"Naruto, can you try something for me?"

Despite his soft tone, Kakashi's voice cracked like a whip through the cave, breaking the three men from their intense standoff with Sakura's tattooed back. Kakashi wasn't sure how long they'd been standing there, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it seemed they had passed some metaphorical timer for bad news and were in the clear. For now.

"Yeah Sensei?"

"I want you to go into Sage-mode and see if you can detect anything outside this cave. Something tells me our luck so far has been very conditional, and we're not far from tipping the scale back into balance."

There was a determined set to his brow when Naruto responded, "Yeah. I'm on it."

Kakashi cast an eye to Sasuke. A flex of his jaw and a nod and Kakashi had his answer – Naruto activating his chakra this close shouldn't be a problem for Sakura and the seal. Either way they'd both be prepared, judging by the way Sasuke mirrored his stance in watching Naruto settle comfortably on the stone floor, Sakura firmly in their periphery.

"They might not be so easily detected as I think we learnt from last time, so keep your eyes peeled for even the smallest of signals. If they're coming for us, we're not about to let ourselves be ambushed. Let's show them we've got an ace up our sleeve." His lips twitched in the inkling of a smile, a barely-there twist of blue fabric, then it was gone.

"Hai. Leave it to me."

There was a shift in the air as Naruto engaged with his Sage chakra, painfully careful in his control in a way that Kakashi rarely saw him. Regardless, both Kakashi and Sasuke jerked towards Sakura as she let out the smallest of grunts. The seal did not pulse or attempt to change colour from Sakura's cooling green tones, but the tight screwing of her eyes belied a difficulty all the same.

Kakashi heard the creaking of leather and fleetingly glanced at Sasuke's closed fist and tense shoulders. He seemed to be a loud noise away from spontaneously combusting and taking out this whole base with a lightning charged fire ball. It was hard not to notice the way Sasuke had retreated further in on himself over the past few days, only opening up to lash out – a behaviour not all that uncommon but veritably more overwrought than usual. And as much as he enjoyed occasionally playing one, Kakashi was no fool.

He tilted his head fractionally and forcibly relaxed his own taut stance, falling into a slouch next to the high-strung Uchiha. His hands itched to find his pockets, but he kept them free. He would not put self-comfort over Sakura's safety. In fact, he'd much rather fall on his own kunai.

"Notice anything different from other attempts so far?" Despite the faith he had in Sakura, Kakashi wasn't about to undervalue the importance of preparation. He needed to know what to look out for, when precisely to intervene.

"Yeah. She's still alive."

Kakashi was unphased by Sasuke's callous response. He was intimately familiar with the defence mechanisms of troubled shinobi. He calmly inquired, "Others?"

"Some are dead before they realise what's happening. Other's scream until they're sucked dry. Most don't last five minutes. Those that do… it only gets worse for them."

He nodded mutely. "She's strong, Sasuke." He felt compelled to say in the silence.

"Hn."

Perhaps if this was eight years ago, Kakashi might've heaved a sigh and ruffled the kid's hair, just to break the air of gloom around him into one of annoyance. But he had never been good at reaching Sasuke, despite the similarities they share. And what does that say about him.

His chest expanded in a deep breath. "It's okay to worry about your friends, Sasuke. Healthy even. But it's also okay to trust them too."

Kakashi wondered when he started to sound so…old. He could faintly recall somewhere in his distant memory his own Sensei having a similar talk with him… or maybe it was the Sandaime? There was probably a whole slew of people who tried to have a similar intervention with him, in fact. Kakashi felt itchy with hypocrisy. Or perhaps it was a sort of grave empathy that had his fingers twitching from blood that wasn't there.

"Trust." It wasn't a question, it could hardly be classified as a scoff; but there was derision in there somewhere.

"Trust." Kakashi repeated steadily. "Not an easy thing for shinobi, and yet perversely essential. You can save more than one life when your trust in your teammates. Or you could lose a lot more than you could ever imagine." He sighed then, deep and heavy. It rattled his bones in memory – a lesson engraved into his very being. But Sasuke didn't need a lesson on loss.

"I know Team Seven isn't exactly known for our long-standing trust, but like everything with our team, it's either all or nothing. And we're here now. I probably don't have to say this, but when you're ready, you have our trust. Freely given and hard-won."

"Hn."

"And it's okay to trust in us in return."

There was a sharpness to Sasuke's eye when he glanced at him; something almost like a cornered animal who was gearing to fight and rent his way out, far too many times used to the situation to do anything but rip and tear his way to freedom. A foot facing Sakura, his other facing Naruto, and a piercing eye assessing everything in between. There were no enemies here, but Sasuke's instincts were hard-wired, and more importantly, heightened in the presence of his team.

Kakashi didn't react to his wild stare. Rather, he idly wondered how many times someone had looked upon him in the past and seen a similar image. He wonders if he ever stopped or just got better at disguising it – that impulsive reflex to bite the hand that reaches for you.

His nose twitched.

They stood in the buzzing quiet of the chamber; restless in waiting but practiced in patience for the right moment to strike – a Viper and a Wolf.

There was nothing in particular that happened to draw his attention away, but Sasuke dragged his gaze over to Naruto, then slowly to Sakura; his eye changing from onyx to crimson to onyx as he swept his gaze from one to the other. He repeated this action as if it was a necessity to live, and perhaps for him, it is.

But Sasuke remained standing beside him and Kakashi thought that might mean more than any words Sasuke could possible grunt out to him.

Sasuke deactivated his Sharingan once more in as many minutes, a persistent ache making itself known behind his eyes. He withheld a huff. Sakura would surely lecture him if she knew he was using his Sharingan so carelessly, so needlessly, after all the work she put into repairing them.

Sasuke glanced at Kakashi from the corner of his eye, standing resolutely next to him, all Konoha greens and navy, a symbol of steadfastness. He didn't have to worry about Kakashi ratting him out to Sakura. He knew with little doubt that their old sensei would not be allowing Sakura to even contemplate using any chakra in the next few days, let alone to heal him.

Sasuke swallowed the sour taste in his mouth with a small amount of guilt. No, that was prejudiced of him. Kakashi was many things, but he was never careless when it came to his precious people, even him. The man took his teammates extremely seriously, and despite his casual façade, he was single-minded in protecting his team. Sasuke grudgingly looked away from the loyal silver-haired man.

Kakashi would rather take the hit than let one land on his friends. Unlike him. No, he would rather kill the person who dared to harm his precious people. But the irony in that is that his precious people would be harmed, and he would be acting after the fact. Well. He was an avenger after-all. Not a saviour.

Sasuke's focus sharpened on golden hair and tanned skin – Naruto, sitting determined in stopping a threat before it can even become one. Sasuke smothered a cynical laugh. Naruto was always looking towards the future, and he was always obsessing with the past. It made them irreparably different. He was not like Naruto. He didn't save people. He was not like Kakashi. He didn't protect. He was an Uchiha. He avenges, he obsesses, and he punishes.

A small hitched breath had his head turning to regard Sakura, still standing unwavering and unbent against something so much greater than herself. Sasuke's crimson eyes traced the beads of sweet that traversed her black and porcelain skin. Sasuke felt his face twitch to mirror the grimace of concentration on her face – a look akin to pain but just too stubborn to show it. So like Sakura.

His eyes span slowly as he tore his gaze away from her face to trace the contours of her body, painted in reds and blacks and ivory. Somewhere along the way his thoughts became unstuck, and before he knew what he was doing, Sasuke was replaying a memory over in his mind.

He should've knocked louder. He should've just waited by the door. Why did he ever think using her bedroom window would result in anything less than an awkward situation?

He should leave. He should make himself known. But he was stuck. Completely stuck staring at the scar on Sakura's back as she sought for something to wear. She clearly just came out of the shower, clad in only her shorts and her wrappings. But he couldn't acknowledge anything beyond the raised flesh that looked so wrong and raw on her person.

His eyes flickered red, as though attempting to see through an illusion. The Sakura he knew didn't have scars. She was smooth skin and small hands and unblemished. She was – had been – naïve of suffering. She could heal. So why hadn't she healed what looked to be a painful, jagged injury?

Then she turned, and he was gone. But not before his eyes forever recorded the twin scar which sat directly over the side of her stomach – the exact proof that she had been impaled.

The thought ran hysterically through his head as he raced back to the training fields he was supposed to meet Sakura on. Why had he thought he would walk over with her? It was stupid. Idiotic. An uncharacteristic decision. And it had cost him a slice of his sanity.

Impaled. Impaled and she hadn't healed it. Couldn't heal it? He wretched himself from that thought only to be cornered by another – Sakura foolishly charging towards an impossible enemy. One moment she was poised to strike, the next, she was dangling from a madman's grip, impaled on the spike of a false god.

The image had barely registered with him at the time; his eyes crazed on Madara, not his ex-teammate. But that's why he had Naruto. Naruto did the saving, he was there to hurt.

But the scar was on the wrong side for it to be evidence of that injury. In fact, he had seen it sizzle and seal over on Sakura's body but a moment after it was inflicted. So who?

Who had Naruto failed to save her from? Who had he failed to punish?

And why was he so shaken by this revelation? Of course, she would have scars, every shinobi had scars. So why did it unsettle him to see them on her? It was ridiculous.

"Hey! You taking pages out of Kaka-sensei's book now?"

Sasuke nearly fell out of the tree he was hiding in when he heard Sakura call up to him from below.

There was lightness in her eyes. But it looked wrong to him now, knowing what she hid beneath.

He didn't respond. Simply jumped into her space and attacked. She met his blows easily, a smile on her lips that he didn't deserve.

He held back, and she noticed. It wasn't intentional, or maybe it was, but he was distracted.

She attacked him with a renewed passion then and he had a fleeting moment to think that all of this was a bad idea. This, trying to be friends. Doing what friends do, as though the past was just that. Because he still carries the past with him like a cloak and they still don't feel like friends – not when she is still guarded and he is still… unbalanced.

He swung his arm up aggressively to block her fist and met Sakura in a battle of fierce taijutsu – as though the act of physically hurting one another would solve everything. It did with Naruto. But Naruto wasn't Sakura. He'd never known what to do with Sakura.

Sasuke wasn't sure how they both ended up in the river and soaked to the bone, but he felt vaguely guilty that it was his way of creating an opportunity to confront her about the scar. And come the opportunity did. As Sakura plucked her wet shirt from her body to wring it out, he caught her wrist.

They both stilled, but he didn't have the mind to care what an invasion of their carefully preserved boundaries it was. He had been fixated and he needed answers.

"What is this?" he demanded tightly, lifting her wrist a little higher to expose her stomach to him.

Sakura easily slipped her wrist from his grip with a strange pensiveness. It wasn't quite defensive but it wasn't entirely without her habitual guardedness.

"It's just a scar, Sasuke. Shinobi have scars, you know?" She spoke lightly but there was a warning to it.

He ignored it. "Not you." He said with a strange accusation to his voice.

Sakura raised an eyebrow and put her hands on her hips. "No? I could've sworn I'm a shinobi and no exception to the rule." She said with bite.

He didn't know why she was being so evasive. Probably for the same reason he was being so persistent. It was none of his business.

"Sakura. Who did this to you?"

He didn't realise what he had said until he saw the widening of her green eyes and sudden shift in demeaner. There was a clear unease to her that he recognised all too easily. It was the same wariness that had lined their every interaction for months. Until they mostly worked through it. …until he ruined things with her again.

Sasuke felt an itch on his neck and swallowed his disgust at himself. He tilted body away from her, but did not bend his neck. Uchiha's held their heads high – it was the first lesson his father taught him. There was no shame, no curse too great that could make an Uchiha bow.

He allowed a passing moment to wonder if things would be different if the Uchiha were the type to bend. But like his clan, the thought ended with him.

Sasuke startled from a barely-there touch. He hadn't realised their lack of distance until Sakura moved to lift her shirt once more; the back of her hand brushing across his damp arm, raising goosebumps in her wake.

Sasuke sought her eyes first. Apple green peeking up through matted wet hair, calm with an edge of steel. He took a deliberate step back, watching intently as she revealed her matching scars to him, on her own terms this time.

Sasuke curled his hand into a fist to keep from reaching out to touch the raised flesh in morbid fascination and misplaced wrath.

"He's dead." Her voice was soft. Far too soft to be speaking of filth who had marked her like this. "Sasori of the Red Sand." She said almost sadly.

Crimson eyes flickered up to jade and Sasuke regretfully recorded the moment she fought against her instinctive flinch at his eyes. He didn't comment, she had the most reason to fear his eyes. It had only been a matter of months after all. They had come a long way, but forgiving was different from forgetting.

He flickered his eyes back to her exposed abdomen and focused on her words once more. Sasori of the Red Sand… Fifteen. She had been fifteen and the first to kill an Akatsuki. He vaguely remembered reports of his demise. He never cared to note who had done the honours. He never cared beyond himself and his vengeance for many, many years. Would he have even cared if her wound was fatal, and it was her death which was whispered to him on the lips of the unsavoury and vagrants.

No. He wouldn't have. Not back then.

So what right did he have to care now?

Sasuke almost let a cruel sardonic smirk touch his lips at the realisation that Sakura was likely having the exact same thought.

He had always been too late for his team. Before he might've said that they were holding him back, dragging behind – you can't help being absent when you're already leagues ahead. But he knows the truth now. They had always had his back. He couldn't say the same about having theirs. He never cared to.

"I killed him." Sakura said firmly, but something in her tone belied the fact it was more for him than for her.

Red material hid the scar from view once more, and Sasuke looked up to see Sakura staring him down with an unreadable expression.

"Good." He said, and it was final.

He was glad the filth was long dead. But that didn't stop the traitorous curl of dissatisfaction that warped and chocked him. He could not punish the dead. The thought tasted like failure.

Sasuke blinked rapidly as his Sharingan slipped once more from his eyes. He ached to rub his temples both from the use of his eyes, and the memory he relived. He left the village but a few months after that fateful day; seeking atonement and peace. He left behind everything his team ever wanted for him, selfishly banking on nothing to change but himself. He left Sakura with an ambiguous goodbye, knowing full well she could never understand the meaning behind his gesture. Not unless he for once took the time to actually talk to her, to give her a shred of the things she deserved. But he never did, for the same stupid reason he flipped out over her scars, and spent four years avoiding his only family. He was afraid.

Sasuke inhaled silently through his nose, relaxing the strangled grip he had unintentionally come to place on the hilt of his katana.

None of that matter now. They were all here together now and he just had to make sure they all made it back alive. The urge to gather them in his Susanoo' and dump them back in Konoha had never felt so great. So unpractised had he become in his bonds, he could hardly comprehend what it felt like to worry over them again – something he hadn't truly experienced since the Chuunin exams all those years ago. But, as much as he was conflicted over the presence of his team here with him, Sasuke felt assured that at the very least, he knew his role. Naruto saves, Kakashi protects, Sakura heals, and he will deliver swift retribution to any that crosses blades with them.

Perhaps that was a limiting way to view his team, but Sasuke had always dealt in absolutes.

"It has begun." Long dark lashes slid open to reveal dark emerald eyes. Yukine took a lungful of the crisp winter air, so pristine and still atop the canyon walls. "Are you prepared Hansai?"

"Hai Yuki!" the man jumped a little, his dusty orange robes flapping with the movement. Behind the mane of his shaggy dirt blond hair, his pale eyes were wild, rimmed with purple bruising. "Is it my turn yet?"

Yukine effortlessly stood from his seated position and inclined his head exactly once. With an excited pant, Hansai disappeared in a whirl of smoke; only the guttered animals strewn across the ground leaving a trace of his presence there.

Ara hummed, kicking one of the mousy brown rabbits lying disfigured and bleeding in the snow. Despite his unkept appearance and mannerism, Hansai had always been meticulous in his 'playtime'.

"Never cleans up after himself." She commented with mild disgust, hooking her red lacquered fingertips into the loops of her tight dark pants. She raised an eyebrow at her remaining companion. "I'm surprised you don't scold him more often to be honest."

"To be bothered by something implies you care one way or the other." Yukine answered simply, despite not lowering his eyes to see the evidence of their comrade's depravity.

"Right." Ara scoffed walking over to languidly stretch herself across a slab of rock, writhing her body provocatively at the stoic man. "That's our Yuki, not a care in the mortal world." She twirled her auburn braid absently. "Think he'll pull it off?"

Yukine folded his arms gracefully across his broad chest, the wind lightly picking up tendrils of his raven hair and dancing it across his jaw and shoulder blades. "It remains a gamble. An unpredictable nature cultivates its own advantages, an element Hansai is well accustomed to. However, the true test will rest in his ability to withstand his own impulsivity."

"You're overlooking one important detail, dear Yuki." Ara sang lightly. A wicked smirk played upon her lush lips at the man's returning stare. "Incentive."

"Hm. He will have to succeed first." Yukine affirmed, casting his eyes across the rugged landscape, sharpening on the plateaued earth beyond the canyon walls. There, a figure stood stark against the icy earth, soon to be joined by many, many more.

"Ah shit." Naruto swore under his breath, his brow furrowing in an impressive frown.

"Naruto, what's wrong?" Kakashi spoke quietly, all of them still cautious of disturbing Sakura's concentration.

Naruto waited another moment to confirm his finding before deactivating his technique, his eyes a stormy blue when he replied, "There are several dozen chakra signatures approaching. But they are weird. Like their signatures have been dampened. But there is at least one that stands out against the rest. Jounin at the very least."

"Shit."

Naruto cocked his head towards Sasuke at his uncharacteristic curse. That was never a good sign. He faintly noted the distance between Kakashi and Sasuke, or more accurately, lack thereof. As if they hadn't moved from where they first stood when Sakura went under.

"Friends of yours Sasuke?" Kakashi asked mildly.

"I don't have friends." Sasuke cut back just as blank, barely concealing the roughness behind the declaration.

Naruto shook his head and screwed up his nose slightly. "Damn Teme, that was cool but dark, man. I don't think you should be bragging about stuff like that."

He didn't need to bagger him about having friends within their team. He knew the Teme cared. Besides, they were more like family at this point anyway.

"Sasuke, this is your mission. How do you want to proceed?" The question rolled off Kakashi's tongue with such authority and sincerity, they all paused for the briefest of moments in the wake of it.

It wasn't so much the acknowledgement of Sasuke's leadership, but rather Kakashi's willingness to offer command entirely up to him. In light of Sasuke's initial evasiveness to share the mission parameters, Kakashi had assumed more of a proactive role within their dynamic. It was a responsibility Kakashi effortlessly shouldered, perhaps without even realising it. He was their superior in every way, and they all respected it, mostly.

But this was an invitation, one that Kakashi was plainly extending. There was something behind the deference of control that struck Naruto. Something had happened while he was scanning for scum! Damn they're always having moments while I'm distracted!

Naruto watched, bewitched, as Sasuke took Kakashi's offer with cool impassivity. But then the Teme looked at Sakura-chan, and Naruto understood.

It was a choice. To trust and stay. Or to trust and leave…

Inexplicably, Naruto felt a wave of strange emotion. Somehow, Sasuke's decision would mean more than just strategy, and they all knew it – were all already accepting of any choice. It was a bizarrely breathless moment for such an ordinary question, and for the life of him, Naruto couldn't say what Sasuke would to choose.

Naruto hide a sad smile as Sasuke's eyes bled red staring after their Sakura-chan.

"Come on, idiot." Sasuke called quietly, eyes fixated upon Sakura and her steady breathing.

No one moved, and Naruto felt a familiar sting in the corner of his heart – a tender scar one too many times touched upon to ever truly fade. He plastered on a grin that would give even Bushy Brows a run for his money, and poured every ounce of his enthusiasm into it. "Yeah, don't worry Kakashi, Sasuke and I will straighten those punks out."

"They won't get in." Sasuke said it like a promise, and it likely was.

"I don't have to remind you two to keep an eye on each other." It wasn't the casual tease that Naruto had come to hope from Kakashi in that moment. There was something far too serious in his tone.

The air felt thick and Naruto pretended it didn't suffocate him.

"You got it, Sensei! I'll leave a clone here too just in case." Clammy palms pressed together in a familiar sequence.

"Protect Sakura." It was a redundant order from Sasuke, but an order nonetheless. "Don't let her lose concentration. You're her last line of defence."

Naruto bit the inside of his cheek as his sensei and teammate exchanged a long look.

"I'll keep her safe." Kakashi promised in return.

That was all Sasuke apparently needed to hear to deactivate his Sharingan, his shoulders dropping imperceptibly with the action.

Naruto shifted a brief look at his clone, appearing just as solemn as him in that moment. He shook it off with a determined grin. Naruto had always been good at smiling when he didn't feel it.

"Here we go Sasuke, just like old times ne?"

Sasuke didn't even try to jerk away from Naruto's grip around his neck, soft as it was. "Just don't get in my way."

"That's the spirit! Oi kaka-sensei look after Sakura-chan for me! Don't you dare let her get hurt, or I'll kick your ass all the way back to Konoha!" Naruto swung around to point at Kakashi who merely nodded firmly.

Naruto felt his smile crack for the briefest of seconds, but he knew Kakashi had caught it when the man suddenly loosened his posture and tilted his head back.

"I heard you both the first time." Kakashi feigned exasperation in a way that made Naruto ache for years past.

But like the air around them, it was threaded with tension and consequence.

As one, they each gave a final lingering stare towards their petal-haired teammate, face drawn in a tight grimace. Naruto wanted to ignore her laboured breathing, and pinched face, but the image stuck with him, even as he made his way back out through the base.

"Hey Sasuke." Naruto called as the air became less stale and light was beginning to seep in from the exit up ahead. "Why didn't we just take this tunnel to get to the seal in the first place? There are like no traps here. And it's shorter."

It was something that had nagged at him before when Sasuke was blowing fireballs up the wazoo trying to find intruders. But he needed something now to distract him from fretting over Sakura-chan. They both did.

"I assumed you would rather avoid an acid mist." Came Sasuke's dry reply.

"Eh?" Naruto's brain blessedly stalled at the words.

Sasuke sighed wearily from up ahead, not even bothering to turn around to lecture him.

"Leaving this way is fine. Trying to enter, however, means you activate an acid mist, among other poisons. Orochimaru could probably use it either direction, being immune to most poisons or having an antidote. He might've just thought it a waste of resources to constantly have to antidote himself on entry and exit though." Sasuke paused before shrugging minutely. "Probably made him shed faster."

Naruto didn't bother to hide his shiver, walking a few extra paces to come up beside Sasuke. "I've said it once, and I'll say it again. I'm so glad you didn't take after Orochimaru the way Sakura took after Baa-chan."

They walked in silence for a few more moments, until. "Or the way you took after that pervert Sage."

Naruto's grin spread across his face with a genuine laugh, slapping a hand over Sasuke's shoulder. "I'm taking that as a compliment. That's actually probably the nicest thing you've ever said to me. Thanks, Teme!"

Naruto received exactly one eyeroll and a hefty shrug. He felt lighter for it.

"Don't get used to it."

Naruto let his smile linger as they trudged towards the golden sun streaming in from a small opening ahead of them, their travel cloaks fluttering behind them as a gust of wind tore through the narrow space. Naruto squinted his eyes against the light as they stepped across the threshold into the open space. They appeared to be on the other side of the canyon walls; a vast plane of rock and ice stretching to meet a forest of tress in the near distance. Something in him sung at the sight of the dense foliage, a piece of home that would always ring a sense of comfort through him, no matter where he went. But that reprieve of peace slid almost instantly away at the sight of a singular figure standing but a few meters from the forest edge.

"I thought you said you sensed multiple chakra signals?" Sasuke said quietly from his side, neither of them taking their eyes off the lone man in the distance.

"I did."

The chink of metal sounded as Sasuke adjusted his katana. "Be on your guard."

They walked towards the figure, his form slowly morphing into more distinguishable features the closer they crept. He was strangely draped in pale orange robes, almost more like a monk than ninja, and his hair was roughly chopped in some parts, but long and shaggy in others. But what unnerved Naruto most of all was the way the man was hunched and swaying side to side in abandon. If they were closer, he could probably make out what it was that was coming out of the man's mouth, but part of Naruto was more than happy not to know.

"Sasuke, I don't think this guy is all right in the head." He whispered under his breath.

"Neither are you." Sasuke replied snidely, not missing a beat.

Naruto choked slightly and opened his mouth to argue when Sasuke cut him off.

"Identify yourself." Sasuke ordered the stranger as they stopped a good few hundred meters from him.

Despite the huddled man's eyes having never strayed from them, he jerked at Sasuke's voice. The swaying stopped and a practised grin stretched across his face, forming well-used smile lines along his pale skin.

"The Uchiha and the Nine Tails come to play with me? Little old Hansai? Oh please be kind to me and I'll be kind to you, Uchiha-sama and Demon Fox-sama." The stranger – Hansai – bowed to them. And if Naruto wasn't mistaken, there was a giggle in there too.

Naruto raised a brow and eyed Sasuke beside him. "As battle introductions go, I'd say that's a top ten 'yikes' for me."

"For you to have a top ten means you talk too much during your fights, Dobe."

"Heyy, at least my fights have some dialogue. You're all interior monologue, Teme."

"Oh dear." They both stilled at the man's wail. "They are ignoring me! I hate being ignored. Ignoring is bad manners. Yuki would hate you." Hansai declared with an eerie smile.

"That doesn't sound good." Naruto murmured to Sasuke, slightly nervous. The man was clearly unhinged in some way, and they'd already succeeded in upsetting him. Worse yet, this Hansai had a clear advantage knowing them, whereas they knew nothing about him. The man didn't even wear a hitai-ate.

"What is your business here?" Sasuke countered severely, seemingly unaffected by their opponents' deteriorating mental state.

Hansai immediately quietened and cocked his head at the question thoughtfully. "To make new friends." He said pleasantly, despite the frantic look in his silver eyes.

Naruto cringed. "Oh yeah, he's gearing up for something creepy, I can feel it in my – "

"If you value your life, you will leave this place and not return." Sasuke brandished his katana, the sun glinting off the polished tip as he swung it towards Hansai.

For the first time since meeting them, the man frowned. "Life? No, not life. Life is weak and fragile. Death is far more valuable."

Naruto saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. He slowly drifted his hand closer towards his weapons pouch. The back of his heel dragged across the icy ground as he shifted his weight slightly.

"Sasuke."

"I know."

A strong gust of wind soared through the open plane, rustling the leaves of the forest and momentarily hiding Hansai's crazed silver eyes from view as sandy blond hair blew around him. Then there was stillness.

"Shall I introduce my friends now? I am always looking for more. Maybe we'll all get along?"

No sooner had the words left Hansai's upturned mouth, did the forest begin to move and rustle with movement once more. Out flickered dozens upon dozens of ninjas, weapons drawn and plentiful as they circled around the pair. Naruto counted multiple different Hidden Villages through their slashed headbands and clenched his jaw at the lack of chakra signatures they gave off, despite standing right in front of him. Just the same as the ambush. He shifted, his back coming to rest against Sasuke's as they squared off against the unsettlingly quiet ninja.

"Sasuke." He murmured roughly. "Are these - ?"

"The summoned nin."

Naruto's electric blue eyes narrowed and he lifted his chin to lock eyes with the serenely smiling stranger, now separated by hundreds of shinobi. "So then he's - "

"Mine." Sasuke promised darkly.

The first thing Sakura felt when she laid her palms against the ancient parchment was pleasure, swiftly at odds with immeasurable pain. It was a cacophony of sensation. A hot bath, an unbelievable agony that sparked and ignited each and every cell in her body, a cool breeze, her veins turned to ice, a calming breath, her lungs expanded beyond capacity, butterflies in her stomach, needles shot through her heart, a sensual embrace, her muscles scraped from her bones, a heated kiss, burnt flesh bubbling into a boiling mass, a coiled spring low in her– No!

Sakura sent a miniscule stream of healing chakra to the pain receptors in her brain to numb the sensation, barely registering her systems' instinctual pull to meet the seal's immediate demand of chakra. It had only just begun and she was already disoriented and wavering. The cloud of pain and fog of pleasure gradually ebbed away enough for her to attempt opening her eyes which had screwed shut in her distress, but it was pointless. All she saw was harsh bright light.

She was blind with or without her sight. Just like Kakashi said she would be. She had to focus entirely on feel and control now. But to feel was dangerous, and control was…slippery. It was all simply immense! An unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, focused into a space too small to contain its devastation. Sakura grit her teeth. She could barely discern where she ended the seal began – it was just sensation after sensation of a desperate battle for control. Like trying to catch running water with her bare hands…whilst on fire.

She had never felt anything remotely like this before. Sakura fought down her own hysteria with a voice that sounded consolingly like her Shishou.

'Remember, you let yourself get overwhelmed, people die. It's our job to stay focused. Even if the entire world around you is burning, the moment you lay your hands on someone to heal, nothing else matters. You will succeed, because if you don't…'

Sakura grasped onto the words with a near desperation, allowing them to ground her. She was a medic. This is what she did. She did not lose focus and she did not give up until the last breath. Be it hers or someone else's.

Clenching her jaw, Sakura continued a steady supply of her own chakra to her brain, certain that if she were to become bombarded once more, it would be her immediate demise. And that was not an option. It was currently all she could do to channel down the vast chakra being sucked from her Byakugou into a precise stream, conforming to the twists and turns which the seal dictated. It was intricate and demanding and so damn terrifying to experience. Sakura swallowed back against the feeling of euphoria that edged at her senses – the sheer shift of chakra dizzying her into perceiving pleasure alongside the pain.

She grunted slightly. In an effort to avoid being swept away by the red herring of exhilaration, Sakura sought to zero-point her focus. Control was imperative. She couldn't worry about quantity now, what she had would just have to be enough. Sakura drew her attention shrewdly towards her chakra coils and network, processing and conducting the vast amounts of her chakra, eliciting techniques of her Shishou to assess the progression on a near molecular level. It was a practice in precision and one that would hopefully help her stay attuned and afloat in –

Sakura felt her heart stop.

Something didn't feel right. There was something there that wasn't strictly part of her; a friction against her expulsion of chakra that was pulling her attention. It was subtle, almost miniscule against the other more dominant sensations of pain and intense chakra withdrawal, but it was unmistakably there. Sakura cautiously allowed a slither of her chakra to flare off its streamlined course and stroke the alien abrasion. The response was immediate and Sakura hissed as the mystery source stroked her back. But that was all she needed to confirm her rapidly forming theory and burgeoning stress.

The seal was doing more than just feeding her an endless loop of pain and pleasure; it was actively sending a part of itself back through her chakra network and reacting directly to her. It was like the seal was trying to simulate what she was doing to it. It – It almost felt… sentient.

The burn of chakra against hers became more apparent the more she carefully focused upon it. Pure chakra shouldn't have a feel, it was simply raw energy – like dancing your fingertips atop a flame, it should burn but not feel. But this. This felt eager, gleeful, desperate. Invasive.

A shiver tempted to break free of Sakura but she held firm against her startling discovery. This was bad. Control and quantity were one thing, but a sentient chakra directly invading her system was entirely another. Sakura audibly gasped at her own realisation.

The seal wasn't just attempting to take chakra, but to push another foreign chakra into her and then suck hers out with it. It was behaving almost like an aggressive parasite; burrowing in and trying to infect her body, rewriting her cells to cooperate with it. It was trying to overtake her network completely, disrupt her control at its source and suck her dry from the inside out!

Shit! What she wouldn't give to have had the chance to examine a victim of this Seal's power ahead of time!

It was no wonder people never lived through something like this. Forget the pain! This Seal was housing a live parasitic-like chakra designed to kill you the moment you interacted with it. It was a plague! …And she was its next victim.

Sakura desperately wanted to panic. She was entirely on her own in this – even if she could communicate enough to call for help, there would be nothing anyone could do. No. She had until she ran out of chakra to figure out a way to survive. And the longer it took, the less chakra she would have to fight it off with.

For the first time in a long time, Sakura felt genuine fear for her life.

What the hell is this thing?!

A/N: Thank you for your patience! And hello to new and old readers alike. This week in 'Team 7 Discovery' everyone feels inadequate! Can relate. It's important to note that this story is almost entirely told through biased and unreliable-perspectives/narrators. Everyone's got their own truth, hopes, doubts, theories, and unfortunately for us and them, communication hasn't been high on the priority listing for some time. Oh and maybe Sasuke's research on the seal was a little undercooked… Oops. Trust issues all around I say!

That being said, this was fun to write, and I hope you're enjoying reading it as much as I'm enjoying writing it for you all. As always, I hope you're staying health and safe. Happy February everyone! :)