I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, I'm just a fan I enjoyed the anime but I love the fanfics even more, they made me fall for the whole franchise.
Chapter 87
Sakura pressed herself against the corner of a building selling tea and looked around it to stare at Sasuke Uchiha jogging with a limp toward the stadium. She turned the corner and followed him in a fast walk using the people walking around to keep herself hidden.
'He cannot seriously be thinking about killing Hinata!' Sakura thought with alarm. 'What was that place, what did he read in that stone?!' So many questions were spinning around the pink-haired Haruno's head that she couldn't think straight. Sasuke turned the other corner of the building and Sakura narrowed her eyes, that turn did not lead to the stadium.
The Haruno Genin quickened her pace and made the turn.
"Ahhh mmh mmh…." Sakura's scream was silenced by a hand, and her personal space was breached by a Sharingan wielder's murderous glare.
"You again." Sasuke growled, his red eyes narrowing at her dangerously and for the first time Sakura met the true Sasuke. For the first time, Sakura really looked him in the eyes, she saw it there in the center of his pupils, his want to kill her, and she felt her survival instinct kick in.
She opened her mouth and took a bite of the hand above her mouth and made Sasuke flinch back. The Uchiha let go of her while shaking his sore hand and Sakura was quick to run out into the busy street. When she found herself away from Sasuke, she realized she was actually in an alleyway.
"Come Sakura I won't hurt you, I just want to talk." Sasuke still inside the alleyway called the member of team 8 to come, while making the come over here gesture with his left hand. Sasuke's Sharingan was still active with three tomoes spinning in his sockets hypnotically.
Sakura took heavy breaths trying to calm her heart and faced the Uchiha. She shook her head no and Sasuke smirked.
The raven-haired boy Vanished and Sakura turned around running toward the stadium to reveal what she heard and saw. Something was wrong with Sasuke, that stone had to have done something to change him.
Sakura dodged the people in front of her, running as fast as she could toward the stadium where she knew she would be safe.
"what is……" The pink-haired Haruno tried to grab her neck suddenly and found something stopping her from doing so. She tried to gasp but couldn't when she felt a pressure around her throat. She suddenly realized something with horror and performed the snake seal with difficulty.
"H-a-I agh.." Sakura managed to sound out before the illusion broke and she found herself back in the alleyway she had just escaped, now realizing she had run back inside.
Sasuke squeezed around her neck while staring at her with murder in his eyes. He was trying to choke the life out of her she realized, Anything else would be too noisy, gruesome, or messy. Sasuke wanted something fast and reliable.
Sakura grabbed onto the arms around her neck by the wrists and tried to free herself. With the life leaving her body Sakura became desperate and swung her knee forward trying to strike Sasuke in the crotch. He jumped back, letting go of her neck, grabbed ahold of her hair while pulling her along, and brought her down, face first on the floor as he landed on his knees.
Sakura felt pain and her world spin, her nose broke on contact after meeting the cemented alleway floor. Haruno tried to scream out for help but a kick to her midsection had her losing all the breadth she took and her scream came out as a heave.
Sakura found herself on her back with a bloody face and tears of heartbreak. Her brain telling her the love of her life was the one causing her all that pain.
Sasuke Uchiha stepped over her body to stand above her crying and bleeding form. His eyes still blazing red with incredible bloodlust.
"I told you, I am not someone you want to say you love." The Uchiha reminded her as he got on his knees to straddle her stomach. He placed his hands around her neck and began applying pressure.
'Sasuke-Kun please stop.' Sakura thought as she had no more strength to fight back, she balled her eyes out as she lay there and got strangled to death by the boy she loved. Sakura could do nothing more than stare at his face which was wrinkled in concentration as he applied all the force he could muster into his grip, making all his handsome features non-existent on his visage.
Sakura's legs began kicking out on reflex at the lack of oxygen before she felt it a few long seconds later, death. The Haruno stopped moving completely and became still, eyes now lifelessly staring back up at Sasuke. The Uchiha stood up quickly and looked around the alleyway to see if anybody saw him.
"Idiot." Sasuke spat and with the coast clear, the raven-haired boy walked out of the alley and joined the crowd in the open street making his way toward the stadium in the distance.
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'A rat! and people say I'm too…. 'GIRLY!'. Me Ino Yamanaka!' Ino was venting her frustration out in her consciousness located in the head of a rat. She was traveling through the ventilation system of Anbu headquarters looking for their Archives. She walked slowly to not make a noise inside the vents.
If she got caught doing this she would be in so much trouble that her non-political vocabulary could not put it into words. Ino turned another wing of the ventilation shaft and smirked when she saw space big enough for the rat's small body to squeeze through.
She looked down and found it to be a hatch leading out of the ventilation shaft. Ino took a deep breath and squeezed through the spaces and fell out landing on the tiled floor below on her borrowed body's back and quickly turning to get on its feet to begin moving.
During her visits to the T and I administration building Ino had always taken a look at Anbu headquarters and knew for a fact there were usually 2 Anbu officers guarding the building, she wondered why there was only one today. She chalked it off to the Chunin Exam finals having a thing to do with it.
Ino in her search for the room holding Konoha's most crucial information wondered what she would find out about Naruto Uzumaki. There were so many secrets and mysteries surrounding him that Ino's imagination began going wild.
She turned into another wing of the building and did her best to be silent and inconspicuous. She did not expect Anbu headquarters to be this empty, and because of that, she was fearful of the thought that they might just be in hiding and already knew what she was doing.
'interrogation room.' Ino read on a door and gulped, she quickened her pace and moved further down the corridor. Ino turned another corner just in time to catch a pitch-black rat squeezing through under a door. Not giving the animal a second thought, she moved toward the door and smirked finding what she was looking for.
'Just a quick peak and then you can find your way out of here okay.' Ino told her borrowed body, planning on dispelling her jutsu as soon as she was done reading whatever was inside the folder labeled Jin.
The Yamanaka squeezed herself through the space at the bottom of the steel door and found herself in a dark room. Luckily the rat had good eyesight and a great sense of smell so she was confused by the fresh smell of ink in the air.
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"Who are those guys?" Shisui mumbled while moving from rooftop to rooftop above the busy streets of Konoha. Trailing the 3 males and 1 female who had left a rundown building after speaking to the Suna Genin inside, Shisui remembered him as one of the finalist in the exams.
In the middle was the female of the group, she spoke a lot, Shisui noticed this from her mouth movements but could not make out what she said because of the distance between them.
The female of the group had fair skin, a slender build, and was the shortest member of the group. She had brown eyes that were accentuated by her eyelashes extending into the corners of her eyes and sported an impassive expression on her face. Her most distinctive feature was her long, untamed, dark pink hair that fell past her shoulders with long parted bangs framing either side of her face and one between her eyes.
Her attire was a black shirt under a tan tunic with elbow-length sleeves and black skin-tight shorts. She wore black arm-warmers, and traditional black shinobi sandals with calf-length leg warmers covered by bandages. A purple rope-like belt tied in an inverted bow around her waist and to keep her wild hair out of the way, she wore a black hat with pipe-like stripes and bandaged sides, keeping her bangs in place while the rest was pushed back behind her ears to trail down her back.
On the left of the female is the tallest member of the group, he is a large and imposing young man, towering over the rest. He has fair skin and narrowed, slanted orange eyes, with a stern look on his face.
He had three tufts of orange hair on his head like a mohawk of sorts that ran down the middle and two similarly styled tufts of hair at the side.
He wears a beige-colored, sleeveless tunic with the symbol of the Sound Four on the hem and a pair of black, knee-length pants that stop just below his knees. He wore black arm-warmers and a necklace that comprised of red circular pieces separating long, metallic pieces. He also wears traditional black shinobi sandals with mid-calf leg warmers covered by bandages, and a purple rope-like belt tied in an inverted bow around his waist.
Shisui found them suspicious, it was forbidden for foreign Shinobi to enter a village during the exams unless they were participating. The Uchiha jumped to another rooftop and landed in a walk still looking to the street below. The Suna Genin had left in another direction with Shisui deciding to follow the bigger group he spied the male on the female's right and observed and committed his appearance to memory.
He is a dark-skinned shinobi with black, shaggy hair tied into a ponytail and black eyes. He is the second-tallest member of the group.
His attire consisted of a black sleeveless shirt under a sleeveless grey tunic that bore the symbol of the Sound Four on the hem and sported black skin-tight shorts. He wore black arm warmers, traditional black shinobi sandals with calf-length leg warmers covered by bandages, and a purple, rope-like belt tied in an inverted bow around his waist.
"Are those six arms?" Shisui asked himself in shock, he looked to the rest of the population walking around the group and noticed none of them were giving the four-man squad a second glance. "Perhaps a genjutsu of sorts, there is no way the public is giving those extra appendages no attention." Shisui jumped down from the building to land in an alleyway and made his way out, now walking casually as he followed them from behind at a distance.
'Is that a head sticking out of the back of his neck!?' Shisui thought in alarm and decided he had to get to the bottom of things quickly or something bad might happen. It was no secret that the sound village had ties with Orochimaru and the four people walking in the distance in front of him wore the village's headband proudly.
"Absolutely not a circus act." Shisui figured as he committed the final member's appearance to memory.
The final member walking behind the group had fair skin and straight, light blue-grey color hair with long bangs that covered his right eye. He wore a green shade of lipstick, and had dark markings around his eyes, giving them an androgynous appearance. The head protruding from the back was tilted down and hung limply, making its hair cover its face.
"They are not heading to the stadium so where are they going?" Shisui wondered and that is when something peculiar happened, the head facing in his direction laying limp raised itself and made eye contact with him. A replica of the visage facing forward stared him straight in the eyes and smirked, the only difference between the two visages was which eye was covered with a bang.
"Shit!" Shisui thought and made to apprehend them but the group suddenly scattered with great speed. The female went North, the boy with two heads went west, the one with 6 arms went east and the robust boy went south.
Shisui looked all around before he tsk'd and ran toward the Uchiha Police Force headquarters to call for backup.
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Sakura awoke with a start and pushed herself into a sitting position, she found herself in the familiar setting of her mindscape that was built like a giant library with scrolls waiting to be filled with information by her inner self as Orochimaru had informed her.
A second later an image began playing in a square-like projection. She could only stare with morbid horror at the sight of Sasuke's angry face barring its teeth as he strangled her to death before it all went dark and then began replaying.
"Am I dead?" Sakura thought with sadness and horror as she touched her neck feeling nothing different but she knew better. The member of team 8 looked to the Giant version of herself staring down at her with fury and she looked down in shame. The pitch black giant frowned and Sakura saw a scroll begin levitating from a shelve.
"What are doing?!" Sakura asked in alarm, wasn't she dead or in the process of dying? Sasuke killed her, what was her Inner self trying to accomplish? Sakura watched the scroll enlarge as the giant goddess-like silhouette grabbed it and began writing something down with a sickening yellow-colored chakra.
When the giant finished, she let go of the scroll and it levitated back toward the shelf while shrinking to its original size. Sakura walked up to the scroll just as an eleventh star appeared on the giant's naval, she grabbed the scroll from it's place in the shelf and raised an eyebrow when she read its content.
the giantess's naval that had 10 stars now held 11 as the kanji on its forehead began glowing before everything turned white and Sakura vanished from the library to find herself in darkness. The Haruno began feeling constricted in her own skin and the feeling of nausea attacked her a second later.
Sakura raised her hands and found them grabbing onto something wet and yet bony and hard. She began forcing it apart, finding it almost elastic and she pushed herself out feeling wet and gooey all over, Feeling like she was getting undressed. Sakura opened her eyes and she closed them again when she was hit by the rays of the afternoon sun.
'I'm not dead?' Sakura thought before slowly opening her eyes when she felt a cold breeze go through her body making her shiver. 'Why am I naked?' She immediately realized and covered her private part with her left hand and her breasts with her right arm. When she looked down Sakura was horrified at what she saw laying there on the floor looking like a human husk while wearing her clothes.
"What the!!!.." Sakura asked shocked as she turned around and threw up her breakfast in disgust of what she stared at. Behind her on the floor was her skin, it looked pale and lifeless as well as deflated, her pink hair still there for her to know she was staring at herself.
Panicked and disgusted, Sakura began feeling like a freak when she peaked at the skin again and noticed the mouth was torn open and stretched to unimaginable degrees. Her eyes widened and she threw up again when she realized she had come out of there a minute ago.
'I have to get home!' Sakura ran trying to leave the alleyway but stopped when her smart mind reminded her she was naked. Sakura turned back to her skin on the ground wearing her clothes and she grimaced. She slowly walked up to what she could only say was something straight out of a horror movie and began undressing it, all the while looking away and holding back another round of vomit.
It took her less than two minutes to get her clothes and put them on, a new record for her. She stood up and looked at the flesh on the floor before anger blossomed in her chest. She balled her fists and felt herself sway on her feet feeling exhausted but her anger had her blood pumping faster and the adrenaline let her forget her fatigue.
"Sasuke.." Sakura growled with anger, he was to blame for whatever atrocity had become of her. 'The body replacement technique of the snake clan.' The Haruno remembered the scroll her inner Sakura had filled.
'I need to get home.' Sakura thought and walked out of the alleyway, leaving the skin shed behind. Her mind was too busy remembering Sasuke's visage as he strangled her to death.
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'Oh no you don't!' Ino thought as she ran on her borrowed four legs. She squeezed back out of the room she had entered and made a left. She pushed the little critter's little legs to their limits to travel faster and gain on the pitch-black rat running ahead of her.
The rat that must have fallen in a bucket of ink due to the scent it carried turned a corner and Ino followed suit a few seconds later, sliding on the rat's tummy when it lost balance and quickly got back on all four to follow the pitch black rat that had swiped the folder she was about to get her hand on.
'That can't be some random rat.' Ino thought as she watched the rat run up the adjacent wall to her right and jump to reach the little space she squeezed out of to exit the ventilation shaft.
Ino quickly followed suit running up and making the same jump to squeeze inside. She sniffed the air twice and ran right. Ino made another right and felt a breeze.
'The ventilation fan.' She realized and picked up her speed, Ino made another right turn and came into view of the rat squeezing through the center of the fast-spinning fan. The hole was a tight fit so the rat couldn't just quickly squeeze through.
'The folder!' Ino's consciousness exclaimed when she saw the folder that was neatly rolled up and held together by a band on the floor. The mysterious rat must have regurgitated the folder to lose a couple of grams to better squeeze through, Ino had deduced.
'Sorry little guy.' Ino apologized to her little minion and began pumping its little leg in one place before taking off with 'great speed'. As she ran, she kept a close eye on the bottom right corner of the fan, watching as the blades spun with great speed. Ino reached the fan and took a leap of faith with her curiosity as the driving force, the little animal would not agree with her.
'Now!' Ino inwardly called as she jumped and found out she made it because she was not immediately ejected from the animal's body. Ino felt a sensation behind her but paid it no mind as she bit down on the rolled-up folder and began running, leaving the pitch-black rat behind.
Ino continued running, looking for the exit, she was so giddy at the thought of everything she would learn that she was already imagining things.
'Maybe he's a real-life prince from the Uzumaki Kingdom or something!' Ino was stretching but a girl could dream, could she not? Ino heard many small footsteps coming behind her and she stopped in her tracks, turning around to soothe her curiosity.
'What is that?' Ino thought with the rat's body tilting its head to the left as it got on two feet and began sniffing the air. 'Oh oh!'
The Yamanaka turned and ran again now in a frenzy, she smelled ink, like a swimming pool worth of it.
'RATS!!' Ino inwardly screamed in horror when she looked behind her and saw an ocean of pitch-black rats after her. She saw an opening above her and jumped inside using the rat's nails to run up the vertical surface. She felt relief when she saw light at the end of the ventilation shaft.
Ino squeezed through the gap and made it to the rooftop of Anbu headquarters. A second later, a swarm of pitch-black rats began coming out of the gaps she had just exited. Ino ran to the edge of the rooftops and stood on two legs before saluting the rats in a mad dash toward her borrowed body.
'Better luck next time.' She wished them all with a smirk and jumped off the building just as the rat in front tried to take a bite out of her minions neck. Ino's rat body fell for less than 3 seconds before a bird swooped it from the sky and flew away from the scene.
All the rats melted into ink and dried up leaving née a clue of their being there. One rat left behind ran to the edge of the building and began running down its surface heading who knows where.
A few minutes later Ino was dashing away from the scene of the crime in her own body after liberating her unwilling helpers. The rat did look angry when it realized it didn't have a tail anymore, the bird looked hungry and the rat looked delicious. Ino had left those two behind and began running toward the Yamanaka Clan Grounds.
Resting securely in a hug against her chest as she ran was the folder labeled Jin.
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After making it to the police station, Shisui called on the help of Dan Uchiha and Rugal Uchiha also known as Rash. They were both working in the office taking in complaints or in Rash's case making the complaints but were willing to drop all they were doing to help their previous leader.
"Some action! Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that I had to work and couldn't watch the finals." Rugal sighed in relief as they made their way toward the last place Shisui had spotted the Sound Ninjas.
"Yes, please go inform Fugaku-Sama immediately and get ahold of Izumi Uchiha." Rash voiced and got a confirmation back from the device in his ear before coming to a stop behind his fellow police officers. The muscular Uchiha scratched his left tricep before speaking.
"I sent someone to inform Fugaku-Sama, and assigned our previous appointment with the Hyūga to two other officers." Dan nodded at Rash's words before looking to Shisui who had bent down to examine the floor for any clues.
'He seems alive again.' Dan thought about Shisui and his passion to protect the weak and bring evil to justice. Shisui stood up and rubbed under his nose with his left index finger looking goofy as he grinned but also professional in the way he wore the full police force uniform.
"Dan!" Shisui said with professionalism and Dan straightened in attention. "You go East, here is a description of the one you are looking for." Shisui handed Dan a sketch of the assailant and Dan refrained from commenting on the 6 armed stickmen he was looking at with an evil grin with sharp teeth.
"Boss yes Sir!" Shisui gave an exaggerated sigh but he was smiling at the act. Rugal must have been trolling him because that grin on his face did not mix well with the salute he received from the man.
"You head south, here is the description of the male." Rugal took the piece of paper, looked at it, and looked up at Shisui before looking back down and looking back at Shisui. The picture was of a stick man with circles for muscles and triangles in random places on his head. Rash thought they were supposed to be mohawks.
"It's beautiful sir!" Shisui knew better, he made a signal and they scattered with Shisui heading west. Izumi would head North and Fugaku-Sama could get Itachi to go west or he could assign another person to the job. Shisui had made copies of all his sketches and handed them to the messenger Rash sent.
Authors Notes
The cogs have begun moving…..