Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

A/N: Thanks for all of your reviews guys! I really appreciate them!

Song Inspo: The Last of Us Theme by Gustavo Santaolalla

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FIVE

"Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?"

Mary Shelley

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A week had gone by since the discovery of case file CS2 #83 and Sakura was so stressed that her own body was starting to react to it. She was just a mean and angry person with no way to direct her anger without destroying the village and it turned out that Ino had had enough.

"Okay, Forehead, listen," Ino stomped into her office, words falling from her lips even before she crossed the threshold, "I don't know what's got your panties in a twist, but I'm tired of you."

Sakura's nostrils flared as her hands clenched into fists and she forcibly reminded herself that good people don't punch pregnant women.

"Ino, I am not in the mood for this right now." She gritted out from between clenched teeth.

Even still, she braced herself for an infamous Yamanaka Ino nagging session as said woman's lips pursed stubbornly.

"I don't care," she retorted, hands on her hips. "I don't care so much that I'm coming over tonight and making you my famous tempura and you're gonna stop being a bitch and like it."

Sakura instantly deflated at Ino's gruff words. Her dear friend only cared for her, and if she had to insult her way into Sakura's heart in the same manner her husband had, then that was how it was going to be.

Besides, it worked.

Chewing her bottom lip before her lips twitched into a smile, Sakura asked shyly, "Tempura?"

Ino smiled and echoed with a nod, "Tempura."

Both women smiled at each other for a moment before Ino huffed. "Now give me your keys. I'll be there when you get home with food on the table. You get off at seven, right?"

Nodding as she dug in her lab coat pockets for her keys before handing them to Ino, Sakura looked at the time and cursed.

"Sorry, Pig!" She cried as she hastily started gathering charts and patient files. "I'm late to a meeting!"

Rolling her eyes, Ino slipped Sakura's keys into her wristlet. "Go on, then! And that bitch attitude of yours better be gone by dinner time—you got that, Forehead?"

"Yes, ma'am!" Sakura said, eyes twinkling as she briskly walked out of the room with the blonde's giggles trailing behind her.

The small smile stayed on Sakura's lips for the rest of her shift, the thought of Ino's amazing tempura dancing in her head. Even when the Head Nurse made snarky remarks about her appearance and apparent poor self-care, she had just smiled and nodded because she had tempura waiting.

Tempura made with love.

It wasn't even the fact that she had one of her favorite greasy meals imminent that had her in such a better mood than she had woken up in, it was the fact that her best friend loved her enough to barge into her office (well, slowly waddle in, actually) and force herself into her life. Little things like that meant something to her, now.

Because the Head Nurse's words had a bit of truth to them: Sakura had been neglecting herself for the last week. Stress had a way of doing that to a person—in fact, Sakura hadn't really slept in over two weeks.

Though she didn't really need to sleep, she liked to because it was a way to rest her mind—to stop thinking about Kabuto's and Orochimaru's bullshit antics.

Without sleep, that was all she could think about. Thus, the roots of her stress and anxiety.

Walking through the hospital doors to the village outside, Sakura breathed in the cool summer night's air. The sun was just dipping over the horizon and if she looked, she was sure she'd be able to see some merry stars barely twinkling overhead.

She took her time heading back to her apartment, deciding to give Ino some extra time to make everything look pretty, and some villagers and shinobi called their greetings. When she had been a Genin, she'd never thought that she'd make such an impact in people's lives; but there, eating a popsicle on a bench, was a boy she'd saved from pneumonia a year ago. Across the street was an old woman whose fractured hip she had fixed after a nasty fall last winter, and on the rooftops was a chakra signature she'd saved from septic shock during the war.

There was so much life around her, and she'd be damned if she let those two bastards take that away from her.

Climbing the steps to her apartment door, Sakura noted that all her traps had been disabled; which wasn't really a cause for worry considering Ino had probably been the one to do so as per usual. Grabbing her mail and rifling through it (which was weird because Ino liked going through her personal stuff), Sakura unlocked her door with a spare key and nudged it aside with her shoulder.

"Ugh," Sakura projected her voice so that her friend, who she could hear bustling about in the kitchen, would hear, "Every single time I go on a mission, Maki-san always sends me an eviction notice!"

Turning the corner to the kitchen, Sakura mumbled, "I swear, it's like she can't wait for me to die or some—Ino!"

For one heart stopping moment, Sakura had felt the Earth disappear from beneath her feet. Icy fear clawed from her chest to her throat at the sight of her heavily pregnant friend collapsed on her side at the foot of her dishwasher. There was a nasty gash at her temple, bleeding liberally and staining her beautiful platinum blonde hair red, and Sakura prayed to every God who would listen for Ino and Inojin's life.

She made a move towards her when she narrowly avoided a kunai to the foot and she whipped angry sea glass eyes to glare at the intruder who dared do this. Anger turned to shock and then horror as the shinobi she had killed in Birds country gave her a toothy grin.

She tried to reason how a man whose throat she had slit was standing at her stove sautéing peppers—how the only indication of said death was a horrendous scar from ear to ear like a gruesome smile.

It made her sick to already know the answer.

"Hello, again."

Swallowing uneasily and falling into a defensive crouch, Sakura hissed, "What did you do to her?"

The shinobi grunted derisively before going back to his damned peppers. "Oh, don't be so dramatic. She's still alive."

A wave of relief so profound nearly made her knees weak, but she held her ground because Ino was still in danger. Everything in her demanded she go to Ino's side to tend to her, but an ancient instinct in her kept her from doing so. This man was dangerous in a way she was loathed to acknowledge—a product of her own creation—and she knew he was the predator to Ino's prey.

He'd had the element of surprise and therefore the higher ground. She had to tread carefully.

If there wasn't so much at stake, Sakura was sure she could have killed him in as little as two seconds. But his foot was too close to Ino's head and she knew that it would only take two seconds for it to come down on it. Not for the first time, Sakura cursed herself for not perfecting the shunshin—those two seconds were two seconds too long.

The soft daytime lights of her kitchen were a stark contrast to the pervading darkness of nightfall from when she had seen him last (four whole weeks ago), giving her the misfortune of seeing the shinobi's features in full.

He might have been handsome once, but the scars from what she had done to him marred his features into something absolutely awful. She had done horrible things to him for the sake of acquiring information. The scar on his hairline from where she had slowly scalped him was a reminder of what had made him break, and she, for a fleeting moment, felt utterly disgusted with herself.

"Admiring your handiwork?"

Silence met his scornful question and he tutted at her like a disappointed parent. Her eyes wandered to the snow white hair on his head and dread settled deep in her belly. Sakura knew, without even having to check, that this man didn't have a heartbeat. In fact, he probably didn't even know how to keep cycling chakra and blood through his pathways and veins to keep his body from decaying; she could see splotches of where livor mortis had set and his movements were stiff enough to indicate bouts of rigor.

She knew without a doubt that she had turned him. She didn't even have to ask herself how; she could remember how the idiot had licked her blood from his blade.

The question was: "Why are you here?"

At the sound of her voice, the shinobi turned around with a wooden spoon in hand to look at her with such loathing that it took her aback. No one had ever looked at her that way—not even enemy shinobi.

There was an unspoken understanding on the battlefield—unless two ninjas had a personal vendetta against each other—that whatever happened between enemy combatants wasn't personal, simply business. Normal shinobi didn't enjoy taking lives, it was just their job.

So while she has had enemy shinobi stare her down with anger or some type of emotion to fuel their killing intent, she had never encountered one who truly, truly loathed her.

Well, she supposed there was a first for everything.

"Why am I here…" He repeated slowly, almost as if each word was a curse against him, before laughing as if he'd heard some grand joke. "Why am I here, she asks."

Turning back to the slowly overcooking peppers with another dry chuckle, the Oto nin gave the pan a shake, the sizzling oil filling the tension filled silence.

Sakura had absolutely no clue what was currently happening, but she edged towards Ino's frighteningly still form with her once still heart pounding hard in her chest. She stilled when the foreign nin turned his head to look at her through crazed, half-lidded eyes.

"Haven't you ever wanted to meet your maker?" He asked blithely, his body turning fully towards her.

"I already have." Sakura answered curtly, her hand inching towards the hidden kunai behind a picture frame a few inches beside her left hip.

His lips twitched, whether to pull into a frown or a smirk, she didn't know. "I guess I have, too."

A moment of silence and the Oto nin turned around to shut off the stove, the smell of burning peppers becoming strong enough to probably stick to her clothing.

"I was never much of a cook," he began conversationally, and Sakura was so, so very confused at the change of focus. "My wife Makoto used to say that I could find a way to burn water."

He laughed hollowly, the sound more of a breathy sob than an actual laugh, as he grabbed a dish rag to wipe his hands. "And my kids! My kids would beg me to order take-out because daddy's cooking was just so terrible. They used to be so dramatic!"

Sakura's eyes narrowed at the useless information, but she had to keep him distracted long enough to reach Ino and body-flicker out of there.

So, she warily asked, "Used to?"

For a moment, the Oto nin looked lost and broken before composing himself. His lips pulled into a tight line, even as they trembled.

"Four weeks ago," He started, his voice thick with emotion, "I woke up with a mangled body in the middle of Birds country next to the rotting corpses of my team. I was confused at first, but then so very grateful because the gods had heard my prayers. I was alive. I would be able to see my family again."

Sakura's throat tightened. Shit, she was such a sucker for sob stories.

"I left my team where they were because we aren't sappy like you tree hugging Leaf-nin. Oto only has room for the living, so I went home to my wife who had been waiting for me to return to her like she knew I would.

"My kids weren't home, they were with their grandmother in Snow country for the month; and my wife, my beautiful wife, who still loved me despite what you had done to me, said she'd cook me a meal."

Sakura was silent throughout his entire spiel, too busy steeling herself against the rising guilt and horror at what she knew he had done. It wasn't her fault, she knew it wasn't, but it was still horrifying to hear all the same.

"So she starts making my favorite while telling me about what new things our youngest had learned while I was gone, and my silly, clumsy wife—"

The Oto nin paused to compose himself, continuing even though it seemed like the words physically pained him, "Makoto cuts herself with the stupid knife and asks me to bandage it up for her. 'I'm just no good at the first-aid stuff, Tenshin-kun,' she says, so I grab her hand and I'm there, with the bandage…and there's just…so much blood—"

"Listen," Sakura interrupted, the direction his story was heading already making her feel sick, "You don't have to tell—"

She abruptly cut herself off when Tenshin pressed the toe of his boot onto the delicate skin of Ino's neck.

"You are going to listen," The Oto nin said slowly, brokenly. "You are going to listen to what you have done."

Swallowing, Sakura didn't dare move her eyes from where the tip of his boot rested ominously over Ino's trachea.

There were fat tears spilling down Tenshin's scarred cheeks, his expression horrified and stricken with self-loathing and Sakura kept her eyes on the growing pool beneath Ino's head so that she wouldn't bear witness to such agony.

Hokages knew she'd seen enough of it in the mirror.

"Makoto looks at me with her big, brown eyes," he continued thickly, "And she asks me what's wrong…and I'm just…so hungry—"

Tenshin cut himself off and Sakura glanced briefly enough to see the pain written in his face. His eyes rolled heavenwards, brows furrowing, and she quickly reached behind the picture frame to palm the kunai. It was all she had time for, if she had been a fraction of second faster, she could have thrown it.

"I couldn't help myself," he said, head shaking. "I couldn't control it and Gods I can still hear her fucking screams."

Sakura narrowed her eyes at him through a moment of sharp clarity. What he said didn't make sense. Not to her, at least. Sure, when she had first awoken she had torn into the first human being she could find (something that honestly still gave her nightmares) so she could sympathize in that respect. But that had given her back her self-awareness—was the only thing that brought her back long enough to be found by her comrades.

So, if he had had enough sense to find his way home, then he must have consumed some type of human flesh before going back to his family. If she bothered to give voice to thought, he might have tried to argue that he hadn't—that perhaps he was different than her and turned with all mental awareness intact—but Sakura knew that he was borne from the pathogens of her virus and they were exactly the same.

And Sakura has never lost her mind at the sight and smell of her comrades' or patients' blood.

That's why, when her lips pulled back into a sneer, she felt no remorse as she said, "That's funny. I've never eaten anyone I didn't want to eat."

"I loved her!" Tenshin roared, his foot coming off Ino as he took a step towards Sakura. "You did this to me!"

Seeing the opportunity, Sakura quickly launched the kunai at his head and cursed when he dodged to the left to avoid. He crashed into her kitchen island and the shock of pain must have triggered something visceral because he began to turn.

The sensation of turning was entirely different to bearing witness to it. For the first time in her life, Sakura realized how terrifying and ghoulish she must look to those who saw her in that state. It made her pause, giving Tenshin enough time to lunge at her with an animalistic snarl.

His larger body tackled her to the ground and with a gasp, Sakura felt the floorboards beneath her cave in from the force of it. His fist came down towards her face and she narrowly avoided it, her eyes widening as it went through the floor.

So it seemed that she wasn't the only one with enhanced strength when under the thrall of zombie-dom.

She saw an opening when he reared back to strike her again and she bucked him off her, lifting him bodily and swinging him into the living room. She had to get him as far away from Ino!

Following after him, Sakura tensed a second too late as he came up from behind her and couldn't avoid the kunai to the heart. She felt it when the cool blade pierced the muscle and it was a small comfort to know that she would not die from it.

The fact that the virus responded to the attack, was not.

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Meanwhile, in the Hokage's office, Naruto was about one second away from dozing off to Sasuke's oral mission report. The man spoke in such a crisp monotone it reminded him of metronomes and could probably put anyone to sleep. Sun dazzling blonde head resting in his palm, Naruto resisted the pull of his heavy eyelids and wished his famed energy hadn't drained away when he'd made his dreams a reality.

If he'd known how boring it was to be the Hokage, he would have swallowed that ambition and gone for something cool like ANBU commander. Or maybe even Jonin Commander! At least those guys still went on missions. The poor blonde hadn't seen the field since his inauguration almost 2 years ago.

He could feel the "dad-bod" setting in and Boruto wasn't due for another two months! Oh, woe is he! Instead of the callouses born from endless kunai throwing, his hands were full of ink stains and paper cuts and god if he didn't feel like he'd developed an unnatural dependency on coffee and caffeine.

He was getting soft and if Sasuke—or Gods forbid, Gaara—got word of how Hinata made him moisturize his hands every night before he touched her, he'd never hear the end of it. He drew the line at pedicures, which was something it seemed all of the kunoichi in his age group were adamant he have done.

Naruto casted a surreptitious glance to the heels of his feet and wrinkled his nose at their cracked state. Okay, so, maybe he could benefit from a pedicure. He could probably spark a fire if he rubbed his heels together and, suddenly, all those random gifts of pumice stones made sense.

His wife had apparently made an art out of being passive-aggressive.

"—sama. Naruto! Dobe!"

Jolted out of his thoughts, Naruto narrowed his eyes at his best friend and waggled his finger at him, "I'm the Hokage now, bastard, so, technically, you can't call me that anymore."

Sasuke rolled his eyes, but a small smirk pulled at his lips, which was something in and of itself considering the Sasuke of a year ago would only smile in the face of someone's unending misery.

It seemed that working on accomplishing his second ambition of repopulating his clan had him in higher spirits.

All this time, all that hatred and pain and anger, and all the bastard had needed to do was get laid.

Unbelievable.

"You weren't listening to a word I said, were you?" Sasuke asked drily as he placed his one hand on his hip.

"Yeah, I was!" I was most definitely not.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed in suspicion and Naruto's narrowed in return. This was the best part of being Sasuke's friend: the challenge in everything. Naruto lived for that kind of stuff, and were he as exuberant as Gai-sensei, he'd probably declare himself and the Uchiha the second coming of the Eternal Rivals.

But alas, Naruto was still in possession of all his marbles and Sasuke had the Rinnegan now. That moniker would have to be passed down to their kids, or something.

"If that's the case," he drawled, "what is the status of Iwagakure's movements at the Northern border?"

Just as Naruto was about to reply that he was the Hokage and didn't have to answer such trivia, one of his ANBU stationed at the eastern corner of the room gasped sharply and stumbled. He knew it was Sai behind the bird mask, and he stood carefully from his seat.

"Bird?" He asked slowly and blinked in surprise when Sai violently pulled off his mask to reveal the most emotion Naruto had seen on his pale face since his nuptials to Ino.

Sai looked positively panicked as he gasped out, "It's Ino. She's in trouble."

Everyone in the room—meaning Sasuke, Naruto, and Hinata—snapped to attention at that. It was no secret that the Yamanaka clan head was heavily pregnant and therefore confined behind village walls for the duration of her maternity leave. They were in a time of peace and while there were small instances of internal crime, Naruto couldn't think of anything that would warrant this type of reaction from his friend.

"Is she in labor?" Hinata asked sharply, concern furrowing her brow.

"No," Sai said as he hastily made his way to the window, "I'll explain on the way but we have to go now."

Wasting no time, Naruto and the others followed Sai as he vaulted out the opened window in the opposite direction of where he knew their home to be. Brow furrowing in confusion, his eyes scanned the streets from their vantage point of traveling by roof top. He was close to voicing said confusion when he soon recognized a small tea house that he and Sakura used to visit as teens. His heart pounded in his chest when he realized that they were heading in the direction of his female teammate's home.

It saddened him that he was unaware of the fact that she still lived in the old complex, that he hadn't thought to ask or visit. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd dropped by her home for dinner or just to say hello.

Intellectually, he knew that it was perfectly normal for Genin to lose touch with one another after reaching a certain rank or adulthood—whichever came first. But they were Team 7—they were forever. After all they've been through—all the pain and loss and prophecies fulfilled—it was almost crazy to believe that Team 7 would become one of those teams that only spoke to each other in passing.

And yet, here they were.

He only spoke to Sakura when she came in for a brief or a mission, and even then, it was stunted with words they didn't say that hung in the air between them. Something happened with Orochimaru that went beyond simple torture—though torture wasn't simple by any means—that changed her so irrevocably that Naruto sometimes felt like he was looking into the eyes of a stranger.

Then there was the matter of her sudden falling out with their other teammate, Sasuke, who he'd thought to be the love of her life. But Sasuke had confided in him that she had pulled away from him, never to be heard from again, and it baffled him to no end.

If there was one thing that was a constant in Team 7, it was Sakura's deep-seated love for Sasuke.

So, to hear that she had pulled away from him was akin to hearing that Ichiraku's had closed down for good. It was unfeasible, unbelievable, so damn earth shattering that it just could not be true.

And yet, here they were, nearly nine months later and Sasuke had his own family on the way with someone who was not Sakura.

And she—he didn't even know where to begin with her.

"Ino is at Sakura's apartment."

Sai's worried voice broke Naruto out of his thoughts centered around Team 7 and a wave of guilt came crashing down on his shoulders. How selfish was he that he could only think of the dynamics of his team when Ino's life was in danger?

"How far away are we?" Sasuke asked, eyes blazing at the threat of danger.

"We'll be there in four minutes," Sai replied, voice tense, and he went on to answer the unspoken question, "She and I both have seals on our ring fingers that react when one of us is in mortal danger. One of her clansmen did it for us on our wedding day, and it has never reacted until now. Not even when she was injured on missions…"

The answering silence was grim. If what Sai said was true, then it meant that Ino's life was hanging in the balance and all four of them sped up in response. Naruto glanced at the rigid lines of Sai's back and were he anyone else, he might have dismissed the ease in which he spoke as apathy. But Naruto knew Sai as well as he knew Kakashi or Yamato, and he knew that he was well and truly afraid; the only way Sai knew how to deal with such emotions was by falling back on deeply embedded ROOT training.

It suddenly made him angry that someone was able to come into his village and attack his friends when he had sworn to protect them. A growl rumbled deep in his chest and his wife casted him a sharp look from where she traveled beside him.

"Naruto-kun," Hinata said sharply, brow furrowing in concern. She opened her mouth to say something else, but Sai suddenly dropped from the rooftops to land in front of Sakura's apartment.

From the outside, all seemed well, until a large crash and a pulse of such vitriolic and caustic chakra made Kurama stir from within him in interest. Naruto heard Sasuke inhale sharply in response and both men glanced at each other in alarm.

Though it had been a while since they had felt such corrosive and venomous chakra, they were both instantly transported to The Forest of Death and then the Valley of The End.

They knew that chakra, and if the way Sasuke's Sharingan was spinning wildly was anything to go by, he more intimately than others.

It swept over them like oil, heavy and disgusting with an aftertaste that was solely Orochimaru. But—Naruto realized with dawning horror and mounting rage—coiled within it so finely was Sakura's own chakra that it made him sick.

This was the Cursed Seal reborn.

Another pulse, but this time the chakra that was laced within Orochimaru's was unfamiliar and inarguably dangerous.

Sai rushed towards the door, kunai already drawn with both Naruto and Sasuke at his heels, and what happened next seemed to unfold in slow motion:

Sai kicked open the front door with enough force to splinter the wood as Naruto and Sasuke followed through with kunai and chokuto drawn respectively. Their eyes sought Ino first, who was slowly rising from her collapsed position by the kitchen on shaky limbs, staring in wide-eyed terror at something that was just beyond their sight.

Her husband moved to flash-step towards her and that's when two figures crashed through the wall that divided the kitchen and the living room, plaster crumbling beneath their tumbling forms as inhuman snarls rang through the air.

While Naruto normally would have jumped in to end whatever it was that was happening in Sakura's living room (and just where was she?) he had other lives to think about—namely that of his heavily pregnant wife (who he should have ordered to stay behind, but Hinata was unerringly stubborn when she wanted to be) and a heavily pregnant Ino.

So they had to hang back and assess—wait for an opening. The two figures clawed and tore at each other viciously, moving so quickly that it was hard to discern their features besides the paleness of their hair and skin. Their chakra coated the air in the small space heavily, feeling so wrong and repulsive that even Kurama bared his teeth at the filth of it.

Naruto's patience had worn thin when suddenly, it seemed that the larger of the two figures found an opening, grabbing the smaller one by the shoulders to quickly sink their teeth into the juncture of the other's neck and shoulder to rip out a large chunk of flesh.

And in that moment, as an inhuman shriek of pain and rage pierced the air, Naruto's heart stuttered in his chest. His ears rang, his palms became clammy as that one small still moment allowed him to glimpse their features in full.

Even with eyes, skin, and hair the wrong color, Naruto would know Sakura anywhere.

And that—that thing was Sakura.

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tbc


A/N: What do you guys think? What was your fave part? Thanks for reading!