Interim: The Birthplace of Hope
Sakura had discovered her on the day of her thirteenth year. She had known of her previously, but only as a passive voice of confidence buried by her self-conscious disposition. It was during a taijutsu spar back in the academy, when she was fighting a young boy named Choji, of the Akimichi clan. Being clan-born, he had received countless hours of training outside of his academy practice. His father was a well-renowned jounin for the Sage's sake. Sakura was quite familiar with the inter-clan training academy students would receive through her tenuous friendship with one Yamanaka Ino, who had on several occasions launched into lengthy tirades on the unfairness of clan life and how jealous she was of Sakura for having civilian parents who would let her rest on the weekends. At the time Sakura had agreed with Ino. But being there, in the academy sparring pit against the large Akimichi boy, Sakura wasn't so sure.
He moved surprisingly quickly for a boy twice her size, keeping Sakura at bay with rapid jabs as he boxed her into a corner. He looked so much like the trunk of tree, his arms held parallel to his body, blocking any attempt Sakura made at rebuttal with his fleshy limbs; and his counters came hard and fast. Sakura realized that she was being lead into a corner and began shuffling to her side. Choji gave her no leeway however, and matched her every sidestep with one of his own. And with each step, he cut the distance between them. Within a few moments, Sakura found her back against the far corner of the academy arena, with nowhere to run. The Akimichi boy boxed her in.
Sakura's parents were merchants, but they were not wealthy. They could not afford to buy a private jounin tutor, as Ami's parents had done for her; hell, they could barely afford to keep her in the Academy, and if not for the academic scholarship she had earned, they likely couldn't have. She studied every day, as was her routine.
She got home from the Academy at 17:30 hours, tore through scrolls for the day until dinner with her family at 19:00 hours, then returned to studying previous scrolls so she could maintain her near-perfect grades, and subsequently, her scholarship. At 23:00 hours she would go downstairs to help her mother with her sewing, her skills as a seamstress at least up to par enough to help out with the simpler stitching that needed to be done. She would be awake at 06:30 to bath before her daily commute to the academy.
As trade routes between the Village Hidden in Leaves and Grass Country became safer and more travelled after years of peace, more and more of the fine dresses and silks the Grass Country was so renowned for came through Konoha's gates. And so too did the price of Konoha-made fabrics drop, in an attempt to compete with the superior quality of the Grass-made linens. And so, Sakura began to help her mother work, until the early hours of the morning. Until her fingers were numb from handling the needle, and her arms ached with stiffness, she sewed fineries for the people of Konoha, all so she could be a ninja.
Twice a week she would walk to the public training ground (a two hour round trip), accessible to anyone, and run through her taijutsu stances, practice her weapon throwing, and practice the ninjutsu she could manage, which at that point, was just two bunshin and a barely passable henge. The problem with practicing taijutsu by yourself—Sakura found—was that it ill-prepared you for actual spars.
And there she was, cornered by some clan-born spoiled brat, who didn't have to worry about academy fees, or acing every Sage-damned test—who was tutored by some of the most respected ninja in the village for free, and probably thought it was a chore. It made Sakura furious, as she attempted to weave through Choji's rapid barrage of strikes. Taijutsu, just like every other subject taught at the academy, had a grade. And hers was dangerously low. If her grade dropped from the 8 she was somehow holding on to, down to a 7, she would violate the terms of her contract, and her scholarship would be void. She couldn't let that happen. She had to win this fight somehow; she had to become a ninja. If she lost here, to this mountainous child, everything would be for naught.
She saw Choji lower his right guard as he threw a wild hook with his left hand. Sakura ducked under the blow and sent a jab towards his stomach. Choji's guard lowered slightly more and he slid back, giving Sakura some much needed breathing room. 'The next time he throws his left hook, I'll counter with a right cross.' Sakura stepped into Choji's range, trying to turn the fight her way and rush the boy into throwing another left hook before he realized how low his hands had gotten. 'Just a little more, come on.'
Sakura ducked in and out, dancing with a grace she didn't know she possessed. She stepped in on the toes of her front foot, head leaning aside to dodge Choji's jab, before countering with a quick strike to his body. Before the boy could retaliate, she was out. Her feet a flash of movement as she circled the boy, never standing in a straight line for him to corner her again. 'This is it, I can do this.'
Sweat stuck to Sakura's forehead, running in thick puddles down her eyes. Her lungs felt tight and every breath brought a burning sting, as if instead of oxygen Sakura was gasping down senbon needles. Choji didn't look much better. Sakura could see the sweat stains running down his armpit, and his breathing, while calmer than hers, was still strained. Still, Sakura danced. She needed to win this fight, if she didn't she would lose her scholarship. She would lose the academy, and all of her hard work would have been for nothing.
Hell no. No fucking way are we going to lose to this fat piece of shit.
After what seemed like hours, dodging from left to right, landing glancing blows on Choji's stomach that did nothing to slow him down, he finally took the bait. At this point his guard was so low that his face was completely unprotected. He pivoted his hips to the left, exhausted after the long bout, and fired a left hook. Sakura was already in motion, pivoting her own hips and extending a haymaker over the boy's shoulder. It was a risky move, an all or nothing gamble that her fist would collide with his chin and knock him out before his fist—containing the force of his entire body weight—could make contact with her ribs.
Sakura saw everything happen in slow motion. Choji's off hand guard, which had been at his waist-level a moment ago, had somehow risen back to its proper positioning. It stood right in the path her all-or-nothing punch, perfectly ready to catch it and absorb its damage. 'It was a trap.' Realization flooded Sakura, choking her on her own stupidity. He had been baiting her the whole time. Lowering his guard bit by bit, goading her into making the stupid mistake of trying to go for a knock-out move. He knew she wouldn't kick. He was too big. Too strong. If he caught her leg, she was done.
He—Choji, the boy who barely managed to pass any of his academic classes—had played her like a fiddle. WIth the force of a hurricane, his left fist collided with her side. She felt every single one of her ribs buckle under the pressure. She collapsed to her knees, rasping desperately for air. 'That hurt.'
Choji stood over her, unmoving. 'This isn't fair.' He was clan-trained. Since before he could walk he was going to win this fight, it was fate. They had been born winner and loser: Sakura, daughter of a seamstress and a contractor, and Choji, heir to the Akimichi Clan. Civilian; Ninja. Sakura fought back tears, though whether they were from the pain of Choji's fist bruising half of her ribcage, or the pain of losing her chance to become a ninja, she didn't know. 'This isn't fair. I don't want to go home. I want to be a ninja.'
It was a stupid dream, really. Who was she kidding? From the very beginning, she never had a chance. All that hard work and dedication, all those sleepless nights and missed play-dates with Ino, they had all been for nothing. Haruno Sakura was nothing.
Fuck that. Fuck him. Fuck everything. Let's kick this fat bitch's ugly ass.
And Sakura met her other half.
Her body lurched up of it's own volition and for a moment Sakura panicked. She could feel everything, the way her ribs protested against her every movement, the way her body sagged with fatigue—but she was not in control. Someone else was moving her body.
"You fucking pansy," she heard herself snarl. "I would have thought with all of that weight you could at least hit a little bit harder than my fucking cat." Sarcasm dripped off of every word like thick venom as Sakura's body stood to her full height.
Even the way she held herself was different; her back straighter, shoulders farther back—despite the resounding pain in her ribs—her chin tilted up. This Sakura radiated confidence.
"I'm not sure whether I should beat you to within an inch of your life or feed you some catnip. But I'll tell you what, I don't have any catnip."
Sakura sneered at the shocked boy, and took a step back to create some distance between them.
"Sakura-san, are you sure that you're feel—" his voice was cut off as he was forced to bend his torso backwards to avoid Sakura's kick. 'I never kick.'
Because you're a pussy.
Choji rights himself just in time to block a middle kick Sakura sent into his side. Her leg slams into his arms with more force than she knew she could create and the Akimichi boy flinches. She can see the bruise beginning to form on his forearm as she lowers her leg gracefully back to the earth.
Despite her bruised ribs arguing with her every movement, she still taunts him. "Come on Piggy, is that the best you got?"
"What did you call me?" Choji's goes red and Sakura can hear a loud groan coming from one Nara Shikamaru. "I'm. Not. Fat."
Choji's face contorted with rage into a sickening farce of the carefree visage he usually wore. "I'M CHUBBY!"
He charged at Sakura, closing the distance between them before she could blink. 'Fast,' she thought. But this other Sakura was faster, dodging out of his way with a quick side-step and turning to face the fuming boy in one fluid movement.
"That's better. Come to Mommy, I'll make all the pain go away."
"You bitch!" Choji roared. He ran at her in form this time. He was less graceful, but his punches were coming far faster and hitting far harder than they had been before. Sakura danced with him. Even watching her body from within her subconscious, Sakura felt like water. Rippling through his every strike, his blows never hitting, only flowing off of her elbows and wrists as she redirected his weight.
It was still the academy taijutsu style, only bastardized. Instead of blocking with her forearms as she had been taught, Sakura parried with the bone in her wrist and her elbow whenever possible, inflicting pain on Choji in addition to redirecting his wild blows. This Sakura also had no qualms with kicking whenever an opening presented itself.
Sakura had always been taught in her kunoichi classes that it was dangerous for women to rely on kicks. If her kick was not substantially stronger than her enemy's arms, then they could easily catch a leg and break it. There were very few female taijutsu experts for just this reason, women were physiologically weaker than men, and for a woman to train her body for taijutsu would take far longer than it would for a man. Her other self didn't seem to share this sentiment.
In fact, she launched kicks that seemed to beg Choji to grab her leg. To see if he could take the full force of the blow on his body in exchange for control over the appendage, and in gaining such, control over the fight. Still, Sakura felt an odd serenity wash over her as her body moved without her willing it. She felt no fear, only a reflective calm as she felt herself dance around Choji's irate form.
She weaved under a jab, bringing her elbow up to clip Choji's forearm as his punch flew overhead. Then she pivoted her hips expertly and felt her leg soar through the air towards the boy's midsection. His arm returned just in time to block the blow. Though the pained expression on his face led Sakura to believe that it wasn't such a victory for the boy as he would have liked.
Already he was attacking again
Choji charged her like a wild beast. His form was steadily getting sloppier as he gave into his fury and feebleness, but his punches still hurt. A lot. One of his straights managed to clip Sakura in the shoulder and she nearly fell over with the force of blow. Even buried behind her eyelids as an observer Sakura could feel her bones ache against the blow. She could feel herself bleeding under the skin, knowing that the blow would result in a massive hematoma come the following day.
He did not let up his assault though, and followed with a strong middle kick of his own, pivoting far too fast for a boy of his size to deliver a bone cracking kick to Sakura's hip. At the last second she teetered back from the hit, balancing all of her weight on her back toe. Then, using the momentum she had stored up, flug forward to smash her forehead into the boy's nose. Blood splattered everywhere, staining her dress and both of their faces as the two combatants separated; Choji holding a hand to the profusely bleeding nose, and Sakura flashing him a cheshire grin.
Sakura knew what was about to happen, and she—may the Sage of Six Paths strike her down—tried her very hardest to stop this 'other Sakura' from saying what she was about to say. Unfortunately, she could not.
"Is the little tubby gonna cry?" she made mock-crying gestures with her hands. Trapped in the confines of her mind, Sakura was mortified.
Choji roared a string of indistinguishable profanities at her before activating his Human Bullet Tank. Luckily, Iruka had stepped in at that point and disqualified Choji from the fight for using chakra in a taijutsu-only spar.
Sakura apologized profusely the next day (she had regained control of her body as soon as Mizuki had stopped the rogue Akimichi), however Choji refused to speak to her for weeks.
Since that day she had come to understand that her 'Inner Sakura' was more than just a little voice in the back of her head. As time went on, Sakura learned to rely on her for the little things, like her throwing weapons and taijutsu tests, or any extreme physical conditioning Iruka-sensei conceived.
There were some things that Sakura was better than her at, though. Studying, for one. She had atrocious focus, and her chakra control was awful as well, while Sakura's was nearly perfect as her instructors in the academy had claimed when she managed to hold a leaf on her forehead on her first try (though Ino had insisted that the size of her forehead gave her an unfair advantage; that pig). She was also a massive pervert. When their sensei had pulled out his little orange book, Sakura was ashamed to admit that she recognized it. Hell, she had read it. Or well, she had read it. They shared a conscious though, and there was nothing better for her to do, after she had begged Sakura for use of her body (Sakura hadn't realized at the time that her intent was to buy and read such a filthy piece of 'literature' or she would have refused). So, yeah, Sakura read the book too. Who cares?
And now, as she found herself face to face with a man she trusted with her life, deep underground in the gladiator pits, she felt her reach to take over.
It was Mizuki, she was sure of it. But he looked different from the Mizuki that Sakura had known for the least several years. His skin was greyer, eyes sunken and ringed with unrest. His shoulders slumped forward and his head tilted at an unnatural angle, he looked more an owl than a man. A twisted mischaracterization of the Mizuki she knew, a poorly realized henge, some warped genjutsu. But there was no way this was the real thing. And yet, it was.
From the moment she saw him she was sure. This was Mizuki-sensei.
The real Mizuki-sensei.
"So," his voice drawled, "this is my final test, is it?
"One of my own flesh and blood," he tasted the word on his lips and found it pleasing, "a fellow ninja of the leaf?"
Sakura shivered. There was no way this was happening. She was going to be killed by her apparently mad ex-sensei. And then a second tremor ran through her as the thought began to form in her mind, 'If this is the real Mizuki-sensei, then who has been teaching us in the academy for the last Sage-knows how many years?!'
"I never did like it, killing Konoha shinobi, is it." He was speaking with a twitch, another sign of mental unhingement. 'He's gone insane,' Sakura thought, backing away from the approaching man.
"Now, now. Don't run," Mizuki whispered, just loud enough for Sakura to hear, "I hate it when they run."
'I can't deal with this, you take over.'
That's a healthy attitude.
'Do you want control or not?'
Fine. Move out of the way you pussy.
Sakura stood tall, chin held high, back straight, with her shoulders rolled back. A sly smirk threatened to split her face and took a half step towards Mizuki. "You're pretty handsome, for a dead man that is." She kept the two rib bones palmed against her bare skin, hiding them from Mizuki's ravenous gaze.
There was definitely something wrong with this guy's head. He continued to walk towards her, the hum of the crowd gravitating towards his every step.
"Such a shame really," he was talking to himself more than Sakura, "I really do hate to kill the pretty ones. At least, before I can get a taste for myself," he breaks into a fit of coughing laughter, "but, they need to know. They need to know the truth. I've got to warn Konoha."
When he was within six meters of Sakura, the girl began to circle him, being careful to keep the rib bones close to her wrists and out of his sight. Just like the Mountainous Lyethumper, she would strike once, and he would die. She had no grand delusions about this fight, Mizuki, however crazy he had become after years in the Pits, was a chūnin, and Sakura was barely a genin.
Just like the Lyethumper fighting a tiger, she would lure him to go for a finishing blow, and then she would reveal her trump card and kill him. It was the only way she would survive. The only way they would survive.
Mizuki began to circle with her while maintaining a separation of about four meters. It was just larger than his striking range, Sakura assumed. She trained her vision on his feet, watching his footwork carefully for any signs of aggression. 'There!' she thought.
And sure enough just as his front foot had finished stepping forward, Mizuki vanished, becoming a blur. Sakura moved on pure instinct, extending her arms to parry a blow to the face and sweeping her left leg back to brace for the impact.
It came before she expected it, her guard managing to redirect the blow from hitting her temple to glancing the back of her head instead. She was almost knocked to the ground with the force of the blow. She used the momentum to catch her weight with her right foot and sent her left leg in a spiralling butterfly kick towards Mizuki's head.
It connected with a viscous 'thunk,' snapping the mad man's neck in an unnatural angle. The stadium was absorbed in tranquil silence for several long moments. Even Sakura was surprised that the attack had landed.
'Is he dead?' she thought, unsure whether she hoped he was or wasn't.
Then he laughed, neck still torqued at an impossible angle. He reached up, grabbed his awkwardly hanging head, and snapped it back into place with a sickening pop. The sound reverberated throughout the stadium, echoing off of every ounce of hope Sakura had of surviving this ordeal.
"Cool trick. I bet you can fuck yourself in the ass like that too, huh?"
"Clever little thing, is it," he replied through bared teeth. His teeth were large and unnaturally white, taking up more space than Sakura would have thought his mouth had room for as he smiled at her. Everything about this man was wrong.
He did not give her much time to ponder his gruesome character as he began circling her once again. Sakura moved her feet to match his own and they danced.
Mizuki was the wind. He would step in, closing the distance between them at impossible speeds, landing punishing strikes wherever Sakura was exposed, before leaping back to circle her again. But if Mizuki was the wind, Sakura was water. With each of Mizuki's dives she landed a few retaliatory blows of her own, flowing to wherever he was not, punishing his every misstep. And though none of the subsequent hits were as impressive as the first—which should have, by all rights, killed him then and there—they were still noteworthy at the very least.
Truly, in terms of blows exchanged, Sakura was managing to hold her own against the more experienced ninja. Unfortunately for her, that was only half of the battle. Mizuki's blows landed with the force of a locomotive train, punishing flesh and tenderizing Sakura's undeveloped muscles. Her forearms were covered with dark purple bruises and the blows that had managed to pierce her guard left her with aching kidneys and what was surely a bruised rib.
Sakura's own strikes seemed to glance off of Mizuki's taut body. Even when she managed to land a blow on his head or torso he seemed hardly affected. It was like punching a brick wall. Or trying to get Naruto to stop asking her out on dates. Painful.
While Sakura was gasping for breath, lungs sore from the exertion, Mizuki seemed hardly phased. Where Sakura's punches and kicks had begun to dull, Mizuki's were still just as sharp as they had always been, if not sharper.
She still had the rib bones, tucked against her wrists. But she couldn't be sure Mizuki hadn't seen them. She couldn't be sure he wouldn't bait her into an attack just as Choji had done some seven months ago.
She remembered them so clearly—her combats. Every bout she had fought during her tutelage at the Academy replayed in her mind's eye as she felt her body glide around a particularly fast roundhouse kick. Something about the hyperfocus attention she achieved in combat allowed her to recall the details of those fights with impressive accuracy, and though her body was physically weaker than many of her opponents and she had far less experience, her near-photographic memory in combat allowed her to bridge the gap. Mizuki's form was simple. Once she had seen it she could analyze it, pick it apart from the safety of her mindscape while she took total control over their body.
Since the incident with Choji some seven months ago she had never taken full control over Sakura's body. It was a hard feeling to describe, as if Sakura's body was a sailboat. She was the wind and Sakura was the sail. Sakura would unconsciously follow her movements, she would feel her confidence.
All of her subsequent body usurpations had felt much different than that first out-of body experience. She was an invisible hand guiding Sakura. If anything it felt like the times they had learned how to perform specific strikes in the Academy taijutsu classes, when Iruka or Mizuki would guide their limbs in the proper positions with firm but gentle hands. 'Mizuki-sensei, what the hell happened to you?' she thought.
It felt queer to float back in her mind while her body danced in fierce combat. But Sakura did not have the convenience of contemplating the experience—just because she was not actively controlling her body did not mean that she didn't feel every blow upon it. She must have suffered two dozen strikes at this point and she was nearing her last legs. Exhaustion crept into her mindspace blurring Sakura's already waning concentration. 'Think, dammit,' she thought, 'I need to think. Focus Sakura.'
Sakura watched as Mizuki circled her once again and her legs screamed at her as she forced them to match his pace. 'Watch his feet, if he steps in with the right foot toes-in he is going to go for a roundhouse kick. Right foot forward toes-straight he will jab at the head or shoulder...' Sakura went through her mental checklist, not daring even to blink as she trained her eyes on the feet of the chūnin circling her. 'There! Left foot forward, toes-out, mule kick coming!'
No sooner had the thought formed in her mind than her body shot into action. She dove to the side, barely managing to avoid the strike. While mid-air she brought the rib bone up in a crescent motion to swipe at the exposed heel tendon. She heard the familiar sound of flesh breaking and felt a splash of the gooey red liquid mar her cheek and neck before she could land in a roll and inspect the damage. Just as she ducked her head and felt her shoulder connect with the ground she noticed a disturbance in the air ahead of her. She collided with a powerful kick and felt her body fly like a sack of potatoes through the air. She screamed at her body to brace for impact as she rocketed towards the earth but her aching muscles refused her. 'Protect the face!' The fight had lasted long enough that the adrenaline that had been fueling her up until this point was fading. As it left, so did the pain in her arms and legs magnify ten fold. They flailed uncontrollably as she fly across the stadium.
Her shoulder made first contact with a particularly jagged stone and it tore the flesh from her bone. She tried to scream but the vertigo from suddenly tumbling furiously across the Pit and strain of her neck trying to remain attached to her skull prevented her from making any sound other than a pained sob. Her tumble was brought to an abrupt stop as she collided with the wall of the arena, her head smashing with unrelenting force into the reinforced steel. Her entire body was broken. Covered in a thousand stinging cuts from rolling across the hazardous floor and more bruises than she thought was possible for a human to produce. She figured she was dark enough to pass for a tourist from the Southern Isles.
She could see the clamshell white of her clavicle and and the rolling joint of her shoulder where muscle and tendon had been torn. She tried to look away but her neck wouldn't move. 'Get up.'
You're too fucking weak.
'Get the fuck up.'
We can't
She was vaguely aware that at some point in her fall she had bitten down on her lip hard enough that blood was pooling in the back of her throat. She couldn't muster the strength to spit it out, instead swallowing what she could and letting the rest drool out. Her stomach convulsed as the blood went down. It twisted her into gagging but she fought down the urge.
'Get up.'
We've got nothing left. We're going to bleed out soon.'
It was true. The spots in Sakura's vision were growing larger and her head was far too light. She could a feel a tingling behind her eyelids. Even her chakra was going haywire, it beat against her chakra pathways and slammed itself violently against the gaping hole in her shoulder though it could not hope to stop the copious blood loss.
She had heard of this happening before. It was a phenomenon they had discussed in her Advanced Chakra Theory class; the more duress the body was under the more volatile the chakra would become. Sakura was actually the only academy student in the class which was made up of primarily genin studying to become chūnin. Because of the peripatetic nature of active ninja duty, the class would hold every lecture twice throughout the semester. This was enough of a boon that it allowed Sakura to compete with the genin who were all at least five years older than the girl. It also meant that even the passing bits of information tossed out in lectures were processed and stuck in her memory.
The degradation of the physical body skews the internal balance of physical and mental energies that form chakra. Molding chakra while in an extremely weak physical state is like trying to plant crops without preparing the soil, just throwing seeds on uncultivated land and expecting wheat to grow. That isn't to say it is impossible to do, only that it becomes much, much harder to control your chakra in such a state and would require much more chakra than under normal circumstances. If you threw enough seeds on the ground, you're sure to get at least a stock or two of wheat, after still.
The first problem with molding chakra in a weak physical state is the imbalance of energies. The second problem is discipline. It was theorized that training the body developed something called Chakra Discipline, or how quickly and forcefully chakra will react to a ninja's command. The weaker the body grows the harder it is to maintain chakra discipline, which results in chakra reverting to instinctual responses. This meant that instead of spinning in a tight sphere in her gut, her chakra was running wild in her system. It tried to flood the wounds covering her body but it couldn't manage to settle enough to ease through her tenketsu, instead trying to crowd the narrow entrance and resulting in nothing but damaging her chakra pathways and stressing her body further. It was a negative feedback loop that prematurely killed many young ninja. In fact, it was one of the primary reasons for assigning jounin to amateur genin. Fresh graduates would train too eagerly, get their body into a dangerous state, and their lack of chakra discipline would cause irreparable damage to her tenketsu and occasionally result in organs failing.
Chakra was not naturally conducive to human health. The limited reserves of most civilians couldn't cause enough damage to kill them internally, but a ninja's reserves—even those of academy students—were large enough to cause a lot of damage if the chakra wasn't properly controlled. It was for this very reason that academy students weren't taught to open their chakra center until the fifth year, once the floodgates were opened and more than the chakra necessary to survive could enter the chakra pathways, there was no going back. Not without extensive sealing at least. There was no real danger as long as the body wasn't in critical condition, the physical conditioning of the body provided ninja with unconscious control over their chakra.
Sakura fought to control her chakra, but it was violent and unresponsive to her attempted manipulations. It slammed itself against the walls of her chakra pathways, trying to force itself through tenketsu blindly.
She knew if she didn't act soon she would die. So she acted.
Sakura calmed her mind and retook total control over her body. She needed to do so in order to control her chakra, as her chakra control was far worse than Sakura's. As she melted back into her skin the burn of her wounds magnified monumentally. She was so cold.
But she had to focus. She would really die in a minute if she didn't calm her chakra.
Sakura closed her eyes and took one long, deep breath. She imagined the weight of a leaf on her forehead. The waxy coat of the foliage that surrounded Konoha.
She tuned everything out. The harsh ringing in her ears, the dizzy feeling resting just behind her eyelids and the very back of her cranium. Gone. The shivering chill. Gone. The sticky feeling of blood everywhere. Gone. Everything faded away but the leaf on her forehead.
Breath in. The oxygen flooded her lungs, pushing to expand as her diaphragm contracted. She concentrated on the transfer of oxygen from her lungs to her blood as her heart pumped in a steady beat. The leaf on her forehead was perfectly shaped in her mind's eye.
She made her body sand wherever she felt pain. The tiny grains falling easily and she became one with the earth. There was no separation between Sakura and the rocky gravel beneath her. Sakura was gone and all that existed was a mound of soft sand. And the leaf on her brow.
Breath out. Her heart calmed even further. It chirped slowly in her chest, each beat left her calmer and more relaxed. Sakura was sand.
She reached for her chakra. It was hers again. It followed her every whim with perfect obedience. She lead it to her brow, had it follow the shape of the leaf, then to her stomach, to her chakra center. She made it orbit her navel in perfect sphere, its spiraling tickled her in a familiar way.
All was right in the world.
Sakura opened her eyes.
She flinched, hard. Mizuki was on her, his clenched fist frozen in place inches from her skull. His face was twisted in a sickening snarl, eyes wide and unseeing. Sakura could see sweat glistening on his tensed fingers in the harsh industrial lighting. It caught the individual hairs on his hand too, like little silhouettes of Konoha at sunset.
Sakura did not move nor yell out, and neither did Mizuki. Sakura watched in wonder as seconds passed and Mizuki remained motionless, his chest did not rise and fall to take in new air. His gray hair remained perfectly suspended, somehow defying gravity with a picturesque stillness, long strands pulled flush against his scalp by the speed of his apparent assault, as rigid as a statue.
Sakura saw a droplet of sweat that had fallen from Mizuki's brow, transfixed in its descent. Sakura could make out her reflection in the unmoving droplet.
Sakura blinked. It was as if time itself had stopped. She took another deep breath.
Time itself had stopped. 'Sage save me, are you seeing this?'
She was unusually silent. That was weird, she always had something to say—especially in abnormal situations like this.
'Does everyone experience this right before they die?' Sakura pondered the implications of such a thing. The Patrons of the Earth Mother believed that the soul was offered an eternity to plead the souls case for reincarnation. 'Is that what this is, am I in purgatory?'
It was strange, the way the sound continued forever in the absence of time. Sakura was vaguely aware of the notion that sound was a physical object itself, and could therefore be altered with jutsu. But to experience this: a single pitch of a particularly loud cry from the crowd, extending infinitely, never changing. It rang in Sakura's ears, but there was no relief. The sound had no end. Sound was an invisible force, and right now it was passing through her eardrums, and though she could not identify the force, or even feel it with chakra, it opened up a whole world of possibility. She could control sound. Maybe, if she could actually learn to feel it, learn to understand its nature.
Sakura was pulled from her tangential thoughts when she saw Mizuki's hand begin to move. It was liking watching one of the famous giant snails of Fire Country moving across a plane. They weighed upwards of three tons and would crush trees, houses, even small mountains beneath their weight. People were very rarely killed by them, though, as their movements were so slow that even a child could outrun one. They only reason they hadn't been hunted to extinction was the unofficial protection of one Senju Tsunade.
The fist was moving now, though. So slowly that she had to watch it for a few moments to be sure it wasn't just a trick of the light. The sound was beginning to shift too, from one pitch to the next, like a steady stream of waves—this invisible force that was sound.
Mizuki's fist was inches from her face and closing, and instinct told Sakura that it would kill her when it hit. She had to move. She had to get up, roll, away. Anything.
To remain still would be death. And yet, not matter how vehemently she demanded her muscles into action, they would not move.
She struggled to control them, but the more she focused on her muscles the more the pain of her injuries returned to her conscious. And to her horror, so too did time seem to speed up. Death was closing in her and she was trapped in an immobile body.
The dim industrial lights flickered once, even in this slowed-down world it only lasted a second. When the light returned it illuminated Mizuki's dark irises for a brief moment. In this moment, Sakura saw fear in place of the madness she had assumed from a distance. Mizuki was afraid. Of what, Sakura could not hope to guess, but the man that was trying to kill her was terrified of something.
If she couldn't move her body, then she would just have to survive using chakra. It was possible to perform jutsu without any hand seals. Most experienced genin could do the basic three academy jutsu without any, and what Sakura lacked now in experience, she gained twice over in desperation.
She knew exactly what she had to do. She had dropped the rib bone when it had cut through Mizuki's tendon, it was lying some twenty meters from her now, barely visible against a jagged array of rocks. She would kawarimi with it, somehow. Sakura had never actually performed the jutsu without the hand seals, and only had a vague idea as to how one went about using such a technique without the chakra-guiding movements. If she could picture each of the hand seals in her minds eye, much as she had done with the leaf-on-forehead meditation earlier, then she hoped she could manage to recreate the technique. It was the only way techniques without hand seals had ever been explained to her, and even that was just the stepping stone to the real way ninja would would perform techniques without them.
First though, she would need to reach out with her chakra and form a link between herself and the rib bone. She would coat the rib bone with her chakra, then allow it to permeate the rib. Once she had her chakra in the object she would form the hand seals with a second string of chakra: tiger, boar, ox, dog, snake. Then she would release her technique and brace for the disorientation that always accompanied the kawarimi.
His hand was so close. Certain death was inching its way towards Sakura bit by bit. She had to move quickly or she would die, just another nameless, faceless genin lost in the gladiator pits. It would not happen. Haruno Sakura would live.
She reached out for the bone with a thin tendril of chakra only for it to dissipate into the air. 'Well shit.' That wasn't good, in this timeless place her chakra was nigh impossible to control outside of her body. She tried again, sending a finger-thick tendril of chakra towards the rib bone. It made it almost five meters before it evaporated.
Sakura could feel the volcanic heat of Mizuki's clenched fist now less than two inches from her face. It was speeding up too.
She had to figure out a way to make her chakra last outside of her body in this slow-motion world. She remembered another lecture from her Advanced Chakra Theory class, the idea struck her with an odd sense of deja vu. Puppeteers would control massive and complex puppets with their chakra using chakra strings. Rather then forge a connection with a thick arm of chakra, they would refine their chakra into super-fine strings and weave them together. Rooting one string of chakra to another string was extremely difficult but also quite useful for allowing chakra to exist outside of the body for long periods of time.
The idea brought with it a wave of nostalgia; late nights with her mother, the feeling of dread in her gut when her father stumbled home at 02:00 hours with foul breath and a penchant for violence.
His hand was an inch from her cheek now. She could see exactly how it would connect, breaking her jaw clean, the backlash from her head hitting the steel wall behind her would cave her skull in. It would be a quick death, at least.
'No, to hell with that.'
Fire burned in her eyes as Sakura once again sent out a tendril of chakra. This time, bifurcating it into two smaller strings, and extending them parallel to each other towards the bone. They only made it three meters.
'I need more strands, I need to weave them.' Sakura realized.
She sent out another tendril of chakra, thicker this time. Breaking into three separate strings was no easy task, but Sakura managed a near-perfect split. Then she began to manipulate the strings together into a common braid. A pattern she had used a hundred times back in her youth. 'My youth, hah.'
The string hit five meters and was still going strong, but the farther it got from Sakura, the more difficult it became to weave. Each twist of chakra sent it farther and farther from its sister tendrils, and by nine meters the individual strands began to dissipate.
'Shit. This isn't going to work.'
There was a wall of flesh now in front of her face. Sakura's heartbeat was a mess. Death was coming for her, and she could feel the tickling of the hairs on its knuckles. One last chance. She could do it. She had to do it.
Haruno Sakura would survive.
She sent out a final branch of chakra, much larger than the rest. She held nothing back, if this technique failed she was dead. Even if it worked, she was probably dead, but why not try?
The chakra cut into eight perfect strings and Sakura began her favorite weave: the spider's dance. It was a complicated pattern, more of an algorithm than any seamstress had a right knowing, but it had been passed down in her family for generations. It operated on a system of pairs, much as spider's walk would. The first pair was a dead even four against four, she imagined it in her mind's eye and felt the chakra cross over, four over four. Then began the real weave. Two under, two over, forming three new pairs, those pairs split, the bottom two pairs twist, top pair through the hole, middle pair through the secondary hole, pairs split. Sakura lost herself in the weave, becoming more and more intricate as it went until she finally hit the bone.
When had she gotten so far? She didn't have long to contemplate the ease of extending the complex weave. She could feel middle knuckle of Mizuki's fist on her skin.
While keeping the weave in place, Sakura drew out two more tendrils of chakra, forming invisible hands in her chakra center. Tiger. She felt the weave twist, tensing with the new information. Boar. A second lurch, the strings of chakra were suddenly very taught, straining her concentration to keep them connected. Ox. A chill ran through her string of chakra, and she felt connected to the bone. Dog. A weightlessness came over her and Sakura felt as light as a feather. Snake. She was gone.
A scream tore through the arena as Mizuki's fist crushed the rib against the wall, shards of bone protruding from his hand.
'It worked.'
Sakura couldn't celebrate for too long though, as her eye caught sight of her clavicle, pearl white against the oozing red wound on her shoulder and chest. Her blood ran cold as she saw the state of the gash, blood frothing from the open laceration.
She felt frostbitten, her whole body quickly numbing with the realization that she'd escaped one death only to find herself at the mercy of another. 'I'm so cold.'
Sakura thought of home for the umpteenth time that day. The rice cake her mother had made her for her thirteenth birthday celebration. The look on her father's face when she had brought home a perfect score on her entrance exam; pride. The warmth of the cabbage and beef stew had made for her when she caught a fever.
She had to close the gaping hole or she would die. It seemed simple enough, if not for a few setbacks. The first being that the kawarimi she had just used had taken the vast majority of her chakra, to be honest, she was surprised that she was even able to stand. Something about manipulating chakra in the timeless world had caused her to use up the vast majority of her reserve. She could probably also attribute it her awful physical condition. 'I'm dying.' she thought.
'I'm really dying. I'm going to die.'
Shut up. Fix it.
'I can't. I don't know any medical techniques.'
You didn't know how to perform jutsu without hand seals either, and look where we are.
'I'm dead out of chakra.'
You won't know for sure until you try. Stop being such a fucking princess.
Sakura's eyes dropped to her hands, still limp at her sides. She tried to lift them but they were too sore to make it above her waist. She was going to bleed out very soon.
The spots in her vision had returned and she could just make out Mizuki sauntering towards her with a slight limp.
Sakura couldn't lift her hands above her hip, but she did have an idea. It would be tricky, and really, really complex, but it might just save her life. Her mind worked in overdrive to conclude the proper order of chakra manipulation she would need.
Three strings of chakra wove themselves together, extending from her left pointer finger to the palm of her right hand. She latched the chakra on tightly, creating a circuit through her body, then used the tendril of chakra to lift her right hand.
'I did it! I'm using Puppet Strings.' she couldn't help the flush of pride that accompanied her second, third, fourth revelation of chakra use in the last ten minutes. She used her left pointer finger to direct the chakra string, dragging her right hand up to the gaping hole in her shoulder. Mizuki was ten yards away, his pace slow and a little unnerved.
"You just don't get it, is it," he began, "I have to kill you. It's the only way they'll let me out of here."
His voice rasped. It sounded like someone scraping the rust off of an old kunai.
"Do you get it? You can't kill a Bijuu. They don't die. You can't kill a Bijuu," he was rambling now, waving his hands—bone still protruding from his knuckles—in the air as he spoke.
This was the hard part, Sakura reminded herself. She sent a second trail of chakra from her chakra center to her right hand. It took most ninja years of practice to learn to mold two strands of chakra at the same time. It would be much harder than the kawarimi she had just performed too, as in that instance she was molding two fields of chakra to create one jutsu, with one center of concentration—her stomach. Now though, she would have to mold two fields of chakra to complete two totally different techniques, the first being the Puppet String, and the second being…well she didn't know what exactly. But when had that stopped her?
She had a rudimentary understanding of what went into medical chakra techniques. It was one of the only areas of the ninja arts that girls in the academy were taught that the boys would not learn. The idea behind it was pretty similar, most girls are physically weaker and therefore have smaller chakra pools and better control, and it would also be a huge boon if a captured genin could convince the enemy ninja that she belonged to the medic corps was exempt from combat and protected under the rights of the Convention of the Land of Rice.
Sakura knew that she would have a much easier time healing herself than she would a second ninja, as she wouldn't have to alter her chakra field to the lime green glow that accompanied medical techniques. It was the first thing they taught any medical students—how add the pacifist nature manipulation to your chakra, something apparently anyone can do with enough training. Training Sakura hadn't had.
What she did have was a fundamental understanding of field medicine, and the theory behind how medical jutsu worked. The hole in her shoulder would need to be closed or she would bleed to death within minutes. Only she didn't know any techniques that would allow to regrow skin. What she did know was how to clot blood, a simple technique that required the user to release a rapid succession of concentrated chakra into the source of the bleeding, the chakra would stick to the blood and act as an adhesive to aid the clotting process. It wasn't perfect, Sakura's own technique having only been practiced once with a small prick to her arm, but it was the only thing she could think of at this point.
She drew deep into her reserves, pulling out every last drop of chakra from the vortex in her navel, and sent it through the chakra pathways in her right arm, to concentrate at her palm. Her concentration was pulled thin, maintaining the Puppet String technique, using said technique to control her other arm, and trying to concentrate all of her remaining chakra into her right arm was proving extremely difficult. And the mental toll it was taking was causing a splitting headache.
Sweat seeped from her brow and ran down her neck and ears, matting her hair. She had to do this now, or she would really die. 'Focus, Sakura. Focus.'
Mizuki's manic voice almost shattered her concentration. "You can't kill a Bijuu, is it?
"That old lunatic," the irony of those words was not lost on Sakura, "the Fourth, he was insane! Did you know, is it, that he was a fanatic?" Mizuki spat the word out like it was dirt on his tongue.
"He doomed all of Konoha for his petty beliefs. Didn't take the Kyūbi to hell with him like everyone thought, no. I knew to ask. I found out too much. That's why I'm here, is it? You can't kill a Bijuu, they reform, they always reform. But the Kyūbi, no one's seen it, anywhere. Not since the attack, not since the Fourth killed it."
Sakura tightened the chakra in her right hand, which was now being held over her wound by the Puppet String technique. She concentrated the chakra into a compressed sphere. 'It's now or never.'
She released the first wave. Then the second. Then ten more waves in rapid succession. She could feel the chakra beating against her blood cells. Her left pointer finger very carefully moved her right hand with the Puppet String technique, the stress of using both techniques at once caused a splitting headache and her nose began spitting out blood. Still, she released wave after wave of pressurized chakra, carefully coating the entire wound.
"He was a heretic! A blind devotee to the Sage of Six Paths. And here's the truth they don't want you to know: the Kyūbi is alive. It is a live, and living inside the gates of Konoha. That's right, is it. The Fourth sacrificed the life of his pregnant wife and son so that the Kyūbi could be reborn! To try and prove his fanatical beliefs!"
Sakura's whole body was covered in a thick mist of sweat and blood, and though the skin-crawling chill of death had left her, massive spots in her vision still remained. She released her bursts of pressure, drawing even more chakra from her reserve to begin the final process of applying chakra sutures to the hole in her body. She was drained to all but completion, and maintaining consciousness became more and more challenging with each passing second. Sakura was just so tired. So very, very worn out.
But there was work to do. Mizuki was pacing frantically, his limp more pronounced than it had been. Sakura would survive, no matter what she had to do.
She drew chakra out from her liver, and her intestine, and even from her bloodstream—an extremely dangerous thing to do, and a last resort (but Sakura figured if there was ever a last resort, this was it)— and channelled it through the fingertips of her right hand. She extended the tendril, shaping it into an extremely fine point, then, using the Puppet String technique, moved her hand with slow, deliberate gestures to apply the sutures. The thin needle of chakra eased its way through her flesh like a fish through water, and pulled her hanging flaps of skin smoothly back into place—more or less. It was a roughshod job, and it hurt, badly. But Sakura managed to close the wound.
"—the whole time, the Kyūbi has been living among us. Disguised as a child! Waiting, watching, learning our ninja secrets so the next time it attacks we won't stand a chance. Don't you get it? I've got to warn Konoha! I've got to get out of this place, is it."
"You understand, don't you? They've sealed my chakra, there's no other way for me to get out. You've just got to die," he sounded almost sympathetic.
Sakura felt her whole body go slack. One second Mizuki was across the stadium pacing back and forth, and the next he was inches from Sakura, the second rib bone descending in a merciless arc for her throat. 'So that's the speed of a chunin,' Sakura thought as she watched herself perish.
Only she didn't.
Through her distorted, failing vision she saw something miraculous happen. There was a boy standing between her and Mizuki, holding his arm by the wrist.
From where she was standing she couldn't see the boys face, but his hair was a light grey, almost silver, and he wore large circular glasses.
"Tsk. Tsk. Can't have you killing my new protégé, now can I?"
"No, No! You can't!"
"The Unhouse has been quite short on medics lately," the boy said, turning to glance at Sakura. Her vision was peepholing, and the last thing she heard before darkness took her was the almost-whisper: "And quite short on patients too, I'm afraid."
Sakura slept and dreamt of the caravan rides she would take with her father back in the days of her youth, interrupted only by the occasional scream.
—
(A/N)
Next chapter: The Place Where Hell and Earth Meet Part II (Naruto's Perspective)
I'll try to keep the word count updated on my profile so you can see how long it'll be until the next chapter comes out.