Standard disclaimers apply. I'm just borrowing these characters for a little while.
Author's note: Kishimoto-sensei's plan is to fit the entire 4th Shinobi War Arc into a matter of days in the Naruto timeline, but I'm taking the liberty of extending it since war is never so quick and clean-cut. Events from the manga will be added, removed or shifted around. Please pardon my impudence.
Apologies for the delay. I do, however, continue looking forward to receiving C&C :D
"Beware of the White Zetsu army."
And really, the way Itachi spoke those words as he appeared suddenly, standing over the dying embers of their firepit made it sound like he should have been saying "beware of knee-high pink elephants" or "beware of falling kunoichis from the skies".
In short, he sounded absurd.
Perhaps it was due more to the context of his message, though, Sakura reasoned. After all, they already knew of the White Zetsus' cloning abilities and their vast numbers. His warning was, at best, redundant-sounding.
Thank you, Captain Obvious.
"Hey, Itachi," Naruto waved gleefully to the ominous-looking figure standing across him as if he was greeting an old friend.
Kakashi and Gai clearly did not share the orange-clad ninja's enthusiasm and quietly shifted in their seats so they were flanking Itachi. If the Uchiha prodigy noticed their actions, he said nothing.
Kakashi was the first to speak up. "I didn't expect to see you again, Itachi."
Itachi glanced once in his direction, then swept his gaze around the camp, assessing the faces old and new amongst them. He had paused briefly at Sakura, a flicker of old recollections jumping to his mind as he placed the pink-haired woman in his still-recovering memories before his passing.
In his mind, the scene before him was akin to the attempted rescue of the Kazekage from over a year ago.
The rescue had been a success of sorts, but at a price which a warring shinobi world could no longer afford.
Itachi knew he had to deliver his warning.
"Naruto," he turned to the blond who leaned forward upon hearing his name, "It was foolish to wipe out all the White Zetsus on your way to confront the bijuus."
"B… but they are stopping the Alliance from advancing! Gaara can't send more shinobis in – I needed to do something to help our army. If I can clear out the White Zetsu army, we can start setting up our own camps that much nearer to the Akatsuki base!"
Naruto looked so crest-fallen, Itachi knew that he had to elaborate, "If Zetsu had done what he always did, then he must have sent back intel on you and the Hachibi. The more you attacked them, the more information you gave away about your abilities. Madara will be prepared for whatever you have thrown at them so far, and more."
Naruto stole a glance at his old teammates and friends, and Sakura could already tell he was wondering if he had endangered them; his own safety was not his top priority – it was the people he loved and cared for.
Also, she did not like how Itachi was putting Naruto through a guilt-trip, intentional or not.
"Itachi-san," Sakura's voice was soft but firm, "We will be providing support to Naruto and Killer Bee-san. I doubt Madara knows of our involvement, and even if he does, it would be best if he does not underestimate the shinobis of Konohagakure."
When Itachi turned to look at her with scrutinising eyes, Sakura could practically feel her body shrinking into itself.
But she had to defend Naruto's good (if ill-conceived) intentions, dammit!
"Indeed," Itachi said at last, "With his attention paid mostly to the attainment of all the bijuus, Madara can underestimate those who do not possess them. That was why he lost to Senju Hashirama so many years ago. Your added numbers may unsettle his plans for Naruto and Killer Bee, but one does not stay immortal without learning to adapt to unexpected situations.
"While the White Zetsus are able to clone themselves, it is not possible for them to mimic the presence of a bijuu within. If they did pick up on Naruto and Killer Bee's abilities, I expect them to be more formidable than your standard foot soldier."
This was the part where Sakura came close to smacking her forehead, and probably Naruto's for good measure. While they made sure to share all their information on Zetsu's powerful cloning technique with Naruto, they had forgotten to factor in the Naruto Recklessness Multiplier, or N.R.M. for short; the clones could have drained Naruto's chakra six ways from Sunday and he still would not be able to tell the difference because of his immense chakra reserves.
"It would be quite a tale to tell if we end up facing an army of Naruto clones," Kakashi rubbed his chin in contemplation.
"We won't be alive to tell the tale!" Sakura was this close to shrieking.
At its owner's distress, the sand-cat shifted from its position of basking in front of the dying embers to Sakura's side. It raised a paw and placed it on Sakura's sandaled foot and gazed up at her, eyes bright against the surrounding dimness.
Itachi turned to face the source of movement and searched his memories for the chakra signature that the sand-cat was carrying, but found nothing familiar. It was, however, a powerful signature: tinged with possessiveness and a desire to protect. Surely whoever that made this creature had to be a shinobi of considerable chakra strength.
It was, however, the protectiveness within the sand-cat's flowing chakra that called out to Itachi the most.
"Kunoichi," addressed Itachi, causing both Sakura and the sand-cat to raise their gaze to meet his, "Keep that cat close; it desires to protect you."
And really, that should not have caused Sakura to blush, nor cause Katsuyu to squelch indignantly from inside her collar.
Sakura chalked up the sand-cat's somewhat familiar, almost-smirking expression to part of her overactive imagination.
What she did not expect was for the sand-cat to turn around and saunter over to Itachi, leap on a nearby branch and then land on the stoic young man's shoulder to perch like a four-legged parrot.
Itachi blinked.
Naruto blinked. Twice.
Sakura blinked thrice. And rubbed her eyes for good measure.
Nope, not dreaming. Mr. Fluffy-kins is picking favourites again.
It was not something Sakura was completely unfamiliar with – Harumi always seemed to prefer the company of her father to her mother, sometimes to the extent of leaving the room when Sakura's mother entered it.
But why in the name of all that was rational was the sand-cat doing on Itachi's shoulder?
Also, why was Itachi scratching its chin as if there was nothing out of the ordinary?
With the sand-cat in such close proximities, it was now apparent to Itachi that it was not actually a real cat, but one that has been made out of sand. And it was done so well that only the slight grainy feel of the cat's chin gave away its true form.
In all his living years, Itachi had only ever encountered a single shinobi capable of controlling sand. He had, in fact, been sent to spy on this particular shinobi before Deidara and Sasori proceeded with their mission to kidnap said shinobi.
From what Itachi had observed – Regimental Leader of the Allied Shinobi Forces, Fifth Kazekage and former host of the Ichibi – Gaara was a man who rarely gave his trust to others, and he was certainly not a man of affections.
Yet here was a sand-cat, a creation that one might consider frivolous. And more importantly, it was not tagged with monitoring chakra to allow Gaara to observe everything the sand-cat was seeing; instead, it felt more like a companion animal sent along with defensive orders directed strictly at a specific individual.
This was a war – casualties are to be expected. If Kages could be considered unfortunate sacrifices, then the Regimental Leader's personal medic was even more expendable, no matter her position within her own village. Sakura's position within Konohagakure, while one which might have been considered that of a daughter to the heirless Hokage, did not make her more important than the Kages' first duty of protecting the last two free jinchuurikis. A protective animal guard should have been assigned to Naruto instead, if what Itachi heard of their close friendship was true.
Unless…
Unless one was considering the bigger picture: one beyond the Fourth Shinobi World War.
Itachi stole a glance at Sakura – the poor girl looked torn between wanting to grab the cat back, and wanting to beat the crap out of him for being so friendly with them despite the very recent disclosure of his status as a double-agent.
Perhaps a union between two Hidden Villages would not be too far-fetched an idea, as long as the other Hidden Villages do not decry the imbalance of power.
An alliance between two Hidden Villages also meant the end of any further tragedies similar to that of the Uchiha Massacre – a system of balance and checks would prevent any faction within either villages from becoming powerful enough to bring about a coup.
And the Kazekage's affections to a certain kunoichi from Konohagakure was evident: it was sitting on his shoulder. Sakura's silent plea in her eyes for him to return the cat spoke of her returned feelings as well.
Itachi decided quietly that he should send a message to the Hokage – a little suggestion of sorts.
To his left, Gai started to whistle a little too loudly. It was then that Itachi realised he had been silent for longer than what most people were comfortable with.
So he drew their attention to the purring creature that was doing an odd little prancing-on-the-spot dance on his shoulder.
"Does this cat understand human language?" The Uchiha prodigy enquired.
Even if the sand-cat understood humans to begin with, Sakura had absolutely no words to express the baffling vision of a former Akatsuki member interacting so casually with a small mammal.
"I think he likes you; you praised Puss for his loyalty to Sakura after all," Kakashi replied cheerfully.
Now was not the time to rebuke Kakashi for oh-so creatively naming the sand-cat; Itachi was supposed to be on his way to stop Kabuto's Edo Tensei if the intel had not been false – Sakura was not going to let anything get in the way of such an important mission.
"Mr. Fluffy-kins," she pitched her voice to a commanding whisper, "Come back down."
Instead, it was Itachi who wrapped both hands just under the sand-cat's forelegs before he lifted it away from his body. He then held it up, eyes fixed on Sakura who knew she should be doing something more than just gaping at them.
Fortunately, Naruto remedied the situation by subtly nudging her – enough to push her unsteadily to her feet.
"My apologies, Itachi-san," Sakura took the sand-cat from him, still not quite able to meet his gaze.
When she finally looked up, Itachi was gone. It was as if he had never came by their camp and talked to them in her first non-threatening encounter with the deadliest (well, probably second deadliest now that Madara was alive) Uchiha ever.
Frankly, it was all a bit surreal.
But Sakura bore no grudge against Itachi; he had to have made a detour to deliver his message – at a cost to his own mission. The serious nature of a likely clash with the White Zetsus was something that could only be conveyed by an actual person instead of an animal summon.
She just hoped that Itachi did not jinx them by painting the possible future for their mission.
Uchiha Itachi was officially a jinx.
Ever attuned to the slightest fluctuations in chakra due to her pulling the emergency shift back in Konoha, the sudden burst of killing intent coming right at them at Sakura jumping out of her bedroll so quickly, she almost tripped herself getting out.
That which really startled her, however, was the fact that the killing intent was coming from Naruto.
Or more specifically, someone bearing Naruto's chakra signature.
"Lee-kun!" She whispered, following the drill that Kakashi them going over during their entire trek.
A blur of green in the dark, and she was back-to-back with Lee while the sand-cat crouched next to her. Glancing around quickly, she saw that Kakashi and Gai had paired off as well, and Naruto's entire body was almost completely eaten by his intense chakra glow.
"We are surrounded," said Kakashi – the wrinkling of his forehead barely visible in the nearing dawn.
"Surrounded? But our perimeters have foreign chakra detection fields as w… oh."
If the White Zetsus was advancing on them while posing as Naruto clones, their chakra-mimicking ability would make allowed them to pass into the camp without setting off any alarms. Warding the camp against the Kyuubi jinchuuriki's chakra made no sense even after Itachi's warning; Naruto's chakra levels were so high that the slightest spike would have set off all their alarms.
"How many?"
"About two hundred."
And Sakura thought waking up in the morning with one Naruto hanging upside-down outside her window was bad.
The first of the clones moved into the light of the clearing with no hesitance, a perfect copy of Naruto's appearance from just before the war. The only dead giveaway was the unnatural grin of malice plastered on the clone's face.
Not that it mattered – infiltration of the ranks was probably not amongst their orders, given that there was just one Nine-Tails Mode Naruto, and two hundred normally-attired Narutos.
The White Zetsu clones could copy everything about a person's physical appearance flawlessly, but there was one thing they could not copy – a jinchuuriki's bijuu. Aside from the fact that a bijuu was not a suitable DNA candidate for cloning, they could not copy anything based on a bijuu's chakra, and that ruled out any bijuu-related jutsus.
Cold comfort at best, seeing how strong Naruto was even before he learnt to wield his Nine-Tails Mode.
Sakura crossed her fingers mentally, praying extra-hard that they would not be getting over two hundred Rasengans in the face anytime soon.
"Careless."
"Reckless."
"Your chakra fed us well."
"Now you will all perish at the hands of a familiar face."
Naruto, who was standing next to Killer Bee, crossed his arms and answered with a too-serious expression, "You guys sound like something out of a zombie flick, and not the good B-movie kind either."
The numerous Naruto clones turned towards each other, a few scratching their heads in bafflement.
Yep, definitely not the good kind.
"That doesn't matter," declared one clone – presumably the lead White Zetsu, "Your futile attempts at wiping us out has given Madara more than enough opportunities to analyse your abilities. He has taken the other six bijuus to a new base; all your work has been in vain."
The good news: Naruto and Killer Bee were presently too much for Madara to handle and he chose to avoid a confrontation with them.
The bad news: everything that they did in the past month had been for absolutely nothing; there was no need to secure bases closer to the presumed Akatsuki base, now that Madara has abandoned it, and an even less of a need for them to be surrounded by a horde of sneering Narutos.
Naruto and Killer Bee were safe – they needed to be taken back alive for Madara to extract the bijuus from them.
From the way the Naruto army was tightening their circle around them, Sakura figured that the rest of them? Were pretty much expendable.
"Bro, I can't punch those White Zetsus, even if it is just a genjutsu," Killer Bee looked somewhat confounded by their situation.
The real Naruto simply grinned up at him and jabbed a thumb backwards, saying, "Then watch the masters at work."
Killer Bee turned around just in time to see six or seven of the clones sent flying back into the forest, courtesy of Sakura's chakra-infused punch.
"Tsk, Sakura-chan, don't keep all the fun to yourself," chuckled Kakashi as he too-casually sliced through a clone with his lightning blade.
The ease with which Sakura and Kakashi took to unleashing their full power against the Naruto clones gave them pause; Madara had calculated that the Kyuubi jinchuuriki – beloved as he is by his teammates – would make the Allied Shinobi Forced less willing to cut down even an enemy wearing his skin.
Clearly, Madara did not know about Sakura's daily abuse of Naruto, and Kakashi's not-so-secret desire to get back at Naruto for the years of suffering as first his teacher, and subsequently as his team leader.
Lee at least had the decency to feel bad about beating up a Naruto clone – he winced and muttered apologies as he knocked out yet another of the clones.
It did not take long for the White Zetsu clones to realise that posing as Naruto was not impeding their attackers. On the contrary, some of Naruto's teammates seemed well at ease with the beat-down; the others appeared outraged at this attempt to target their emotional attachment to the Kyuubi jinchuuriki.
They only really needed Naruto's chakra signature to sneak past the perimeter traps, anyway.
As if by silent agreement, the White Zetsu clones dropped their clone appearance in one felled swoop. In the blink of an eye, the sea of orange disappeared, only to be replaced by an army of whitish, tree bark-like skinned shinobis.
"Giving up already?" Kakashi asked one of them conversationally as he easily side-stepped a punch.
The White Zetsu said nothing, but the faintest whispers of branches twisting caused Kakashi to whip his head around.
He barely dodged the grossly-enlarged arm that was retracted back.
Alright, so the White Zetsus' usual appearance gave them certain unique abilities, and Kakashi knew he had to warn the rest of his team about it.
One lightning blade, bisecting the White Zetsu's arm from lower forearm to shoulder, coupled with the angry sound of splintering wood and Zetsu's shriek of pain, and Kakashi ended up calling the attention of every bipedal being within their campsite.
A dangerous mistake.
Lee and Sakura dove in separate directions, just in time to avoid being pummeled into the ground by a matching pair of tree-like fists. The sand-cat transformed into a cloud of sand and moved to hover over Sakura's shoulder, slowly and menacingly.
There was a sickening snap – a noise that any shinobi would be all-too familiar with. Sakura did not need to look to know that Gai had just broke the neck of a White Zetsu with deadly precision.
This was a war.
Their duty here was straightforward: to live and fight another day.
Deliberately moving away from Gai's direction, Sakura readied her fist as she charged straight for a mob of White Zetsus still hanging around the outskirts of their campsite. The cloud of sand picked up speed and shot right for the White Zetsus, erupting into a cloudburst of sand in their faces.
Sakura wasted no time in delivering her follow-through; the closest White Zetsu must have at least broken six or seven ribs, and the furthest from her was fighting the vestiges of a mild concussion.
She wanted to move in – to finish the job. However, something, or more specifically, someone was yelling at her in her mind.
"A medic-nin is always the last to fall in battle. Their duty is to save lives, and they cannot do that if they are dead or drained of chakra."
Sakura was suddenly very much aware of Katsuyu's chakra signature emitting from the small space between her collar and her neck. As an animal summon, Katsuyu had her own unique signature. However, the slug's blood contract with Tsunade also meant that they each carried a bit of the other's chakra signature as a result.
Simply put, it felt as if Tsunade was about to grab her by her ear to give her a good telling-off for wasting her chakra as a combatant instead of a medic-nin.
Sakura knew she had to swallow her pride, and let the others deliver most of the ensuing carnage.
Imperceptibly, she withdrew the chakra that she had been channeling into her fists and forced them back to her reserves.
For the good of the team.
A kunai readied in her hand, Sakura dove back to Lee's side. Her actions earned her a curious tilt of the head from the green-clad shinobi, but his attention was almost immediately drawn back to a pair of flanking White Zetsus.
Sakura cut down the one on her left; Lee knocked over the one on his right.
Weeks and months later, Sakura would still curse herself for not driving the blade deep enough.
The shinobi's kunai was tempered and forged for deadly throwing precision and could be used as a slashing tool in a pinch. But unlike a sword, it was a disposable piece of equipment, discarded by the dozens in a single fight. Its single sharp point, lacking the force of a throw driven by an entire body behind it, coupled with the White Zetsu's bark-like skin, meant that all that White Zetsu took was the force of Sakura's regular arm strength – a rip in his flesh that looked deeper than it was thanks to the folds and recesses in his skin.
As a result, Sakura took his collapsing act – hook, line and sinker – and was already moving in the opposite direction to assist Lee.
Her back: completely exposed and unguarded.
"Sakura!" Kakashi did not even bother to shout out the suffix he always added to her name – time was of the essence.
The pink-haired kunoichi whipped her head in her former sensei's direction, and she caught the White Zetsu that she thought she had slew coming at her in her peripheral vision.
With a twist of her upper body practiced a thousand times, Sakura propelled herself to face the charging White Zetsu. Her momentum was carried in her heels, however, and that left her momentarily unbalanced.
That moment was all that White Zetsu needed, as he transformed one arm into a fine-pointed lance.
A spear of sand instantly formed and threw itself at the White Zetsu, successfully goring him in the side. The White Zetsu did not manage to stop his surprised shout of pain.
Sakura flinched and gasped silently, but not in empathy.
The sand-cat was fast, but not fast enough; Sakura realised that when she looked down to see a blossoming patch of darkness in her abdomen, in approximately the same region as where the sand-cat had stabbed the White Zetsu.
And when the White Zetsu collapsed for good this time, his still-embedded arm in Sakura's side shifted along with him.
Her blood beating in her ears louder than she had ever remembered, Sakura was vaguely aware that Zetsu must have jousted or even pierced one of her organs – the pain of a muscle or cavity tear would never have been this intense.
As her world faded to blissfully painless darkness, she barely registered Naruto's angry roar and his rippling yellow-orange chakra cloak glowing brighter than the now-risen sun.