saved, until I called Sakura by her maiden name. It wasn't until then that the woman began seizing and died. Neither of us could figure out why."
"Bad timing, maybe?" Shikamaru said, and Neji pursed his lips.
"No," he said, after a pause. "It is a possibility, but I know Sakura, and she is an exceptionally skilled medic. That woman died from fear, not from her injuries."
Shikamaru didn't like it. It was still too grey, an undefined solution sitting just out of reach, but the hints were adding up. It was rare for so many circumstantial snippets of information to come into such perfect coincidence, and given current events...the probabilities were stacking.
"I shouldn't say this," he said, after Neji had turned around again, "and it will need verification...but when you get back to Konohagakure, Neji, I would suggest you have your niece's blood checked out against the database."
All he got was an incredulous stare.
His radio chose that moment to raise from its stupor and bleep harshly. Shikamaru winced; he must have forgotten to plug in his earpiece again. He keyed the switch in mid-step, making a mental note to fix that once he had a chance to stop.
"Base, search team," he said. "What is it?"
He certainly wasn't expecting the name that filtered out through the speaker, tinny and shot through with static.
"Search team, this is Sakura," she said, her voice flush with stress and tinged with an agony he was ill-prepared to deal with. "Lady Tsunade got your last report, and Hinata and I are here as reinforcements. There's a problem, though."
"What's that?"
He'd stopped. Neji was frowning; no doubt because Sakura wasn't supposed to be here, and the history between her and the Uchiha besides. Conflicted was perhaps the best descriptor.
"Team...Team Five and Team Four," she said, biting out their formal appellations with considerable difficulty, and Shikamaru's heart rose into his throat. Even Shino's attention was riveted to the radio. "Damn it, I can't say it like that. Ino and Kiba came through here with their teams. They were attacked."
"Damn it," he said, and then keyed in again. "What's their condition?"
"Not good, at any rate. The genin got out without injury, and they're lucky they did, but Kiba's critical and Ino's still unstable. We did what we could and they are en route to the village for further treatment."
"Will they make it? And where are those genin?"
"Ino, yes. Kiba...it's still up in the air right now. I sent the genin home too, I wanted to get them as far away from here as possible."
Relief washed over him; she was confident that Ino, at least, would make it. But he still had a job to do.
"He's going to chase them. Tell me Hinata is keeping a look out."
"She's doing that, yes. But I don't think he's going to be chasing them very well. Ino said she took out one of his eyes, and from her condition I'm inclined to believe her."
There was silence on the air for a long few seconds while Shikamaru found himself looking for words that wouldn't come. There was a wince in Sakura's voice, a tone of pain that described what Ino had done without saying it. It wasn't a pleasant notion.
"There's a map here," Sakura said after a moment. "It's so bloody I can barely make it out. But bless her, it looks like she marked the spot where they fought him last."
"That cuts down our search time significantly. You stay put, both of you, we're on the way."
"Shikamaru, we need to find him now. He's not going to stay where he is, because he has to know that Haruka..."
"...has the sharingan, I thought as much. If he's as injured as Ino said, that's going to slow him down. Do not go anywhere until we get there."
"Like hell I will," she said. Her snarl exceeded the capabilities of the little speaker, and it crackled and squawked as she spoke. "He's smart, Shikamaru. He's not going to chase her in the state he's in now, he's just going to run, and hide, and we won't get another chance. He's not getting away again. Not after this."
Shikamaru reached down to push the reply button again, but his radio was gone. Neji had it in one hand.
"No you aren't," Neji said, his voice firm and cold, his voice of command. "You're going to stay put until we get there, and then we move together. He won't get far."
"He'll have gotten plenty far as it is already. It's been at least three hours since they escaped him. Even if he took the time to apply first aid -- and he will have -- he's had at least two hours travel time to put between us and him. Not counting the time it'll take us to catch up. By the time you get here..."
"Sakura, this is final. Stay where you are until we arrive."
Temari nudged Shikamaru in the ribs, whispered in his ear.
"As much fun as this is, are you going to put an end to it or what?"
A new burst of static and squealing feedback cut him off and Shikamaru moved to deprive him of the radio with a half-assed grab of his own. It failed miserably, Neji hadn't even noticed.
"Nice," Temari said.
"Bloody hell, you're not listening to damn thing I'm saying, Neji. If I sit here and wait, he's going to be long gone by the time you get here, and we'll never find him again."
The radio was only one-way, and Shikamaru had the impression that if it weren't for the fact they were forced to take turns, they would both be shouting at each other simultaneously. Probably without breathing between sentences.
"And you're not listening to a thing you're being told, either," Neji said in a low growl not far from being forced between his teeth. "Even injured he is going to be dangerous, even more so now that we are between him and what he wants. You are not going to take him on alone, and you are not taking my cousin with you, either."
"No, I am. Fuck you, Neji, I just cut out a third of my best friend's liver because she nearly gave her life to keep my niece alive. He is not getting away with this, not while I can do anything about it."
"You will stay there and wait," he said, in what Shikamaru thought was one of the hardest tones he'd ever heard out of Neji, and that was saying something.
"Oh, bad move," Temari whispered with a sordid, vicarious grin. Shikamaru rolled his eyes, and no one said anything during the ensuing, uninterpretable torrent of invective and static issuing from the speaker.
"Give me that," Shikamaru said, and this time he managed to wrest back control of the radio. Temari was staring at him through the dark behind him, eyes half-closed with mockery written all over her face, he could feel it. "I understand she's your wife, Neji, but this is still ostensibly my operation. Stand down."
Neji seethed, but complied.
"Reserves, search team," Shikamaru said, finally, stressing every word to make sure she understood who was talking and just how annoyed he was getting. "He isn't getting away. Shino is here, and our target is bleeding. The kikaichu will find him. Is that understood?"
He almost wasn't sure she was going to reply.
"Yes," she said, as icily as Neji, "Understood."
"Good. We'll be there shortly, get some rest while you can."
Shikamaru snapped the radio back into its place on his belt, gave Neji a dirty look, and glanced over to Shino.
"They can follow a trail, right?"
OoOoOoO
"That insufferable prick! Who the hell does he think he is?"
Sakura caught herself before her fists hit the table. With her habitual force, she probably would have shattered it, and the broadcasting radio set as well. It took a concerted effort of will to gradually ease the accumulated chakra from her fists back into the rest of her system, and it was not entirely pleasant given the sheer quantity and the knotted concentration she'd given it out of pure reflex.
"I think...I think they're right, Sakura."
She had to try not to snap at Hinata's quiet rejoinder, and settled for clenching her jaw shut as tightly as she could.
"I'm tired," Hinata said, still sitting on the bloody bench Kiba had been lying on while they'd stitched him up.
For the first time since they'd left the village, Sakura got a good look at her partner.
Gone was Hinata's aristocratic poise and the practiced finesse that practically defined her. Barring the long, straight black tresses that fell over her shoulders and down her chest, she looked more like the Hinata of fifteen years ago, afraid and unsure.
Blood stained her jacket from the chest down, seeping swathes of dark crimson deepening as it dried. Even her hair had lost its deep indigo sheen, glinting burgundy in the light. Her hands were conspicuously clean, though, no doubt due to the surgical gloves that lay discarded between her feet, and even then there were splotches and splashes on her ivory white hands where it had leaked in through the cuffs.
If she didn't know better, Sakura might have wondered how someone could bleed so much and not die. Kiba had gone through five units of the stuff, injected straight into his veins only to pool back out onto the floor until they managed to stitch him back together, and it was a testament to Ino's resolve that she'd been able to hold him in stasis while hemorrhaging internally the entire time.
"That...took a lot out of me," Hinata said, eyes downcast, but when she looked up, they were stone-hard, white opals glittering with keen fire. "I don't want him to get away, either. Kiba's my best friend, too. But Shino will find him, I promise. He doesn't have Kiba's smell or my sight, but he has just so many kikaichu he's never lost anything yet. Please, Sakura. We're not ready."
For the first time, Sakura noticed what a mess she was, too. Her hands and arms were stained just as badly as Hinata's, in black and in red, and she had to admit that no matter how much she tried to deny it, maybe some rest would do them both some good.
"Fine," she said, but there was still an edge in her voice. The feeling that she'd buried for years and years had grown again, crawling up out of its dungeon to grasp at her entire imagination, and she had to forcibly push it down just to acquiesce. "Two hours. No more."
Hinata thanked her with a look and a nod, and left, dragging herself up the stairs. The banister creaked under her tiny hand and the weight of her apprehension.
She felt tiny in the empty room, small and alone and everything around her reeked of death and pain. It never had to come to this, so why had it?
Despite herself, she felt responsible. Despite all rational explanations to the contrary, some terrible suspicion within her still lurked and knew there was a reason, and that it was somehow related to her. With it came the inexorable sadness, the helplessness she'd tried so hard to crush, and it threatened to usurp everything she'd built up in herself over the years.
But she wouldn't cry. She wouldn't let it dominate her again, she'd promised herself that much long ago. She couldn't afford to, not now, not ever again.
She found a sink that Hinata had already used, and as the blood on her arms and face joined the rust-tinged trails curling towards the drain, she tried to convince herself that her face was only wet from the water.
When she could breathe again, she found Hinata, curled up on the second floor by the window, dozing lightly. Hinata startled, and her eyes lit up with the byakugan.
"It's...still clear," she said.
Sakura shook her head.
"I'm sorry. Go back to sleep."
She'd always thought of stars as merry, happy creatures, dancing far above the world. A dozen children's stories and rhymes reinforced the image, but now they seemed to mock her in her misery, cheering for no reason whatsoever. So too had they mocked her the night Sasuke had left her, Naruto, and the village.
No matter what she'd told Tsunade, it still hurt, and now she found she couldn't chase it. She knew she was better than this, that she was professional, that she was at the peak of her game, but there was something so very intrinsically wrong.
Dealing with injuries was one thing; she was well accustomed to that, even wounds as grave as those inflicted on Ino, and Kiba as well. Even injuries inflicted on close friends.
What she found she couldn't handle was all the flesh rent by someone who, at her core, she still somehow considered a companion. It had been easy, telling herself she'd deal with it in front of Tsunade, in front of Hinata. Easy to pretend that was the truth, because there'd been so little evidence besides Shikamaru's best guess -- though she'd never doubt him again.
She still remembered Sasuke. She remembered a time when they'd helped each other, though he accepted the assistance of friends but grudgingly. She remembered a time when he had learned to smile, even, however small and however fleeting.
He'd never been a monster. Misguided, but no murderer. So how was it he could do something like this? Ino's injuries moaned at her, shadows in the blood spilled below.
She still wanted answers. Needed answers. Needed to be able to tell Naruto something, something more significant than the base report that would be filed. Naruto deserved to know, once and for all, why his distant friend had turned so sour. Why their distant friend had changed into something so unfathomably cruel.
Hinata sniffled in her sleep, tucking her face deeper into her arms, and it occurred to Sakura, in one horrified moment, that no one was actually keeping an eye on the surrounding countryside. Not her, and not Hinata. The usual crew had been dispatched as escorts for the wounded...which left her.
She checked the time; an hour already had passed, but it seemed like an eternity, and there was still another hour to go before Hinata would even consider discussing options.
"I can't," she said, a low, unconvinced murmur. "I can't leave this place. I can't leave Hinata, I can't..."
And damn, but she was still angry at Neji. What the hell was he thinking throwing orders at her? It wasn't exactly as though she was made of china. Besides which, if there was any one person on this mission who could possibly persuade Sasuke to talk, it was her. Anyone else, and it seemed he was more apt to attack than to explain himself.
Her loyalties fought and tore at each other in her heart, and she bit her lip, bruising it. In fact, one of the tempting voices offered, she was probably more at risk facing him with the rest of the team than by herself. And, it added, this was the only way she'd know for sure.
Sakura silently thanked the regular outpost staff when she discovered they kept the hinges well-oiled as she shut the door behind her and headed off into the night.
The wilderness was a different place without the screaming, a quiet, dry land populated only by the nocturnal insects calling to each other in the night. Here a firefly would sparkle, and be answered there by more of its kind. In the distance a coyote came to rest on its prowl, tilted its head skyward and poured out a lamentation to the night. It seemed appropriate.
Ino's bloody mark suggested she start somewhere down a south-west bearing, so she did. It was an easy trail to follow, even with night-vision. Akamaru hadn't been trying to be stealthy, and the fresh dirt churned up by his claws stood out in the moonlight.
Fifteen minutes at a gentle pace, and she was already at the ridge overlooking the entire valley. Even as far off as it was, the smoldering evidence of battle called to her, a glowering mass of coals from a grass fire that had spread upwind before guttering out and dying, asphyxiated on its own ashes.
Not long after, she was picking her way down the slope, dodging stumpy, gnarled trees and the weedy underbrush that clung with thorns and tore at her legs. The trail wound down along the inside of a dry, wind-eroded ravine, and dumped her out onto the plain below where Akamaru's prints vanished onto a crumbled collection of cracked stones. Beyond, the aftermath of the firestorm that had laid waste to the prairie below beckoned her toward it.
When she found Sasuke, it wasn't because he was making himself scarce.
She noticed him before he saw her, which was strange.
Ino hadn't lied. It looked like he had torn off a sleeve to make a clumsy bandana to conceal the ruin of his eye. Blood and dirt were smeared across a face that was still defiantly handsome, and his clothes were torn in places. Despite all that and the minor cuts here and there, he was still just as deliberate and purposeful, still a force of nature.
When he looked up, saw her, and didn't immediately attack, she thought for a fraction of a second she might actually have a chance to sort this out, to speak to him as friends and find a solution. For a fraction of a second, Sakura thought Sasuke was as she remembered him.
And then he spoke.
"Where is she?" he said, a growl that resonated through his ribs and pulsed in time with the inchoate illusion of fear he threw in her face.
She waded through it, shrugging off the alien feelings, acutely aware they were not her own, because the fear he cast upon her was shallow and pale compared to the knowledge that he was different, that he was another. She didn't answer.
"Where is she!" he shouted, the black pips of the sharingan whirling in the crimson pool of his remaining eye, driven by a fury whose source she couldn't divine.
"You won't find her," Sakura heard herself say. There was no point in playing stupid; she'd seen the sharingan in Haruka's eyes, and it was not something Sasuke could have possibly missed. "Why, Sasuke? Why now? Why like this?"
The questions seemed to take him aback, and he halted. His face shifted, for a moment back to the mask of flat-eyed calm, but she could see the changes boiling beneath its surface before they erupted, and he was gnashing at her again.
"She's the new one," he said, but the words were twisted and different. It was his voice, but something was missing. Something had replaced the confident arrogance he'd once had, tainted it. "She's the last member of my clan. My! Clan!"
His voice dropped again, the creature that inhabited Sasuke's skin slipping into hiding once more.
"Stand aside. This is your last warning."
"I won't," Sakura said, and her fingers curled into fists, stretching the leather of her gloves taut across her knuckles. "You won't hurt her. Not while I'm alive, you won't have her."
"I have no such intention," he said, voice still cool, but she could still see the creature writhing beneath. "She is to come with me. Her place is with me. With her clan."
Something caught fire within her, a rippling candescence that climbed and surged through her veins, and Sakura realized she'd never been truly angry with Neji just now. This was anger, this was raw, unfettered, righteous anger that screamed in her flesh and pulsed behind her eyes.
"Her place is with her family," she said, and her normally pleasant mezzosoprano was dropping into a dangerous place. "And you are not it."
She barely saw the sword clearing its sheath and it shone with the stars as it slashed upward toward her chest. She moved on instinct, kunai in hand as she leaned back and twisted, forcing it away from her.
You, she thought, are not Uchiha Sasuke. And you are not Haruka's family, not her father. Not her...
"What did you do to her mother, Sasuke? Why did you destroy her?"
Sasuke's sword, already rearing back to strike again, paused, and the creature that had attacked her burbled and slipped into the depths of his psyche once more.
"Because she was not you."
Sakura's heart broke.
OoOoOoO
Kiba was pretty sure he was dead.
In the darkness that coddled him, so terrifyingly absolute, so ineffably impenetrable, the old aphorism about thought and existence being correlated was of no comfort at all.
The stillness was intolerable.
He was such a dork, he knew. Constantly inflicting his energy and stupid, blind cheer on everyone around him whether they liked it or not, but he needed it. Not moving -- and the gods and a few of his ex-girlfriends knew how much he moved around in his sleep -- was tantamount to death.
This wasn't movement. No momentum, no change, just the same, weighty inertia tying him down.
The analogy fell apart because he was pretty sure he didn't have a body to tie down any more. Wherever he was, whatever had happened to the essence that was him meant he no longer seemed to have hands or legs, and he was stuck in this peculiar space. He hated it, in a sullen, impish way, a sort of pouty petulance.
He wondered if it could be pouty if he no longer had lips.
The memories floated back to him. He remembered his last, best effort -- best fight he'd ever had, actually. The desperation and unyielding, driving will he didn't know he possessed was a stunning epiphany, even if that last stab had found nothing but dirt and left him defeated.
He remembered figuring out at the very last what had gone wrong. The gatsuuga wasn't supposed to end like that. What made it great, and a staple of his clan's stable of techniques, was its ability to dictate range. It spun so fast he was essentially invincible while in it -- no matter how hard they were thrown, or how much chakra guided them, projectiles would just bounce off, thrown aside by its incredible energy. Trying to physically attack an Inuzuka in full gear was dumb, because that was the whole point of the gatsuuga: it was trying to touch you so it could hurt you.
He'd never considered the moment of slightly disorienting vulnerability that resulted from exiting the attack.
And again, the gatsuuga had an answer for that too: you don't leave the gatsuuga until you're far away from your opponent.
Damned that the Uchiha had figured that out so fast.
He remembered, too, watching Ino fall. She'd been doing just fine, constantly keeping herself away from the genjutsu that had made the fight such a pain. And then the bloody Uchiha had switched it up with a clone. She hadn't noticed, but he had -- the nose knew, it always did -- but he couldn't find the strength to tell her until it was too late.
She hadn't deserved that, and it was his fault.
She was too bright, special. Bratty, but earnest. Pretty, too, under the makeup she seemed to think she needed. Hot stuff, with that flaxen hair hanging down to there, and the sweetest legs. Way, way smarter than he was, and kind of scary, too, the way she could get into your brain and make you do crazy stuff.
And she smelled nice. Always did. Even when she was pissed off.
Especially when she was pissed off.
What a waste.
Maybe in the next life.
He'd not been the best person in this life, though. Maybe not the worst, but he did dumb things every now and again. And, it didn't help he'd killed a few times...well, quite a few times...really a lot. If he was lucky he'd get reincarnated as a dog. That would okay, actually. Liberating, free from the responsibilities and demands of his hectic life, free to wander, free to hunt, free to let it all hang out.
None of them deserved this, though.
If he was dead, and Ino very probably was, so were both their teams.
It was a pure, honest selfishness that was glad he wouldn't have to explain his failure to anyone. Not to mention Hinata, and Naruto. Or Shino and his sister. Or the Nakamuras. And it was a greater shame that he'd never see Kiyoka with a colony big enough to properly swarm someone over, or see Nanami trick the entirety of an enemy patrol into stepping into a kill zone Haruka had laid down somewhere.
Maybe Akamaru had escaped, but that was maybe a worse fate for the big animal. He'd been with Akamaru for a long time, their lives bound together in more ways than any eye could detect. He shared more than friendship with Akamaru: they shared lives. Without him, his poor dog would start to age as though they'd never been bonded.
He was never supposed to grow so large, really. It was only because they were sharing chakra and all that entailed that he'd gotten so big. Now Akamaru was a size that would inflame his hips and bow his spine in the absence of his master's presence. He'd be an invalid in months, if not weeks.
Maybe he'd died by his master's body. Which was more probable, Kiba supposed. Hoped, because the alternative was devastating.
Still, not being able to smell the big lunk was a hole in the world.
Except he could, which was weird, because Kiba was still pretty sure he was dead.
Now that he was paying attention, he was sure of it. Sure, Akamaru smelled like dog, but there were undertones only a dog, or an Inuzuka, could really pick out: the oils in his fur, with hints of dried saliva from where he'd licked himself, and the dirt that lingered between the hairs if he hadn't been properly bathed in a couple weeks. Even the smell of the desert still clung to him, it seemed.
It seemed possible he was hallucinating -- if a dead person could do that, somehow. But there were more smells, it seemed, more familiar presences lingering just out of reach. They were out of focus, melting into each other and for the first time he noticed a hum hovering at the periphery of his consciousness, somewhere beyond the almost pleasant numbness that cocooned him.
Voices, actually, as he tried to focus in on the smells.
As he worked on it, he realized he wasn't dead, not just yet. There was a dull throbbing ache, lurking all around him, all through him.
Shit, he thought. I must be really, really drugged up. Or poisoned.
He hoped for drugged.
The smells resolved, and a wave of joy and the inimitable elation of victory shot through him. They were all there: Kiyoka, like fall leaves and sandstone; Nanami, like clean fur and her fruity shampoo; and Haruka, like beech bark and steel. Ino was there too, hidden in the iron stench of caked blood and entrails, and beyond that the more unfamiliar smells of her team and some others he assumed were friendlies.
The voices followed, too, echoing from far away but resonating as though they were in his head.
"...turn them off, or something? It's starting to creep me out."
One of the boys, Kiba thought. He sounded totally winded, too.
"Look, I get it!" Haruka shouted from the distance "Great, it bothers you. It bothers me too, and if I could do something about it I would have by now!"
Somewhere a lot closer, Akamaru let out an exasperated moan asking them all to shut up, but they didn't hear him and wouldn't have understood anyway.
"Hey," Nanami said, "I thought your dad was that Naruto guy, right? How come..?"
"I don't know why my eyes are all messed up like this!" Haruka said, her exasperation exacerbated with confusion and, Kiba thought, no small measure of discomfort and terror. "And fine, okay, I'm adopted. Happy now? Yay, Haruka's a freak! She's not even from the village!"
"I didn't mean that," Nanami said, quiet and hurt.
"Sure, you didn't. Thanks, Nanami."
Whatever was wrong, Kiba didn't like it. It wasn't like his team to dissolve and bicker, and even if they hadn't made it to the second round, he knew they were stronger than this. Even without him. They were all hurting, it seemed. Kiyoka was mourning her bugs, Nanami sounded lost, and Haruka was falling apart, collapsing into herself and lashing out at the same time. He'd never heard of her like this.
Ino's boys lapsed into a wise silence.
"Um," Kiyoka said, after the quiet stretched on longer than Kiba knew was healthy for anyone. "I don't think you're a freak, Haruka. If you're a freak than so am I."
"No you're not," Haruka said. "You're too nice to be one."
"I'm the one full of insects, remember? But you told me that didn't matter when you said we could be friends, even when some other people were making fun of me. I don't see how this changes anything."
"Your parents aren't trying to kill us," Haruka said, and the revelation hit Kiba about as hard as it had hit anyone else.
"Neither are yours," Kiyoka said stiffly, carefully. He could see her in his mind's eye, focused on her steps as she ran, not daring to find out what the others might think of a potentially contentious opinion. "I don't know where Uzumaki-san is right now but he's not trying to do that."
"Don't you get it? Look at my eyes now and tell me that wasn't the man who..."
"I don't care, Haruka," she said, and their voices faded for a moment as the footsteps stopped. There was a lurch, and Akamaru barked and howled, doing his best to instruct them to hurry on and forget about it until later.
"I don't care," Kiyoka repeated, strength and conviction creeping into her voice as she stood her ground, "so what?"
"So I find out I'm going to turn into something like that and what the hell am I supposed to do now? No one's going to forget what happened here today, they're all going to look at me and know that I'm related to that...that..."
There was the sound of a slap, and Nanami gasped unnoticed in the background.
"Wake up! I like Uzumaki-san, Haruka. He's your father and you shouldn't shame him by thinking your blood makes any difference. You're one of us and you always will be. I don't care where you came from, you're my friend and I'm telling you that you're being stupid!"
No one said anything.
"I'm sorry," Kiyoka added, contrite, and Kiba had a clear mental image of her kicking the dirt and staring at her feet. "That was uncalled for. You're not stupid either."
"No, I totally am. I'm sorry too, Kiyoka. Sorry, Nanami."
"Sorry," Nanami said, "I probably shouldn't have...said...stuff. Wow, Kiyoka, I didn't know you had it in you."
"I don't. Really."
Crisis averted, Kiba thought, good job, Kiyoka. But even as the voices became clearer, so too did the pain. The drugs were wearing off and undiluted agony screamed through him as his body remembered the crimes that had been committed against it.
He heard himself moan and there was a brief flickering of lanterns and the skeletal fingers of trees passing in the night. Something jabbed into the side of his neck and he surrendered himself to the blissful darkness once more.
OoOoOoO
A tiny tremor woke Hinata. She sat up with a start, and her right foot slipped off the bench to the floor with a bang.
She blinked and rubbed at the bridge of her nose to clear the sleep from her eyes, and only then did she notice Sakura was gone.
"Sakura?"
Her voice disappeared into the darkness, darting into the rooms of the border post, seeking but finding no answer. Everything still smelled like old rust, and it seemed stronger and ranker now that she'd been sleeping. She covered her nose as she made her way down the stairs into the light of the floor beneath, and tried not to let it get to her.
"Sakura?" she called again, and there was still no reply. "Oh, no."
The byakugan confirmed her worst suspicions, that Sakura had vanished while she'd been sleeping. That she hadn't been woken up by battle meant it was unlikely she'd been kidnapped, so it had to be that Sakura had left on her own -- which could only mean she was getting herself in trouble.
"Why'd you have to?" Hinata said to herself, tying her hair back and looking for her jacket.
Thunder boomed, and a cursory check outside the window confirmed that it wasn't cloudy. Hinata made the signs and her eyes ached with a familiar over-strain, and her brows furrowed as she surveyed the surrounding countryside.
Her range wasn't as good as Neji's, certainly, but it didn't take a genius to realize that the flashes bursting up from inside the ravine could only have one cause and one cause alone.
Hinata ran for the radio first.
"Search team, reserve. We are engaged about two or three kilometers southwest of this outpost. Will not wait for acknowledgment. Hurry!"
She skidded out the door and vaulted the compound fence, doing her best to reach the fight before anything seriously wrong happened. At the very least, she could consider the rumblings and explosions as a good signs, since they meant Sakura was still probably holding her own. In the silver world of the byakugan, she watched a stretch of the ridge nearly fifty meters long pulse with chakra and give way to the ensuing shockwave, tumbling down out of sight in a landslide.
Keeping her attention divided between her footing and the telescopic, transparent view she was using to keep tabs on the battle was not by any means easy, but a necessary compromise as the sounds of violence drifted northward and still further away from her. She dodged plants, stones, and cracks in the earth as she made her way forward, and finally she caught a figure at the edge of her range.
She wasn't exceptionally good at reading lips, but she'd had some practice. The byakugan made it easier, certainly, and she was often asked to try if there was an espionage component to her missions.
The fact that Sakura and the Uchiha were shouting at each other helped.
"You left me!" he was screaming, almost mournfully, "You promised and you left me alone!"
"We left you?" Sakura screamed back, stomping, and another section of the ridge gave way. Sasuke flew above the rumble of falling clay and shattered shale, perching gracefully on the remains of a collapsed tree. "You're the one who abandoned us! You're the one who wanted to go alone! What was I supposed to do?"
"That man was mine to kill! Mine!"
He was incoherent, clearly. Perhaps Hinata had missed something important earlier, but the words that were coming out of his mouth seemed as related as the brutally unpredictable thrashings of his mood.
"I don't care!" Sakura said, and an explosive note blasted the tree into a fine hail of dessicated splinters.
"He killed my family! Everyone I cared about! He ruined my life! He was mine!"
"Great! Just great! I'm glad to know I mattered that much!"
It was also good, Hinata thought, that they were still trading mostly words. Sakura was attacking, certainly, but she'd also seen her fight and knew she wasn't entirely into it yet. Genjutsu didn't appear to be a factor yet.
Who knew? Maybe their old bonds held some strength yet, but the shouting match was far from over.
Already, Hinata was close enough that she didn't have to rely exclusively on her eyes to make out what they were saying. It didn't help her theory that their kinship was holding, though.
"You don't understand," Sasuke was saying again, and though he was growing hoarse, it seemed as though his rage had dissipated for the moment. "You could never understand. It was my duty."
"Oh, of course!" Sakura shouted back, oblivious or uncaring about his new demeanor. "It was always about you! It always had to be about you, didn't it?"
Her voice wavered, but she never let up, and Sasuke's cold stare was frankly unnerving. Hinata slowed her pace and stopped, still hiding about the ridge line. Better to hide and move when the moment was right than to rush in and ruin all surprise.
"Yes it was tragic! Yes it was horrible! Yes I'm sure you suffered! But you didn't have to go it alone. You didn't have to leave because we would have helped you, and you just had to go ahead and ruin everything!"
Sakura sniffed and swiped quickly at her eyes with the back of her hand, never taking her eyes off her errant ex-team-mate.
"Impossible," Sasuke said, and the sneer destroyed his features more than the gaping hole where his right eye had been. A moment later, concern flashed across his face, before dying in the resurgent disdain that flooded it once more. "He would have killed you all. You're too weak. Look at you, crying again."
"Oh, good one," Sakura said, mirthless laughter spilling from her lips and she made her contempt for his statement clear by dashing in to punch him again. Sasuke stepped aside and flicked his sword at her, forcing Sakura to duck, spin inward, and rise, kicking backward at his head as she turned. Chakra flared in Hinata's vision as Sasuke deflected it, but his grunt betrayed the fact that it would have shattered his arm if he'd tried to block it directly.
"If that's true, how come we're all still here, one village, one team? How did we ever finish the rest of Akatsuki without you?"
Sasuke bayed with incoherent anger and rushed Sakura. She'd been occupied with shouting him down with her fists at her sides, and it left her open and vulnerable. Hinata chose her moment to make herself known.
His sword swept down in an arc designed to intercept Sakura's head at the temple. Sakura reacted well though a little late, bringing her hand up to catch his arm at the wrist, but a shining lash the colour of a young star caught the blade first and moved it away, beads of light spilling off into the night where it touched.
It wasn't much force, but it drew the blade away and left him exposed, and Sakura capitalized with an axe kick that crushed him to the ground and would have broken every bone in his body if he hadn't escaped by virtue of the ubiquitous kawarimi. Hinata closed her hand, shutting off the stream of chakra.
"If we're all so weak," Sakura screamed, "then what was that? If we're all so weak, how did Ino get your eye?"
There was nothing left of the collected Uchiha that Hinata had glimpsed only moments ago, his wordless, tortured sounds revealing his new location.
"That's what I thought," Sakura said, the anger still burning in her eyes and her voice. "Good to see you, Hinata."
"So...it really is him?"
Sakura nodded, and wiped a bead of sweat away from her neck. As she did so, eyes jaded in more ways than one flashed downward for nothing but a moment, and Hinata glimpsed the sorrow hiding there.
"It didn't have to be this way," Sakura said, quiet. "I'm sorry I ran out on you...I had to know."
"I know. All that matters is that you're okay. Did you learn anything?"
She honestly thought Sakura was about to lose it right there, but her friend pulled herself together, blinked, and the old resolve settled on her face again.
"It's him...but he's not there. He's not really in there. I'm hearing all the things he used to say, and I can't believe they still...it doesn't matter."
"It does matter, Sakura," Hinata said, as they turned to watch for him again. He'd be back, they both knew, and the screaming had stopped. Hinata wasn't sure which version of Sasuke she'd rather face. "It matters because it matters to you."
"Thanks, Hinata. You didn't, ah, tell Neji what I did. I hope."
Hinata shook her head.
"Either he'll figure it out or it won't make a difference."
"Thanks again," Sakura said, and slammed a foot sideways into the ground as Sasuke came running back towards him. A plume of pulverized stone erupted forward, showering him in fragments the size of Hinata's head, but they passed through him. Sakura took steps to deal with the illusion, steps behind Hinata whose byakugan had already seen through it.
Hinata's pseudo-jyuuken forced him away from his flanking maneuver, sparks arcing off the stone as twin whips trailed whisper-thin burns behind them. She'd learned refinement with this, her one true original technique, and it was no longer the stylized, chaotic dance it had once been.
Her feet moved with her hands, body twisting to match, and her mind was on the narrow, pin-prick openings of her palm tenketsu. She'd never been particularly excellent at identifying and shutting down the chakra systems of her opponents, even if she was capable and quite competent, but she was more keenly aware of her own.
Every movement she made was devoted to maximizing the flow of energy. Even as she restricted Sasuke's escape there with a sweeping motion of her arms that cut an arc of pain across his path, she flexed at the waist and extended a leg to open the pathways within her own body. The form fed the flow, and the flow fed the form, endless. And behind it all, her technique was supported by the deliberate, stable, and unsurpassed footwork of the jyuuken, evolved around a framework she'd studied all her life.
Hair-fine, furnace-hot, and steel-hard, her chosen weapons were as flexible as silk. They didn't have exceptional reach, but they were ideal, creating a zone centered around herself in which she could protect and punish at once. In the day they were virtually invisible; at night they were a display whose deadly significance could not be lost on the Uchiha, who would see them brighter than anyone.
He no longer seemed interested in trading barbs with Sakura. She no longer seemed interested in anything other than subduing him.
Sakura recognized Hinata's safe zone for what it was and lingered in it, moving to intercept Sasuke when he strayed too far from them, and darting back when he moved to reply to her. They could match him illusion for illusion, and if he was too agile for them to catch by themselves, they would hold him here.
Every minute they held was another minute in which Kiba, Ino, Haruka, and the genin had to escape. Every minute they held, the search team drew nearer, and Hinata might have found the irony amusing if she had the time to think about it.
Neither of them could see how the iris of his remaining eye morphed continually back and forth, shifting patterns erratically.
OoOoOoO
"Hey, Hideo. So is she going to be okay?"
"Shut up, Dai. She'll be fine. Didn't you see who that was who rescued us?"
"Am I supposed to know?"
"You're totally useless. Those were the two Hyuuga women. They're both, like, some of the best. Besides Ino-sensei. If they thought she was good enough to send with us, she has to be okay. Did you get the water?"
"Yeah, sure. Takeshi, say something."
"I almost killed her," Takeshi said, almost whispering. "If she dies, it's because I screwed up."
"No way, man...hey, she's moving. She's moving, awesome!"
Ino blinked, and then slammed her eyes shut. Someone had cranked the lights up too far, and it was killing her eyes.
Eye.
It didn't hurt all that much anymore, curiously. Just a low, dull throbbing, and she could feel her every heartbeat shaking beneath the eyelid. Slowly, she willed her left eye open, wincing against the light as her eye adjusted. Objects swam into focus, too: ceiling tiles, that damned fluorescent bulb, the half-full intravenous bag of saline, a curtain.
She was in a hospital. Thank the gods.
"Hey...Ino-sensei, can you hear me?"
"Sure can, kiddo," she croaked, and her smile stung as it disturbed the minor cuts that still marked her face. "You're all here?"
"Yeah, we are," Hideo said. "Team Four, too. They're with Kiba-sensei. Want some water?"
She did. The worst case of cottonmouth she had in a long time was plaguing her, and she was grateful that it was now the greatest of her worries. Still...she had been stabbed in the stomach.
"Am I allowed to?"
"The doctor didn't say no."
"Can I sit up?"
"I didn't ask."
Well, whatever. She took the little plastic cup, fumbled it to her mouth and drank. The first mouthful was horrible -- it tasted like blood and ash, and the stickiness on her tongue clung to it until she swished it around a few times. The second was a million times better, and she felt as though she could drink forever.
"Thanks, Hideo."
"Hey, I'm the one who went to get it."
"You too, then. All of you. You did good."
She couldn't see too much from where she was lying. Tipping her head up to drink the last of the water was hard enough on her tortured abdominals as it was. She concluded she probably wouldn't try that again for a while, regardless of what the doctors said.
Still, she couldn't help the laughter. For a pleasant, insane moment, nothing mattered. Her missing eye didn't matter, the pain in her stomach, nothing. She'd earned the right. It came first in creeping snorts, tiny half-sneezes of amusement, and then chuckles, and it almost reached a fully mature laugh before the agony in her gut forced her to kill it.
"Oh, gods, it's good to be alive," she said, and she couldn't help the tear that forced its way out. "Oh, come on, Takeshi. It's over."
"I'm sorry," he said, cringing away from her. "It didn't work...I couldn't..."
"What is it? C'mon, look at me."
He refused. Dai filled in the gaps.
"He thinks he almost killed you somehow."
"That's not possible," she said. "What happened?"
"I thought...I thought I did it right, but Sakura-san had to cut you open and fix it. You were bleeding inside, and I just closed it like I'm stupid because of course it's not a flesh wound. She had to cut out, like, half your liver and I had no idea."
Her hand went to the scarring on her stomach. Sakura had done a good job, it seemed, it was barely noticeable to the touch, but even so Ino felt certain that it looked a lot worse than it felt. Now that she was looking for it, there was a strange lightness, an odd void like something was missing after all.
Maybe she'd get used to it. Maybe not.
"Oh, Takeshi," she said. "It's not like you're fully trained for field surgery yet anyway. All I've taught you so far is first aid and some of the basics, so I'm ordering you not to think of it that way. Do you understand? None of you are supposed to be facing things at this level. Not yet, not for a long time. The fact that we're all here -- that I'm here too -- means you all did a superb job."
Dai yawned. Hideo handed him the empty cup.
"He missed the part where he was helping Sakura-san with the surgery."
"See? Exactly my point. Did you pay attention to her?"
Takeshi nodded.
"Did you learn anything?"
"I guess I can seal a wound better than before."
"Then you're doing fine. I'm proud of you guys."
They were all tired, she could tell. They all had heavy bags under their eyes, and when they moved they were sluggish. They were all dirty too, and if she felt somewhat fresh it was probably because the nurses had done something to clean her up before changing the bandages over her eye. She was wearing one of those horrible hospital gowns, too.
She didn't dare ask what time it was.
"We can't be in the village yet, are we?"
"No," Hideo said, and he told her what town they'd stopped in, for Kiba's sake. Fortunately there was a small community hospital, and apparently he was out of danger for now. She was glad someone was finally monitoring him who could actually give him the help he needed.
She let her team hang around for a while, as tired and obviously in need of rest as they were. They needed this as much as she did, time to just hang out and try not to think too hard about what had happened.
Eventually they started to drift off. Takeshi fell asleep first, slumping onto her bed, and had to be half-way carried out of the room. Dai, for once, had taken responsibility for everyone and found them a room at an inn not too far away.
Ino supposed she should sleep too, but she'd just been knocked out for far too long. She found herself restless, which only got worse as she realized she probably wasn't allowed to turn onto her side, either, so she resigned herself to quietly suffering in the dark.
It wasn't pleasant. Her mind turned to the bandages over her face again and again, and she wished she knew if she'd have to deal with an empty socket for the rest of her life. Prosthetics were creepy and never looked right, and the image was personally horrifying. And even if her eye was still there, it would be mauled beyond repair. She'd made certain of that when she jammed a fistful of dirt into Sasuke's eye to guarantee she ruined it while she was in his body. At least hers wasn't going to get infected.
Gods, she was going to be ugly for the first time in her life. Scarred and beaten-looking, like a loser, because she just wasn't tough enough to make it convincing. She wasn't leather-hided like Shikamaru's father had been, she couldn't pretend to be that cold.
What felt like hours later, she heard a furtive knock on the door, and then the creak of the hinges when she coughed while trying to tell whoever it was to come in. In a weird way, she hoped it was Kiba, even though she knew he was in absolutely no condition to do so. It would be nice to see him for herself, though.
"Ino-sensei?" her visitor whispered. "Are you awake?"
No such luck, though. Too short by a good third, and a girl too.
"Yeah," Ino said, sighing. "I can't really sleep. Shouldn't you be curled up somewhere?"
Haruka came out of the shadows and sat in Hideo's chair as though all the bones in her body had dissolved. Her shoulders slumped with her, and she looked just as exhausted as everyone else.
"I can't sleep either. I can't stop thinking."
"That was brave, what you did back there. I'll make sure Takeshi thanks you when he gets a chance."
"He already did," Haruka said, distant, like it didn't matter. She was squishing around a stress ball in the palm of her hand, but it looked more like rote habit than anything. "It was nice."
"So...are you okay? What do you want to talk about?"
"I wanted to ask Kiba-sensei but...he's still out of it. You go into people's heads, right?"
"Yes," Ino said, carefully, wondering where Haruka was going with this. "I do."
Haruka looked around in the dark, then back to her ball. She sighed.
"Is it...could it be possible that maybe you went into that guy's head...but the eyes ended up with me instead when you came out?"
Oh, Ino thought. She'd forgotten about that.
"No, kiddo. Those are...those are your eyes."
"I was afraid of that," Haruka said, disappointed. "They went back to normal about an hour ago, I don't know why, and I thought maybe...it was just temporary. I...I didn't...I don't..."
"You don't want them, do you?"
"It's like...I've always wanted to know. I've always wondered who my mom and dad were. Like maybe they died in an accident or something. You know? I just...I always thought they'd be good people."
"He was good. Once." Haruka didn't answer. "I knew him. Your father knew him better than I did, your auntie too, so you'll have to ask them. I don't know what changed or why, but he was good when I knew him. Weird, now that I think about it, but good."
"Well, he's not. I don't want to be the daughter of a...of someone like that. I mean, I know dad is my...he's my family. He's more real than this...this guy."
"Listen to me, Haruka. You might be related to that person, and yeah, it's a nasty way to find out. That doesn't mean you are that person, or that you'll become that person. You are who you want to be. You know that."
"Uh huh."
"But you still don't want them, do you," she said, and Haruka shook her head in the dark. There were other similarities between her and the Uchihas, Ino realized. The texture of her hair, the shape of her chin, her eyebrows...but there was another person mixed in there so thoroughly no one had ever guessed.
"It's called the sharingan," Ino said, finally, "and I guess it's useful. I can tell you what I know, and I can't promise you'll feel better about it. But can you promise me something?"
"What?"
"When we get home, when we all get home...talk to your dad, okay? Tell him about it. Tell him everything. Don't try to hide it, don't keep it a secret. You'll feel better, I swear. This is nothing to be ashamed of. You didn't do anything wrong...it's just a weird twist of luck."
Haruka nodded. That was good enough.
"So...what is it?"
OoOoOoO
The sharingan, Neji fumed, and the Uchihas who'd spawned it, seemed to be the greatest curse ever visited upon Konohagakure. At least as much as the Kyuubi, who despite being the calamity of the prior generation, hadn't been able to extend its disruption over nearly as long a time and still had managed to redeem itself somewhat through Naruto. Including the internecine massacre that had claimed the bulk of that clan and the casualties incurred hunting down the Akatsuki and the ensuing war with Amegakure, even the death tolls weren't all that dissimilar.
Worse, however, were the lasting scars it left with the survivors.
Everyone, it seemed, was eventually dragged into the tragedy whether or not they were meant to. Even the first Hokage hadn't been immune, forced to defeat and expel the other founder of the village, and if you believed the rumors, it was entirely possible that the entire incident with the nine-tailed demon had been a direct consequence of that battle.
Certainly this particular Uchiha hadn't been spared the curse, and among the rest of his peers he counted at least three that had nearly given their lives to save Sasuke's. Including himself, and his chest and shoulder still ached sometimes where he'd been impaled.
There were more, if you considered those who still believed he could be saved.
He'd known from the first that Sakura would be hurt somehow if ever the Uchiha reared his head again, but he'd never expected her to actually be here, to actually be in a position to confront him head-on. She was already hurting, he knew, and he was regretful only in that their argument had been cut off before he'd been able to explain himself. Not that he really expected her to be reasonable about this.
He was forced to divert his thought for a moment as Shikamaru directed the team to climb the ridge before continuing. They were maybe ten, fifteen minutes away from the outpost now, having covered the return trip at nearly twice their original pace, and he was thankful they'd all agreed to move as quickly as possible.
Even more so since Hinata had made her distress call.
It wasn't too hard to figure out, and Shikamaru had still left his earpiece unplugged, so he'd heard all he needed to. Hinata had said they were fighting a few kilometers away from the outpost, and yet there hadn't been a single noise in the background, which meant she was somehow separated from Sakura, which meant Sakura had gone and done the one thing he really, really didn't want her to do.
Something bright flashed against the horizon, momentarily washing out the stars in its glare, and Shikamaru called a stop.
"This is close enough," he said, tossing a pill into his mouth and biting down on it. "Last chance to prepare yourselves. I don't have to remind you who we're fighting, but we can expect to have to deal with the mangekyou side of the sharingan, which if you remember is something of a pain in the ass. Both because it's powerful as hell and we still don't know everything it can do."
"Normally I would recommend clones," Neji said, and he had to fight the urge to leave the team behind and see just how badly Sakura had gotten herself into trouble. "However, I seem to remember he was able to see chakra."
"That limits the utility, yeah. Shino, you might still be able to confuse him with an insect clone, but I don't want him to even know you're here until it's far too late for him to do anything about it."
Shikamaru knelt and scraped a line in the dirt at his feet with a kunai. With his other hand he tossed a handful of grass above it, and designated the two as the ridge and the forest, respectively.
"He has pretty large chakra reserves, so you're going to drain him dry, first chance you have. He'll realize that if he spots you or any suspicious concentration of bugs, so you're going to stay hidden behind the ridge as long as you can. Keep an insect clone decoy closer to the edge of the ridge so you have more warning in case he does come after you, and keep clear."
Shino adjusted his sunglasses, still as strange as ever in the darkness, and nodded.
"I already have most of my swarm dispersed ahead of us; if he has not noticed them yet, I will begin burrowing them gradually near the battlefield."
"That's an even better idea. Neji, you stay with Shino."
Neji cocked an eyebrow and crossed his arms.
"What? You realize I have the shortest range on this team."
"Yes, I do," Shikamaru sighed. "I want you on the high ground because you can also close range faster than anyone here. Besides which, you know Sakura and Hinata both and can probably work your way in there without throwing either of them off."
Well, Neji thought, that was reasonably accurate. Still, he needed to be there as soon as possible.
"Very well. I assume I will be engaging early."
"Sure, go nuts, but only once I've managed to distract him to let you through the door so he can't take you out on approach. Besides which, Temari and I have something worked out. We can't use clones but there's something I've been meaning to try."
"Oh, hell no," Temari said, groaning. "You don't seriously mean you want us to do that again."
"I know you're not a fan, but it'll work. It's night so I haven't got any restrictions this time around."
"I...trust...you," she said, her eyes narrowing into a glare even as she said it, "but the last time was not pleasant. I'm not doing that again."
Shikamaru showed her something that was almost like a smile.
"Yeah, it won't be like that. Everyone clear on our approach?"
They were, despite Temari's misgivings.
"Good. Neji, coordinate yourself with Hinata and Sakura when we get there. Shino, you know your job. If you can do that, we'll have won. Temari, we already talked."
Shikamaru stood, and it was a sort of understood signal. Shino was already moving up the hillside, and Neji followed him closely. Another flash over the hillside, and Neji realized that soon he'd be within range of the byakugan. It wasn't particularly comforting, but at least he'd have a reasonable idea of what was going on, and what he needed to do to deal with it.
Below them, Shikamaru and Temari had already entered a full-out sprint, heading directly for the conflict, and he and Shino were forced to move at least as fast to keep up. Shino motioned that he would move even further in from the cliffside, and as he angled away a skittering cloud of droning transparent wings burst from his coat, coalesced, and silenced itself as the illusion installed itself over the writhing mass of beetles.
Neji shuddered, but ran alongside the doppelganger anyway.
When they were just a kilometer and a half away, his byakugan came to life, and he swung his focus ahead to where his wife and his cousin were fighting for their lives. He couldn't afford to lose either one, and he hoped he wasn't too late.
It looked as though a giant had carved a seat out of the hillside. Where a ravine had once been there was now only a sinkhole of collapsed stone and pulverized clay, a pit excavated by Sakura's knuckles. And she was, to Neji's infinite relief, still digging. A wave of fire shot towards her, and she quenched it under a plume of dirt launched by her fist.
Every move she made was marked by a golden surge of chakra, a flashing tide of light that crossed her entire body only to concentrate in a single knuckle or the very edge of her foot. Every contact was a firework, a blinding detonation of her energy that showered sparks across his vision. She was pyrotechnic, and so distracting.
Behind her, Hinata retaliated, a dim, constant glow compared to the strobing violence of Sakura's blows. Her constant harassment seemed to keep Sasuke at bay, warning him off every time he came too close, her chakra whipping in behind him if he tried to escape, and boxing him in any time Sakura had a chance to strike.
They were both beautiful, they way they moved together, and a slow, confident smirk began to creep across Neji's face as he realized how frustrated Sasuke had to be. It was strange, though. Besides the normal distribution of chakra, pulses would shoot to Sasuke's remaining eye and then retreat unused, over and over again.
It was worrying. The mangekyou was unpredictable, and that was the only thing it could possibly be. Perhaps the injury to his other eye had disabled it?
That theory was put to rest a second later, as Shikamaru and Temari scrambled up to the edge of Sakura's crater and attacked straight away.
Knives of wind whistled down on Sasuke at the speed of sound, converging on him from a broadside of Temari's extended battle fan, only to be torn apart in the turbulent glare of another fireball. She attacked again, even knowing how easily the carefully ordered chakra of her element was thrown into disarray by the chaos of Sasuke's fire. Next to her, Shikamaru had settled for throwing various knives, a weak and ineffectual attack at best.
Sasuke's chakra system flared again, this time with murderous purpose as the channels in his chest and neck engorged and discharged their entire contents into his left eye. Neji let the byakugan drop for a moment; it was like staring at the sun, and when he could use it again, he saw nothing but black fire rippling over the plain where his other two team-mates had been. They'd vanished without a trace, and he rather hoped that was a result of Shikamaru's plan and not Sasuke's.
A blistering hot shock wave rolled up over the lip of the ridge, and he hid his eyes in the crook of his arm to protect his eyes. Next to him, Shino let the back half of his insect clone fall open and there was a furious buzzing as the beetles beat their wings to vent the excess heat before closing formation once more.
Sakura and Hinata hesitated in that moment, thrown back by the heat, confusion throwing their normally perfectly ordered chakra into slight disarray, and Sasuke turned back to attack.
Now or never.
Neji leapt into the crater, feet sliding through ten feet of sand on landing before he found firmer rubble, and the distance between himself and the errant shrank in an eye-blink. His fingers found their targets, forcing his will through Sasuke's open, unwilling tenketsu. Neji stopped mid-strike, as the familiar pattern of kawarimi surged through Sasuke's system, and rocks tumbled to the ground where he had stood.
"Are you all right?"
Sakura punched him lightly in the kidney and scoffed. She didn't use much force, thankfully.
"Of course I'm all right, lover" she said, still angry, while Hinata kept a quiet lookout, "I told you I could handle it. You and I will have words later."
Sasuke reappeared, his back to the pitch black conflagration that was darker than the night, and he was lit by less sinister fires in the pit below. The calm Neji had assumed would always be with the Uchiha had vanished.
"Him?" Sasuke screamed. "You picked him over me?"
Hinata cried out in warning, and light flashed through Sasuke's body, rising through his chest, pulsing through his head and congregating in his right hand. Sasuke charged.
Neji had always been fast, fleet and agile to the point that the destructive nature of the jyuuken was almost superfluous; if he had chosen to learn regular taijutsu instead, he would have been no less successful. He'd worked at it, improving it and challenging himself, matching Lee pace for pace because damned if Lee was not the fastest, craziest combatant Konoha had.
And yet it wasn't enough, somehow.
For the first time, Neji saw a blur through the bykugan, a blur of blue-white lighting and crackling force that left the sting of ozone creeping in the air, a blur which, for the first time, he could do nothing about.
He turned, not even fast enough to track the movement with his suddenly clumsy body, and saw the stuff of nightmares.
Still holding the power of the skies in his fist, the Uchiha's bloody hand protruded clear through the hole in Sakura's chest where her heart had been.
OoOoOoO
A/N: updated a day early because I'll be out of town.