I just want to make something clear: I will finish this. I plan to finish it neatly and without rush because I would hate for it be pieced together like everything I have tried sewing in my life. (meaning: awfully). Updates will be more frequent after February because then everything I need to get done for my admission next year will be done and I will have more time. I have another chapter handwritten somewhere, so the second I have some time I will type it.

To Chisa Chispa: Thank you so much for your kind words. You have no idea how much they meant to me. I wish I could have had answered you sooner (or more importantly, update sooner), but there was school and it was just impossible. Again, thank you a lot for your reviews. They mean the world to me. :)

To crazee: I'm not a fan of Sasuke's character as a matter of fact so there was never a doubt in my head that it would end like this. :P Thank you for your review! :)

Summary of Chapter 7: Shi, Sora's student, was sent by his sensei to retrieve an object from the house of her mother. However, when he arrived there he found Chinese soldiers occupying the house and even if he showed his dragon tattoo, they beat him up. When Sora arrived with Ibiki, it was revealed that the soldiers are in fact her half-brothers' soldiers, Ning and Bo of China, and they arrived in Japan with the sole purpose of taking the Japanese throne for themselves. During Sora and Bo's discussion, it was hinted that Sora owe her life to Bo and as a result of this, and his threats toward Tenten's life, she agreed to let them stay on her mother's lands. She didn't leave before Ibiki roughly broke Ning's nose. Meanwhile, at the front, Naruto grew reckless on the battlefield. Deaf to Neji's warning, he kept pushing himself until he found Sasuke. He delivered a fatal blow to him, but unbeknownst to him, Sakura had followed him to the battlefield. She threw herself in front of Sasuke to protect him, but Naruto's katana killed them both.

-X-

Morino Ibiki weighed the kunai in his palm. Its handle barely covered his palm and whenever he closed his fist over it, the blade shook and caught the light and the vivid green of the grass.

"She's in pain, you know? And because she's as stubborn as two mules, she lies there and refuses to eat. We both know, it's pride. When she was a child, it was pride. Now, it's still pride. Goddamn woman threw me out of her room when I told her that. We don't grow up, we're all just the same... Time after time after time."

Ibiki had learned long ago that death wasn't white or stiff. It was oily and reeking, bloating, barely hanging on hard bones that shone in the sun. He barely stared down, accustomed to it all. Even if he refused to move on when the rest of his clan did. Even when the sun was setting, the sandy horizon gleaming like a thousand distinct pieces shimmering.

A mere mirage.

"Remember the day you met your wife? You told me something ridiculously cheesy I don't even remember. You met her and you knew. I met your sister and I wanted to strangle her. You cut me my face for that, you little shit." He dropped Tenten's kunai in his pocket, resisting the urge to feel the scars on his scalp beneath his bandana. "So I guess you had the last laugh."

He spat on the ground.

"You little shit," he repeated because it seemed to be the only thing to say in front of a dead friend.

Ibiki had missed the greed of the shadows, the way they drank and licked and begged for dark secrets surrounded in pain. The pain before truth. Yet, it was the silence that followed the revelation that always pulled at him, his blood churning and twisting, because of the stillness. The light rustles of the branches, the haunting of the wind. Like now. And soon he would move on with the rest of his clan, all shadows, his shape blurry by his speed. Soon, that secret would perish, vain and useless, because secrets meant nothing once unraveled.

He smacked a mosquito against the bark of a tree before he leaned more comfortably against it. He finally glanced down then, the horizon closing onto itself, the night unveiling the rest. Soon, there would be the stars and moon and he would have to move.

The hand seemed to be scorched, gripping at a strand of grass. The insects ate their way down the corpse's eyes and nose. Katsuo could have been sleeping and forgotten to smack them away. He could have slipped between two states, his bow at his feet dangled in long strands of hay and yellowish grass. The skin sank onto the sand and the bones remained atop it. Strong and unwavering.

"We trained together and I won every time. I should have that engraved on your tomb." He stopped himself, his glance turning towards the katana still ebbed in his flesh.

Somehow, Ibiki expected him to say something back.

Everything was as expected, he knew. Dead took only one form, for him, the surprised frown, the cold anger. For everyone he had lost or seen die or killed himself, he always expected the next reply, the argument. The next something, that would mean nothing needed to end in pain.

"Katsuo, how am I supposed to tell your sister you're dead?"

He straightened himself before the shadows started buzzing behind him. Slowly, he scribbled down on a piece of paper and held it at his side between two fingers until he felt the pull. He let it go and turned away.

Ibiki whistled slowly, his hands deep in his pockets, the tip of his finger resting against the tip of Tenten's kunai. The buzzing intensified around him and he could hear his men fall into steps with him. The pain at his fingertips sent jolts of pleasure up his arm and burnt at the nape of his neck.

"Get the body wrapped up and send word to Hyuuga Akusa that her son is dead. Tell her Maito Gai is to blame."

Most importantly, he had missed power. Now was the time to take it all back, a grain of sand at a time, and build his own sandcastle. Then, Sora would choose him.

The pain before truth.

-X-

Written In the Stars

by Clementive

-X-

It burnt in her chest, until she could barely move. Heavy. The moist air, the halted breeze. She wondered if it was the weight of the world sneaking its way up her chest and bleeding in her veins.

Her sense of doom paralyzed her under the stars.

The land breathed and recoiled, an unsteady sea of bodies, and suddenly it was bleeding, the earth wrecking open every time a man shouter. Open wounds of dry red earth snaked through the battlefield. The blood was in the mud. The mud was the blood and it dragged them deeper and deeper, the survivors under the moonlight. Silver clashed and the earth kept roaring.

The world was alive but reeked of death.

Tenten turned towards the stars because she remembered her father doing the same before each battle. Because it felt safer that way, with everything shifting and Neji at the front and her at the rear. She didn't know what she looked for written in the stars, but somehow she found herself counting the lights turning off. And on and off. Even the sky was nothing but a circle.

On the ground, there were waves after waves of mud and hushed whispers. Above, in the stars, earth and heaven were torn apart. The more she frowned, the more she thought she could hear her father pointing and yelling at the stars. It was a bridge, her last memory. Where everything was meant to start and end.

"You foolish girl, war isn't written in the stars. It's written in the heart of men."

Tenten startled, lowering her head to squint at the darkness behind her. Vaguely, she could see Rong kneeling besides the sliding doors. She uncrossed her arms exhaling sharply as if the air was chilling but her hair stuck to her forehead and neck with sweat.

"I couldn't sleep," she murmured.

Her lips froze when she realized, there was no glimpse of silver where Rong's mouth should have been. The wood creaked and still Rong didn't move.

The voice had spoken in Japanese.

The clouds moved, the moonlight illuminating for a short while the earth exhaled above the chilled silence, a foggy breeze rising, the budding flowers frozen in red, and the monks died one after the other. Aburame Torune and Yamanaka Fu tossed the body of the old woman on the side. Finally, there was a glimpse of silver, her mouth slightly ajar, and Tenten couldn't look away.

The stars had reflected so little of the world below.

"Wonderful night, yes, Tenten-chan?"

She remembered having seen the act too many times to count, while she had introduced a man in a room where Torune and Fu were waiting. Her ears rang with her heartbeat hammering against her ribcage. The sound filled her entirely, her back hitting a wooden pillar behind her. Torune was always the first to speak, while Fu would be the first to strike.

"Did you really think you could get away from Danzo-sama, Tenten-chan?" Slowly, he shook his finger, clicking his tongue while he moved towards her. He reeked of the poison he handled and when he leaned in, she nearly gagged, her pale face reflected in his eyes, as if he was an insect.

He smirked, titling his head on the side.

"You really should have read my heart, instead of your stars." He straightened his back, still staring at her. "Don't look so petrified, Tenten-chan, it's comical really, when you think about it. Had you not been pregnant, you wouldn't have gagged at the stench of the soup and you would have eaten some and you would be dead. Like the rest of them. Danzo-sama needs you pregnant and well, you see?"

The clouds passed over the moonlight, the nails sank into her palms and she finally saw.

Fu held Yamanaka Ino against his chest, his katana to her throat. The pressure of the naked blade brought tears to the corner of her eyes.

Tenten finally saw the game where war was a ghost, shapeless, faceless, that shallowed everything whole, and she had already lost it.

-X-

Yamanaka Ino was terrified. Her breath quickened, blurring the blade along a slight flow of her blood.

She reached out of her body and saw them as they really were; a princess and a pauper. They had crossed the last line and the gap between them was deepening, hollow and silent. No one was coming forward to take the fall, save the other, as they would have a month ago in Konoha. No one was willing, now, to hold on to the last parcel of the dying horizon while the rest slipped between their fingers.

Ino had thought it would end with Tenten, her act still up, but she was more terrified now that Tenten seemed to hesitate, her glance shifting, between the blade and above. She had imagined Tenten titling her head on their way to the monastery, her act up, unwavering. In her mind, there had been no ring under her eyes, no sad curve to her lips. The lump in her throat tightened, unbearably, when she tried to force it down. Tenten's hand closed around her stomach and when she met her eyes, there was a dagger between them and Ino knew that she would die here.

In the gap.

In the ruins of her last impulsive act.

"Let me guess, I do as you say and Ino-chan lives? I expected more originality from you Torune-san."

Ino closed her eyes. Every time, she had replayed this scene in her head, Tenten's voice wasn't a murmur, it was a disdained shout, part of the movement of her arm that would snap open her fan.

"Ah! No, we are showing you your fate. Ino-chan thought like you she could escape us. Then, she thought she could fool us. Does that sound familiar?"

There had been jealousy, raw pain and anger between them, in the past, but Tenten wouldn't, couldn't save her, now. Ino was one of the pawns that could be crushed, disregarded while the others resumed their chase towards the throne. She had always thought if she was more beautiful, more intelligent, more powerful, she would survive longer. If she smoothed the imperfections and smiled until her cheeks hurt and pretended there wasn't always the slightest wrinkle on her kimono, on her face, they would think she belonged with them at the table where the game was played and she would be allowed to pull her own slates, move forward her own pawns on the board.

The air tensed around Torune, Fu and Tenten, and she was already dead. Her tongue weighed the capsule of herbs, the last that remained of her clan.

The chant of the monks had quietened hours ago, smears of coughed up blood around them. Rotating. Out of reach. The shadows swept in and she already faded, deflating, leaking in columns of red no one reached forward to wipe. Tenten's sad smile erased her. Torune's tensing shoulders and smirk drowned her.

In the gap.

In the dirt.

There was Shikamaru thinking the same thing without saying it: expendable.

The dagger katana left her throat to dig between her ribs. She gasped, her flesh buzzing around the blade and her fingers slipped onto the silver trying to hold onto it. Tenten barely flinched as she glided forward, her insides burning, her throat closing onto itself.

Ino bit onto the pill and her blood stilled in her veins. Her body was in pain but her mind was free.

-X-

Ino's body slid onto the floor, gurgles rippling out of her chest. Her skin turned paler, her blood sucking onto her bones, until its metallic salty scent hung in the stale air. It peeled layers and layers of life, colours, until Ino stopped moving and she started drifting, grey and sullen. Dead.

Torune forced another girl to sit in front of them. She shivered, meek in her pleads, and the dagger played a tune each time it hit one of her ribs.

"You need me alive and well for Danzo-sama, so what will you do now that your only pawn is as pale as death itself? I don't know this girl."

Her tongue was thick in her mouth, but her words hung light and humming. They slid out of her chest like a knife, smooth and warm. Ripping. She almost reached for her fan and snapped it open as if she still worked for Danzo and she was leaning forward, watchful on the fickle she needed to build or destroy a man. She had never realized until now that the game had changed, evolved and spun out of control. She wondered if this was how Neji led his own war now; his knees drenched in blood and with no survivor. No innocence.

"Our only pawn? Tenten-san... act as almighty as you wish, but you have the most dangerous fear of all."

"And what would that be?"

"You hate piles of cadavers." Torune smiled softly at the girl, drinking in her expression as her lids fluttered and Fu's dagger reached deeper inside her. "Spilling innocent blood," he inhaled deeply as Fu let go of the girl and her fingers curled and twitched in the empty air. "Guilt, Tenten-chan. You are terrified that people would die because of you. Well, they do, Tenten-chan. They did." He smiled wider and all she saw was an untamed wolf aiming at her jugular. Spilled lives, spilled blood; the same drop, the same red puddle.

"Maybe not Ino-chan, though. She died because she's a liar and Danzo-sama doesn't like liars. Did she seriously think she could fool Danzo-sama? We have allies in the Nara house. What a foolish girl. I guess I can see now how you two couldn't see beyond your dear loved ones. You didn't learn this foolishness under Danzo-sama's, that's for certain."

They locked eyes and Fu raised to grab another girl pressed against the wall.

"But tell me, Tenten-san... Did you seriously think that you were free of Danzo-sama? That you didn't belong to him anymore?" Torune inspected his dagger, frowning, as his thumb ran along the sleek crimson of its curve. "Danzo-sama offers you the Japan empire and his hand in marriage. Once he's conquered the Hyuuga clan with your son, he will kill him but that's a small price to pay for the unification of Japan, don't you think?"

"I already have a husband."

"You mean a traitor who will have to take his life because he fought against Danzo-sama's troops while he sat on the Japanese throne? His war is a rebellion, Tenten-chan. It's only a matter of time before he's beheaded."

Rong stared at her with empty eyes, her teeth gleaming dully and the moonlight fell on the open sliding doors like tendrils of spirits. The underworld opened before her. They would call her Empress, betrayed and sad and she would finally sit with them. The girl Fu held wept and tried to meet her glance, but she still stared at the silver.

"Think of the irony... Hyuuga Neji's son raised in the hatred of his clan. Like father like son."

She weighed her dagger in her palm, spreading it in her mind like a fan, like a shield. The silver gleamed, but it was forever tainted and skewed.

"Do you think he'll still love you?" Torune asked softly, his smile as poisonous as his words.

Tenten froze.

"Your husband always wants to save everyone. Some call him fair, but most call him weak. So, Tenten-chan, tell me do you think he'll still love you when he learns you let poor weeping girls die? One after the other... Ah! Now, you're terrified of losing him."

"I thought my greatest fear was guilt."

"No, it's not. I know that now, Tenten-san. Don't worry. You're better at this game than you were months ago, but your weakness is still your heart. Has anyone ever told you: you should never give your heart?" He pushed a strand of hair out of the girl's face. "All love is weakness."

She needed to perfect her hand, maybe her last, maybe her first. She would play until death, until Tirune's dagger and Ino's eyes faded and there was just her and the game. A new player and the darkness rising. A clean slate, new pawns. She smiled like she used to when she knew nothing but revenge.

"I'll come with you. You can stop now."

"Ah, but we'll stop when we'll stop and you'll watch until we'll stop. Don't you see, Tenten-chan? What you want, what you love, what you fear... Everything about you is irrelevant from this point on. You're just the vessel of Danzou-sama's pawn."

Tenten clenched her teeth. She would rip out her own heart if she needed to and then, she would win. There would be no throne, no battlefield, just a country ablaze because that was how dragons fought.

-X-

"Sora, you need to wake up. Now!"

She groaned, bending her knees when the bed sheets were stripped of her body. The futon beneath her was moist with her sweat and the burn in her arms was still consuming. Her eyes moved beneath her lids, her arms still crossed over her midsection. Around her, there were spinning shadows and rushed whispers. The last time she had been in the Morino estate, the buzzing was incessant but it seemed to glide onto the walls, then. Now, the shadows were chaotic, carrying more secrets with quick steps and brisk rustles of their clothes. Somehow war had always succeeded in accelerating time passing by, the way secrets and allies and enemies piled onto scrolls in the robes of members of the Morino clan. Beneath the estate, she knew men were screaming.

The sliding doors opened in a loud squeak of wood, their base reverberating with the harsh movement.

"Sora! Wake up!"

"Bibiki-kun..." Sora groaned again.

"It's your daughter," this time, Morino Ibiki whispered it against her ear.

He watched her inhale sharply, her fingertips brushing against the side where she usually kept her needles. She turned her head towards him and she opened her eyes, they were black. Corded thin veins snaked down her neck and the rest of her movements rolled off her skin, halted by her hiss of pain. She sat up. She straightened the bed sheets, again and again, her fingers moving, stretching and repositioning. Beyond him, the sheets and sun's light filtering inside her room, there was nothing but darkness and stillness.

"What did you do to her?"

She stretched it again, aligning the cushions.

"It's not me," he clenched his teeth, his glare intensifying when he reached inside his robes for the scroll.

Her arm shook when she gripped the scroll he handed her. Briskly, Ibiki turned his head toward the rest of the room. He whistled lowly, thin papers changed hands and the movements meant nothing to her eyes. There was nothing but pain and blindness for now. With shaky hands, she unrolled it against her knee and on the floor. Nervously, her tongue played with the needles in her mouth as she read.

"Hn. You want a trade, then," she said slowly when she finished reading. She lifted her head and searched his face.

They had never been alone since he had brought her at the Morino estate. Each passing day, she thought the next day, they would put words on what happened when she left Konoha. He told her he wasn't punishing her, but she still felt he was. He kept her at arm length, never staring for too long into her eyes before turning away grumbling. Or he would slip close to her and not ask for anything before fading with speed. The way he used to when Qiang exiled her to Konoha. Because if for her, there had always been only him, she had never been sure about him. And between them there was nothing but a twist of fate.

"I interfere and you sit on that pretty ass of yours without causing another war between Japan and China, this time. You hear?" Ibiki paused long enough to stare at her before waving a shadow forward. "Samui, you know what you have to do. Three days, is that understood?"

A tall blonde woman bowed and then disappeared back in the darkness.

"This time?" Sora hissed and the needles in her mouth clicked against her teeth.

"Yes! That's what I said, 'this time'. As in, the last time, there was a war and I was banned for the South. So, you sit back like a good little princess and you do these."

Ibiki dropped a pile scrolls in front her. Her jaw twitched, colour raising to her neck.

"Administration stuff for your very own pleasure."

"No," Sora said coldly before turning away from the pile.

Ibiki stopped mid-step onto the veranda.

"How do you mean 'no'?" Ibiki asked angrily.

His body buzzed and twitched with the need to follow the movement. He didn't want her to see Katsuo's death on his face. Not yet. Not when Tenten's fate was uncertain. Sora had never believed in trending carefully, she had plans that revolved around her and her daughter and no one else.

Slowly, Sora rose to her feet and coldly gesturing for the servants to enter her rooms. She took her time to answer, tilting her head. He tensed up, watching the servants sneaked uneasy glances at each other. If the world was drifting, fast and furious, Sora wanted to watch it slow down. Just for her. Just for the moment necessary for her to regain her footing. She was princess. She was queen. They would wait for her, her next word, her next gesture.

Ibiki wished he could call her selfish, but he had once begged her to choose him over her child.

He wished he could call her childish and spoiled, but he kept her at his estate so he wouldn't have to share her with anyone else.

"I believe it to be clear enough," she said finally. "You used to make fair trades, Ibiki. And this is not what I want. That tall woman..." she slumped one shoulder, one needle poking between her lips. Almost immediately, her tongue swirled it back in her mouth. "And your treating me like a servant... Hn."

"Sora-"

"One meeting with my daughter and I will do your scrolls."

"That's not what we have discussed."

"That's why you're negotiating and I'm not."

She slammed the door in front of him. The pain rushed back in her arm and her insides welled with discomfort and fear as the darkness ascended in her room, clutching and unclenching with each ray of light. She heard him curse and then the veranda creaked loudly under his footsteps.

Pain. Fear. Him.

Sora welcomed it all.

-X-

Ino floated.

The world was made of uneven swirls of colours that glided onto one another before lifting her farther. She had felt the blood slipping out of her, then it had all stopped. Screams were blunted, until they pierced through her. She gasped, emerging more quickly than she would have thought. Her heartbeat was akin to explosions to her ears, and the blood pumped fast and hard to her numb limbs.

Her eyes fluttered open and she was staring at white, her throat crammed with sandy burning air.

"I apologize," a voice murmured.

Ino blinked, the light searing through her mind, colours still danced in front of her, loud and thundering. She felt something pressed against her mouth and her paralyzed muscles tensed and jerked, frozen once more.

She drifted back inside her, her senses quietening.

"I apologize," Hinata Hyuuga repeated softly, her fingers still hovering around Ino's mouth.

Ino drifted.

-X-

Sora and Tenten's meeting next chapter. Woohoo! :D

Oh, and obviously, I didn't kill Ino off.

Thank you for reading and please, take the time to let me know what you thought. (I mean you aren't too angry with me taking forever to update... ^_^')