She had forgotten that she hadn't a clue where anything was in Leaf Village. Apparently, so had Sasuke, or else he just liked making a fool of her.
Eventually, by asking several people, Sabuka found it. But then, the overcast sky had turned to rain.
Sabuka smiled smugly to herself, her expression rather like that of a satisfied cat. After all, lightning did better in a storm than it did in a person, and shadows were harder to see in the dark.
In the center of the field, the kunoichi saw her own expression mirrored on Sasuke's face, although he smirked - no doubt - because she had showed. Sabuka had showed, and Sasuke wanted to fight.
Sabuka idly walked around to the three posts and surreptitiously surveyed her surroundings while appearing to keep her gaze only on Sasuke. He gazed back, coolly, but with anticipation.
"You're late," the dark-haired shinobi called. She could have been wrong, but Sabuka thought she heard his voice tremble with excitement; he was anxious to get started.
"I disagree," the kunoichi retorted. "You set no specific time. It's not possible to be late." She couldn't resist adding, "I would have come later, but your rose-haired girlfriend has a glare like kunai. I think you lost me my place to stay."
Sabuka strolled towards Sasuke, hands in her pockets. Annoyance tinged the expression on his face; no doubt he didn't like the girlfriend remark.
She really had to stop irritating the people who wanted to hurt her.
"Shall we get started, then?" Sabuka asked jauntily.
Without answering, Sasuke chucked a lone kunai at her, a weak distraction from his immediate disappearance and reappearance beside her. Sabuka ducked his sideways jab and swept out with her foot. He evaded it easily by leaping backwards and flung several shuriken in her direction. The kunoichi swung her arm up, kunai in hand, and blocked them deftly, knocking the throwing stars to the ground. She then threw a few of her own, which Sasuke slid under, aiming a sweeping kick for her ankles. Sabuka backed away from it and threw a sidekick toward his head; he blocked upward in an X-block and grabbed her arm, twisting it. A palm strike went toward his face; Sasuke released her limb to block one-handed and Sabuka sank her half-freed fist into his stomach.
First Blow.
It was a weak blow, restrained as it was, but he let go, acknowledging the strike despite its lack of damage. They both jumped back; in the same fluid movement, Sasuke sent three kunai speeding for Sabuka. Not expecting them, she was unable to do much to evade them, though it didn't much matter. Two of them flew wide, simply thudding into the wooden posts behind her. The third sliced along her cheek and stuck in the center pole.
First Blood.
Sabuka wiped it away with the back of her hand, although it trickled down again, and rubbed it on her pants, eying Sasuke. She began to move forward, but Sasuke had other ideas.
"Fire Style: Dragon Flame Jutsu!"
First Ninjutsu.
Euphoric flames raced along the threads attached to the kunai - the threads that Sabuka had not noticed. She was trapped between them with nowhere to go.
"Akakekkai!"
The hemisphere of red rose around her; the fire met it and rebounded, unable to continue along the strings. As soon as the fire faded, so did the barrier; she did not want to waste chakra.
Sasuke began to run toward Sabuka, all his concentration locked on the kunoichi, who had began several complicated hand seals. In a split second's lapse, Sasuke slipped in the mud; Sabuka slid one hand behind the other and raised her palms to the sky.
"Akarai Arashi Jutsu - Red Lightning Storm Technique!"
The clouds above went from dark grey to crimson black, like shadowy blood. Ubiquitous scarlet light flashed, and the rain turned red as it hit the ground.
Then a twisting, multi-forked bolt of lightning streaked down toward Sasuke.
He dodged it, but it grew a lateral branch that reached for him with greedy crimson tendrils. With a screech like metal scraping across glass, the lightning flexed and wrapped around the dark-haired shinobi, detaching from the sky. It contracted, crackling with scarlet electricity.
A few moments later, Sabuka released the technique, unable to maintain the flow of chakra. Before the lightning vanished, it flung Sasuke backwards into the mud.
First Fall.
Sasuke scrambled to his feet and raced toward her. He began to throw a punch but vanished before it was completed. Appearing next to her, he finished the strike; Sabuka just barely stopped it with an inner wrist block and attempted a punch to Sasuke's solar plexus. He caught it in the palm of his hand and hook the kunoichi's legs out from under her, throwing her to the ground, but not letting go of her right hand.
As a kick came for her nose, Sabuka reflected that they should have established rules for how far this could go.
Her left arm came up just in time; the kick glanced off it and hit her cheekbone - damage slightly reduced and no longer bone-shattering - as well as her eye, though she closed it before contact. The kunoichi twisted from Sasuke's grasp and rolled away, coating herself in mud, then scrambled to her feet.
They backed away from each other, both panting, both muddy. Sasuke's clothes were scorched from the chakra lightning; Sabuka's were no longer visible beneath the grime.
The kunoichi turned her face to the sky, letting the rain wash into her bruised eye. Sasuke took advantage of Sabuka's distraction and flung several shuriken at her. They thudded sickly into her flesh, but her body was immediately replaced by a log.
Sabuka turned up behind Sasuke, but her roundhouse kick met only another log. A kunai pierced her shoulder, but she was, once again, only a substitution.
From the relative protection of a tree's foliage, Sabuka cried, "Kage no Shinkudoki - Crimson Wrath of Shadows!" At the same time, nearby, she heard an icy hiss.
"Sharingan."
Then the world around them went black.
--
The effects were similar to that of her Red Moon technique, but Sabuka's silhouette this time was a brilliant scarlet, her eyes an abyssal ebony. But then, instead of growing, the silhouette multiplied.
The original glided down from the tree and turned. Her wide, unnerving eyes met the deep, ebony-pierced rubies of Sasuke's Sharingan.
Gradually, scarlet silhouettes of Sasuke Uchiha added to the immense crowd.
Sabuka swore.
--
To be perfectly blunt, she was no match for Sasuke. While her techniques could have been strong, she was terrible at controlling the flow of chakra. Molding it into fancy shapes for an audience took a lot less management than manipulating it in the heat of battle. As she had already demonstrated, Sabuka often used up a lot more than she needed.
So she had counted on using this technique to take him out, a thousand to one. But now it was a thousand to a thousand, and they were not equally matched.
You have potential, she remembered. You have potential, but no control. Concentrate. Let go of the sarcasm in battle.
She had never remembered that before.
The carmine shadows were fighting each other now, locked in crimson combat. Sabuka's silhouettes were losing miserably, as she had predicted.
The kunoichi silhouette turned to fight and a scarlet fist caught her in the jaw. Whether or not it was the original Sasuke, she couldn't tell.
"So, you're a copycat," Sabuka quipped, in case it was the real Sasuke. There was no reply, but that didn't mean much.
A hint of sand swirled across her vision, but there was no sand here. Forget the insults, Sabuka, and concentrate.
The kunoichi shadow stumbled away from the Sasuke shadow into another. She turned around and began to spar with it. If she could concentrate, she could awake the full power of the Crimson Wrath…
But she couldn't: Her chakra, even now, was almost gone. And there was no concentrating in this crowd.
A kunai thudded into her left arm, dangerously close to where her scar would be. That was one good thing about this world: In it, she couldn't bleed.
But then a second kunai pierced her right shoulder, and she was jolted back to the real world, where she could.
Sasuke stood behind the kneeling, bleeding kunoichi, a third kunai held at her throat. "Yield," he ordered icily.
"Yes," Sabuka replied, panting. She was trying not to rock forward from exhaustion, as that would have slit her throat on the blade. "I lost. Please remove that before I kill myself on it."
The dark-haired shinobi took the kunai away and the kunoichi fell forward to her hands and knees.
"That was interesting," said Sasuke coolly.
"Not really," gasped Sabuka, although it had been. Very interesting. "You can leave now." She sat back on her knees. "I have to go find a place to stay. Sakura is probably not going to take me back."
Sasuke shrugged and walked away.
Sabuka watched him fade into the rain, regretting only that she had used too much chakra to leave for Sand Village right away.
--
When she reached Sunakagure, night had fallen a few hours before. Sabuka wove her way through the streets of Sand Village; on her approach of Ora's house and café, the cloaked medical ninja left without a word. Ryūken glared at her, but said nothing as Sabuka slid behind the counter and picked up her notebook.
"I can help you, ma'am," the kunoichi cheerfully informed the one woman in line.
--
"I thought you'd be back," Ora told her, although there was no trace of annoyance. Just satisfaction at being accurate.
"Well, you thought right," returned Sabuka. Then, because she thought that was a little impertinent to one who had essentially taken her in, the kunoichi bowed and added, "Thank you. For everything. You don't mind, do you?"
"Not as long as you keep working," Ora said. "Your room is in the same place."
"Eternally grateful," Sabuka assured her, and collapsed into bed a few minutes later.
--
"I'm going to need a new map," Sabuka moaned into her pillow as a bundle hit the ground behind her. The kunoichi rolled sideways and landed on top of it.
"I'm a bit ahead of you," came Ora's reply, which sounded far too awake for this time of morning. "There is one in the package. But don't worry about it now. You were traveling all day yesterday. Sleep a little later this morning."
So Sabuka rolled off the bundle and tumbled back into slumber.
--
Someone prodded her forcefully in the back and Sabuka grumbled at Tianmaru to leave her alone. Then she realized that she had simply shifted back on top of Ora's package and she had absolutely no idea who Tianmaru was.
Sabuka made a disgusted sound and sat up. There were some clothes in the dresser, she discovered, and she put them on. The white shirt had elbow-length sleeves that weren't quite long enough, and the kunoichi was forced to tear a strip off the bottom of the stormy grey trousers, giving them an oddly lopsided look.
On the way out, Sabuka stopped by the café, where an irritable young man – not Ryūken – informed her that "Ms. Kaido said you eat for free". Impressed – with Ora's generosity – Sabuka ordered something she could eat as she walked, and headed out into the heat without forgetting a canteen of water.
--
