Almost... there...Ony a few more chapters till I'm done with this!
Please read and review and even flame if you want. I do not own the (oh so cool) Naruto universe. Gosh how many times do I have to say it?
Chapter Sixteen
A storm's Begining
The hand in front if her was lowered and somewhere in the back of her head Sakura heard the distant echo of 'Begin' ring around her and her edgy opponent who stood ready and equip in front of her.
She dared not make the first move, she knew it would be a foolish thing to do in her condition. Her eyes were still concealed in the darkness much to her liking as she watched the two shimmering orbs of indigo blue pools that belonged to her opponent. You could tell too much about a person from their eyes. That was why she choose to keep her own hidden.
The male in front of her didn't look like he was going to move anytime soon so Sakura decided to make him move. Thrusting her body forward she leapt towards the boy in what looked like a kick but was really only a move to make him react.
'He's either avoiding me on purpose from fear or studying and analyzing me from afar and preparing an attack plan.' Sakura thought communicating with the motherly wolf inside her head.
'Don't underestimate him just because he sent a hit man after you. He is after all the son of the most powerful man in Waves and has most likely been taught by only the best." Okami replied in a warning tone.
'Then that makes two of us.'
"Just don't ahead of yourself just because you have me here. Remember you are injured and not at your full strength. It will be harder to wield with only one arm and I had to use quite a bit of chakra to work on your arm. With only one mobile limb and half of your chakra reserves you are hardly at the top of your game.' Okami replied in a warning tone as eight of her busy white tails ruffled at the thought of her daughters blood staining the ground.
'Good thing I have you then.' Sakura joked with a smile.
.'Sakura smiled and tried to roll her injured shoulder only to wince in pain from the wound. Instead of an upper body attack she opted for of using her lower body.
"Sand still and die runt." She growled landing a foot away from where the boy used to stand. He was no currently back flipping away in an attempt to put as much distance between himself and his opponent.
"Coward." She seethed deciding to attack him anyway.
No wonder he needed an assassin to kill her before the match. At the rate this kid was going he would never become the Kage of his homeland in the ever rolling waves in Mist.
The petal hared Kunoichi tossed a few sharpened kunai at where the boy was about to land and to her amazement he deflected them with what looked like a sword of pike made out of water.
She smirked reaching for her scroll. "So you like to fight with weapons, two can play at that game."
"Ha you're unarmed fool, and even if you weren't you wouldn't be any match against my Mizu blade." He sneered back in a snotty manner eyeing her up and down. "I've been watching you and I can see you are injured and not at full chakra capacity. You can't win."
"Yeah wonder how that happened." She mumbled under her breath rolling her eyes.
"Shut up and die." Her opponent roared pulling back his large blade and running forward with it, preparing his body for the impact he hoped to achieve in his attack.
"Baka Yaro." Sakura hissed reaching behind her and grasping her gray scroll with one hand and her shirt with the other. It was wet from her wound and interfering with her movements.
Back flipping out of the way of his wide attack Sakura ripped off her blood stained shirt and pulled out her gray scroll, swiping a certain area with her blood dipped thumb.
"Die!" He screamed bringing his enlarged sword down on top of her head.
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A large cloud of dust sprang up from the earth where Sakura used to stand and for a solid twelve seconds you couldn't see anything. The crowds were crying out in panic at not being able to see what was going on.
"What's that there!" Naruto cried when his highly trained eyes began to pick up a flickering shadow.
Sasuke narrowed his blood red eyes dotted with black commas like markings. "It's not over." He coolly stated not even blinking in surprise when the dust cleared to reveal an unscratched Sakura holding back the attacking weapon.
"Hn." Gaara merely replied holding back a smirk at how strong his girl was.
Sasuke seemed to stiffen at Gaara though and growled. "Don't get too comfortable Gaara. You don't own anything yet."
"That's what you would like to think Uchiha." Gaara replied not making a move to turn around and face the dark haired male with blazing blood red eyes boring into the back of his head.
"Keep telling yourself that. Sooner or later you and your family have to go back to Suna and guess who isn't coming with you." Sasuke hissed with a small smirk at his own words.
Gaara growled at the truth behind his words but did not reply.
"Ah hey, hey, hey! Look at that, look at what Sakura has!" Naruto cried breaking the red haired boy's concentration.
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Sakura grunted under the stain that was being forced down upon her but spread her legs and pushed up against the overpowering force with chakra streaming through her arm's mussels and hands.
"What the-?" Her opponent cried seeing what he was bearing down on.
"Weaponless huh? I guess you didn't see wolf bane did you." Sakura hissed pushing harder against his Mizu sword. With a loud cry she flung the weapon off of her own and took a leap backwards bringing her dark colored blade behind her.
Sakura flipped her hair behind her shoulder with a flick of the neck and grinned, now standing in a black tube top with one strap starching front her front right side to her back left side. The bottom of her mask lifted upward just a bit in the breeze reveling her chin for a split second before it was concealed again. Sakura frowned at this in her mind. Her mask was coming undone and at the rate she was going it would most likely fall off sometime during her battle.
In her hands Sakura held a long thick scythe with a knife at the bottom and on the opposite side of the silver colored blade. The trimming around the blade resembled vines almost and starched down the length of her pole ending in an ornate design around the bottom's knife. The blade it's self was almost as long as the girl who was holding it and sharpened to perfection with a sinful gleam begging for blood.
Sakura swung the blade around her body bringing it over her hand and pivoted towards the male in a graceful attempt to catch him in her blade's deadly embrace.
The male brought his blade up stopping her scythe from chopping of his head and began to spin towards Sakura with a fist ready to bury it's self in her face. Sakura drew back and swung her blade around her to block the water sword's attack.
"I see now, you had your weapon ready and waiting for you in that gray scroll of yours. What puzzles me is this: the scroll you had would be used for a single object of small mass. Your weapon is in no ways small and I can't believe that it is the only thing in a scroll so thick in size."
"Then you'll find out." Sakura hissed drawing her chakra out of her weapon letting it, to the amazement of the crowd, shrink three or four sizes to the length of her leg. Small enough to swirl out of the sword's hold and allow Sakura to skid backwards and arch forward, trying to take a swing at his legs.
He easily avoided her attack by jumping over the blade but had to relinquish him opening at her head.
"As you can see my wolf bane is no ordinary weapon. I can make it as small as a pin or as large as a house if I push enough chakra into it." Sakura explained pushing a bit more of her chakra into her weapon making it grow back to the size it was when she first summoned it.
"It won't help you if you make it as big as the Hokage monument, you'll still loose to me Pinkie." He hissed.
"Who are you calling pinky you idiot?"
"Who are you calling an idiot short stuff!"
Sakura seethed at the insult. It was a fact that Sakura was short ever for her age of thirteen (and ¾), she was shorter than most girls and Okami told her that her mother was a short woman and would mostly pass on her genes of shortness to her daughter. The fact that she would most likely stay short became engraved in her mind as a very bad thing and so being insulted about it for the first time in her life so openly really pushed her off the edge.
'Easy Sakura, he's baiting you. Don't let him get the better of you, control yourself and your emotions.' Okami instructed in a soothing voice trying to calm the rage in Sakura's hear the clouded her mind and better judgment just like her opponent wanted.
'He's dead, one arm or not I'm grinding that smug little face of his into the dirt.' Sakura snarled back in response before lunging forward with that intention in mind. The warning voice of the large white wolf in her mind going unheard.
The male in front of her smiled, or more liked smirked, seeing her come his way in blind rage and held up his mizu sword, hiding a mizu dagger behind his back ready for a sneak attack.
Sakura roared and swung her weapon against his sword meeting it with a ringing clang sound as she tried to force her body weight against it and make his own blade bite the dust.
She gasped out in surprise when she caught the glimmer of his mizu dagger speeding towards her chest and with only a moment's though pulled almost all of her chakra out of her scythe, minimizing it to the side of a kunai, and pivoted away from his sneak attack.
Twirling around his shoulder Sakura brought one of her knees up to her chest and thrust her foot through her opponent's back only to succeed in getting her leg wet from the water clone she attacked.
"Ah crap." She muttered feeling to water around her one foot begin to take form and pull her up into the air with a sharp pain.
"Sorry pinky but you're gonna have to try harder than that to land a blow on me. You should have just given up when you first entered the arena. Even if you win against me you won't come out alive."
Sakura's eyes widened at his words. 'Even if you win against me you won't come out alive.' What did he mean by that?
"What do you mean I won't come out of here alive?" Sakura hissed in anger twisting her ankle out of his hold and landing a few feet away from him. "Tell me what you meant by that.
His shimmering indigo blue eyes seemed to sadden at whatever he was thinking and his shoulders slumped along with the rest of his posture. "I meant exactly what I said. Even if you win against me you won't come out alive. This battle is really nothing. I'm just another pawn…"
Something about his hallow tone and hopeless posture sounded the little red bells in her mind off and she began to panic. Something was not right with this picture. There was something wrong but as to what she did not know.
'Sakura look out I a feel a large amount of chakra building up around us overhead and over by that wall-!" Okami's warning came too late as a loud explosion rocked the arena and sent Sakura off her feet and into the dust.
"What was that?" She choked covering her eyes to prevent any more dust from staining her mostly blurred vision.
Once her narrowed forest green eyes adjusted she saw a red colored dome stretching over the arena's opening keeping anyone from getting in or more importantly, keeping her from getting out.
"What the heck is this?" She breathed out watching as a few leaf ninja tried to break through the red tinted barrier that seemed to be made out of chakra only to met with failure. "What is it doing?"
"Dear dear Sakura, you're such a smart girl. I though you would know by now that it's keeping you safe my little angel." A suckling sweet voice that reminded Sakura of oil sounded from behind the girl.
She froze as her emerald green eyes widened in shock with her pupils dilating to a much smaller size making them almost too tiny to see from a few feet away. She had her back turned to the explosion but she didn't need to be facing that voice to know who it was.
She knew all too well when the person behind her was just by the tone of his voice. A person she had hoped to forget and run away from by fleeing from her mountain.
'O-Okami…" she stuttered fearfully trying to make her body turn around enough to get a look at the in-human male behind her. "O-Okami…tell me this is not h-happening."
'Sakura get a hold of yourself! Don't let his voice make you nervous like this. Control your emotions, don't let them go.' Okami warned in a stern voice knowing it was hardest for Sakura to see the since in things at such a time as this.
'It's not….It's not him…He…he's not here… he can't be…" Sakura gasped out finding her lungs closing up and squeezing themselves in a painful manner that forced all her breath out.
'Sakura.'
"No… no, no, go away. Go away….go away" Sakura moaned falling to her knees and holding her head with her good hand, her scythe long forgotten at her side in the dirt.
"When it comes down to it…we're all pawns at the dispense of out superiors." The son of the Mizukage sad before materializing into a puddle of water scattered around the field.
Sakura could faintly hear the sound of ninjas banging against the blood colored red dome of chakra trying to get in somewhere off in the back of her mind as her body grew icy cold and began to shake beyond her control. A pathetic like whimper pierced her quivering lips from behind her bandages and her eyesight began to grow hazy and watery from her tears building up.
All the voices calling her name, even Okami, seemed to die down as she looked up at the man who had entered the arena only a few minuets ago in such flamboyant a way.
"Oh no, no dearest. Don't look at me like that Sakura" He laughed seeing the tears in her eyes and the quiver in her small body. "You stare at me as if I were a bad guy or something."
Sakura broke down and let her tears fall in fear, she couldn't take it anymore. "Go away…go away…just go away and leave me alone!" She cried screaming the last part in agony.
Out of all the people in the world this was the one she hope to never see again. He scared her so much to was painful to breath around him. One of the reasons for this was because she was so torn around him. She saw the goodness that could be but she also saw the devil he really was. Her soul ripping apart over just his appearance and voice was too much for her.
"No Sakura is that any way to talk to your father?" The man asked stepping down in front of her and smiling evilly at her distressed form, his ivory fangs shining with malice.
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I was going to stop here but I really want to finish this so…. ONWARD HO!
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A tall wall of sand came crashing down against the blood red colored barrier and was instantly reflected back once the tiny brown and gold grains met it's flawless surface.
"Chikusho!" Gaara cured when his third and forth attacks fame back with the same results as the first and second. "Nothing can break this barrier. We have to find the channeling points and cut it off there. Attacking it this was is only a waste of time and chakra."
"But we don't even know where those points are and Sakura really looks like she's in pain or freaked out real bad." Naruto whined drawing another kunai up in preparation to throw it.
"Shimatta." Sasuke cured jumping back form the licking orange red flames that he had launched at the dome only a few seconds ago and landing next to Naruto catching the end of his sentence.
"I know, I know, that's why we need to stop wasting out time with this and get to the channeling points and cut them off there." Gaara relied not even sparing the normal glare aimed towards the Uchiha.
"Then what are you two still doing here?" Sasuke hissed before jumping off towards the corner parts of the dome.
"Sasuke is right Gaara, I'm going to look for an opening myself, there should be two more. If we split up it will go faster okay." Naruto called before jumping off in another direction.
"This is not going well." Gaara mumbled before disappearing in a funnel of sand himself
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Sakura's father advanced upon her stepping out of the rising dust the reveal his full figure clothed in a pair of plane black pants and a long white jacket that reached his ankles in a flare. Three large straps stretched across his chest japing his jacket closed and his chest concealed.
His fiery reddish brown hair flapped in front of his eyes for a moment before sweeping away to let his saffron gold eyes shine brighter with the overflowing malice that matched his smile.
Sakura whimpered falling backwards and then tried to crawl away when her legs would no longer let her stand. "get away from me…Leave me alone…" She whimpered shaking even more.
Her father didn't stop advancing upon her and when he reached when she was standing bent down and grabbed her neck, pulling her off the ground with a choked sound. "You should have know I would never leave you alone for long. You have something I gave to you a long time ago and I want it back." He hissed raising his other hand to her face.
Sakura made a strangled sound as she tried to kick her father with her legs that were dangling inches above the ground. "St…stop…."
Her father made no indication that hinted to the fact that he heard her and began to draw chakra into his raised hand.
'Okami stop him, help me get out of this!' She cried within her mind.
'I can't don anything aside from work through you, you'll need to get out of his hold before I can do anything for you.' Okami replied with sadness obvious in her voice as she paced anxiously within Sakura's clouding mind.
'But I can't do anything!' Sakura cried with more tears streaming down her bandaged cheeks.
'You have to get out of his hold!' Okami replied.
'
'Sakura-!'
The petal haired girl cried out in pain at the tattoo on her back began to respond to her father's hand and crawl up her back and slither over her shoulder towards her face.
"That's it, come back to your creator. I know you couldn't master it. If you had it would have been entwined into your chakra signature forever and I wouldn't have been able to take it back." He chuckled as her tattoo climbed up her face and began to burn through her mask.
"St…stop t…that." Sakura screamed in between her chokes as most of her bandages began to fall from her face. Soon her features were clearly visible, void of any bandages to hide behind.
"Only a little more…"
'Sakura you need to break off now!' Okami screamed in a most desperate tone.
"Almost there…"
'Sakura, now!'
Sakura hissed in an agitated manner bringing up her knees to dig her heels into her fathers chest knocking the air out of his lungs from the attack he never though her possible of in her current state. His hand around her neck released her and he moved to cradle her chest when Sakura saw her opening. Calling on the white wolf's chakra Sakura felt her wolf like fangs grin at the familiar feeling.
Like Naruto's whiskers and Gaara's dark rimed eyes the characteristic that Okami passed on through Sakura were her fangs. The was the main reason she wore a mask, so that no one would see her connection to the demon inside her. Despite that she really did love her fangs and her smile grew when she ran her tongue over the silver white teeth.
'Thank you Okami for the chakra boost.'
'About time you came to your scenes.'
'Thanks for helping me with that too.'
'Just kick his butt.'
'Will do.'
Sakura straightened herself ready for an attack when she saw something wrong with her father. Her tattoo was currently twisting around his hand and arm like some sort of pet as he chuckled evilly.
"I knew I would get it and look at me now, I have it." He boasted letting the black vines snake down his wrist and under his sleeve. "You are of no use to me now. So, just like your mother, you will be disposed of."
Sakura's eyes widened and her pupils shrunk into little slits, hints of cobalt blue began to stream into her emerald green orbs mixing them into a blue green color thanks to her demonic chakra.
"Take that back…" She hissed crouching down lower to the ground.
Her father simply smirked making no moment to do anything of the sort.
"Take it back now!" She cried lunging forward with her fangs bared and her claws extended in an intent to kill.
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I'm done.
That and I started a form with info on a bunch of story ideas I have. Maybe one or two ideas that need to be adopted will be posted in the future but for now it's stories I have just started writing. So if you want to see that please go ahead. That and I'll put more info about this fic and it's updates on my profile page. Ideas are welcome!
If you haven't seen already Softer than Scarlet is on hold for a time. I will never abandon any of my stories but this one is just so hard to write at the moment so I'm taking a break for a little while. I'll update it sooner or later but I just need to give myself a break every now and then.
Please review!