A/N: What made them think Chidori was a good tactic against Gaara in the first place? Yes, it's capable of breaching his defense, but if you don't kill him at first contact, all you've managed is to put your arm inside his weapon. I mention this only because the Team Seven of First Flower is elementally balanced. Naruto is wind, Sasuke is fire, and Sakura is metal. What do you get when you combine these three? The necessary elements to forge a weapon. (I'm obviously not operating according to the canon elements-before I read the manga I'd never heard of an elemental breakdown that included lightning as the fifth element. Spirit, yes, metal, yes, but never lightning.)
First Flower of Spring
-Chapter Fifteen-
Down Came God (Part III)
"Jou-chan," a familiar voice called out teasingly, then Jun himself appeared before her. He sank down on his heels in a leonine movement, his braid pooling on the floor. He leaned forward slightly, invasively. "Jou-chan, it's dull out there," he said coaxingly. "It's no fun if no one bleeds. And Nara clan is dull through bone and branch. His lady friend, on the other hand-well, she's from a village that drinks the blood of their beasts when the water's short. But they're playing, not fighting." His hand traced the edge of her cheek and flicked at her bangs. "You know that, jou-chan."
His restless eyes flicked toward Shiho-nii and he smiled sharply. "Don't let it whisper to you of moderation. Once you amass so much horror at your deeds, they can no longer condemn you for it-then you're a demon, which is only a god too strange for humans to understand. And they say that killing is the best broom for troubles, sweeping them straight out the door. And, jou-chan?" he leaned forward, his shadow enveloping her until she sat in darkness, the scent of his body like blood and dried grass in her nostrils, his eyes so close to hers that that jade and black melded into a similar darkness. "There's going to be a lot of blood," he whispered to her with all the solemnity of one making prophecy.
There was nowhere to retreat to, her back already pressed against the wall, so she kept still as those words burrowed deep in her heart.
"How can you know?" she asked quietly.
"Ai knows to make herself useful-she's not needed at my side, so I've had her watching our snake from the forest. And today it slithered in to the village. Do you wait to see if a snake is poisonous before you cut its head off?" he murmured.
In practice, yes, providing it was identifiable. Snakes were useful as vermin control on farms and played an important role in a balanced ecosystem. But that wasn't Jun's question. And so that was not her answer. "You don't," she said softly.
She could almost feel his smile. "Would you like to see what happens when you set a dog to drive a snake from a corpse? Especially when the face it wears is one that is called 'Kage'?"
Startled, she shoved Jun away, he collapsing obligingly backward, his hands coming to rest on either side of his body, legs extending so that she sat between them. "You think-," she hesitated, choosing her words with care, "that Orochimaru has somehow supplanted the Kazekage? Kagami-sama said those were his children in the arena. Wouldn't they notice that their father-?" Another fact supplanted the question in urgency and she paused as she considered the ramifications of it. "Ai wasn't needed at your side? What did you do to her? Branch clan members are bound to their weapons. You didn't-you didn't purposely abandon her, did you?"
She sensed the way Shiho stiffened, but her focus was on Jun and his answer. It wasn't supposed to be possible, especially with how often Jun drank of the well of cold madness that was their kekkei genkai. He chuckled. "There is no slight of hand I am capable of that would have allowed me to slip such a distinctive senbon into Orochimaru's weapons pouch, though that is a trick Ai is well-trained for. No, I've simply loosened her shackle a little to let her drift and make herself useful. And isn't that what every human being wants, to be useful?"
"I thought it was to be loved," Sakura answered softly.
"What do you think love is but being useful?" Jun asked, eyes steady as he gazed upon her, jade filled with challenge. "All people are always and only motivated by self-interest. We love others because it pleases us. We help others because it makes us feel like necessary components of society and because it makes us feel as if we are 'good,' which all children are socialized to experience as a pleasant thing, associating it subconsciously with parental praise and approval. No one would be good if we weren't rewarded for it. Take it from a dog, jou-chan."
"That's not true," Sakura protested automatically, but it didn't escape her the way her eyes automatically sought out Shiho for reinforcement. Was she 'good' for the sake of it, or was she good, reacting and behaving according to rules she didn't quite understand and didn't feel intrinsically, because it pleased Shiho?
After a moment of anxious thought, Sakura decided firmly that the motive didn't matter. People couldn't actually read each others' hearts, after all. Whatever thought process resulted in behavior that maintained social order, Sakura desired most of all to please Shiho, all other people being relatively irrelevant. She felt obliged to Ran-oba-san, respected Kakashi-sensei, felt some measure of affection for her teammates, had the same kind of awed fearful love toward Shiki-dono one might feel towards Susasnoo, and a sense of responsibility toward Jun that the owner of a dangerous exotic pet might feel. But all of those connections were fragile, tenuous as the silk of a spider web. Strictly speaking, the tensile strength was greater than steel, but to humans it was easily brushed aside with little more than irritation. Her kekkei genkai rid her even of that.
Then Jun chuckled, startling her from her reverie. "Don't worry so, jou-chan. Pet a dog and it will adore you forever. And, well, you'll never lose your chain unless you break it." He tilted his head back to glance at Shiho-nii. "Although, it's funny, jou-chan. He's going to turn you into the very thing he fears."
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Sasuke heard the ambient noise of the crowd, driven to a fever pitch of bloodlust by his near disqualification, chanting his clan name like that hoped to invoke a god, but he'd noticed only briefly the reactions of his two teammates before turning his full attention to his opponent. Naruto had waved cheekily at him from the balcony, but Sakura hadn't even met his eyes, her attention firmly fixed on the red-head across from him. There was something odd there, something he couldn't spare the attention to investigate, but her usual calculating intensity seemed even more distant and fierce than usual.
But with an opponent like this, he couldn't afford overconfidence. Lee had possessed simple confidence and left his battle broken-Sasuke had had it deeply engrained over the course of a month that he shouldn't let arrogance blind him to the very real fact that Gaara had superior battle experience, training, and a habit of beginning a battle using fatal force. And, as Kakashi had pointed out dryly, he had an abnormally developed chakra system, to be able to saturate so much sand with his chakra and manipulate its mass-the weight of it dependent on how densely he was able to compress it into that gourd of his, if he didn't make use of a sealing seal-so adeptly.
Still, no matter how much of a barrier the sand was to victory, utilizing any single technique to the exclusion of all else could make it a weakness no matter how powerful the technique itself was. During his elimination battle, Gaara hadn't even moved, shifting his sand rather than his body. Even when Lee had surprised him by breaching the sand, he hadn't even flinched toward his equipment pouch. It was a instinctive reaction, difficult to control, ingrained as it was from their earliest classes. It was one of the first things they were forced to unlearn when they graduated, it being a distinctive tell, like reaching for a much-beloved toy as a child.
With only a single technique to contend with and a month with Hatake Kakashi to develop a counter-strategy that would assure both his survival and his promotion, Sasuke had entered the arena confident that he would at least surprise Gaara.
The key was in the realization that while the jutsu itself might be undefeatable by the usual means, it was reliant on an unusual weapon. Sasuke could remember with unusual clarity the thoughtful line of Kakashi's brow and he rubbed a sample of Gaara's sand between bare fingers.
This close to Gaara, he could make out the broken blood vessels in his eyes and the manic expression on his face, like someone on the verge of death by dehydration catching sight of someone carrying a glass of water. Only it wasn't water he thirsted for, but violence. Almost, Sasuke could look at him and expect him to be unable to speak in words intelligible to a human being. Because, in that moment, Gaara didn't seem particularly human at all.
"So now...at last," the proctor murmured around his senbon, apparently not particularly thrown by Gaara's bloodlust. His tone was almost monotonous as he continued. "The rules are the same as in the preliminaries. The match goes on until one of you dies or admits defeat. When it's determined that there's a winner, the match can be stopped. But that's my decision. Both of you, to the middle."
Gaara sneered as he approached, but Sasuke's naturally impassive face served him well in this instance. Ever since that night, when it had felt like a part of himself had been murdered alongside his clan, it had been far easier to keep what he felt inside. Only emotions that spilled over-hatred, rage, irritation-could normally break the mask he wore. Except with his team-it irked him deeply that they saw so much that he didn't want others to see.
"Begin!"
Sand erupted from the gourd on Gaara's back, uncoiling like a snake. Sasuke tensed the muscles in his legs, preparing to dodge as soon as Gaara gave some indication of the direction of his attack-another advantage that controlling the sand solely with his chakra imparted-but then his expression contorted to one of pain and he clutched at his forehead. The sand faltered in its advance and Sasuke took advantage of the opening immediately, a flurry of shuriken burying themselves in a shield of sand curved protectively around the young ninja now ignoring him.
"Please don't get so mad," he cajoled softly, "Mother..."
Sasuke for a moment could only stare and wonder whether the standards for soundness of mind among the Suna shinobi were more lax.
"Earlier," Gaara murmured , just barely audible, "Earlier I fed you something awful. I'm so sorry. But this time, surely..."
Sasuke listened with a growing sense of alarm. Sakura had been wrong, he thought with what was probably undue wonder at that fact, Gaara didn't kill because he liked the color of blood. It was something both more and less alarming than that. Madness was more commonplace than that sort of uncanny existence that lacked so much of what made humans what they were.
Sweat beaded on Gaara's brow, as if this conversation took more effort than the entire battle with Lee.
The pain seemed to intensify, Gaara cradling his head in both arms, making him vulnerable, but Sasuke found himself unable to act on that vulnerability, which seemed far more emotional than physical. But then the sand-shield dissolved into nothing more than piles at Gaara's feet and Gaara steadied, his eyes slightly more cogent as he stared at Sasuke. As if the conversation had never transpired, as if moments before he hadn't been all but trembling, he said in that same dead voice he'd used to address his siblings, "Come on."
His sand rose, swirling around him like it ached to touch him but didn't dare, ready to meet Sasuke's next attack. Sasuke obliged and a brief period of combat ensued in which the sand revealed a heretofore unseen flexibility, forming itself into a clone. Gaara simply stood, arms crossed, as the clone battled briefly with Sasuke, its poor hand-to-hand skills confirming Sasuke's expectation of Gaara's combat skills. It didn't last more than fifteen seconds, even if it did attempt to reform itself about Sasuke's forearm as it gave it a blow that would have collapse a person's throat.
Lee had breached Gaara's defenses with speed and Sasuke aped that, though with far less sheer skill. He didn't allow himself to feel regret for lacking the Sharingan-his technique might not have given him victory over a taijutsu specialist, but he didn't intend to beat Gaara in hand-to-hand. Lee had tried that and failed. No, what he intended was to put Gaara on the defensive and draw out all of his sand from his gourd.
He soon found himself breathing heavily, his speed augmented as it was by the subtle use of chakra, but it was doing as intended. Gaara was used to such raw superiority that any challenge to his sand seemed to throw him off balance. Sasuke paid careful attention to the chakra he expended, knowing that the demands in the latter part of the match would be excessive. Given their lateness to the match, the time between matches would be considerably shortened for him, giving him very little time to recover before he fought again.
But he shoved that aside, for fighting one battle at a time was all he could currently manage.
Gaara finally seemed to master his astonishment, forming his fingers into a handsign. Sasuke leaped backward to give himself more range if it proved to be offensive, but the sand instead began to weave itself into a dense sphere about Gaara's person. Despite himself, the corner of Sasuke's mouth tipped upward.
Perfect. Slipping his hand into his pouch, deft fingers found the sealing scroll waiting for him there. Activating it quickly, as it was important to make use of it before his defense finished forming, he dashed forward, flinging the scroll like it was a kunai.
Gaara's eyes widened at the unexpected action, especially when the contents of it were caught up in his sand, white grains swallowed by dun-colored ones. Then his expression was obscured by his impenetrable defense.
But, as anyone who had lived through a siege in a castle might report, impregnable defenses might as easily become an unbreakable cage.
The white substance that he'd donated so generously to Gaara's sphere was sodium carbonate. And, like much sand found in non-tropical areas, Gaara's was composed of degraded quartz crystals. Silica sand.
All he lacked was a source of heat; and that, Sasuke could provide.
Inhaling deeply, Sasuke let the heat build inside him, until the fire he spewed from his mouth was tinged deeply with blue. The fire encountered Gaara's shield with a roar, Sasuke quickly bringing the fire under control. There were those who used fire as a crude weapon, little more effective than a flash-bomb, but the Uchiha clan had made it an art. It wasn't enough to simply be able to use fire-nature jutsu-that would have never won his father's approval. It was that that Sasuke kept in mind as he used every iota of oxygen in his lungs to fuel his flames.
And, lightheaded, smirked faintly as he beheld the glowing glass bauble that had taken shape in front of him. It cooled quickly, revealing Gaara's incredulous expression behind green-tinted glass, warped by the uneven flow of the sand. Another movement produced several fragile orbs containing a powder that dispersed itself liberally over the sphere where they burst on contact with the surface. Basic knock-out stuff, effective either when inhaled, which was likely if he broke the glass and disturbed it, or after a longer duration if absorbed through the vulnerable tissue inside the nose.
He turned his head expectantly toward the proctor, looking to see if he would call the match in his favor.
But then something odd drew his attention back to Gaara. Though Sasuke had effectively nullified all the sand from his gourd, a spike of sand drawn from the arena itself pierced Gaara's glass tomb. Sand began to fill the globe like an hourglass in reverse, Gaara's eyes slipping slowly closed. Sand obscured his form, but the color and texture of it changed, blue veins streaking through it.
An awful sense of foreboding stole over Sasuke, though he couldn't have explained what exactly about this newest development would cause such alarm. But, for a moment, he could only entertain the feeling that the thin shell of glass was the shell of an egg, from which something terrible was about to be born.
Inhaling deeply again, he resolved to see if he couldn't cook the embryo within before whatever it was within could draw breath.
He never had the opportunity to discover what it was, nor if his fire burned hot enough to kill Gaara outright, though the sand-shield that coated his skin had apparently dispersed the heat of his first attack-a loud explosion on the balcony where the Kage sat drew his attention. And then the world dissolved into chaos.
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"You can't sleep now, jou-chan," Jun murmured in her ear as the first drowsiness of a genjutsu settled over her, "this is when the fun begins." He bit down, hard enough to draw blood, on that same ear, returning her to a full awareness of the dawning crisis.
It had been unnecessary, Sakura fully intending to feign being effected while more quietly releasing herself from the genjutsu, but Jun would allow her no such pretense. So Sakura watched, taking in the assault on the village Shiho-nii loved, Jun's prophecy coming to bloody fruition.
She recognized the symbol on the headbands of the invading ninja and while her mind contemplated how such a large force had penetrated their border security, her mouth was already forming the order her dog waited so eagerly for. "If they're bold enough to launch an attack like this, there will be further reinforcements outside the village."
"And?" Jun asked her, his hands already donning the soulless clawed gauntlets that were all that remained of his first partner.
"Send them on to meet Enma-ou." Jun grinned fiercely, petals spreading in his eyes, his kekkei genkai spreading poisonous roots in his mind. A flower of perfect madness, the scarred tree on his back as foreboding as ever and the long braid of his hair trailing him like a pennant, Jun delighted in the coming carnage and departed before any more words could be offered.
Sakura glanced over at Shiho-nii, to gauge his reaction to her response, but Shiho-nii had no attention to spare. His eyes were caught on the cloud that obscured where the Hokage had been, his expression stricken. Orochimaru...!
Inside her heart, Sakura bloomed.
A/N: Sodium carbonate is used to lower the melting point of silica sand-if you can breathe fire, why not fire hot enough to melt sand? Without using sodium carbonate, the melting point is 4,172 degrees F, but with its a mere 2,732 degrees F.