They travelled moved mostly in silence, with some scattered conversation.
"Naruto, did you encounter Akatsuki whilst you were training with Jiraiya?" Asked Sakura.
"No, not at all!" The Uzumaki replied.
"But they already went after you once, why not again?"
"Maybe it's not to say that they chose not to, but that they couldn't. Jiraiya-sama was always at his side." Hatake added.
"From what I have gathered, I heard there were other reasons." The old lady said. "It requires considerable preparation to seperate a 'tailed beast' that is sealed within a man. I assume that's what hampered their effort."
"It would be easier to understand their motivations if we knew if the other jinchūriki had been captured. But the other nations wouldn't tell us if they were." Sakura sighed.
"It's common sense not to reveal a weakness to a potential enemy."
"Not when there's a mercenary group filled with S-rank shinobi wandering around." Sakura retorted. "The amount of power they would hold with all of the tailed beasts could level the elemental nations."
"How many of us are there?" Uzumaki asked.
"You don't even know that and you call yourself Jiraiya's student?!" The old woman said belligerently.
"The information regarding the nine tales and other tailed beasts is top secret in Konoha so…" Hatake said.
"Well, I suppose so. There are a total of nine tailed beasts in this world." She said, her tone a haughty, nasal grating on Sakura's ears. "Each beast differs in characteristics depending on the number of tails they have. Each possessing a number of tails according to their name. They are a monstrous form of chakra. During the great ninja war every village attempted to acquire the power for military purposes, competing to obtain these beasts. However, no one can control them beyond the ability of men. I don't know why the Akatsuki are attempting to acquire them, it's too dangerous."
Sakura rolled her eyes as they settled back into silence. They were dealing with a group of S-rank missing-nin with aspirations to some as of yet unknown higher cause. The kind of prodigies treated like gods by their villages until their ego grew to big for the constraints of a military hierarchy and they killed their way out. Something as mundane as the knowledge that 'it had never been done before' or it was 'beyond the power of men' wouldn't be a deterrent to that kind of personality. It would be a challenge.
A challenge Akatsuki could very well meet.
The tree line abruptly ended. The damp shade of the forest giving away to reveal gentle, rolling green fields and a clear blue sky. The air was pleasantly warm on Sakura's skin and carried the crisp scents of spring.
Uchiha Itachi cut through the idyllic surroundings like a ghoulish spectre. The milky white of his skin stood in stark contrast to the black of his cloak, making him look pale and drawn as though the bright crimson of the clouds were his blood, haemorrhaging relentlessly from a corpse-like body and pooling in macabre patterns. The spin of the gleaming Sharingan was lazy. His face a picture of barely polite disinterest.
"Halt!" Hatake called and they landed on the flat, the four of them settling into a tense line before the Akastuki.
"Those eyes." Murmured the old woman, her voice reverent with fear.
"Uchiha Itachi!" Uzumaki cried.
"Itachi. Ho, this is the child who killed his entire family?"
"It has been a while. Kakashi-san, Naruto-kun." The Uchiha greeted, his voice tonelessly polite.
"You bastard!" Uzumaki growled, face twisting angrily. "NOT JUST ME BUT EVEN GAARA?!"
"Kakashi." Sakura said, her gentle tone cutting through Uzumaki's rant as she stepped forward. Hatake hummed unhappily but didn't hesitate to step up next to her, a hand pushing up his hitai-ate. It went against her typical play of milking underestimation for all it's worth- which she knew he'd prefer she did- playing the fool and the weakling until a kill shot opened up and she stepped in to easily take it, but Itachi was different. He carried a powerful name, sure, but he had lived most of his career as a knobbly kneed child. Small and frail and easy to dismiss on a battlefield. Sakura watched the flat, indiscriminate expression and did not expect him to underestimate her due to her height.
Or perhaps she just wanted to see him hurt by her hands. Pay back the sight of a too-still body and a report filled with descriptions of torture by ripping those pretty little eyes out with her teeth. Uchiha Itachi may not be the traitor he played but he was someone she craved to make bleed.
Itachi's expression did not change, but his hands moved slowly upwards.
"Everyone!" Kakashi called, his own Sharingan beginning to whirl rapidly. "Don't look directly at his eyes, its dangerous! Judge his movements from his body and feet, Itachi's genjutsu is an eye jutsu, in other words it's a vision type. You'll be fine if you avoid eye contact." She tuned out the following argument, instead focusing on the Uchiha before her.
Itachi held his hands in a seal over his face, likely gathering chakra for a genjutsu, and Sakura drew her chokutō from its sheath. She maintained eye contact even after Kakashi's explanation and felt a slow smile stretch her face. Itachi expression did not change from the flat politeness, but his Sharingan spun just a little faster in response.
It was a risk, but a calculated one. The Sharingan gave the user perfect visual retention and allowed them to implant that information into their opponent's own sight with genjutsu. The great flaw with the Sharingan was that it used the user's information rather than the opponent's. If Itachi made someone see a flower before them then it would appear exactly as Itachi had seen it through his human eyes. Any average human would never notice the difference, making it exceptionally powerful, but it also made it weak to people outside that metric. It's what made visual genjutsu on intelligent animals so difficult, their eyesight so different from a human's that the genjutsu would always look fake to them, no matter how perfect.
Sakura's eyes were more bird than human and her chakra control was unprecedented. Itachi may have the Mangekyou but its abilities were just a fire she couldn't dodge if she couldn't tell where it was aiming and a better genjutsu. She didn't fear it. She almost wanted him to use it against her, just to find out if she could break it.
On the flip side, her stealth techinques were useless against a Sharingan. They would have to win a frontal assault. Her grin was sharklike as electric blue chakra burst to life over her skin.
"We'll kindly ask you to come with us now, Naruto-kun." Itachi said dispassionately and pointed. The world turned flat to her eyes. Itachi's chakra seeped into her system, laser focused heat with the cloying aftertaste of burnt sugar. It was the work of half a thought to pull her chakra in the wrong direction for a moment and purge the invasive energy from her system. The world returned to normal and she launched forward alongside Kakashi.
His punch was blocked and he was sent flying back as she darted in from the side and slashed. Itachi blocked with a kunai and slid a half step back. Kakashi was out of ranges and Itachi's other hand was forming a sign for a jutsu she didn't know so Sakura latched onto the storm-sped cycles of her chakra and pulled, forcing the manic speed to work as kinetic energy and shunt her just over ten metres backwards. The blue energy disappearing from around her.
Kakashi stood to her right and his second finger twitched. Sakura pushed her chakra back over her skin, the energy leaving her tenketsu points as storm and sinking back into another to change back to pure chakra. The returning chakra more manic than before, her system speeding faster and faster with each circuit over her body, hastening her very cells until every part of her operated at an ever increasing pace.
After five seconds of build up she would have enough speed to perform the short range body-flicker again. The chakra loss free system performing a chakra loss free jutsu but at the cost of her movement abilities for a few precious moments. Something potentially fatal if the jutsu was used aggressively.
Sakura and Kakashi leapt forwards again but Itachi began speeding through hand signs faster than Sakura could differentiate them. A monstrous ball of fire was spat towards them and she shifted her momentum sideways as Kakashi disappeared under the ground. It was molten with heat, leaving her face burning like she'd held it under the midday summer sun.
A Kakashi shadow clone burst up from the ground at Itachi's feet and he threw himself backwards, catching clone-Kakashi's arm and shoving it off balance, sending a fist towards its face.
Sakura rushed forwards, as though attempting to flank the pair. Her system speeding up and up and up. The clone-Kakashi gripped Itachi's ams and held him in place. Five seconds had passed.
She flickered directly behind clone-Kakashi and didn't hesitate to bury her chokutō in its back all the up to the hilt. The shadow clone popped in a burst of smoke and she couldn't help but frown as she came face to face with Itachi. There was no sign of pain in his expression despite the chakra laced sword buried through his heart.
Sakura pushed it deeper and twisted. Itachi smiled.
A man that was not Itachi slid backwards off her blade.
"Well, that explains why he was so easy to kill." Sakura said, making no effort to hide her annoyance. Kakashi rose out of the earth next to her and nodded.
"I had a bad feeling about it in the middle." He said, just sounding resigned. The Uzumaki and old woman appeared from the trees, frowning at the corpse.
"What could it be?!" Uzumaki asked.
"He…" The old woman murmured. Both Hatake and Sakura turned to look at her.
"Do you know this person?" He asked.
"Yes…" She said. "Yuura. He's a jōnin from my village."
"From the Sand, what does that mean?"
"I don't know."
"How recently was he in the village?" Sakura asked. "Could he have been an Akatsuki spy?"
"No way, he's been working faithfully as a leader for four years."
"Was he impersonating Itachi with a henge?" Uzumaki asked.
"No, this isn't that level of jutsu." Said Hatake. "The Goukakyuu is a jutsu that the Uchiha clan worked out and perfected. It recreates their bodies and allows them to control them from a distance, but with significantly less chakra and it requires a living sacrifice. The Uchiha used to capture enemy shinobi and send them on suicide missions during the last war."
"That's horrible!" The Uzumaki exclaimed.
"That's brilliant." Sakura said begrudgingly.
"Looks like the real one's at the hideout. His objective was to delay and gather information about us. Those bastards have good jutsu." Hatake grumbled.
"Indeed, this was clearly stalling." The old woman added. "They must have already started the extraction of the Bijuu, perhaps they wish to use the one tail Shukaku to make a new jinchūriki."
"Then there's no time then, we have to hurry to save Gaara." Hatake said, but his tone was grim.
"Jinchūriki?" Uzumaki asked.
"It's the name for people like you and Gaara," Sakura explained, the Uzumaki looking strangely angry about it. "The people who have a tailed beast sealed inside of them. How do you remove a Bijuu?" She directed the question towards the old woman.
"A sealing jutsu which releases the exact amount of power to match up to the Bijuu is used, but that takes a considerable amount of time." She answered. "But if that were done, the jinchūriki would die." She grimaced.
"Let's hurry." Uzumaki said. "I'll rescue Gaara." He started walking and they followed, quickly bouncing back up into the next line of trees.
They stopped for a break just after midnight, neither the Uzumaki nor the old woman capable of the sleepless stretches the ANBU frequently demanded. Sakura was glad for it, the previous few days travelling had been hard and heading into a fight with S-rank criminals tired was a good way to die.
She took the first watch, only a two hour slot in deference to the hurry they were in, woke up Hatake for the second- and last- watch and sped-ate a bowl of the stew they'd whipped up before falling straight into a nap. Well used to sleeping at a moments notice.
They awoke, packed up camp, and left whilst it was still dark, following the Akastuki trail.. The hideout came into sight early the next morning, Maito's team already standing before the giant rock door.
"That's a five barrier seal." Hatake said as they landed.
"You're late, Kakashi." Said Maito.
"Ah, well we ran into a bit of trouble on the way."
"Naruto-kun! Sakura-san!" Lee exclaimed as the Hyuuga grimaced at the Uzumaki.
"Yo!" Uzumaki yelled.
"Hey guys." Sakura greeted, pouring in just enough effort to not be construed as disinterested in them as she actually was. The weapons mistress scowled at her as Lee mooned but Sakura pretended not to notice. Instead, she beelined for Pakkun and dug out the pack of dog treats she'd taken to carrying around now she was working with Hatake again. The man gave her a side eye but did nothing to stop her so she took it as enthusiastic encouragement to her fattening his ninken. "For all your hard work, Pakkun." She crouched and held out the bone-shaped, Inuzuka made cookie.
"You really are a smart one, girly." The pug said and took the treat, his little tail wagging as he munched. Sakura smiled and pet the top of his tiny head with two fingers, only vaguely following the conversation occurring around her. When the pug was finished it burped and looked up with a serious expression. "I think I'll disappear, since I'll just be in the way if I stay. I wouldn't really be any help."
"Pakkun, good work!" Hatake nodded his agreement.
"Bye Pakkun!" Sakura said cheerfully and the pug disappeared in a puff of smoke.
"Right! First off this barrier, eh, Kakashi?" Said Maito. "How do we take it out?"
"This particular five barrier seal in created by tokens with 'kin' written on them and placed in five places in the vicinity." Hatake explained. "To remove the barrier, all of them must be detached."
"So where are they? The other four?" Asked Uzumaki.
"Neji-kun."
"Understood." The Hyuuga answered, activating his Byakugan in a spidery web of bulging veins . Sakura fought a grimace. She didn't care that the Hyuuga's were the 'pretty clan'. No amount of perfect cheekbones and sculpted jawlines could overcome the how gross their eyes looked when they activated.
"Found them." He said and rattled off the positions.
"Right, if it's that range we'll use these radios! While we're taking Neji's directions, we can keep in communication and we'll find the locations of the tokens!"
He handed one to each member of the team and one to Hatake, the five of them efficiently setting them up before team Gai blurred out of existence. As they moved he climbed up the rock to crouch sideways next to the fifth token.
"Sakura get ready to smash it the moment I pull off the token." Hatake said, discreetly making the ANBU sign for 'tactic four'. Sakura's lips quirked as she nodded. It seemed he didn't trust the old woman and her very apparent sentimentality anymore than she did. "Naruto, Chiyo, stand to either side and prepare yourselves. We'll break in with a button hook entry."
They did not wait long before Maito's tinny voice came over the radio and Hatake ripped off his token, launching off the rock and barking an order. "Sakura!"
"Ok!" She yelled, slamming her fist into the rock with a pulse of chakra. It exploded into dust and rock chunks, her chakra pushed specifically in just the right direction to make it explode outwards rather than inwards. Sakura used the chaos and lack of visibility to switch with a water clone, the clone mimicking her signature in the same moment she made her own disappear, and the glassy feeling of the transparency jutsu settled over her skin.
As the three shinobi and her clone entered the small space she clung to the wall outside, using the Uzumaki being predictably loud and distracting to slip through the entrance and crawl her way up to the cavernous space's ceiling.
Sakura had nearly perfected her use of the jutsu, but there was still a slight warping that became more obvious when she passed over areas with distinct colour changes. Using the distraction and at this distance, it would have been essentially impossible for someone without the Sharingan to notice.
She crept slowly forwards as the conversation went on, keeping keen eyes on the back and forth.
Abruptly, the giant bird and blonde man flew through the entrance and the Uzumaki ran after them without a second thought. Hatake hesitated be he turned to clone-Sakura and the old woman, throwing a pair of capsules that the clone caught. "Naruto and I will handle the one outside. Sakura and Chiyo, take care of this one… but until team Gai gets back, do not do anything too drastic." His tone was entirely no nonsense and Sakura pulled her mouth into a scowl. Apparently Hatake had caught the loophole in her promise, it having voided after being attacked by Akatsuki, and yet he still wanted her to play nice with the old bat.
"Got it!" Cried clone-Sakura. Hatake nodded once and disappeared outside.
"Sakura, I'll handle him." The old woman said as she stepped forward. "Stay behind me." Clone-Sakura nodded and complied, on orders to follow the other's directions so Sakura could observe the fight and step in when a kill shot opened up. Her scowl deepened further, without the clear threat from Hatake she would have been very tempted to wait to attack until the crone had hopefully gotten herself killed. But now if she did then Kakashi would be mad at her.
Maybe the woman'd get injured or psychologically scarred a little. After all, Kakashi had just said not to do anything too drastic, not nothing.
The old woman sent a volley of kunai and the tail came up to deflect them. It swung, ripping the cloak to shreds and exposing a giant face. The misshapen lump was a puppet.
"If you plan to oppose me then I've got no choice." The puppet- or was it a man inside the puppet?- rasped. "Why don't you and that kid join my collection, eh, Chiyo?" It released a wave of killing intent that soured the air like old milk. Sakura easily ignored it. "First, I'll drag out your entrails. Then, when I've ripped off your skin, I'll clean off all the blood."
"Sakura that's not Sasori's real body." Said the old woman "It's a puppet."
"I'll treat it so it doesn't decay. Then stock it up with the rest of my puppet collection. Like the old hag said, this is one of those bodies. Also, with the two of you it will become exactly three hundred bodies. That is my fine art."
Sakura resisted the urge to roll her eyes, just focused on crawling down the wall behind the puppet soundlessly and keeping her eyes on the fight.
"I can tell that's not his real body. But… where is his real body, then?" Clone-Sakura asked.
"His real body is on the inside." The old woman said.
Sakura was now halfway down the wall and her eyes narrowed on the puppet consideringly. The clone could probably smash it. It didn't have the ability to perform the highly controlled, massive amount of destruction that she'd done to the door but an uncontrolled, wild burst of pressurised chakra to smash something the size of a small car? Sure.
It just needed to get there without being injured.
The old woman leaned in to whisper to the clone and Sakura frowned as she strained her ears to hear. Whilst clones would follow orders sent through the connection between them and her in real time, they did not actually share senses. If Sakura closed her eyes and ears she would have no idea what the clone was hearing or seeing.
She thanked god- or in this case the cuckoos- for her enhanced hearing as she just made out the whispered words and gave the clone the go ahead.
"Alright, let's go for it!" The clone said, stepping forward as the old woman attached her chakra strings to it. Thanks to the physical nature of the water clone, the old woman wouldn't notice the clone was a clone despite the lack of squishy meaty stuff below its surface. The attacks were poisoned, so she'd have to make sure it didn't get hit at all- and hence it wouldn't be in danger of melting- and the clone would overcome its lack of ability to get close enough to smash the puppet.
It was perfect.
Sakura just had to sit back and wait for the real body to pop out.
The puppet roared and sent a mouthful of senbon that clone-Sakura and the old woman dodged, both of them rushing forwards. The puppet's arm detached and launched, the nobs and lumps on it exploding outwards once it drew level with the clone and the woman. They twisted and jumped, dodging and drawing ever closer to the puppet. Disappointingly, the old woman was competent enough to not even get a little hurt. There was a tense moment where Sakura was sure the clone would be popped by the tail and she prepared to launch herself at the puppet in that eventuality, but then it halted suddenly, centimetres from the clone's face.
Sakura smiled ruefully. The old bitch was pretty crafty, at least.
The clone punched. The puppet shattered. A black figure flew away from the remains and landed about a metre away from the wall.
"Of course, that's my grandmother." The figure said, making no move to remove the obstructing fabric.
Sakura waited. She would not blindly rush in and expose herself.
"No wonder, that the little girl would be able to avoid my traps." It said, an edge of mockery in its voice. "You saw through all of my attacks and you used chakra threads from the puppet jutsu to control the little girl. Furthermore, you even put chakra threads on the Hiruko's tail. Wasn't it when you attacked with kunai at the beginning? The chakra threads attached to the kunai switched over to the tail when they hit it."
"Indeed, even though I was suppressing the chakra as much as possible so it was invisible, you worked it out well." The old woman said.
"But of course, who was it who taught me to play with puppets?" The figure said, a hand reaching up and grabbing at the black fabric. "No one else but you."
"Yes, well, we're done playing for the day."
The figure ripped off the cloak as melodramatically as possible and the old woman gasped. The young boy in the Akatsuki cloak definitely shouldn't have been that young but Sakura had seen Orochimaru. The man could overtake other people's bodies and wear faces like masks. They lived in a world that could heal flesh and broken bones in minutes with magical ninja powers. Their Hokage was a woman in her fifties that didn't look a day over twenty five. A little extended youth really wasn't that shocking.
What Sakura did find interesting was the… seam? on his neck that she could only see from her position from above and looking down into the kid's collar. It was a physical line between what looked like a normal head and neck and something a little more… wooden looking?
She frowned, largely ignoring the intensely gushy conversation going on before her to instead let her mind whirl. Was his body enhanced? Was it another fake? It was possible the puppeteer was simply hiding under the dirt somewhere, using a jutsu to watch the fight going on without physically seeing it. She had seen the Suna jinchūriki do something similar during the chūnin exams. She focused on her hearing for a moment. She couldn't hear any breathing or heartbeat from the puppet, but she also couldn't hear any unidentified noise from anywhere else in the room, and the sounds were potentially drowned out by the crone's and clone-Sakura's.
Sakura settled more firmly against the wall and lifted her hands in a seal. Her range was absolute crap and using the technique always gave her a migraine so it was pretty much useless in battle, but her clone had no chakra for any more attacks and she had no interest in playing along with the enemy and endlessly attacking puppets posing as his real bodies.
She closed her eyes and expanded her chakra sense as Cat had taught her, being very, very careful not to spike her signature. She could sense the old woman and clone-Sakura- it mimicking Sakura's own signature and just feeling like a normal person- and she could sense the kid's but it was strange. Like it was all concentrated in a spot on his left breast.
He definitely had chakra but he wasn't using a normal chakra system. It was more like a tiny version of himself was sitting inside his chest and steering the puppet that way.
Sakura's brows furrowed further. She didn't know how that was possible. Didn't know what kind of jutsu he was using.
…But did that matter?
Decision made she released the technique, ignored her rapidly building headache and crept down the wall. Thankfully, the puppeteer proved to be horribly arrogant and eager to gloat to his victims. The ego-driven idiot milking the old bitch's sentimentality for all it was worth in a classic villain monologue. Thus , Sakura had plenty of time to position herself behind him and silently draw her chokutō. She positioned it over the centre of chakra in the kid's body and waited, sending a mental order to her clone to be loud and distracting. She could make herself almost invisible, stop breathing and forcibly slow her chakra regulation until her very body cooled to room temperature for a short period of time but she couldn't stop that tiny little bit of killing intent leaking out when she made an attack.
So she held her position and thought about nothing but holding her position and she waited.
The clone screamed distractingly. The Kazekage puppet was launched at it. Sakura plunged her chokutō through the kid's chest. He froze. The puppet clattered to the ground. Sakura released her transparency jutsu and pushed her chakra through her system to heat her body back up with a sigh.
Her limbs filled with pins and needles and her brain pulsed with the beginnings of a migraine but she ignored it.
"Y-you!" Yelled the kid. His eyes were blown wide with horror as he looked back at her.
"Yeah, that was a clone the whole time." She gestured at clone-Sakura. Green eyes narrowed poisonously. "Tell me what you know about Orochimaru and I won't pump you so full of storm chakra you melt." She demanded with an edge of curt aggravation she didn't normally let seep into her voice.
Maybe she wasn't ignoring the headache all that well. So sue her. Compartmentalising your pain was hard when your compartmentalisation machine was the thing that was hurting.
The kid laughed. "I'm dying anyway." He pulled off the Akatsuki cloak and exposed his puppet body. The left breast held a fucked up cylinder of flesh that Sakura had rammed her chokutō through. It was like mortadella that had been left out in the sun for a month. Rancid purple with green chunks and a gelatinous texture that sent it jiggling wth every small shift of her blade. "I am a puppet, but an incomplete puppet with a 'core' of my real body. Not human not puppet."
"Orochimaru. Talk." Sakura growled, a sharp ache resolving behind her right eye.
"I'll do something pointless for you then, a reward for defeating me." He said, a small smile on his face. "No, you completely blindsided me. A truly formidable opponent.
"You want to know about Orochimaru? Go to the Tenchi bridge in the Grass village, at noon ten days from now. I have a spy in Orochimaru's subordinates, I'm supposed to meet with him there."
Sakura sighed. "I hope that's true, unlike my own lie." She pumped storm down her blade and the air filled with a noxious stench not dissimilar to burning liver. The flesh bubbled out of the puppet in viscous trails of oil-spill-coloured goo.
Her blade knocked the inside edge of the empty flesh hole and the back of the puppet opened. A circle of five senbon launched out of small tubes. She twisted in time to dodge two but three of them buried themselves into the meat of her right shoulder, piercing straight through the armour of her flak jacket.
She hissed and fell to her knees, chokutō clattering out of her hands as the puppet smashed to the ground. She could hear footsteps rushing across the cave and desperately held on to the connection with her clone. Kept the chakra pumping to it even as the poison sent her face-first to the floor and grinding her teeth to stop herself screaming. It burnt a trail of cold under her skin.
Unconsciousness sung like a siren from the corner of her mind but she forced herself to hang on. Forced herself to deal with the pain as the clone rushed to her side and jammed a needle into her neck.
Sweet, sweet warmth flooded her body. The pain dissipated and muscles loosened. Her entire body felt brittle, her head pounded in time to her heart beat, her skin pricked painfully and the senbon were still buried well into muscle but she was no longer dying. Pain was temporary. Death was- well.
Previous evidence pointed to temporary but her departure from this world would at least be permanent. Probably.
The clone melted into water and its cargo clattered to the floor.
"Asshole." She breathed, only the threat of more surprise weaponry stopped her from smashing the puppet to pieces.
"You are… not dying?" The bitch asked, frowning down at her. Sakura pushed herself onto her knees and gestured at the two injectors. One empty, one not.
"Antidotes."
The crone stared solemnly down at her grandson's body for a moment before turning and taking a step towards Sakura. She tensed. "You do not trust me." The crone said, frozen in her movements. Sakura raised incredulous eyebrows.
"Why would I?" Sakura hissed. The crone nodded.
"Of course, you are of the Leaf, I am from the Sand." Her expression weary. "The friendly alliances are nothing more than fabrications, underneath it we just are enemies." Sakura snarled at the old bitch.
"Oh fuck off." She spat. Her voice pumped full of vitriolic disgust. The crone's eyes widened. "When you're working as a team the least important thing is which pretty little symbol sits on your forehead." Sakura pushed herself up to standing and glowered. "I don't trust you," She stepped forward, (for once) looming over the hunched woman. "Because you broke that trust the very moment we walked in the door." Her voice was poisonousness. Barely a whisper that was seemingly amplified through the cavern by the thick blanket of killing intent she was giving off. Like the oppressive feeling in the air moments before the outbreak of a monstrous electrical storm.
"I-"
"We came to help." Sakura took a step forward. The crone took a step back, leaving a solid metre of space between them. "You disregarded our intentions, goals and the alliance and tried to kill Kakashi." A much more aggressive step forward. A stumbling step back. The oppressive weight in the air doubled, just thinking about it and how she couldn't just end the bitch's miserable life for trying to touch one of hers sending the monster frothing at the mouth as it howled for blood. "And after you attacked the envoy bringing lifesaving medical care and invaluable fighting assistance? You tried to play it off. As. A. Joke." Sakura jabbed a finger into the crone's chest. Her face was pale and sweaty and her limbs were shaky with the effort of holding up under Sakura's killing intent. The jab pushed the crone back another stumbling step.
"Take responsibility for your actions."
Another aggressive step. Another poke. The crone stumbled, teetered, and landed hard on her ass.
"Face up to your mistakes."
Sakura bent down and twisted her hand in front of the crone's dress. The old woman flinched backwards but Sakura was already yanking her upwards until their faces were only inches apart. Poisonous green eyes boring into shocked brown.
"And fucking apologise."
She tossed the crone back to the ground with a sneer. Only Kakashi's threat making the toss hard enough to bruise rather than break. Ignored the hunched form completely in favour of stalking towards the cave's entrance. She used her anger as fuel to pull the senbon from her shoulder, the metal clattering in a bloody trail behind her, and wasted no time as she stepped into the sunlight and swiped a thumb through the blood gushing down her arm. A lightning fast series of hand signs and her palms hit the floor. A cuckoo popped into existence in a puff of smoke. It opened its beak, likely to loudly complain, but she cut it off.
"Five caterpillars. Lead me to Kashi and Naruto. No arguments." Her tone was furious and the bird took to the sky without a word. After a minute of circling it dived back down and flew towards the forest. Sakura followed, the sound of footsteps behind her the only indication the crone had followed her.
Sakura didn't care. Either the crone came or she didn't.
Sakura rippled with blue. Her movements became faster and faster, following the flash of a bird through the leaves.
The footsteps behind her followed, began to flag and yet still followed.
Storm pulsed over Sakura's skin. Her sleeves and much of her pants began to flake off, in her foul mood unable to concentrate on stopping the storm from burning the areas it was most concentrated. Every step scorched foot prints of ash into the trees.
Sakura arrived to see Naruto covered in bubbling, acidic charka and Kakashi running towards him. She ignored them, instead streaking towards the tiny movement of blonde in the bushes. Eager for the chance to hurt. Her chokutō left a wake of ash and melted leaves as she sliced through the undergrowth, the blonde rolling just in time to avoid it and bursting away from her, a kunai in his mouth as his lone hand rummaged through the pouch at his hip, eyes wide and manic.
Sakura's chakra had already stringed. Already coated.
She kawarimi'd just as he'd felt the foreign chakra and panicked, spitting out the weapon. She appeared before him and her chokutō burned straight through his scratched hitai-ate. A truly outrageous amount of chakra pumped through it. His head boiled and melted as they plummeted to the ground. Sakura twisted the corpse below her and her feet landed on it's chest with a satisfying crack and squelch. Blue coated sandals crushing bone and organs like a boulder through papier-mâché.
She pulled her sword out, stopped her flow of chakra and straightened; sheathing the clean blade and ignoring the way blood and gore began to slosh over her feet. She turned her face to the sky and breathed deeply, forcing herself still through the head rush as her suddenly almost empty reserves hit her. Her anger abated, the monster slipping back into the box. Much of her pain eclipsed by the numbness of chakra exhaustion.
That had been monumentally stupid.
And monumentally satisfying.
She stepped away from the body to stumble and sway to a nearby tree. She pressed her back to the bark and sunk down until she hit the ground. Knees drawn up to her chest and head tilted back to rest on the trunk.
Kakashi, Naruto and the old lady appeared from one direction, Team Gai appeared from the other. Her summons landed on her knee and squawked loudly.
"Yeah, yeah I got it." She mumbled, digging a hand through her kit to unseal and pull out her jar of caterpillars with shaking hands. She tipped six into her palm and held it out as the bird chomped through them eagerly. "Sorry for being a bitch, even if you probably deserved it." It swallowed the last caterpillar and puffed out of existence, looking distinctly round. The half full jar slipped out of numb fingers and spilled over the floor. She couldn't find the energy to care.
The old woman appeared by her side and pressed a glowing green hand to her shoulder. "Idiot girl, pushing yourself that far, injured and having just fought off poisoning?" The old woman clucked her tongue and a second green hand landed over Sakura's forehead. "You're a mess, I'm shocked you're even conscious with this little chakra left."
Her migraine blessedly abated and Sakura smiled. "What do you mean, I've got a whole three percent left!" She chuckled weakly and blinked away black spots, the sweet embrace of unconsciousness looking more and more tempting.
"Sakura-chan." An orange blur said from her left. Her eyes drooped and she yawned.
"Didn' do 'nything too bad." Sakura slurred as her eyes slid shut.
"I'll take her." Someone said and she was lifted onto a familiar back. She buried her face into a flak jacket and let unconsciousness claim her.
When Sakura opened her eyes again she was still being carried on Hatake's back, but she felt freshly washed and they were walking through the desert. She blinked, rubbed an eye and straightened to look at the people around them.
Maito was walking next to them with three packs on his back, enthusiastically gesturing with his hands as he told a story about… fighting himself? The Uzumaki was in an argument? Undergoing a friendly competition? Flirting? with Lee and the Hyuuga, the weapons mistress watching them with an extremely confused expression. Sakura glanced down at herself and realised she was clad nothing more than her shinobi blacks.
She looked up from her bare feet to see a grey eye peering back at her.
"Where are my shoes?" She asked and Hatake eye smiled at her for a moment before turning back to watch where they were going. Maito was laughing next to them.
"They were pretty gross so we threw them out, Sakura-chan. Along with most of what you'd been wearing actually." He said. She sighed and leaned back into his back, stretching her arms over his shoulders. "Your flak jacket survived, though it needs a new right shoulder."
"A small price to pay for such an impressive victory!" Maito boomed. "Truly, taking down two Akatsuki is a very youthful feat!" That caught the attention of the others and Uzumaki bounded over, the rest trailing behind him.
"Sakura-chan!" Uzumaki cried. "You're awake! The Suna medics said you were just super tired but Shizune had already gone and we wanted to get you checked out by granny so we left early!" He babbled and she smiled.
"I appreciate the concern, though I do just feel tired." She said. He smiled and threw his hands behind his head, walking along beside them.
"That's great, Sakura-chan!"
"What happened?" She asked. Uzumaki's face turned solemn and he didn't answer.
"Chiyo-sama used Naruto's chakra and a jutsu that gave her life to bring back Gaara-sama." The Hyuuga explained when it became apparent no one else would. His voice was bland and professional but tinged with a surprising amount of respect for a member of the stuffy clan. "The Suna shinobi caught up to us just as the Kazekage woke and we returned to the village for a memorial service."
"Aah."
"The old lady told me something to tell you." Uzumaki said, his face scrunching up in confusion. "She said… 'You were right. Stay the hell out of Suna.' Then she apologised to sensei for attacking him."
Sakura laughed. "God what a cow. So, how did you guys beat the Akatsuki guy? He was cowering in the bushes when I showed up."
That launched the Uzumaki into a dramatic retelling of the events and after a few sentences Maito decided to enthusiastically join in with what his team were doing at the time. Then Lee began physically jumping in to make the occasional sound effect or comment, which led to the girl throwing in some mostly weapon related anecdotes- and some weapons- and the Hyuuga adding basic contextual information the others glossed over in favour of showy descriptions of explosions.
Hatake quietly wilted beneath her.
"We told Suna that Team Gai took down the Akatsuki called Deidara and you passed out after helping Chiyo-sama take down Sasori of the Red Sand." The Hyuuga said as the group finished their tale. "Hatake-san seemed sure you would not appreciate the recognition and ordered us not to mention the colour of your sword." Sakura couldn't really be sure, but she was almost certain the featureless purple eyes were fixed on her with curiosity. "I am unsure why this would be the case. I watched you take down Deidara with my Byakugan, it was most impressive."
"Sensei was right- thank you Kakashi- really wouldn't want to have to start looking over my shoulder at peace talks, you know?" She said. The Hyuuga's face seemed torn between confusion and grief. Maybe it was too early to be making jokes about the Hyuuga incident.
Then again, Hatake's chest was shaking with silent laughter beneath her.
(Kakashi collapsed ten minutes out from Konoha, apparently having been cycling chakra to stay moving. She walked the rest of the way on foot.)