Obito-Sensei Chapter 14

Picking Up The Sword

It only took them five minutes to find the river, and when they did they turned north, following it towards the center of the forest. As they walked along it, Sakura wondered how long the team from Rain had been following them before they'd been noticed. The two teams had naturally fallen into a modified triangle formation; Sakura and Haku walked together on the banks of the river, and Suigetsu and Sasuke formed the vanguard up ahead. Naruto and Kabuto were both walking on the river itself, completing the triangle. It hadn't been a verbal agreement for them to pair up team by team, but it made sense. Each of them wanted to keep an eye on the other.

Haku was quiet, but her teammates were not. The girl had a kind of severe beauty, Sakura thought, but now that they'd been walking side by side for some time, she'd begun to notice that Haku was more androgynous than she'd seemed at first appearance. The other ninja had a couple inches on her: she was about the same size as Tenten, and probably close to her in age.

Down in the river, Naruto and Kabuto were talking.

"How'd you learn it?" her teammate asked. Sakura couldn't see them over the lip of the bank, but she could hear them despite their hushed tones. The Forest of Death wasn't a quiet place, with the constant sound of wind rustling the trees and distant and not so distant animals, not to mention the rushing of the river, but they were all still very aware they were in potential enemy territory.

"I started when I was young," Kabuto answered. The bespectacled shinobi had a calm, warm tone, but Sakura thought something sounded off about him. Everything he said was carefully constructed. Maybe that was just how he was. "My mother taught me."

"Your mom's a shinobi too?" Sakura let her mind drift a little as she listened to the conversation, keeping a lookout on the forest.

"She's not by birth. I didn't know my birth parents. She found me on a battlefield."

"Oh. I'm really sorry. That's terrible."

"It wasn't one created by the Leaf. No need to worry about it."

"... I didn't think about that."

"Why would you?"

"... So she was a medical ninja, huh?"

"Yes." A shuffle. Someone had kicked the water. Probably Naruto. "She knew that I wanted to help people like she had, so she taught me her jutsu. By the time we arrived at Amegakure, I knew most of it."

"You weren't born in Rain?" That was pretty interesting, Sakura thought. So far as she knew, villages didn't generally take in foreign ninja. She definitely didn't know of any Leaf ninja from another village or even country. Maybe there were and she just didn't know.

"No, but when we arrived they took us in without question. Rain's like that."

"That sounds pretty nice. Is that why you teamed up with us?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, it sounds like you guys are taught to get along with people."

Kabuto laughed. "I guess so. Mostly we were just desperate for someone to work with. We're the first shinobi from Rain that have gone to a Chunin Exam in many years: we don't want to fail."

"Well you picked the right team then!" Sakura couldn't see Naruto's grin, but it still made her feel a little warmer as the forest cooled down. The day was winding on, the sun growing lower. "We're hoping to win too."

"Is this your first try?" A momentary silence, maybe a nod. "That's impressive. I dunno if I'd be that confident at your age."

"Even with your medical jutsu?" Naruto sounded skeptical. "How does that work, anyway? It seems pretty crazy to just fix a broken bone like that."

"No crazier than a broken bone healing on its own," Kabuto said, and Sakura nodded along. Haku glanced at the small motion with an equally small smile, and Sakura felt a flash of embarrassment. "That's all most medical jutsu does."

"Makes it heal on its own?" Naruto asked. "Whadya mean?"

"Well, your body's got its own natural healing process," Kabuto explained. "It can change depending on your chakra for some people, but in general humans all generally heal up the same way. I'm sure you know that."

"Duh." Naruto was probably rolling his eyes. Sakura wondered if he had given Sasuke that habit, or if it was the other way around.

"Well, basic medical jutsu like the kind I can use just convinces the body to heal itself faster, with some extra help. It's a little like genjutsu, I guess." Kabuto's voice grew slightly more official; it was the voice of a teacher. The boy wasn't much older than them, but Sakura was suddenly sure he'd told other people the same thing. "The medic sends their own chakra into the recipient, though too much can induce chakra shock. That's an offensive technique, so it's not much use to me. I don't like fighting."

"Why not?"

"I saw too much when I was young, I suppose." Naruto clearly didn't know how to answer that as Kabuto continued. "So the medic's chakra enters the body, and like a genjutsu, initiates a response. In this case, it tricks the body into thinking that it has more than enough chakra to produce new cells rapidly to speed up the healing process. Something like a broken bone fixes itself by producing a hematoma, which then…"

He trailed off. If Sakura had to guess, Naruto was giving him a confused look. He'd never been one for anatomy books. "I won't get too technical," Kabuto decided with a laugh. "The point is, normally it'll take weeks to a month for the blood clot to draw enough new cells in that will become healthy bone cells, but medical jutsu tells the body and its chakra to do that with increased speed, and provides the extra energy."

"That's pretty incredible," Naruto said. "You've gotta have crazy chakra control."

"And know everything about the natural process, or else things will go wrong," Kabuto acknowledged. "They're difficult techniques to learn, but worth it."

"Fixing people up is definitely really awesome," Naruto said.

"Yes," Kabuto said, sounding a little wistful. "It means putting other people ahead of yourself. That's what being a medic ninja is."

"Hmm." Naruto hummed, and Sakura wondered what he was thinking.

They walked another thirty minutes in silence, moving slowly and quietly. They could just have rushed to the center through the treetops, Sakura thought, but the team from Rain had had the right idea. Following the river along the forest floor was both stealthier and made it easier to not get lost. The water flowed inexorably north.

"You're smart not to trust us." When Haku finally spoke in her soft voice, Sakura almost tripped over her own feet in surprise. The shinobi at her side had been totally quiet for so long that Sakura had begun to think she'd never speak at all. She glanced over at the Rain shinobi, wondering what had driven her to talk.

"What do you mean?" she asked, and Haku cocked her head, a light smile flitting across her face.

"Shinobi can be cruel," she said, and Sakura narrowed her eyes, wondering what was coming. "Even if we helped you, that doesn't free us from suspicion."

"Are you calling my teammates dumb?" Sakura asked, and Haku laughed.

"No, no, nothing like that," she said. "I think they have good instincts; they all understand the situation. I was just trying to compliment you."

"I'm not sure if I should thank you," Sakura said. Haku's smile faded.

"My apologies," she said. "I didn't intend to offend."

Sakura felt herself deflate a little, that familiar embarrassment creeping back.

'Why're you being so ungrateful? They're helping you win.'

"I'm sorry," she said. "After Sasuke's arm got broken… we didn't expect anyone to help us."

"I understand," Haku said, looking forward to the Uchiha. He and Suigetsu were arguing about something, but Sakura couldn't tell what. Sasuke didn't look angry; if anything, he looked like he was having fun. She wondered what they were talking about. "I would have thought the same in your position." She glanced back to Sakura. "What managed to break his arm, anyway? We were told to watch out for Sasuke Uchiha; that he was one of the most dangerous genin in this exam."

That was probably why they'd teamed up with him, Sakura thought. Better to be Sasuke's friend, and Naruto's, than their enemy. That made sense.

'You weren't part of the equation.'

"It wasn't another genin," Sakura said, and Haku blinked. "I don't think I can say more than that. Ask him yourself if you want to know."

"Interesting," Haku murmured. She grinned. "And perhaps a little ominous."

They walked in a more comfortable silence for a couple minutes after that. This time, Sakura was the one to break it.

"Was it actually a coincidence," she asked, "that you ran into us?"

Haku looked over at her, and didn't answer right away.

"You said you were told to watch out for Sasuke," Sakura said, and gestured towards the river. "And Naruto's on the team too; the Hokage's son. You must have been warned about him too."

"Yes," Haku acknowledged gracefully. "We were told the both of them were extremely capable." She looked Sakura up and down. "I'm surprised we weren't told the same for you. Your chakra control, and your kenjutsu, were both excellent. You would have killed Suigetsu if it weren't for his jutsu. None of us noticed you coming until the last moment."

"I don't think I could have if I hadn't known about that water jutsu," Sakura said, the admission slipping out as she refused to acknowledge the compliment. "I've never killed someone."

"That's good," Haku said. "Killing someone is a terrible crime."

Sakura blinked. "You're a shinobi," she said, stating the obvious. "Do you really believe that?"

"Of course." Haku spoke with such certainty that Sakura felt for a moment the older girl possessed a secret, or understood something on a deeper level than Sakura could hope at. She sounded convincing in just two empty words. "If you end someone else's life, they're gone forever. You've wiped out everything they were and everything they could ever be. Surely, you could only do something like that with the most drastic justifications."

"I…" Sakura didn't know what to say. She'd never heard anyone say anything like that. She'd been taught since before she could even remember that sometimes, you needed to kill someone to live; her parents, her school, all her friends, they'd all told her the same thing. You could protect the Will of Fire by killing those who sought to suffocate it, and protect it with your own life. She couldn't conceive of something outside of that.

But she couldn't say Haku was wrong, because as Sakura considered it, she came to understand that the strange shinobi from Rain was totally correct.

"I guess," she eventually said, internally cringing at the weakness of the answer. Haku smiled.

"You let me distract you," she said, and Sakura shook her head.

"I was gonna get back to it," she said, and the ninja from Rain grinned.

"I could keep it up, if you'd like," Haku said, and Sakura tried to resist the urge to laugh. "I was going to ask next why you picked up a sword if you weren't sure if you could kill someone."

"That's a good question," Sakura admitted. "But mine first. If you were told about both my teammates, was it really a coincidence that we were the ones you ran into?"

"Yes," Haku said again, and Sakura wasn't sure if she believed her. "We would have been happy to work with any team, but it was lucky we met up with yours." She gave Sakura a sly look. "We were searching for a team to gift our spare scroll to, in the hopes it would make them trust us. I won't deny that."

"That makes sense," Sakura said, but she didn't believe her. Naruto and Sasuke were both too unique for this team from Rain to just happen to run into. Probably.

'It could happen. That's what coincidences are. You're just being paranoid. You can't believe that anyone would want to team up with you.'

Shut up.

Sakura flinched, and Haku glanced at her in concern. She waved the other girl off.

"It's hard to believe," Haku admitted. "I don't blame you if you don't."

Sakura shrugged. "It doesn't really matter if I do or not," she said. "What matters is working together now to pass."

"That's practical." Haku smiled. "How about this. I'll tell you a secret-"

Sakura held up her hand, stopping her. Down in the river, she heard Kabuto and Naruto stop as well. Up ahead, about fifty meters away, Sasuke was covertly signing something behind his back as he and Suigetsu continued chatting; the boy made of water was doing the same thing.

She couldn't recognize whatever Suigetsu was signing, but Sasuke's sign was one of the dozens of simple hand-language signs that all Konoha shinobi learned as children. "Enemy," he signed quickly, three times. "Ahead."

"Three?" Haku muttered, and Sakura confirmed with a nod. Sasuke and Suigetsu were signing the same thing. "Only one team?"

"What should we-?" Sakura started to ask, and then the earth erupted.

A huge wave of earth exploded up out of the ground below Sasuke, throwing him away and out of sight, and hurtled forward along the bank of the river towards Sakura and Haku. They both tensed, watching the jutsu come, and Sakura backed up in shock. It was like a mobile mud wall, over twenty feet tall and moving several hundred miles per hour. Getting it by it would hurt, without a doubt.

Haku grunted and jumped, and Sakura followed her into the air, trying to gain distance. The mud tsunami rolled by beneath them. It was thicker than Sakura had thought, maybe thirty feet deep; she looked around for Naruto and Kabuto, but they weren't in the river anymore.

Before she could catch her breath and decide on where she would land, three dozen shinobi all leapt out of the tsunami, eyes fixed on her and Haku as they emerged from the jutsu. They were all the same person: one of the girls with long black hair from The Village Hidden in Stone. They were all holding short swords, tanto.

"Clones," Haku noted. There was a frozen moment as the clones watched them. They'd been caught totally flatfooted, unable to maneuver. The enemy team had been trying to force them to jump.

The Rain shinobi looked over at her, and a dozen senbon fell out of her sleeve, two each resting between her fingers in both hands. She spoke, perfectly calm. The clones jumped up at them.

"No reason to worry about cutting them down."

Sakura shivered, feeling as though the words had physically struck her. Without a conscious thought, her hands found her sword.

Thirty-six shinobi attacked them at once, but they were slow. Everything was slow. Sakura drew her blade so quickly she didn't even notice it leaping into her hand.

The first clone reached her less than a half second later, and Sakura cut it in half, watching as it crumbled to dust, along with the sword in its hand. Clones made of Earth. That made sense.

She stopped thinking and started swinging as she fell into the mass of ninja. Three more came, each aiming their tanto for a different limb, and Sakura deflected one blade, kicked another clone in the face, and impaled the last. She spun in the air, taking the upward momentum as her own, and pushed herself down, slipping past most of the attackers. One lashed out at her at the last second, and their blade clipped her shoulder, barely cutting her.

Looking up, Sakura could see Haku: the ninja from Rain had thrown all of her senbon, and then another clutch, and seven clones were tumbling through the air, pierced and paralyzed. She was almost as accurate as Tenten, Sakura thought. Hitting that many targets in midair in freefall was crazy. The other clones were falling back down towards her, still over twenty of them, swords at the ready.

"Like hell!" She heard a familiar yell, and her vision was suddenly dominated by orange and blond as Naruto came out of nowhere, hitting her hard in the side and carrying her out of reach of the rest of the clones. Sakura tapped him and he dropped her; she tumbled out of his arms and rolled as she hit the ground, spinning around just in time to watch Naruto bare his teeth and hurl a couple stones he'd plucked from the ground up into the mass of clones.

One of the stones struck a clone in the temple. The rock caught fire, glowing kanji squirming across it, and all of the other stones lit up with the same light.

"You picked the wrong team!" Naruto announced, and then all the stones detonated, a series of explosions rippling out above Sakura. The blasts tore over a dozen clones apart, blowing them into earth and dust and raining rubble down on the riverbank.

Sakura watched in awe. She'd known Naruto had been working on his jutsu shiki, and figuring out ways to turn other objects into explosive tags. But she'd never seen him do it so quickly, and with so many objects at once.

There were still more than ten clones left, and they landed about fifteen feet away from Sakura and Naruto, watching them carefully. Haku landed behind them, and several turned around to keep her in sight. Naruto growled, and a Rasengan grew in his hand.

"Nicely done, Sakura." She didn't know where Kabuto had come from, but he was behind the two of them all the sudden. He lay his hand on her shoulder, and Sakura felt the small cut on her shoulder knit itself closed. "We're glad you're safe."

"Naruto," Sakura said, giving Kabuto a nod. "Stay back. There's still a lot of them." Better to let them come to them, especially with Haku flanking them. The clones watched them, and one of them spat, the liquid turning to mud when it hit the ground.

"You look just like him," the girl from Stone said, and the other clones nodded in agreement. Sakura wondered where the real one was. She didn't think she was among her clones. She almost hoped not. "It's disgusting."

"What-?" Naruto muttered, and then there was another explosion, one that completely dwarfed the ones Naruto had been responsible for. Sakura looked up, trying to keep an eye on the clones as well.

It took her a second to understand what she was seeing. One of the founding trees was tipping.

The tree, which had a trunk with a radius of ten or fifteen meters and doubtlessly weighed thousands and thousands of tons, which was many times older than Sakura herself, was tipping towards them. It started so slow it could barely be perceived and rapidly gained impossible speed, crashing through the canopy and destroying hundreds of branches as it fell directly towards them.

Sakura felt her brain short circuit at the sheer size, speed, and weight of the tree coming down on top of them. It was just too big to understand. The shadow completely devoured her.

"Sakura! Move!" Naruto shouted, and the spell broke. Sakura yelped in shock and went left, towards the river, desperately trying to get out of the way of the tree. She jumped with all her strength, pushing herself away as fast as she could, and looked back as the tree came down on top of the short-lived battlefield. Everyone else had scattered; there were ninja everywhere, but none in the tree's shadow.

In the moment before impact, stretched out to infinity, Sakura laughed.

Sasuke was on the side of the plummeting tree, dueling someone. The moment Sakura looked back, he kicked the Stone ninja in the throat and jumped away from the tree.

He was kidding, right? Sakura couldn't suppress the giggle that wormed its way up through her throat. It felt like she was floating, suspended over the river. He had to be kidding. That was just too-

BOOM

The tree landed, the sound so loud and so violent that Sakura's whole body shuddered, all of her organs shaking and her heart jumping, and she tumbled backwards in shock. The impact threw up an enormous gust of wind, mixed with water, earth, mud, and dust, an explosion that coated everything for a hundred meters around and filled the air with debris of every kind.

Sakura landed and rolled backwards, her heart hammering in her chest. When she came to her feet, she couldn't see more than three feet in front of her. The dust and debris hung so heavily in the air that it was like she was in the middle of a storm.

Where was everyone? Her ears were ringing: Sakura stepped forward, trying to orient herself. Her eyes stung with the dust, and she teared up, raising her sword.

When she took another step, a pair of hands burst out of the ground and wrapped around her ankles.

Sakura yelped and swung, and one of the hands pulled, yanking her off balance. Her swing missed, and she fell backwards, her feet sliding along the ground as the hands pulled her back and forth. A second later, she started to sink, her feet slipping under the ground. One of the hands jerked up, grabbing at her knee and drawing her deeper.

She yelped, trying to swing again, and once again, was yanked off balance. She was going to get sucked underground. The shinobi was going to bury her.

There was a shimmer in the dust, and a series of needles flew out of the dust; four of them buried themselves in the hand on Sakura's knee, and the last one missed, leaving a small cut in her leg. The hand suddenly withdrew, and Sakura stumbled, trying to regain her balance. She spun around, but the hands didn't come back.

"Sakura?" Haku emerged from the dust, and Sakura backed up, keeping her distance.

"What were you going to tell me?" she asked. The Rain ninja could be one of the enemies wearing a henge; putting one up after all the pandemonium would be the perfect time. Haku smiled at her.

"A secret," she said, and Sakura lowered her sword. "Sorry I scratched you. It was a difficult-"

The earth behind Haku erupted, and she flinched, starting to turn. Too slow. A girl with short black hair burst from the ground, knife at the ready, swinging down to bury the blade in Haku's head. Sakura watched the whole thing in shock.

Haku's eyes went wide. Sakura's mind went blank.

She lunged and swung, covering the distance between her and Haku in a heartbeat. Her whole body rotating with the blow, ankle to hip to shoulder, a clean arc. The Stone ninja didn't have time to react: Sakura's sword clove a silvery trail through the dust, missing Haku's temple by inches. It struck the knife clean out of the enemy's hands, and took off the top joint of the ninja's middle finger.

Blood sprayed over Haku's shoulder. The knife hit the dust and bounced. Haku finished turning, one leg sweeping the Stone ninja's legs out from under her and the other hand coming up and slamming her down, directly into the ground.

Sakura breathed out, the whole moment crashing into her at once, and time resumed. Haku came down on top of the enemy ninja like a sack of bricks, knocking the rest of her breath out, and pinned her there, wrapping around her like a constrictive snake.

Sakura looked around. The ninja was bleeding. That meant it wasn't a clone. That one of the three was definitely down.

"Thank you," Haku said quietly. She slid a needle into the shinobi's neck as she struggled beneath her, and the girl calmed down a little, slowly stilling.

"Of course," Sakura said, scanning the dust. "Did you just…?" The dust was slowly clearing, settling to the forest floor.

"Just paralyzed," Haku said. "So long as it's removed properly."

Sakura nodded, sure that another attack would come soon.

'Why 'of course?''

She didn't consider it. She just said it. That's all there was to it.

"Kabuto?" Haku called out, and there wasn't an immediate answer. "Suigetsu?" She must have thought that having a hostage put them at an advantage, Sakura thought. She was right.

"Naruto!" Sakura echoed her. "Sasuke! Are you out there?"

"Here!" Naruto stumbled out of the dust, with Kabuto at his side. He looked at the shinobi Haku was standing up from, and at the blood on Haku's haori. "You alright?"

"Yeah," Sakura said. "It's her blood." Naruto looked a little surprised at that. The dust continued to settle; it was still hard to see, but Sakura could make out the great tree, lying on its side next to the river.

There was a figure on top of it. Sakura squinted, and Naruto followed her line of sight. "Sasuke?"

The figure gave her a thumbs up and a gust of wind whipped the dust between them away, revealing her teammate. Sasuke was standing on tall, atop another ninja. He had one foot on the small of the Stone shinobi's back, pinning both the ninja's hands beneath it.

"I've got this one," Sasuke said calmly, his voice carrying over the river. Sakura walked a couple steps towards him and glanced down into the water, now clogged with mud and dust.

"Where's the last one then?" she muttered, and then the river grinned at her.

"I was waiting for that," it burbled, and Suigetsu's smiling face surfaced, along with another sputtering shinobi. The last one was a boy, and he gasped and gagged, coughing up mud and thrashing as the river kept him captive.

"You always were too dramatic, Suigetsu," Kabuto said with a grin, walking up besides Sakura. "I guess we got them all then."

"Man," Naruto groused. "So we just fought clones? That's lame." He must have been talking about whatever he and Kabuto had done in the dust.

"They couldn't have won their fights if those clones were harassing them," Kabuto said, and Naruto glanced at him. "I wouldn't worry too much."

"I guess," Naruto said, looking a little doubtful. The ninja Sasuke was pinning on the other side of the river squirmed, twisting her head to face him, her long hair whipping with the motion: that was the one that had created all the clones.

"You bastard," she snarled. "Didn't get enough glory?"

Sasuke raised an eyebrow and stamped down on her, and the girl coughed, still glaring at them.

"So you were targeting us," he said, and the girl grinned up at him from the corner of her mouth. "Did you really think you could go after the Hokage's son like that?"

"Depends what you mean," the girl sneered. "Kill… no. The Yellow Flash wouldn't be happy with that." She looked back at Naruto with a disgusted expression. "But teaching him a lesson. That was definitely possible, right?"

Sasuke shrugged. "Guess not," he said, and before the ninja could do more than look offended he punched her in the back of the head, instantly knocking her out. Sasuke stepped back and picked up the shinobi's unconscious body, leaping over the river and landing in front of Sakura.

"Looks like we won," he said matter of factly, and Sakura didn't know what to do besides nod. The final stone shinobi was spat out of the river and landed next to them with a thud, still coughing up water, and Suigetsu slithered up the bank towards them, reforming into a boy near the top of the embankment.

"Nice," the boy grinned, his teeth too sharp as always. He kicked the prone ninja, rolling him over, and the boy gagged, finally clearing his throat.

"Shit," he coughed. "I told them it was a bad idea. Two teams at once..."

"You were the one responsible for that earth wall, right?" Kabuto asked him, and the boy nodded. "That was really impressive." He was kneeling over the girl Haku had paralyzed with her senbon, green light playing over her hand. "Your teammates are both pretty beat up. I've stopped this one's bleeding. The other's just unconscious. You see this?" He pointed at the needle sticking out of the girl's neck, and the boy mutely nodded. He was slowly rising into a crouch, deliberately trying to project at little threat as possible. His dark eyes played over each of them in turn, fixing on Sakura's sword.

There was still blood on it, she realized. Standing there, covered in dust and her sword stained in blood, she must have looked intimidating. It felt familiar.

Like the merchants, she realized. Like the blood. But this was a shinobi, not a civilian. How could they be looking at her like that?

"This is just paralyzing her," Kabuto said, making the irony of his wording clear. "If you pull it straight out, slowly, she'll be perfectly fine; a little numb for a while, but no permanent damage. Do you understand?"

The boy nodded again. Behind him, Suigetsu frowned.

"Do you have a scroll?" he asked, and the Stone ninja shook his head.

"We didn't start with one," he said. "We were gonna grab one a while ago, but that team from Sand nabbed the team before we could-"

"Okay, okay, I don't want your life story," Suigetsu held his hands up mockingly. "You should just get out of here then. You're too hurt to continue." He grinned, showing even more of his teeth. "We'll let you off this time. But if you come after us again, we'll hurt you even worse. Get it?"

"Yeah." The boy was shivering. How old was he, Sakura wondered? Maybe fourteen, fifteen? Older than her, but not by much. "Got it."

"Cool." Suigetsu jerked his thumb. "Then get out of here, you punk."

The boy silently gathered up his two teammates, carrying them over both shoulders, and leapt away, heading south and higher into the forest. Suigetsu called after him.

"And hey!" he said. "When you get back to your hole in the ground, tell your folks that they shouldn't be worried about some Yellow Flash! That kinda thing is gone in a flash: they need to keep an eye on the Nation of Rain!"

The boy shot them a hateful look, and then he was gone, disappearing into the dimness of the forest.

"Well, that was fun." Sasuke didn't seem to know what to say. "Thanks for the help, Suigetsu."

"My pleasure," the boy responded with his perpetual smile. "You should have seen his face when I grabbed him. That shit was hilarious."

"That went well, considering," Kabuto said.

"Well, their mistake going after Sakura and Haku first," Naruto said, smiling at Sakura. She felt her stomach flip. "They must have thought they were the easiest targets; you really showed them."

Had she? She'd killed a couple clones with her sword, but besides that, Sakura hadn't felt like she'd done much. Naruto had taken more than a dozen out with a single jutsu. Still, she'd ignored enough compliments for one day.

"Thanks, Naruto." She smiled. "You were amazing. I didn't know you'd gotten that jutsu to that level."

"I didn't either," he admitted with an uneasy grin. "But when I saw all those girls trying to stab you, I guess… I got a little angry." He rubbed the back of his head. "I didn't think it would be that big an explosion."

Sakura didn't know what to say to that, and they fell into an awkward silence.

"Well," Haku said, dusting herself off. She glanced at the blood on her haori and swept it off, carrying it folded in her arms. "We should continue."

"Yeah!" Naruto said, seemingly grateful for the words. "We should get going: we've gotta be close!" The sun was setting behind Sakura, throwing him into sharp relief.

"It'll be dark soon," she noted. How long ago had it been noon? They couldn't have been walking for that many hours, could they? Had she really lost track of time so easily? "Maybe we should stop for the night."

"You think?" Naruto said, and Sasuke nodded.

"Most creatures hunt at night," he said. "There are a lot of predators out there, and other teams besides. They gave us forty-eight hours: it won't hurt to use some of it."

"I agree," Kabuto said. "I wouldn't mind resting before we reach the Tower. There may be another test when we get there. I wouldn't put it past the examiners to push us right into it, to punish people who rushed ahead."

Sakura hadn't considered that, but it definitely seemed possible for the Exam to punish impatience. Sometimes, being a ninja meant being impossibly patient, waiting in one place for days at a time; that was the best explanation for the test giving them two days to cover ten kilometers.

The Forest was dangerous, but not that dangerous.

"It's a good idea," Haku said. Sakura looked back at her, wondering. In hindsight, she wasn't sure if Haku had needed saving from that final Stone ninja. After Sakura had struck, she'd counterattacked instantly, and pinned the enemy in a moment. Her speed and reflexes were incredible.

'She could have saved herself.'

Was she just being paranoid again? Or simply putting herself down? Sakura wondered if she really had just saved someone and simply couldn't bring herself to accept it.

She didn't know. As the others debated on where to camp out, Sakura glanced back at the setting sun, its light barely visible through the thick trees, and wondered how much she could trust herself.

###

They ended up farther up the river, in the canopy once again. The January sun set so fast that by the time they were arranged, it was already almost completely dark. Under the canopy of the Forest of Death, night was transformed into something infinitely blacker. The forest came to life as well; below, Sakura could hear huge creatures rampaging around, feasting on one another. Being on the floor right now would be anything but pleasant.

They'd decided to take shifts watching over the others, laid out across the branches and resting on their head on whatever was convenient. Naruto and Sasuke were both using their packs, with the knives removed and laid alongside them; Kabuto and Suigetsu had rolled up a spare shirt each and were using them as pillows. Shinobi were trained to be able to sleep in all sorts of conditions, but Sakura was still surprised at how readily her teammates had fallen asleep. They must have really trusted her to watch over them.

'You were being stupid. Like usual. You're their teammate. You're their friend. Why were you worried, stupid?'

Sakura looked out into the dark, pacing silently around the branch. If any of the other teams were moving at night, even if the pitch black they'd be a tempting target. Haku was on the other side of the branch, and as Sakura paced near her, she glanced at what the other ninja was doing.

Haku had her canteen out and her haori laid over her lap, and was gently moving her hands in a circle over the garment. As Sakura watched in astonishment, the water from her canteen swirled out, defying gravity, and slipped back and forth over the haori, gradually soaking up the dried blood.

Circle, swish, circle, swish. Haku directed the water like a composer, washing up all the blood and leaving the haori spotless and black once again. She fluttered her fingers, and the miniscule clumps of dried blood in the water fell out as though they were suddenly lead. The water slipped back into the canteen as silently as it emerged, and Haku put the haori back on, tugging it into place.

"That's incredible," Sakura said quietly, and the girl glanced back at her.

"Just a chakra control trick," she said. "I'm sure you could learn it."

"If you say so," Sakura said doubtfully. She paused. "Haku…"

"What?" Haku asked, and Sakura shook her head. Asking was pointless. It was like she'd thought. She was being stupid.

"What's with the clouds?" she asked instead, and the girl cocked her head. "The red clouds. Did you make that design yourself? It's pretty."

Haku laughed. "No, I didn't make it myself. It's the mark of the Akatsuki."

"The Akatsuki?" Sakura asked. Red Dawn: it meant nothing to her.

"Sit, if you'd like," Haku gestured, and Sakura did, putting her back to the darkness Haku was watching and keeping her teammates in her line of sight. "The Akatsuki is the group that rules the Nation of Rain. They overthrew the old government some time ago."

"My sensei told me that," Sakura said, and Haku nodded. "But you're not that old. You couldn't have been part of that Akatsuki."

"No," Haku acknowledged. "But they're willing to accept new members. People who believe in their mission. In that way, wearing an Akatsuki cloak," she chuckled, lifting the cloth off her shoulder slightly, "or a haori, tells the people of Rain that you're devoted."

"Devoted to what?" Sakura asked. This sounded like the Will of Fire, almost. Every village had something different driving them, she thought. The Akatsuki must have been the village of Rain's.

"If you want to know..." Haku smiled, vibrant in the dark. "I'll be happy to tell you."