"All Kill Landing Edge"
By Nes Mikel
Acknowledgment;
I hereby acknowledge that the work of fiction presented here is for my own personal amusement and entertainment purposes alone. I hereby also acknowledge that while this story is mostly based on Kishimoto Masashi's "Naruto", crossover elements from other fictitious sources also exist, which will be named as they arise. Thus, I acknowledge that the original story concept and ideas, while heavily altered for the sake of the crossover, are copyright of all its associates.
For non up-to-date readers, this fiction will contain spoilers up to the latest Naruto manga chapters.
With that said, enjoy.
"All Kill Landing Edge"
- Chapter Four -
"Mokutou"
Japanese – "Remembrance"
She was floating in a sea of empty space where neither light nor sound existed, naked and exposed, slowly falling, sinking into the bottomless pit of black. It was dark, and when she looked down the territory that existed beneath her soul, all was darker still.
It was all that remained, of 'her'.
The space stretched out and beyond, the expanse so large she didn't know if the distance was expanding or constricting. She wasn't even sure she was falling to begin with, for there was nothing. Absolutely nothing had existed there. She realized that the darkness wasn't darkness itself. It just… didn't exist. Light did not exist. Darkness did not exist. Nothing existed. And because nothing existed, she could see nothing. There was even no meaning to the question of if she was falling or not.
But somewhere, somehow, she knew she was falling, sinking deeper as time passed in silence all around. Here, in this empty space where form did not matter, she knew her presence was offensive, an unwelcome, foreign object. She wanted to shut her eyes away from the reality that encompassed her, for she looked so terrible, so weak. What 'existed' here was poison to the emptiness all around her.
"So this is… this is death?"
Sakura wasn't even sure if her frail voice was real, but just a speck of her imagination.
Time passed longer in silent symphony. In this empty world, time was supposed to not exist. But because she existed, she could observe.
It was all she could do, really. Observe. It was pretty much the only thing she could do in this macrocosm of nothing, and as she continued time continued to decay along with it. She once tried to look far and beyond. Nothing. She once tried to lie still and wait. Nothing. And even then, she felt an impeccable sense of accomplishment for her actions, a warm, woolly feeling enveloping her exposed soul. But that was only because she was perfect here, she knew, in this emptiness. Nothing else existed, so by simply existing she had become the definition of perfection.
But this was death, a world where it was normally impossible to observe. It was a world only the dead were supposed to access, not someone like her, someone still alive…!
Sometimes she had felt she'd gone insane.
For two years, Sakura had been in constant 'contact' with death. And when it was all over, no sense of accomplishment existed within. Just an overwhelming tiredness, as if she'd just come out of the grandest of battles.
A battle, fought between life and death.
And even now, she wasn't sure which side had won.
Morning arrived for the second time since her awakening, and along with it came the increase in volume. As the early-shift hospital nurses scrambled to reach their destinations, they brushed with some early-bird patients taking a walk in this first light of the day, and as they passed each other, footsteps echoed loudly through the long, hollow hospital corridor. For Sakura the noise was deafening, compared to the quiet silence that marked the night before.
She supposed she was thankful her room was a private one. While it was noisy outside, in here she was able to relax away in privacy, allowing herself some time for pause before the inevitable came.
And just like that, it arrived.
"How are you feeling, Haruno-san?" The doctor asked as Sakura heard him scuffling for the stool nearby before he sat himself besides her bed.
"…I don't know."
"I see." The doctor sounded unsure of how to respond at her toneless reply. He muffled a cough, but after a while he resumed his talk. "Well, at least you seem calmer than two days ago. Now, while I understand it might not be the best of times to be doing this, I want to talk to you about your condition. If you feel nauseated-" He suddenly seemed to remember that he was talking to a mere child, and corrected his vocabulary accordingly. "If you feel sick in any way, let me know immediately. Okay?"
Sakura replied with silence. It didn't really matter, for she held no interest in knowing what had happened to her. She already knew.
The doctor, however, took her silence as sign to continue and continued to speak. "I'll try to explain this as simple as I can. Today is January the 16th, Tenth year in the Second Region of the Third Hokage. You were carried into our hospital two years ago in the early mornings of January the 2nd after the results of an unfortunate accident. You fell down from the stone steps of a local shrine. Do you remember any of it?"
"…"
She doesn't reply, but this time she didn't because she couldn't remember what the doctor was referring to. The last thing Sakura could extract from her memory was seeing her friend, her only friend, standing in the middle of an empty courtyard that was covered in snow, spinning around in happiness, dressed in the traditional kimono dress she had handpicked for herself for the New Year's festival that year. She had no recollection over how she got to involve herself in her supposed 'accident'.
"Oh, you don't have to be so worried about it if you don't remember. The accident itself actually wasn't that serious." The doctor quickly reassured her as she heard the flips of paper from the few pages attached to the clipboard he carried. "You were pretty lucky. You were wearing a thick, padded jacket stuffed with fur over the kimono you were wearing at the time, so the damage to your body was minimal… I mean, not much." He corrected himself again. "But on the other hand, you hit your head pretty hard when you fell. You were already unconscious… erm, knocked out pretty badly when you were carried in I should say. Thankfully tests have revealed that there wasn't any serious damage done to the brain, but nevertheless you've been sleeping for two whole years. Can't really be helped if don't remember a few things. Inoichi-san… you remember him, don't you? He reported there was no serious damage done during your coma, so we figure we just need to give it some time before your memory returns." She heard him sigh. "I'd like to guarantee it, but unfortunately it's not every day we see comatose patients waking up after two years. We haven't had that many example cases to go off of."
Sakura heard the doctor constantly referring to the events from two years ago, but she still couldn't grasp the concept quite so accurately. For 'Haruno Sakura', two years was merely three days ago, and as for 'Sakura' herself, two years was time spent in that empty void.
"Your wounds are also not that serious." She heard the doctor say, knowing he was referring to her bandaged eyes. "I suppose we should be glad you didn't have access to anything sharp. Your bandages will be coming off very soon. You can expect to see out of them again after a week or so, so just try not to irritate your eyes further until then."
Sakura caught the doctor's hint. It was way of showing his disapproval when she tried to gorge her eyes out when she first woke up and saw the changed world around her. After they'd put her on sedatives yesterday they had questioned her on why she'd done it, but she didn't grace them with an answer. They had only let her go when she assured them she would no longer be repeating her attempt.
"Starting from tomorrow, you'd be doing rehabilitation exercises twice a day, once before noon and once during the evening – exercises so we can get your body back into shape." He announced, almost suddenly, his tone carefully neutral. "And we're thinking of allowing visitors to see you, but because we want to be careful we're thinking an hour daily would be best for both you and your family. You'll be out of the hospital in no time if you keep it up, Haruno-san. Everything will be back to normal. Just stay positive."
She thought she couldn't really fault the doctor for repeating the line he undoubtedly gave to countless other patients, but she still felt a little cynical over it. Sighing to ease out that tiny bit of disappointment, Sakura turned the palm of her right hand and tried to move her arm along with it in an effort to distract herself. Her attempt was thwarted almost instantly when her joints and muscles flowed with pain, and she discovered that even moving a single finger took a considerable amount of time. She didn't get to use any of it for two years, after all. Sakura figured it was only natural.
"I'd best be going by now." The doctor said as she heard him rise from the bedside stool. "Inoichi-san had insisted he'd keep guards posted outside for your convenience, so if you need anything just press the button near your pillow. The guards will fetch the nurses from a nearby room for you then. Don't hesitate to use them for anything you deem necessary."
She could almost imagine the cookie-cutter smile the doctor was showing her as she felt his large hand pat gently on her head in departing gesture.
And just like that, she was alone again.
Lying flat on her bed that had been her home of two years, she tried to stir herself into sleep as she closed her eyes and mumbled out her proper name.
"I'm… Haruno Sakura, right…?"
Even though the words had come out from her mouth, it didn't sound convincing. It wasn't convincing, for she knew deep down that the person previously known as 'Haruno Sakura' no longer existed. She could, of course, remember everything she could remember during her eight years of life when she was 'Haruno Sakura', but it no longer mattered. The two year separation between the 'Haruno Sakura' from the past and present was more than enough to differentiate themselves as separate entities.
It was only with 'Sakura' and the other 'her' that made her feel complete. It was the two conflicting but comforting personalities inside her that made Sakura into the 'Haruno Sakura' she always knew. And with the other 'her' dead, killed from the two years she spent in the void where only 'Sakura' had been present, she knew she was no longer the same person.
"Please… help me, Ouka… please…"
Once, there was a time when another presence inside her mind would've torn her a new one for sounding so weak. But now, there was no mental reply to her tearful plea of help. A never ending moment of silence was the only thing that replaced it.
'Haruno Sakura' was here, but only 'Sakura' remained.
And it didn't make her feel any more alive.
"All Kill Landing Edge"
- Chapter Four -
-END-
Author's Notes:
Chapter four.
If people are sharp, by now I think several people could fathom a guess as to where the crossover elements of this story lie.
Thanks for reading!
- Nes Mikel
All Kill Landing Edge, Chapter Four "Mokutou", First Edition: February 19th, 2013, Last Edit: February 24th, 2013