"Sabuka!" shouted Sasuke. Mesmerized by Gaara's eyes, she stood frozen as sand crept toward her, more and more of it. Startled awake, Sabuka dodged out of the way and leapt toward Gaara, her hands suddenly bristling with shuriken. She flung them at Gaara, then aimed a flying side kick at his chest. However, she met only a wall of sand, not flesh, and she fell into the sea of crimson with a sickening splash. Disgusted, Sabuka scrambled to her feet and jumped backwards out of it.
"I could have told you that would happen," Sasuke muttered.
"Nice of you to mention that you could have told me before I actually tried it," Sabuka replied out of the side of her mouth.
"Sometimes a strong enough jutsu will get through it," Sasuke advised.
"I don't have any particularly strong jutsus," Sabuka admitted, but her gaze dropped to her left arm, just below her elbow, breaking eye contact with Sasuke.
"The Sand and Leaf Villages are allies!" Sakura was shouting, distracting Sasuke. "Why are you killing our people?"
"Your rules and theirs do not apply to me," Gaara snarled. "I have no allies. I will kill every living being but for myself. My existence will remain!"
"What is his deal?" muttered Sabuka, the fear not showing in her words... but it was there.
"Now is not the time to explain," Sasuke said grimly, undoing the wrappings around his arm. "Cover me, please."
"I take if you have one of the afore-mentioned 'strong enough jutsus'?"
"Yes, it's worked against him in the past."
"Do you expect me to take a fatal wound for you?" Sabuka inquired.
"I expect you to be able to block it," he retorted.
"You have a lot of confidence in my abilities for never having seen me fight."
"I saw you attack. That was a perfect side kick, and would have worked if not for the sand." He began making hand seals and backing away as he did so.
"One side kick is not an adequate evaluation of ability," Sabuka began, but Sasuke cut her off.
"Don't argue! Just go!" he said, continuing to move his hands in complicated patterns.
Kakashi saw what he was doing and apparently had a problem with it. "Sasuke - "
"Not a chance, Sensei," said the dark-haired shinobi grimly. "This one's mine."
--
Sabuka glanced over at Gaara, wondering why no attacks were forthcoming. She was shocked to see him bent over slightly, hands pressed to his head, pain warping his features.
And they call him evil. Am I the only one who sees this? But she caught sight of the bodies of the Leaf villagers. There has to be a reason... Eventually, his hands dropped, and Sabuka knew with a deadly certainty that the attacks were about to start.
Gathering a bit of chakra, Sabuka teleported over to where Naruto was standing uselessly. "Uzumaki! Can you do the clone thing again?"
"Believe it!"
She rolled her eyes. "For now, I will." Sand was gathering like a living thing, creeping toward Sasuke, who was gathering chakra in his arm. "As many as you can. The goal is not to attack Gaara but to stop him from attacking Sasuke." The clones seemed perfect for getting in the way of those lethal-looking sand spikes.
"I can do the same," said Kakashi, multiplying into many more clones than Naruto. "It's a decent plan, since Sasuke has taken the Chidori upon himself."
Sabuka turned to Sakura. "I don't know what you can do."
"I can do that, too, but mine aren't solid," Sakura confessed tremulously. "And I'm a medical ninja. But," she added in a firmer voice, "I would take a fatal wound for Sasuke."
"I'm sure you would," Sabuka murmured. She had enough tact to understand that this was not the time for a cutting remark, but privately, she thought it would be better to let Sasuke take the wound if Sakura could heal it. "Alright, go stand in front of Sasuke. You're the last line of defense. But it tells you to move, move, because he's probably got a good reason."
Looking marginally happier, Sakura teleported over to Sasuke. Kakashi and Naruto clones were throwing themselves into deterring sand attacks while Sasuke gathered his chakra from a distance. Sabuka felt momentarily lost.
What do I do now?
--
Sabuka crept around behind the sand ninja, unnoticed. She didn't have any super-strong techniques, and she wasn't selfless enough to take a fatal wound for anyone, but that didn't mean she couldn't aid in the distraction.
She stood directly behind Gaara now. Pressing her first and middle fingers against their partners on the other hand, she folded and crossed the remaining digits. Chakra gathered in her hands as she whispered, "Akarai Jutsu - Red Lightning Technique!"
From her palm, which was now turned outward, the back of her hand pressed against her other palm, a bolt of crimson electricity, the same hue as the blood it sped across, zigzagged toward Gaara. As Sabuka had expected, it met only a wall of golden sand, but Gaara felt the impact and whirled around, furious. A multitude of clones took the opportunity to fling themselves at Gaara's now exposed back. Sand twined around itself, pouring out of the gourd Gaara carried, shielding, and destroying the copies one by one. Apparently, Gaara didn't consider them enough of a threat and let the sand deal with the clones behind his back.
Over and under it danced, waves of gold slipping towards her, dusty, deadly fury. Gaara's hand was stretched out, as if reaching for her, but Sabuka wasn't fool enough to mistake it for longing. His lips moved, and she could just barely make out the words.
"Desert Coffin," he said, and it was a malicious, sibilant hiss.
Licking her lips and finding her voice through her panic, Sabuka flung her arms up into an X-block and gasped, "Akakekkai - Red Barrier!"
A transparent crimson shield sprung into existence, a perfect sphere half above ground and half below. The wave broke against it, rebounding in a spray of gold dust, glittering in the dappled light beneath the trees. It spiraled around and returned, beating relentlessly against the barrier, twisting and writhing like a swarm of tiny insects.
Chakra poured into the shield as Sabuka searched for salvation. She saw Sasuke say something; she saw a worried-looking Sakura step out of the way. Shimmering blue danced around the hand that hung at the dark shinobi's side and he began to run.
--
Sabuka eyed the glimmering Chidori and knew that it would penetrate Gaara's defenses, especially since Sasuke had said that it had worked in the past. This was good, because she couldn't maintain the barrier for too much longer. But...
She was crazy for it, she knew, but she hoped it didn't kill him.
Sasuke raced toward Gaara; Sabuka created another tentative bolt of red lightning to draw his attention closer to her, away from Sasuke.
But he turned anyway. It was almost too late at that point; Sasuke was nearly upon him. There was not enough time for Gaara to do anything, though sand began to gather in a desperate, futile attempt to halt impending doom.
In the last half a second, Sabuka transferred the barrier.
The Chidori could get through the sand. It could get through the barrier. But it couldn't get through both.
Sasuke, puzzled, struggled to push through as he crashed into the combined shield. The Red Barrier shattered, but he had lost momentum and couldn't fully penetrate the sand shield.
In a whirlwind of gold, Gaara vanished, leaving them with several bodies and a whole lot of blood.
--
"What the hell was that for?" Sasuke demanded, striding up to her. Sabuka regarded him coolly and responded with, "I'm going to Sand Village."
"You are not," he said furiously.
"I wasn't aware that you had any power over me. I'm going back to the desert."
"You said you'd never been," Sasuke accused.
Sabuka smiled wryly. "You're grasping again. I said I'd never been to Sand Village, not that I'd never been to the desert. Besides..." She paused. "I lied."
"What else did you lie about?" he asked irritably. "Where you're from? Are you related to him, then?"
Sabuka hesitated, then shook her head. "No. No, I really don't think so. I'm not from Sand Village." Her face hardened. "But I am going."
"I would like an answer to Sasuke's question," Kakashi said mildly, coming up. "Why did you stop the Chidori?"
Sabuka shrugged. "It seemed like the thing to do at the time."
Leaving it at that, she walked away.
--
Sabuka slipped through the gates of Leaf Village soon after. She knew that Squad Seven was busy helping clean up the mess, so they - especially Sasuke and his unhealthy obsession with Gaara - would be unable to follow and interrogate her further, at least for now.
Nevertheless, Sabuka bypassed stopping to purchase any food, worried about the time it would take. She still had some travel rations left anyway, and it wasn't as if she were walking the entire distance. She was a shinobi, and there were plenty of ways to make the journey go faster.
She wasn't sure she knew the desert well enough to teleport all the way there, so she gathered chakra in her feet and began to run.
--
It had been early afternoon when she left, and now it was late, late evening. Night was gathering, day quickly extinguished in a spray of fiery glory as the sun drowned in an ocean of sand.
Sand. She had run and run, pouring chakra into her feet, faster and faster, more and more. She had stopped only a few times, because she wanted to reach the desert before nightfall, even though it was so far away. Her chakra was drained; there would be nothing to protect her through the night. She would just have to hope.
Her bare toes swam in the pleasant, grainy sea, and Sabuka took a few more stumbling steps. Then, weary to the bone, she gave up. Sinking to the ground, she fell asleep in the last, dying rays of the sun.
--
Sweat crawled across her face, stinging her eyes, and that was what woke her. Or maybe it was the shadow that passed over her... No, there was no shadow; that was only wishful thinking. She may have adapted to extreme temperatures - and she could bear them easily without complaining - but that didn't mean she had to like them. Especially not with an almost-long-sleeve, black shirt and long pants.
In fact, Sabuka wasn't sure how she had slept so far into the day beneath this oppressive heat. But then she remembered: Running. Running and running and running and running out of chakra and then running out of the will to stay awake.
Tentatively, Sabuka tested for chakra. A little had returned with sleep.
So... here she was.
Sasuke never had told her Gaara's story, but then, that had been more her fault than his, what with her running off and all. But maybe, just maybe, it was better that way. She was afraid of that story, even as she wanted so much to hear it. She was afraid she would find no reasons for what he had done.
--
Not long after she began to walk, Sabuka rolled up her right sleeve. Unfortunately, it kept sliding down, and eventually, she tore it off. The ebony cloth fluttered forlornly away in the hot wind, a retreating raven, leaving Sabuka looking a little lopsided. But her left sleeve stayed untouched, and so, too, did her trousers.
Sand waltzed around her ankles, and though it was searing beneath her bare feet, she hardly noticed. There were enough calluses from walking around without shoes that she hardly noticed anyway.
She was weary to the bone, and the view was still the same monotonous sand, although it had a sort of golden beauty that kept her eyes riveted on the horizon. This is the truth of the world, she realized suddenly. We walk and walk, and all around us, the world stays the same. But there's something so inexplicably beautiful about it that keeps our eyes on the future and our dreams in our eyes.
At long last, the buildings of the Village Hidden In Sand rose from the expanse and Sabuka wondered if she'd reached the future.
--
She passed into the village without incident, and abrupt segue between monotony and variation. It left her momentarily disoriented, but the feeling faded quickly, leaving her with the impression of emptiness one gets when losing something precious to the heart.
Her first impulse was to find Gaara, or to at least find someone who could tell her about him. However, reason won out: She need rest. An inn: An inn would be helpful.
Sabuka's strides became a meandering, dizzy stumble. People shied away from her drunken walk, fear lighting in their eyes, but she was too tired to even notice, let alone puzzle out why. She hadn't the foggiest idea where she was going.
At least, someone took pity on the unstable stranger, stepping out of the crowd to catch her. Sabuka's last, semi-coherent thought before unconsciousness was, Well, this sucks worse than Naruto's kicks. Then Naruto led to Sasuke and Sasuke led to Gaara and she fell into dreams of sand.
--
