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beta: Icescim

The Philosophy of Self

Chapter Ten

Sakura tried to ignore the sick roiling of her stomach as she walked into the trial chamber, knowing that her nerves would do absolutely nothing to help Sasuke, and knowing that the calmer she was the easier her own part would be. But apparently, her ninja instincts were running on high, because the nervous something-is-wrong-here sensation would not abate, no matter how much controlled breathing she did. She was distracted somewhat from it when the Council entered the chamber and the trial began.

They started in the absence of Uchiha-san; it was standard practice when trying dangerous criminals to address as much of the trial as possible without exposing Konoha's leaders to said dangerous criminal. Even though the room was swarming with invisible ANBU, not to mention the fighting prowess of all the leaders themselves, it was best not to tempt fate overmuch. They were already putting all of the ranking ninja of the Village in the same room as a notorious S-class missing-nin. They didn't have to risk themselves beyond that by having him present for parts of the trial he didn't need to be there for. It was one of the few Rules that were worth anything: Minimize risk.

They called the trial to order, and started by presenting the evidence that their prisoner was, in fact, Uchiha Sasuke. To be able to try him, it was necessary that they establish he was the accused.

Tsunade, Sakura, and the Head of the Medical Division were called upon to confirm the blood test that had been run while Uchiha-san had been hospitalized. The projector on the Council's table threw the image of the test results up on the wall, set next to the record from the test run on twelve-year-old Sasuke for comparison. They were obviously the same.

Then the image changed to Sasuke's Academy graduation photo, set next to a photo of the Uchiha, unconscious in a hospital bed. Though there was a difference in age, there was also a clear resemblance. The vice-commander of ANBU, Kakashi, and Hyuuga Hiashi—all skilled in detecting and recognizing ninjutsu—testified that there was no henge or genjutsu at play.

Then (grudgingly), the Council informed the assembly of the Uchiha's amnesia. It was clear from their tone that they were only divulging that information because Tsunade had cited law at them to force them. Ibiki and Shizune testified to the validity of the diagnosis. With more enthusiasm, the Council also brought forth the evidence that, despite his apparent amnesia, Uchiha-san cited memories that corresponded to known facts about Sasuke, hinting that he was Uchiha Sasuke. They played clips from the recording Ibiki had made of Uchiha-san's questioning, in the hospital when he'd first woken. It was testified that the clips and the quotes were truthful and un-altered.

Finished providing the base for their trial, the Council called the accused in.

He took his seat between her and Kakashi, and everything was fine until the trial restarted.

"It was an order." Uchiha-san's voice was a strained whisper, his face deathly pale. His hands braced him against the table. "The Uchiha Massacre was on orders."

For a second Sakura couldn't even process his words—they sounded like gibberish. It seemed like everyone else was suffering the same failure of comprehension, because the room was utterly still.

But then they understood, and everything exploded into motion and noise.

Sakura was first aware of Kakashi taking up a defensive position between Sasuke and the Council. Everybody was shouting, and there were suddenly too many ANBU, and they were fighting each other. But that wasn't right, because ANBU were…

"Sakura! We need egress!" Kakashi was shouting in her ear. He had a kunai in one hand, and Uchiha-san's upper arm in the other, and his hitai-ate was shoved up to bare his borrowed Sharingan. Sakura stared, as Naruto leapt, snarling, to intercept an attack apparently aimed for Uchiha-san. "Sakura!"

Kakashi's sharp, authoritative voice banished the last of the astonished haze from her mind. She snapped to attention. A way out. Right. "On it, sensei!"

Turning sharply, Sakura ran a practiced eye over the wall that they'd been using as a projector screen. Then, with swift and devastating precision, she punched it out with one chakra-strengthened fist. A hole wide enough for three people to pass through side-by-side, and tall enough to accommodate Kakashi and his hair, crumbled out. Beyond it stretched the tiled rooftops of Konoha.

:There. Egress,: Sakura thought with satisfaction. She turned to Kakashi and Naruto, who had been guarding her back and Uchiha-san's life. The Copy Ninja shoved the Uchiha at her.

"Take him and go to Whiskey-Echo-Five," Kakashi ordered. "Naruto and I will stop pursuit."

Sakura hesitated a mere fraction of a second. "Understood."

Grabbing Uchiha's wrist, she pulled him along with her as she ran at speed out across the roofs.

Whiskey-Echo-Five was one of Team Seven's rendezvous points, predetermined and known only by the Team itself—it was common protocol for ninja Teams to establish such points, for any number of reasons. They just never expected to have to use it for something like this.

Uchiha went easily, willingly. When she glanced back at him, his face was still pale, making his black eyes and the dark smudges under them stand out vividly. She wondered if he was okay. He'd been pretty shocked.

:Either that or he was lying,: whispered a snide, suspicious voice at the back of her mind. It was possible, of course. But, she just didn't think he was. And she'd learned early on to trust her instincts and intuition. :Even though I REALLY don't want him to have been telling the truth. Giving the order to kill a whole Clan… Is that something Konoha is really capable of?:

"On the left," Uchiha-san said, quietly so that just Sakura could hear him. She blinked. Ah. Well, she hadn't expected Kakashi and Naruto to be able to stop every single pursuer. They had their hands full with the mess in the Council chamber. This pursuer came from somewhere within the Village.

"He's trying to herd us toward his comrades," Uchiha said, after a moment. They'd just hit one of the larger wooded areas of the Village, passing seamlessly from rooftop to tree canopy.

"Oh, really?" Sakura murmured. She pulled out a brace of shuriken and held them in the standard double-throw grip. It was somewhat easy to evade attempts to lead; when Sakura wanted to go right, she'd attack to force the pursuer to the left, thereby opening the path. It worked well, letting them get about a mile further in their own direction. The only thing was…

"Look out!" she snapped, juking to the side. She shoved Uchiha the opposite way, and the Suiton Dragon that had been aimed at their backs went roaring through the space between.

The only thing about thwarting attempts at herding was that the person doing the herding eventually gave up and resorted to other methods. Like attacking.

Sakura span around, spotted the attacker—he was charging toward Uchiha-san—and shunshin'd to intercept. With a clash of kunai, she forced him to break off attacking Uchiha. Her eyes flicked up to the hitai-ate on his brow. It bore the swirled etching of Hidden Leaf.

"Who are you?" she demanded. He had a plain, blank face that she couldn't remember ever having seen before. "Why are you attacking a fellow Leaf ninja?"

He didn't answer, not that she really expected him to. Her eyes narrowed as she deflected another attack. "If you persist in attacking me, I will be forced to judge your actions treasonous and take action to eliminate the threat to Konoha!"

Evidently, that possibility didn't disturb him, because he lunged again, kunai reaching for her gut. She swept her own weapon down in a tight arc, pushing his kunai to the side so that it passed right by her torso. Committed to his strike, his arm followed, just enough so that when Sakura's arm came snapping in to her side, it trapped his wrist between her body and her arm. With that arm immobilized, she gave a quick jab of a chakra-powered fist toward his kidneys.

He twisted like an eel, evading the punch and freeing his arm. Sakura jumped back, away from him. Almost immediately, he started flitting through some hand-seals. Sakura's eyes narrowed. :I don't think so.:

She stamped one foot, and the ground heaved. She followed it up with a barrage of shuriken. Her attacker jumped to avoid the shattering earth, and was forced to break his hand-seals to parry the projectiles. When he landed, Sakura forced him airborne again by tossing an exploding-tag-bearing kunai at his feet. In mid-air, they engaged in a flurry of taijutsu, culminating in Sakura ax-kicking him to the ground.

She wasn't as fast as some of her comrades, which meant that she had to try a little harder to make a hit. But when she did land one, it counted. The kick she'd just graced this shinobi with broke some bones, at the very least.

:Hm. Definitely some ribs.: she thought clinically as her attacker rose and coughed. He seemed to be breathing with difficulty. :Pneumothorax?:

She concentrated on one hand to form chakra scalpels on her fingers. She flexed her hand, five chakra blades extending like blue-green claws from her fingertips, and smirked at him.

It was at that moment that Uchiha appeared behind the injured shinobi, driving a kunai into his kidney. He must have grabbed one of the weapons they'd been tossing around during the fight. He twisted the blade, and their attacker's mouth dropped open… and he collapsed limply. A wound like that, he would have gone into shock instantly.

"Why did you do that?" she demanded, appalled. He gave her a puzzled look.

"Ones such as he will not stop unless they are dead."

"I could have incapacitated him!" Sakura said. "I'm a medic, I know how to make them stop without killing them!"

"We need to continue," Uchiha said, ignoring her. "He called reinforcements before engaging with us."

She stared at him a moment. :Should I take the kunai away from him? I don't want to murder my way out of here. They are wearing Leaf hitai-ate, and I'm not sure if they really are friend or foe. And anyway, what if he turns on me? He is a traitor, he's all but admitted it…:

"Let's go," she said, making a snap decision. She'd trust him with it for now. If she moved fast enough she could incapacitate before he could kill. And he might need to defend himself.

Since Uchiha couldn't use his chakra, they couldn't use shunshin to travel at top speed. With that handicap, the dead shinobi's reinforcements caught up with them quickly.

"What the hell is up with these guys?" Sakura growled as she caught a Fuuma shuriken and sent it whizzing back toward its origin.

"They are Root," Uchiha said. "And they have orders to kill us."

"Us? What is this 'us'?" Sakura muttered under her breath, even as her stomach dropped at the words. Hand dipping into a side pouch, she slapped some exploding tags onto a few branches in her wake. A few steps later and a series of explosions made the ground rumble.

Sakura stopped dead, and turned, so that when the Root agents emerged from the smoke from the blasts, they overshot her before they realized she was there. As they attempted to turn, she was on them.

Training with Hatake Kakashi, the Copy Ninja, and Senju Tsunade, the Slug Sannin, had made her much more dangerous. In point of fact, their training had helped her to become the match for an S-class Akatsuki member—with some help from Chiyo-baasama, Sakura had killed Akasuna no Sasori. A pair of Root members wouldn't be too much of a challenge, in comparison.

She hamstrung one before they were able to readjust, using her chakra scalpels to sever the tendons without cutting flesh. It would be physically impossible for him to move now, unless he dragged himself around by his hands. He wouldn't even be able to stand properly.

But he could still lash out. His arms worked perfectly fine, as he proved a second later, when he launched a handful of kunai at her. Sakura twitched out of the way, her body undulating as she wove herself around the trajectories of the weapons. She didn't get it quite right, though, because one made a pretty decent slice in her arm as it passed by.

She hissed, feeling the burn of poison in the wound. She shoved a chakra block around it, to contain the poison until she could take the time to flush it out of her system.

Kicking off of one foot, she broke into a crouched run, straight toward the second Root. He flicked through a few hand seals, and a wave of water rose from the ground in front of her, welling up into a clear threat. That much water moving with that much force behind it could break bones when it came crashing down on a person.

Sakura punched the ground, making a great slab of dirt and stone lurch vertical right in front of her. With a spinning kick, she sent the mass hurtling forward. It crashed into the Suiton with a great explosion of water and dirt and newly-formed mud. The wave broke against the great slab of earth, diminishing the force and volume of the water at the break-point. Sakura leapt through the hole in the Suiton, fist cocked, but as she cleared the white-cap, she saw that someone had gotten there first.

Naruto and Kakashi had caught up to them, and Naruto had mobbed the remaining Root with a couple Kage Bunshin. Kakashi was standing over the hamstrung Root, his Sharingan exposed. The hamstrung shinobi was lying unmoving at his feet.

"Where's Sasuke?" the real Naruto demanded, looking around. Sakura jolted, opened her mouth to respond. But before she could, there was a rustle, and Uchiha dropped out of a tree nearby, kunai held in a ready stance.

"Sakura-san, confirm their identities," he said. She blinked, eyes flicking toward her two Teammates.

"Sparrows enter swiftly with kimono." Kakashi gave his pass code without fuss. A random, nonsensical sentence, it was known only to Hatake Kakashi.

"Confirmed," Sakura said, and looked at Naruto.

"Electric papers coil clockwise," he said.

"Naruto…" Sakura said forbiddingly, frowning.

"Sorry, sorry, counter-clockwise," he corrected. She relaxed; the reprimand-correction was actually a part of their code, and thoroughly assured her that they were her Teammates. She glanced at Uchiha.

"I don't suppose you remember Sasuke's pass code?" she asked. He stared at her levelly for a moment, and then turned to Kakashi.

"Even moss pays tithe," he told the older shinobi. Kakashi's eyes narrowed, and very quietly he said:

"I thought so."

"Kakashi, that isn't—" Naruto started.

"It's fine," Kakashi interrupted. "Cancel order Whiskey-Echo-Five. We're heading to a safe-house. Let's go."

Confused, Sakura glanced between Uchiha and Kakashi, and shared a puzzled look with Naruto. That wasn't Sasuke's pass code. But Kakashi seemed to have recognized it anyway. :What is going on?:

Her stomach was starting to writhe again, like she'd swallowed a nest of snakes. Dread, for what the answers she would get would be.

When Kakashi signaled them to move out, and launched himself forward to take point, she followed without comment. She wasn't sure she wanted to ask those questions just yet. She wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answers.