She felt a cold current of air whipping her face and her entire body, so she forced her to open her eyes. The first thing she noticed is the bright blue sky and the white clouds passing by her at a dizzying speed, the second thing, was her numb body ached like hell and her chakra channels were at a critical level and the last thing, she was falling straight down to the sea.
The mere fact of her breathing agonized her, she felt as if she was putting fire instead of air into her lungs. A sizable trail of blood dripped from her body and forehead toward the sky from plummeting.
She heard groans next to her:
"S-sakura-chan."
It took her a few seconds for her cloudy vision to make out Naruto's blurry silhouette. Naruto's arm with varying degrees of burns reached out shakily towards her. She tried to do it herself but her arm didn't respond.
We're going to crash Sakura thought to herself. Her tiredness won over her and she closed her eyes, becoming unconscious again.
The second time Sakura came back out of unconsciousness she heard the sound of wood creaking with the gentle rhythm of the floor swaying from side to side. With a lot of effort, she looked around her finding that she was in some kind of ship. Next to her, crammed in a fetal position, were unknown people who had a fearful and dejected countenance.
What happened? Where is she? What happened to her house? Just thinking about her, her mind was clouded with exhaustion. When trying to move, she could barely process that her hands and feet had heavy chains to limit her movements.
At the bottom of the space, they began to hear the sound of footsteps going down some steps. Her instinct told her that she had to move. She used a little force until she felt the click of the chains breaking. By the time she made it a person, a man she couldn't recognize was in front of her with an unpleasant laugh.
"So you have a devil fruit," said the man. As Sakura's vision was still very poor she only saw a dark spot.
Before Sakura could react she felt a pinch on her neck as she was injected with a drug.
"Naruto," she whispered before fainting, but not before noticing that she was hanging a necklace from the man's neck with a skull pendant with two x-shaped spears.
The next time she opened her eyes, it took a few seconds for her vision to clear. Although she felt very tired at least she wasn't about to faint like the other two times so Sakura was able to be aware of her and her surroundings. She was in some kind of cold, dark cell. Hearing moans and wailing next to her, she tried to turn towards the direction but she was stopped when she noticed a grotesque necklace tightening around her neck and others around her wrists.
What happened? she wondered in dismay. This place was nothing like what she had seen so far, not even in the mission where she went to the prison as a doctor to talk to Sasuke about the change in mission.
"So you have a devil fruit" she remembered the man who spoke to her before passing out. She frowned in confusion. Devil fruit… in her years as a Hokage student she had never heard of fruit with that name would be very hard to forget.
Sakura looked around hoping to find at least one familiar face among her cellmates. She had to hide her surprise when she noticed that the people around her had features and complexions that she had never seen before, even one of them, the one at the bottom, seemed to be a giant. A giant!
Some footsteps were heard from the corridor until a couple of people stayed in front of the cell they opened.
"We'll make a lot of money for that giant," one of the jailers taunted, dragging a man not far from her. The boy tried to struggle but to no avail- Those damn pirates excelled this time.
"Please I'll do anything! I don't want to be a slave!" the man yelled before they walked away.
Giants, pirates, slaves, each thing was more surprising to her than the last. Slavery had disappeared long before the founding of Konoha and from what she knew in the other countries it was the same. Had a lab experiment gone wrong and the drug was giving her a strange and unpleasant trip? No, her injuries and chakra were too painful to be a fantasy.
Maybe if she planned it well she could escape but she didn't know where in the world she was if this was the country of the claw, demons or one of those who have only gone a couple of times and with her injuries she doubted she could get very far so she decided to remain silent and observe.
The person next to him began to tremble in fear as the minutes passed. Little involuntary spasms ran through her body randomly when her chakra channels and internal injuries became painful enough.
"If you think this is hell, you're wrong, hell has levels," said the man next to her. It only remains to wait for it to arrive soon.
He immediately realized that he misinterpreted her trembling but decided not to correct it.
How did she end up falling out of the sky? Naruto! She saw Naruto, she heard him, he was there with her! Even with her chakra levels dangerously low she decided to use some in hopes of tracking Naruto's chakra and getting answers. She felt her chest sink as her eyes trembled in surprise and fear.
"T-the cha-kra," she whispered hoarsely.
As every scholar, scientist and ninja knows, the chakra surrounds and presents a nucleus in all organic matter, even the air was charged with chakra or it is supposed to be. There was nothing here, the people next to her didn't have a chakra core in their body, just some weird kind of aura/energy that surrounds them, objects were also covered by that energy and even the air that it was supposed to have chakra had that aura. Panicked, she began to hyperventilate, even more so when the jailers returned and this time they took the man who told her about hell a few seconds ago.
Nothing. Only the almost empty chakra in her body.
Calm down, there must be an explanation. You have to look for Naruto she thought, trying to control herself.
Sakura stretched her chakra as far as she could until it was so painful that her vision blurred for a few seconds and blood began to drip from her nose from the effort and she had to return it to her body. There was no person with chakra.
The hole in her chest grew deeper and deeper, sucking the energy and emotions out of her like a monster. Something had happened and she sensed that it was very bad.
When the men returned and this time they went after her, she did not resist. Like a rag doll, she allowed herself to be carried through the corridors. She was so scared and worried that everything around her disappeared. She only heard the voices of her captors.
"Surely we will have a good profit from this girl," said one of them.
"I bet she'll be sold as a sex slave," another of them said.
"The new fashion for nobles is to buy slaves and bet on how long they live by running away from monsters that they starve," said the third.
The theories got darker and darker so Sakura logged out. She flinched as they walked past the slaves weeping with sadness at having been bought and flinched as the three men left her in the dark on a dais until a bright light blinded her for a few moments until she got used to it.
She felt numb to see that in front of her were dozens of people examining her like a piece of meat. Some with interest, others with lust and many others with malice on their faces.
"Here we bring you an exquisite piece, arriving from a distant exotic island, he introduced you to Sakura, she's small but don't be fooled, she's a human who ate a devil fruit that gives her super strength!" the presenter said enthusiastically. She smirked as people murmured to each other with interest, Sakura wondered if she said her name while she was drugged, "She can do housekeeping, work as a human shield, and even do heavy-duty or if you're interested, her face is pretty enough." to be your pet. We will start with the amount of 300,000 berries. Who says me!
The offers began to be given but to Sakura, they sounded like buzzing in her ears, she didn't even care that she was being sold, she just lowered her head and waited until the last person offered an amount of money for her. By the time she finished the auction, she was taken to a corner with the others that had already been sold.
What's going on?
She desperately tried to remember the last thing she did but no matter how hard she tried the blackout was getting bigger and bigger than she expected.
After a while, the masters arrived who, when paying for their slaves, took them away very happy. When three sets of feet of hers were positioned in front of her she finally looked up. In front of her, there were three people with curious white suits and on their heads a kind of bubble.
"Here's Fernan, you can do whatever you want with her, I hope this time it lasts longer," said the oldest man of the three.
Fernan, who turned out to be the wide-eyed, spiky-haired boy with what looked like his parents, looked no more than eight years old. He approached Sakura, took the chain that was attached to her earlier and connected it to her necklace, he pulled her not with much force but because of how exhausted she was she fell face down on the floor. Fernan smiled, satisfied that he was taller than her -although he only went to throw her to the ground- giving one more reason for his feeling of superiority.
"Yes, dad, mom, I'll have a lot of fun with my new toy," said the boy with a mischievous look.
He led her out of the building with several bodyguards with them and onto a float. She was surprised when she saw it around her, not even in her wildest dreams did she believe that this was possible, bubbles came out of the ground and rose to the sky and people transported themselves or transported things with the bubbles. As soon as the three got on, the boy peeked out the door.
"You better keep up or you'll be whipped to faint for not advancing at our speed," the boy said with a Machiavellian smile.
When they closed the door, the chain that held Sakura was left hanging over the window, implying that she had to follow the path of the vehicle because the child would continue to hold until its destination.
Without a word, Sakura followed the car in silence. The following days were the same, confused, painful, cold and silent while she listened and endured the child's mischief. Only when they arrived at the Tenryuubito residence and left her in a lonely cell with Sakura sitting on the rickety bed did she finally get some peace. She leaned forward bringing her hands up to her face until she stopped dead midway. The air rushed out of her lungs, her hands began to shake.
Scraps of memories came to her mind like an exploding tag that went off without warning:
She had just come off a long shift at the children's clinic, she was so tired that all she wanted was to get home and hibernate until next spring because the last few months had been very physically and emotionally exhausting and going back to work didn't help her, but she knew that she had a pending meeting with Naruto to discuss a serious matter.
The blood in her veins froze as a couple of images flashed through her mind like a scene of terror. Loud explosions, the earth roaring as it shook, great flames of fire spreading across the earth, and the terrified screams of people before they died before her eyes. Tears began to flow from her eyes, soaking her cheeks, the little energy that she had gathered evaporated in seconds when she realized what had happened. Her body began to shake uncontrollably.
Her dulled mind was now racing at full speed trying to salvage her last memories of Konoha, desperate to know that this was an illusion, perhaps a genjutsu.
The magnitude of the damage was so great and so fast that life disappeared in the blink of an eye, there were no survivors.
"There was nothing left," she said, her voice cracking.
The spark of life and hope disappeared from Sakura's eyes leaving a deep, dark void. That man who spoke to you at the auction house was wrong. He wasn't going to enter a worse hell, he was already in the worst of hells.