Title: Are You Ready?
Chapter: 35 – Fourfold
Author: Killaurey
Rating: T
Word Count: 5,180
Summary: AU. Sakura gives up on Kakashi as a teacher after Team 7 falls apart. Too bad fate, enemy ninja, and sheer bad luck have other plans.
Disclaimer: Naruto doesn't belong to me. It's Kishimoto's and I just play with it. Part 35 of ? Unbeta'd.
Sakura runs until she's past several hedges that reach taller than she has inches of height and then she takes a sharp left, taking a wide angle back towards the Main House, to come at it from a different direction.
This should, she knows, help throw people off her trail and also mean she's able to gather intel on what happened.
Only once she's thoroughly certain that no one is following her (and paranoia pulses in her heartbeat, her mind turning over the idea that, as someone really is out to get her then… doesn't that mean it's no longer paranoia?) does Sakura stop, take cover, and then take stock of her injuries.
Nothing that will slow me down, she decides, peeling a few of the more uncomfortable splinters out of her skin with a grimace when they come out bloody. They sting and that sucks but I'm not actually hurt, hurt.
As she considers her next move, Sakura bites her lip thoughtfully.
I really want to know why they're so desperate to get us into that wing of the building. What could they need us there for? What could be the reason that they want us to blithely invade the innermost rooms of Kakashi's parents? Their personal living quarters? The only thing I can think of that might have any value there, after so many years, is the summoning contract.
After all, if it was just thieves looking for expensive things… there wouldn't be a need for us.
Then there's the whole problem of the monster. The sun is starting to go down.
She eyes the trail of it in the sky uneasily.
I think I'd rather face the people inside the building than the monster. If I'm in the Main House when the sun goes down, though, we're going to be facing both. I don't even know if these two things are connected. Does the monster have anything to do with the enemy or are we just having a very… Team Seven… run of bad luck? There's no way to tell until it's already too late.
Sparing a moment to wish that she could go back in time and start the day over again, Sakura sighs. That's silliness, of course, since outside of Hatake-sensei's run-in with a bloodline ability, there's no such thing as time travel.
And he didn't even time travel in the first place. He got… displaced. Replaced? Whatever. Now quit dreaming and focus.
After a few minutes, she sighs again.
I don't see any way around it. I'm going to have to go back in there or I'm going to need to evacuate and get help. I haven't seen or heard from Ino, who would definitely have broken Hatake-sensei's orders to find me by this point, even if she didn't say anything, just got my location and joined up. Hatake-sensei can take care of himself, probably, but Ino…
Well. Ino can also take care of herself too but it's not on the same level as Hatake-sensei, not at all, and Sakura admits to herself that she'd feel more comfortable if she knew where Ino was.
Since she hasn't found me yet, she's either unconscious and captive or…
Sakura pushes herself back onto her hands and knees and grimly begins the process of sneaking back up on the Main House and whatever will be in there.
She's unconscious and captive.
Because Sakura is not going to even entertain the idea that Ino is dead.
No chance, no way, she vows.
So intent is she on distracting herself from bad thoughts and getting back to the Main House that Sakura never even realizes she's wandered right on into the range of an enemy and—
The world goes black.
"Sorry about this," Ino says, looking down at Sakura's unconscious body. "I promise it'll all make sense eventually. You're just going to have to take my word for it because, well, the rest of the night is going to suck for you."
Sakura, being unconscious, doesn't answer her.
"If it makes you feel any better, it's going to suck for everyone. It doesn't make me feel better but, well, you'll find out why… in a while. It's complicated."
Are you monologuing to Sakura's body? the Captain asks, well, 'Ino'.
"Maybe," 'Ino' says evasively as she kneels and hoists Sakura's body up across her shoulders. "You'd do the same if you were here."
I'm a little busy right now, the Captain snaps. Get Sakura and get both your asses back here. Three has confirmed that Hatake-sensei is on the move.
"And the sun's going down," 'Ino' says. "Not that this hasn't been fun and all but I'm looking forward to having this over with. My head hurts."
Oh, your head hurts?
"Yeah, yeah, Captain, I know," 'Ino' says easily. "Just hang onto your hair, I'm coming. You can probably stop renewing the jutsu now and just let it simmer."
Not yet. Ino's not quite in place.
"That doesn't surprise me at all," 'Ino' says, running easily despite the weight of Sakura dragging on her. She doesn't bother to hide. There's nothing out here, not right now, to interfere with them. "You're never where you're supposed to be either."
Disgruntled silence answers her and 'Ino' grins up at the sky.
"It's a beautiful night out," she says to Sakura. "It's like all the stars have come out to play and there's a blanket of clouds coming in after them to make sure they get enough sleep. What do you think about that?"
Still no answer.
"Probably for the best," she says. "After all, I wouldn't want to have to knock you out all over again. Once, you'll forgive, right?"
'Ino' chuckles.
Ino, wearing Sakura's face, stares at the stranger wearing her face. It's still super weird.
"You wanted to talk," the stranger says. "So talk. Hurry up or we'll run out of time."
Run out of time for what?
She resists the urge to narrow her eyes, covering it with a glance around the room. There's a few packs, which might be interesting, except that Ino doesn't dare go poking through them with someone right there. Then there's a stool, a lantern on a low table, and an ancient looking book.
Obviously, this fake has been reading to pass the time.
"You see," she says, not really sure where she's going with this but ready to roll with it and just let the words tumble out, trusting herself that she'll say the right things, "it's that—"
The crump of an explosion at a slight distance makes the building tremble.
Both of them whip around, a strange unison, an oddly familiar thing to her, paired like this, with both Ino and Sakura as a unit, but neither is wearing the right face and Ino finds that unsettling in a bone-deep sort of way.
"That's the signal," the fake her says. "We don't have time for last minute adjustments. You're going to have wing it instead of trying to dump your responsibilities onto me."
Ino, ostensibly Sakura, laughs. "And this isn't winging it?" she asks. "Besides, that's called delegating."
But the stranger-enemy is right about one thing: there's no time for this. A signal means bad things, means that she's in the wrong place at the wrong time, that she needs to get somewhere else or she needs to keep this stranger right here and hope the plan, whatever it is, fails due to the lack of a complete team.
But my team will also be incomplete, Ino thinks. And I'm disinclined to accept that. Logic says if there's a signal going off that their pieces are in place. I want to go and kick them over.
"Don't be ridiculous," 'Ino' snaps, then her eyes narrow— "You!"
"Yeah, sorry," Ino says, not sounding sorry at all, even though it irks her that the enemy figured it out, "but you're not the only ones that can wear each other's faces and, frankly, I think Sakura would care less that I was doing it than any of you."
She grins, sharp-edged and not at all Sakura's smile. "Tell me," Ino says, "if this place goes up in flames, what'll happen to the plan?"
'Ino' sputters and looks at her with what Ino thinks might be true horror. "Are you nuts? You'd die too!"
But that moment of shock is all Ino had needed.
She grabs one of the packs, at random, deliberately knocks over the lantern on the table, and bolts out of the room, ignoring the enemy's swearing as oil and flame spread like a sunrise on water across the floor.
That was weird, Ino decides, eschewing stealth for the moment in favour of speed as she puts space between her and the enemy and the fire. Weirder than the rest of it, even, because I'm pretty sure the stranger didn't want me dead. The idea that I would sacrifice myself upset them.
Reaching a grove of trees, Ino flings herself up into the branches of one, then carefully, slowly, slips a few over before she dares to look behind her.
I don't think I was followed, she decides. Carefully, she dispels the henge and resumes her own form. Though that doesn't mean I can let my guard down.
Ino looks behind her, at where smoke is crawling towards the sky.
That's going to have to be dealt with. That should take immediate priority over me. The oil cut off their escape, there's no windows, and the rest of their things are in there. I've got a little time.
There's a possibility that the enemy will die in that fire, which doesn't bother Ino—better them than her—but she doubts it. Not due to the spill of a lamp.
Now, if I'd soaked the outside of the building in oil and lit a match… well, yeah, but that's a totally different thing. I didn't do that. I also probably wouldn't have entered the building at all then, just let it go up.
With a shake of her head, Ino studies the bag and supplies that she's stolen.
Just supplies. Nothing interesting, she decides after a few moments. She does pocket the extra kunai and the handful of explosive notes because why wouldn't she? The ration bars she leaves, unwilling to trust that they haven't been tampered with. But there's something about it that's weird.
It nags at her, the sense that there is something about the bag that she ought to realize, and Ino frowns at it before—
This is a Konoha bag! And these are the same kinds of rations we have back at first base!
Ino feels a little sick.
Does that mean whoever is attacking us—are they Konoha nin?
Moving quickly, she stows the bag in the nook of yet another tree, and then drops to the ground.
With another glance in the direction of her fire, Ino heads back to the Main House. In the gloaming, dust from the explosion can barely be seen.
They might not be. Didn't Hatake-sensei say that it was important to take nothing of your real home with you? That's why he went through our things before this mission and replaced almost everything, so it wouldn't give our home away as easily.
But she doesn't feel good about this idea, not in the least, or about anything that's happened.
I want some answers and I want them now, Ino thinks rebelliously. And I should probably be leaving and getting help—I have no idea where Sakura or Hatake-sensei are but I suspect I won't like the answers to their locations.
It bothers her that a signal went off. It means something is going right for the enemy. She hopes that her fire means something is going wrong for them too.
Taking to the rooftops, Ino feels the skin at the back of her neck prickle, like she's being watched, but she can't spot anything and doesn't want to waste any more time. In the twilight she's not all that visible anyway.
In minutes, she's staring down at the site of the explosion. There's a crater a few feet across, the ruins of what had been an overgrown garden, and no obvious sign of any person having been caught up in it. She hops down from the roof and runs her fingers against the rim of the crater, feeling how the ground is still warm.
The air is still warm, chasing away the rain-heavy chill that is rolling in with the night.
Ino frowns at it.
A movement, caught out of the corner of her eye, has her darting under the cover of some truly bedraggled bushes. The leaves are torn and in tatters but the overgrowth has left them thick enough that in the growing darkness she's pretty sure she's covered. Tamping down her chakra in a hurry, Ino holds her breath.
It's—
Oh, for crying out loud! Can't they use someone else's face?
It's another Ino.
This one looks over the wreckage thoughtfully for a moment then heads back inside.
I'm still the prettiest, she thinks stubbornly. But thank you, fake me, for showing me where to go.
Though Ino hesitates because there's a possibility that it's a trap. A good possibility that it's a trap.
Okay, okay, so think about the layout of this area of the estate. Can we get closer without going inside? Am I close enough that I can feel their chakra?
She doesn't dare go into a trance, not right now, which would be the easiest way of stretching out her fledging sensor abilities, but she sends invisible fingers out questing, best as she can, looking for something, anything.
That's Sakura's chakra!
Ino would recognize that anywhere and she hadn't even realized it but, the moment she'd found it, she knew it. No one else's chakra was Sakura's. Except that Sakura's chakra is oddly placid, calm and unrippled. On the heels of that comes the ugly realization—
They have Sakura! And she's unconscious!
Gritting her teeth, Ino shoves away the urge to run towards her. A rescue can't happen if she gets caught and she's not skilled enough to just barge in, hope for the best, and grab Sakura. They're too close in weight to make that an easy feat.
That is one thousand percent a trap.
Ino wracks her brain for an alternate way to approach. There has to be one, always is, once someone utilizes a little creativity.
I am not going through that door.
But Sakura being unconscious, likely captured, limits her creative approaches. She can't put Sakura in more danger, not when she doesn't even know where she's been held.
Sensor skills suck, Ino decides, because she can't possibly be the one to suck at anything. Never mind that she's had literally zero training at using them and has no idea if she's using them right or not. All I know is she's that-a-way and that's not useful. Much.
She pulls herself a little further into the brush and closes her eyes. A daring move, she knows, but she doesn't sense any chakra right by her, which she consoles herself with, and turns her concentration inwards, sending her senses outwards.
This would be so much easier if she had her mind abilities.
Dwelling on that, now, will only serve to slow her down. Ino ruthlessly suppresses the complaint and deals with the hand she's been dealt.
There's Sakura, I'd know her anywhere. Then there's... three people... no, a fourth one just arrived, I think, but they've all got weirdly blended chakra signatures and I can't differentiate between them. I want to say they're a little bit familiar but, she swallows hard, feeling them is making me nauseous. It's like they've turned their chakra into kaleidoscopes. I wonder how they did that?
Before they really do make her sick, Ino turns her attention away from them, looking for Hatake-sensei. It takes her precious moments to locate him and the only reason she does is because of all the time they've spent together in the last few weeks with only his and Sakura's chakra signatures.
It's whisper quiet, tamped down hard, and if she didn't know him so well, she doubts that she'd have even noticed him.
Maybe a sneeze's worth of chakra, Ino thinks ruefully. I can't get down that low.
But the good thing is that-he's nearby.
And I don't think he's been captured, not when he's masking his chakra. I think it's time I rejoined my sensei.
Ino pulls back through the brush, heedless of the way the branches scrape at her, until she's through to the other side. Casting a glance at where the other Ino had been, and seeing nothing, she leaps onto the roof and then flattens herself immediately.
And waits, breathlessly, to see if anything stirs.
Nothing does.
As carefully as she knows how-which, thanks to Hatake-sensei is more carefully than she'd have managed a few weeks ago-Ino closes the distance until she's forced to stop, another courtyard spread open and lambent in the light of lanterns.
He's on the other side!
She can't see him, not with the dark crawling around them, falling like a blanket to cover their vision, but she knows he's there.
Now, how do I get his attention?
Kakashi lurks on the rooftop and, unless he misses his guess, he's directly over where his childhood bedroom was. He's not sure if it means anything, not yet, but he's keeping it in mind.
Most of his attention is riveted on the scene in the courtyard below.
Sakura lays crumpled next to a brazier that is throwing off flames tinged with an eerie green and there are-
Four Inos.
That, he feels, is way too much Ino for anyone to deal with.
And none of them are my Ino.
Worry about where she might be gnaws at him but from the looks of things below, the entire enemy team is there, which means Ino has evaded capture.
And they're not happy about it, he thinks. Kakashi casts a baleful glance up at the sky, which is filled with scudding clouds, dark enough to muffle any starlight before it reaches them. The lanterns give him the layout but there's not enough light to fully read their lips. She's not where she's supposed to be?
A glint on the roof across catches his eye. Then again, flashing in a signal pattern that he hasn't seen since the war, which was the last time he'd been on a team with a Yamanaka-led squad.
Kakashi smiles. Good girl. I bet she doesn't know many patterns yet. She'd have had to improvise with something she'd hope I'd recognize.
He shifts, moving back so that this won't be seen from below and then tilts his head, catching the lantern glow, and flashing it back at her. Once and only once.
She stops.
And she'll be ready to go when I move.
Because that is what the pattern meant. She is in position and waiting. Had they not been above the enemy it would have been risky, especially using her hitai-ite, but a few feet back from the edge of the roof means no one can see them from below.
Kakashi's smile turns sharp.
Teamwork is one of Ino's strengths. If I go for the enemy, she'll go for Sakura, no question about it. The question is... what are they doing down there?
Down below, he sees Sakura startle awake, then deliberately relax again, like she's still unconscious.
Good. As good as I could hope for. Let's see now...
Sakura's head hurts like hell and so does her pride and her feelings and basically her everything.
I got captured! I've been turned into a damsel in distress!
It's a heavy, ugly blow against her fragile self-confidence, but there's no time to concentrate on her feelings, which wail and protest, not when she's got a rock digging into her side, her hands and feet bound, and the heat of a fire far, far too close to her.
Staying still takes more effort than is pretty but she manages.
It's the tiniest thing but the fact that she did it, Sakura uses as a wall against the rise of her insecurities. She's so tired of not being good enough, strong enough, and this—
This is a fork in the road, she realizes. I can either spend my time here beating myself up and getting nothing accomplished while the rest of my team is either incapacitated or, more likely, planning a rescue. Or I can try and do what I can to gather information and, possibly, rescue myself.
She pictures Hatake-sensei smiling at her, telling her that her success is up to her, not anyone else to determine, that she's good enough to be whomever she wants to be.
Ino is even easier to picture—Ino has always believed Sakura should be the best she can be. She takes it for granted that, obviously, Sakura is going to be awesome.
Sakura doesn't feel awesome. She feels kind of like dirt and the cobblestones underneath. Unkempt and ill-maintained, a current hazard for the unwary.
But I could fix a yard. It takes a lot of work but laying new cobblestones and weeding and sweeping and everything would make it right again. I'm not a yard. I'm more than a yard. So, maybe, all that means is that I need to work harder and longer at me to make me really shine.
She's not sure she believes that—she's trying-but it gives her something firm to stand on in the moment.
And, the first thing to do, in order to repair the Sakura-yard, is to do my best. What is my best then? What's the best way to be my best, here and now, while held captive by the enemy?
That's easy to figure out. She's just got to pay attention, see if she can get away, and if not, make them very, very sorry for having taken her captive. Relief floods her.
I can do that. Think! You've got to get an idea of what you're dealing with first! Okay, so the best way to move forward is… start with the senses.
She listens, hard, trying to guess how many of them there are from the sound of movement.
They're too quiet to be Genin. At least, they're quieter than any Genin I've ever met. I'd guess they're Chuunin, though, just because I can't see this having fallen out the way it has if it was a Genin team. Hatake-sensei would have taken them out by now. There's at least three, I think? What else do I hear?
After a few moments, she thinks she has where they're roughly located. Only one is close enough to her to cause immediate alarm. The others are a little further away and there's the soft murmur of a familiar voice, oddly doubled, tripled.
Are they still using Ino's form in a henge?
It sounds like it. She can't make out the words but from the rhythm of the conversation, Sakura thinks they're unhappy about something.
Good. Confusion to the enemy is always to be celebrated.
There's also a soft noise that reminds her of tea ceremonies with her mother who, no matter how delicately and graciously she makes her movements, the porcelain of the cup clicks against the saucer now and then.
For a wild moment, Sakura wonders if her captors are sitting around drinking tea while they argue before she remembers the shards. She has no evidence that they have them, but they're another suspicious thing she's encountered and it would be an awfully large coincidence for this and that to not be related.
And all she really has to do is open her eyes to prove it.
She'll get there.
For now, tentatively, Sakura decides it's probably something to do with the shards she and Ino had found while searching through the Main House. It isn't a fun thought. Sakura still has no idea what they could possibly be doing with them, which makes predicting what's going to happen a near impossibility.
The bugs are singing their wild songs, which likely means they're well into sun-down, encroaching on the night. She doesn't hear many birds. It's too early for the night hunters, she gauges, and too late for the song birds to be active.
A fire crackles hotly nearby but the other side of her is cool. Which is another tick in the box of the sun having gone down.
As for smells… she breathes in and out, keeping the movements slow and careful, hoping her captors won't notice the change in breath that indicates someone is awake. The longer they think she's unconscious the better her odds are of figuring something out that will help her.
There's the scent of decay and growing things both, which tells her she's still very close to the Main House—or one of the other buildings, she concedes, since the dust-laden abandonment is the same around all of them—and there's the fire she's already noticed.
There's also an oddly… spicy… edge to the air that she doesn't recognize.
Taking inventory of her body and possessions, Sakura is grimly unsurprised to find that her weapons have been stripped from her, all of her pouches gone, the things she'd tucked away into her clothes also gone.
But I still have my greatest weapons, she reminds herself. Hatake-sensei would be so disappointed in me if I discounted my body and my mind. A kunai can't defend or attack if the body and mind don't work and we've been working on my taijutsu.
She's tied up but other than a headache, the splinters from earlier, and some new bruises, Sakura doesn't think she's particularly injured. That's a comfort to her, even though she hasn't decided what to do. It leaves her options open wider.
Her chakra feels fine too. A bubble of energy that all living things have but only some can manipulate. Sakura's chakra might not be as strong as a lot of peoples', though she's working on building the reserves of it, but she knows it and knows how to use it with a light touch.
There's a lot of things I can do once I get my hands free.
Bolstered by that thought, Sakura moves onto the next sense.
Carefully, far more carefully than she's been regulating her breathing, Sakura cracks her eyes open a slit. She's gone as far as she can without seeing and now, though it does carry a risk of being discovered, she needs to obtain visual data.
Night has fallen and the darkness is near complete, not even stars smiling down upon her. She is in a courtyard, though not the one she'd exploded—and now, now Sakura wonders if having her trigger the explosive note had been part of their plan though she doesn't see what purpose it served, but it must have been one the fake Ino she'd been with who'd slipped her the note in the first place.
That makes her pause a bit.
Why did I use it? she wonders. That was so dangerous. It wasn't even my tag.
But there's no answers right now.
She's still by the Main House, Sakura decides. There's other courtyards and other buildings on the grounds but the Main House is the only one with courtyards completely surrounded by walls. The rest are open for coming and going without having to go through the actual buildings.
The sight of not three, but four Inos is deeply disorienting. Sakura loves her best friend and teammate dearly but seeing the enemy use her face and form… it makes her want to shiver. One of them is close by, near the fire that she's been feeling, which turns out to be in a brazier rather than a fire pit. The metal is old and scarred by time.
More concerning is the way the flames have licks of green wound through them. As she watches, the Ino nearest her adds a handful of powder to the fire and for a moment the entire thing is a deep, dark green before the orange of natural light bleeds back through, burning higher and harder.
The weird spiciness to the air intensifies.
Across the courtyard, she sees two other Inos doing the same thing to their braziers, then her eyes are caught by the fourth Ino who is alone, in the center of the courtyard. This one is kneeling by a low table, carefully intent on putting together—
It is the shards!
From the angle Sakura has, she can't tell what the Ino is making from them, but she can see the odd flow of sparkling, twinkly lights drifting up from it. Inky shadows, like fingers of darkness, writhe across the Ino's face unnaturally.
Fear sinks into Sakura's bones.
She forces the sudden surge of terror away, refusing to give into the atavistic desperation she feels looking at the center tableau. Pulling her gaze away from it helps, though watching the nearest Ino cut open her hand and write on the ground with a brush dipped in her own blood…
I need to get out of here. Like, now. There's no more time to waste by looking and seeing what's going on. In stories and histories, nothing good ever comes from blood rituals.
Sakura grimly starts trying to free her hands.
"Number Two," the Ino in the center says, not bothering to look up from her careful work.
The Ino closest to her is there in half a second, grabbing Sakura's hands and squeezing them so tightly that she gasps. "Ah ah ah," Number Two says. Her voice is Ino's but Ino has never sounded so impersonally chiding. "None of that now."
Like she's a cranky toddler who won't go down for nap.
Infuriated, Sakura lashes out with her feet. The movement is terrible between her position on the ground, both her hands and feet being bound, and her hands being further trapped by Number Two. She does it anyway out of spite.
Number Two kicks her across the courtyard.
Sakura lands in a crumpled heap at the feet of yet another Ino. She has time to glare up at her before this one picks up and shakes her roughly. This Ino is far, far stronger than her Ino.
"Boss," this Ino says, giving her another shake. "We good to go?"
"The trigger will need to be pulled first and then…" Center Ino, who must be their leader, says then hums thoughtfully, distractedly, trailing off. Something clicks.
Sakura wonders if throwing up all over the Ino that has her now would be sufficient revenge. It would serve her right, this freak wearing her best friend's face and body, but there's a bar of pain across her chest already and she feels dizzy and nauseous.
When the boss finishes her thought, though, Sakura's blood runs cold.
"Then bring her here and tie her down."