&dedicated to: DreamerGirl92813 (for reviewing first) and Aerin35 (for sending the wrong messages to you, sorry!)
Summary- In the natural scheme of things, the dead stay dead. But in the world of ninjas, nothing's for certain anymore. Sasu/Saku.
&as per the usual, the standard disclaimer is heartily applied.
Quick, muffled sounds pricked at his ears. Staring through the darkness in his room, he swung his feet off his bed and onto the cool wood floors of his apartment. He craned his neck toward the window as the sounds echoed louder. Walking to the window, he yanked on the string, tearing the blinds up and his face fell into a scowl. A flash of pink sped past him and his hands shook against the white sill.
How is she here? She's supposed to be dead.
The monotonous scraping of metal against wood accompanied the sound of the fire crackling. The flame cast dim patterns on the walls of the forest clearing and fidgeted with its orange fingers, snapping this way and that.
"So, tomorrow's the big day, huh?"
The figure addressed didn't make any move to indicate that he had heard or would even begin to consider answering. A pregnant silence followed before it was broken yet again.
"Hmph, rude."
"Like he would ever bother to answer you, anyway! And what are you doing?"
"What, you never seen a guy whittle before?"
"Um, no. But can you quit? It's annoying as hell."
"Then maybe you should start it up, too, Karin. You two would have that much in common."
"Oh shut up the hell up, Suigetsu!"
The corner of his lips lifted up, revealing his shark-like teeth. "Hey Sasuke! Maybe we should leave her here! If Itachi does show, then we wouldn't have to worry about Karin screwing everything up!"
Karin huffed in response. Her arms folded over her chest and she looked down her nose at him with her very best you-unworthy-scum look. "Can it, shark boy."
Suigetsu threw his hands out in a mock conciliating fashion, palms facing up. "No, it's okay, Karin! We all have talents; screwing up everything's yours." He threw back his head and laughed.
"I'm the one who has to track him, remember? I don't see you doing anything, jackass!"
"Maybe you're too busy stalking Sasuke to see anything besides his butt, you stupid whore!"
"Like I give a damn about what you think!" A mop of silver hair ducked as her hand swatted at his head. He threw up patches of dust as he slid around the fire and behind a much larger frame than his.
"Well, I bet Juugo agrees with me! Don't you, Juugo?"
Juugo's half lidded yellow orbs showed barely any recognition of being asked anything, until both Suigetsu and Karin kept staring; he shifted in his seat and looked away, not answering.
"See, he agrees with me! Everyone thinks you're worthless."
"I am not worthless!" Her red hair jerked around as she made a series of attempts to punch Suigetsu's face in. Her knuckles pulsed red quickly as she repeatedly mistook his head for a stray branch while he skirted off unharmed.
"Oh, you're completely right! I forgot: you're a stupid, worthless whore!"
"Argh, Suigetsu!"
"Shut up."
The two figures froze in their spots at the sound of their leader's deep voice interrupting their conversation, before immediately returning to their previous places. They didn't make a single sound until his black eyes closed shut once more.
Tomorrow, huh? Tomorrow, you're dead, Itachi.
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it's
chapter five,
folks!
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March 14
Location- Waves
Light breeze whistled through the trees, leaving waving shadows streaming across Sakura's sleeping face. Her shoulders and fingers jerked as she dreamt restlessly, flinching every so often when a leaf brushed against her arm, a blade of grass skimmed the side of her hand. Her eyebrows pulled lower on her forehead, scrunching in thought while more warmth gradually heated up her skin. The sun rose over the horizon and the distant snapping of twigs and branches tugged her out of her chaotic dreams.
"So what are we going to do in town today, Daddy?" The rustling of the grass was uneven to Sakura's ears as the little girl skipped around in reckless circles. The debris littering the ground crunched in protest.
"Well, we need to trade those-" The man's voice trailed off, and the sole crack of leaves signaled that he had stopped dead in his tracks. He shifted a little either in thought or nervousness. Sakura guessed the latter.
"What is it?" The girl's wide, innocent eyes looked up at him in absolute confidence. Curiously, she searched around for what had distracted her father, finally resting on a woman leaning against an old elm tree.
Sakura lifted a single eye to discreetly glance at the civilian. The man looked as if he already had his farewell-to-life speech going through his head, so she thought she'd better not give anyone an actual reason to raise her status to "priority" in the bingo book. No quick movements or he might go running off into the trees and forget his daughter. But she really should have remembered to put away her weapons, so this wouldn't have happened.
The little girl's hair was like spun gold as it glittered in the sunlight. She took an eager step forward to study the pink haired ninja. "Hi! Are you from here?" asked her bright childish voice. Her head cocked to the side and her lower lip jutted out cutely, turning directly to a pout at the firm grip now registering itself on her arm. Her father leaned down to her ear and furiously whispered something along the lines of, "We don't talk to ninjas like them. Probably another one of those Sound ninjas creeping around here."
He'd meant it to be disrespectful to her, but he looked a tad too fearful to pull it off. Mentally sighing, Sakura lifted herself up from her sitting position. Yeah sure, she thought, hate us ninjas till it's wartime and we're saving your helpless asses.
But Sound ninja? Why would he assume that of all things?
Beams of light pulled across her face- the wind picked had up, pushing the trees and throwing light pink hairs across her face. She could really hardly keep herself from snorting at the man's comment. Sound was practically extinct, ever since Orochimaru was killed those years ago. Unsureness nagged at her growing doubt. It had been around two weeks since she'd started aimlessly traveling from village to village, and hearing complaints of Sound ninja sightings was becoming less and less frequent.
Sakura's pink eyebrows furrowed as she titled her head upwards to the early morning light. And then the villagers mentioning one of the old buildings in the southeast corner suddenly disappearing... She frowned. Sound couldn't possibly have something to do with it, could it?
Then she took a bored, uninterested glance at the snowy scene and felt the corners of her lips tug upwards. With a shrug, Sakura decided that just because she was a missing ninja and shouldn't necessarily be wandering around didn't mean she couldn't do a little recon if she felt like it.
"Do you sense something?"
"It's faint, but a chakra signature seems… to be moving in the same direction we are."
"Anyone we know?"
"Don't know; I don't recognize it."
"Sound?"
"I doubt it. My best guess is that's it's female, and judging by her chakra flow, a medic ninja, too."
"Then it's probably no one important to us. Let's keep moving."
Thick swabs of green raced past her as the scenery flashed behind. Sakura swung out her arms and caught the next branch, ducking under it and back onto another branch. Her body stretched out reflexively. It had been so long since she'd done much of anything.
Wind tunneled in and out of her ears, and somewhere in the back of her mind, the noise slowly increased -something whirring, like the faint sounds of screams... Her vision flickered black, erasing the trees and the cloudy skies. The tips of her fingers grazed against wet rock and her body swam in a shallow layer of something pungent… like chloroform? Her insides burned, but her limbs were frozen and heavy. One pair of eyes peered through the darkness at her lifeless body and a mouth opened.
But the sound of rushing wind came out again. A quick blink later and Sakura barely escaped plummeting head first into a tree. Sweat had beaded on the nape of her neck. In a flash, she dipped under the limb she was on and scaled up the tree to her right. She crouched behind the trunk in a defensive position.
Seconds passed by and not a single kunai slashed through the air, whizzing toward her like she'd hoped. Genjutsu was her first thought, but if she couldn't find any ninja…
Sakura's shallow gasps met her ears and she tried to pace her breathing. Bark splintered beneath her fingers as she pulled herself up from her crouched position, and her suddenly weakened legs almost buckled under her own weight. It was like it had just happened to her.
Focusing white-hot chakra into the pupils of her eyes, she scanned the forest for any ninjas that might've placed a genjutsu on her. The swirling energy burned under her corneas, enhancing a more detailed view but smearing her regular vision in wide streaks. Faint tinges of chakra signatures lined a village some ten miles away, but each one was weak and undeveloped. She grunted. Civilians.
Frustrated, Sakura pulled her hands into stance and muttered several Kai's under her breath, resending the chakra to her hands more than once, but nothing happened. Reluctantly convinced that whatever it was, it wasn't genjutsu, she redirected the chakra going to her eyes and sent it rushing toward the bottoms of her feet and sped through forest.
What was that? She glimpsed at the thinning trees around her- solid, tangible, real. Her body was unharmed and there were no ninjas within a seven mile radius… Then what just happened?
Sakura shook her head, hoping to chase away that thought. Dryly, she wondered if she was going crazy. She had known of a few cases where ninjas had become mentally unstable from stress or long-term exhaustion. At that, she told herself to just stop thinking. It wasn't anything. After weeks of no social contact whatsoever, and being thrown out of her own village, her imagination might have every right to go a little haywire. It couldn't possibly have happened because she would've remembered... (Maybe not.)
Sakura landed with a soft plop on the soggy ground beneath her as she reached her destination. Her eyes hardened and calculating, she searched for something familiar in the mess of her disappeared memory. Slowly looking around, she was both happy to finally have something to preoccupy herself with for the first time in what seemed like years, and a little wary of what she might find.
Within seconds, her shoulders slumped. Sakura sighed disappointedly. Rumors; can't ever trust them. A disappeared building? It was a lake in Waves Country. It wouldn't be a longshot to guess it simply had been flooded.
She looked around; nothing suspicious at first glance. It was a large clearing surrounded by the forest. It lacked luster, for sure. The whole patch was practically all lake. It was odd, though –how it was shaped. It looked like a massive crater that just happened to be filled with water. Then again, it could be a crater. They would get enough rain here for that.
She shuffled towards the edge of the lake and channeled a light, steady flow of chakra into the soles of her feet before stepping onto the water's surface. The thin film broke in circular patterns with every step, fanning out and disturbing the stillness. She smoothly made her way to the center of the lake and tilted her face to the overcast sky. The thick clouds were dark and foreboding: for Waves country, that was a sure sign it was going to storm soon. Hard. Then again, it was always hurricane season in Waves.
The water splashed as she jolted backwards, half covering her surprised yelp. Her wide eyes peered curiously down through the water at the object floating beside her foot. Cold, empty eyes blankly stared into hers. And an odd sense of déjà vu washed over her.
The body's pallid face rested on top of a broken cement block that, judging by its jagged edges, had probably been roughly snapped off of a rather large wall. She wasn't shocked, more caught off-guard than anything. The fishlike glow of the face was startling, though not nearly unaccustomed to. Moss and seaweed lay unsympathetically around the corpse's head to complete the charming picture.
Thoughtfully, Sakura pulled her foot away from the body and lifted off a wide strand of green from his forehead. She clucked with her tongue in disappointment when there wasn't a forehead protector under the mass of seaweed. He had ninja clothes on, though. Could he have been from Sound? Or would that be assuming too much?
She stood up once more and moved away from the soulless face that stared through her, eyes alertly scanning the water while she treaded across the surface. The lake steadily took on a more light-red tint, and as the broken cement became more obvious, so did the decomposing faces that lingered in the depth of the water. There were only a handful of men and a few women that floated near the surface, caught on some piece of building or hooked onto a random plank. The rest Sakura could see far below, their forms wavy and obscured by the green-black floor of the lake.
Speechless, she couldn't tear her eyes from the grotesque sight. She had the distinct impression that only some of the bodies had died before the building collapsed, or more likely, was unexpectedly torn down. The various open wounds that were still clearly visible showed they had died in some sort of sudden battle. But it would've taken quite a force to tear down such a sturdy building, especially all at once. It must have been recent, too, by the looks of things.
It was almost like walking in a dream; it didn't feel real. Something about the way everything was laid out seemed predictable, as if… The air was very silent as she thought, eerie and whispering; maybe she was just imagining her ears picking up the sound of screeching yells, clashes of metal, the sound of fresh blood splashing the walls. An image blurred in front of her eyes, of dark rooms, haunting eyes, and mocking smiles.
But maybe it was just her ninja mind supplying a scene for her. (Could be.) The uniform expression of horror was painted on all their faces. What would it have been like? Even with all the dead bodies she'd seen before, Sakura always wondered what they might have seen last.
Looking up from the lake, she nearly jumped in surprise as a strong chakra signature swiftly traveled to her spot; gooseflesh covered her neck. It raced toward her, so fast she couldn't pinpoint his exact position. The signature was powerful and wide, but focused into a perfect dome one mile around. Not moving from her place at the lake's center, she looked over her shoulder at the intruder, deceptively calm as her fingers found their malicious way to the weapon scroll at her side. Blood dripped from her thumb while she sliced through the skin, waiting to smear it across the summoning parchment when the ninja broke through the tree line.
A figure appeared at the southwest corner. Sakura's apple green eyes widened as they caught sight of a pair of black orbs boring into her own.
…
Sasuke?
a/n.
yikes, i can explain how happy i am to have another person to write. lol
revised 1.23.09 (Only two more chapters to revise!)