Obito-Sensei Chapter 50
It's All Your Fault
Your means are vast, Lord of Lightning, and your Court of Storms as powerful as it is beautiful. The Land of Fire must implore you to find those truly responsible for both the tragedies of deceit and destruction in the Land of Waves and bring the architects to justice. Let the thunder of Cloud ring through the world, and flush such rats from their nests.
In execution of such a worthy goal, pursued so generously, it would be as it is everywhere: lightning strikes, and fire follows.
With Regards And Trust
Saitama Sugawara, Lord of Fire
###
When Hinata woke up, everything hurt. She blinked, looking up into a dark sky and picking out countless stars blocked out by light pollution. Her side and chest ached, and her first breath was thready and uncertain. She hacked, coughing hard enough to make her throat ache, and then tried to sit up.
"Careful." An arm came down across her chest, and at the same time there was a distant crash, screams. Hinata looked to her left to find her sensei lying down next to her; Kurenai was covered in dried blood and her face was pale, but at least she was speaking. Her voice was quiet, muted by the cut across her throat. "Your heart stopped for a minute there. Take it slow."
Hinata didn't take it slow. She immediately activated her Byakugan, and freezing pain lanced across her body as her muscles locked up, deprived of what little chakra she had remaining. She took in her surroundings with a glance, her teeth clenched as her body locked into a solid slab of pain.
They were still on the docks, and everywhere she looked complete chaos had taken it.
Gaara was here; he'd transformed into a complete monster, huge and heavy, his chakra so thick that Hinata's eyes couldn't penetrate the surface of his sand. His legs were the size of trees, his arms long and ending with bloodstained claws instead of hands, and he towered nearly twelve feet tall, thrashing and roaring as he fought up and down the docks, tearing the concrete beneath him to pieces and generating storms of wind and sand that could strip flesh and hurl people to the ground.
Gaara's team was watching from a safe distance, not moving. His sister had her head buried in her hands, too ashamed to look. His brother watched everything, sweat and rain dripping down his face and smearing his face paint. Their teacher was just standing with his arms crossed, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge his student's murderous tantrum.
There were corpses scattered across the docks: the shredded remains of those killed by the warehouse explosion, two ninja, a woman from the Land of Grass with a hole in her chest and a man from the Land of Rivers who was missing most of his face, and over twenty civilians, some lacerated by Gaara's sandstorms and others crushed by a collapsing apartment. The Land of Waves wasn't taking this lying down, and neither was Team 7. Gaara was being attacked from every direction by fourteen ninja, including Sakura and Naruto: ninja from eight villages were struggling against him, including another shinobi from Grass who looked completely identical to her fallen comrade.
A twin, Hinata thought distantly. A twin sister. Even though it was mundane compared to all the death around her, it was that realization that made her start crying.
It had been raining all night, but now it was coming down heavier, washes of heavy horizontal rain and sleet pelting everyone. It washed away Hinata's tears before anyone could see them. Suigetsu was there, close to Gaara, moving from puddle to puddle and waiting for something as his chakra rhythmically surged, his strange body flattened out and moving in a way Hinata was sure only she could perceive.
She and Kurenai had been laid down over three hundred feet away, and Ino and Shikamaru were standing guard over them, ready to move the second the fight expanded. They both obviously had no idea what to do: this was so far outside the realm of their mission that they'd defaulted to keeping her and her sensei safe.
Hinata tried to expand her vision, desperate to see what had happened to Sasuke and his team, to find out where Darui had run off to, but the second her range moved beyond five-hundred feet she seized, a full-body cramp. She felt like she would snap in half, and with a groan she allowed the chakra that had accumulated in her eyes to leak away and drip back into the rest of her body. She was too hurt, too useless; all she was good for tonight was making mistakes and murdering family.
"Sensei," she choked out. "We have to help them. The city…"
"We can't," Kurenai rasped. "I don't care about Sand being our ally, but we just don't have the power to stop him here. The best we can do at this point is minimize casualties." She gestured with a limp hand. "Shikamaru, Ino, both your jutsu can get people out of there-"
"Oh fuck that," Ino growled. She was crouching down, a kunai in one hand and bandages in another. Hinata realized that the cut in her side was still partially open, but her entire stomach and lower back was covered in bandages and compression tape. She could barely bend to sit up even if she wanted to. "Sakura's fighting him: she's got the right idea."
"Your Mind-Transfer won't work on him," Shikamaru said. He was watching the fight with intense eyes, and Hinata was sure he was playing through all the possible scenarios with every blow. "And neither does my shadow. Kurenai-sensei is right that we can't attack him directly." His eyes shifted, away from Gaara and towards his team. "But if we're lucky, maybe we can pull something."
"We have to do it quickly," Hinata said, forcing herself to breathe. Focus. Be present. Worry about yourself later.
"People are dying."
###
It took about two minutes for Sakura to realize they were losing the fight.
At first, it had just been her and Naruto and his clones, but they'd very quickly been joined by seven other shinobi from various villages, including the two Grass ninja and the man with long black hair who'd been there since the beginning. Like Karin and Hinata had said, the city was full of ninja, many hired by Waves itself, and they clearly considered Gaara a threat.
More than a dozen ninja against a single enemy was insane overkill in most situations. Unless the skill or physical ability of the sole ninja was ridiculously more advanced than their opponents, they'd be overwhelmed by simultaneous attacks from too many angles at once and die in short order. It was a simple fact brought about by the constraints of physics and biology, which Sakura considered unquestionable. She'd been attacked by dozens of clones before, and despite being faster and deadlier than them only Naruto's intervention had kept her alive.
Sakura had figured that would happen to Gaara when the other ninja joined the fight, but it hadn't.
Instead, ninja started dying.
One of the ninja from Grass was the first to go down: Gaara caught her as she jumped to the side, his sandstorm slamming her to a stop in midair. He spat, and a spear of sand flew from his mouth and punched a fist sized hole in her chest. She fell, convulsing and spraying blood everywhere, and her sister let out a scream as the battle continued. Another fell less than a minute later, the man not even having time to scream as Gaara tripped him with a whirl of sand and lashed out with one bloody claw. The man ducked back, apparently avoiding the attack, and then collapsed, revealing the front of his skull as Gaara's claw carried away his face.
Naruto's clones were dying with tremendous speed. Merely being close to Gaara was dangerous as he spun and screamed, kicking up waves of displaced concrete and generating hurricane winds filled with cutting shrapnel and hungry sand. Even from twenty feet away, Sakura barely felt safe as she relentlessly attacked. All of her blows were aimed for Gaara's head, the only part of his body that still seemed human. Maybe if she cut it off the chaos would come to an end. But it wasn't to be: as the strikes flashed out, Gaara's head sank back into his chest and emerged from his back, his body reorienting and leaving the Hail Blade to cut useless gashes in his torso.
As she watched, a man with skin darker than Darui's was smashed away as he leapt at Gaara with a Water Dragon wreathing his body, sailing off towards the sea and leaving a trail of moonlit blood. Gaara's body of sand was becoming more active: spikes and knives were beginning to lance out of it at anyone who got too close, an active defense instead of a passive one. One of Naruto's last clones went down as a spike pierced his brain, and Gaara raised his hand high in the moment of respite it brought him.
"Weak!" he roared, and when he slammed it down a storm of razor wind erupted out of the palm. It shot out in every direction, tearing the dock to pieces, killing the rest of the clones, and ripped off the feet of a ninja from the Land of Tea who was too slow to back away. The woman let out a shocked yell, fell,, and one of Gaara's fists struck out and crushed her upper body to pulp the second she hit the ground. Blood sprayed out across the concrete, but much of it was absorbed directly into Gaara's sand. Three of the remaining shinobi turned and ran at that, and then it was just Sakura, Naruto, and the woman from Grass.
Sakura took all this in, felt her ribs ache, and broke into a sprint directly at Gaara, both blades whirling. She needed to get closer.
"And pointless!" Gaara's scream was accompanied by another sand shuriken wreathed in a storm. It wasn't as large as the first, but Sakura found herself terrified; there were still people at her back, and she didn't want more to die because of her poor positioning. She slashed out at the shuriken five times, trying to break it apart, and partially succeeded. The projectile collapsed, the wind dissipating, but a chunk of leftover sand slammed into her shoulder and sent her spinning to the ground with a painful crash, spikes digging into her flesh and drawing out and absorbing her blood.
She ripped it out, leaving behind a messy wound. The left side of her jacket was getting wet, but at least more people weren't dead. Naruto and the Grass shinobi were fighting side by side, shouting and pounding Gaara with more Rasengans and a lightning jutsu that accompanied the woman's punches, boiling patches of sand to glass. The Sand team was still watching, not interfering on either side; Temari's face was buried in her hands.
"Annoying, annoying, annoying!" Gaara stomped, sand pouring into the cracks the fight had made in the concrete and erupting out in waves of cutting blades and more wind. Sakura rolled away and to her feet, barely avoiding the jutsu. However, the Grass shinobi fell back with a deep cut across her chest as Naruto pressed forward, ignoring several bleeding wounds. The woman hit the ground and began crawling backwards, her teeth bared, but Gaaa didn't have eyes for her. He was focused on Naruto.
"Don't you get it?! I'm here because I can't be stopped!" Gaara lashed out again, catching Naruto by the ankle and pulling him up into the air. Sakura's heart skipped a beat, and she launched several more attacks in desperation. Gaara caught them on his other arm, the sand hardening and trapping the water sword in the center of it. He pulled back Naruto to slam him into the ground with a laugh as Naruto flailed, trying to form a Rasengan to smash apart Gaara's arm.
Gaara started to shout something else and then there was a deafening crack from Sakura's right. His head snapped back, an arc of blood flying from his face, and his grip loosened. Naruto tumbled free, hitting the ground and rolling as he reoriented himself, the Rasengan finally fully forming in his hand.
Sakura looked over as she revved her blade and pulled back to swing. She found Suigetsu there, rising out of one of the countless puddles of blood and water that had accumulated on the docks. Both of his hands were formed into pistols, and he had a manic grin. It was like she'd thought: he'd been waiting, biding his time until Gaara gave him an opening. Suigetsu's grin shifted to Sakura, but she didn't have time to smile back.
She was too busy trying to slash Gaara into as many pieces as possible. She didn't know if he was still alive after being shot in the face, but that didn't stop her from laying into him with ten, twenty, thirty strikes, slashing out with both blades and carving countless scars into his body of sand. Thick mud and old blood poured from the wounds she left, but she felt in her heart that she wasn't cutting deep enough yet. The blood she was drawing wasn't Gaara's.
She charged forward with a full body thrust as Gaara rocked back, drawing both blades back to her shoulder and pairing them together. The Hyouryusuiken combined, becoming a single tremendous spinning drill of a blade, and then she thrust it forward with a grunted kiai as the familiarity of the situation made her sick to her stomach.
As she charged, Naruto did too. He had both hands on his Rasengan, and it grew by the moment, almost to the size of his entire torso. He slammed into Gaara and drove the Rasengan into the Jinchuriki's lower back at the same time Sakura's spear exploded out and took Gaara through the chin, impaling his throat. They both screamed out at the same time, desperation making their voices one.
"Hyousuiyari!"
"Odama Rasengan!"
Gaara gagged, head snapping up, and Sakura could now see he had two neat holes in his face, one right through his tattoo and the other below his right eye, in the cheek. He glared at her with utter fury as her Hail Spear spun and shredded his throat, and then Naruto roared and pressed forward with his enormous Rasengan. The entire front of Gaara's stomach blew out, showering the ground with sand and coagulated blood.
He let out a gurgle and collapsed in a pile of gore-covered sand.
Sakura staggered back, overwhelmed by pain and shock as she stared at the ruined body. Gaara's siblings were screaming, a distant sound that barely registered with her.
'Screw them.' It didn't feel like her own thought, though it was her voice. 'They can't let him kill people and then cry about it.'
"Got you!" Naruto cried out. He was covered in hundreds of cuts, the product of Gaara's sandstorms and several near misses, and was limping on an obviously broken ankle. He took a painful step away, almost collapsing, his whole face red. "How do you like that, you freak?!" he screamed at the destroyed corpse. "We got you!"
As Naruto screamed, some of the sand shifted, and Sakura's heart stopped.
Naruto cursed, but before he could retreat a tendril of sand snapped out and pierced him right through the arm. He let out a scream of pain as more of the sand whipped away, stirred up into a tornado of blades and slashing him countless times across his whole body.
"No!" Sakura cried out and swung again, but another tendril of sand, more finely controlled than anything so far, intertwined itself with her hasty Flowing Hail Blade. The jutsu was only half reformed, not as solid as she should have made it, and Gaara's sand yanked it and the sword that Tenten had gifted her so long ago right out of her hand, ripping away the top layer of her skin as well. It skittered away and was swallowed by the bloody mud that now covered much of the nearby docks.
As the sand raised itself into a tornado, Gaara was revealed. Sakura understood now; the head had been a fake; the blood had never been his. He was curled up into a ball, stuck in the fetal position and sheathed in an unbelievably thick layer of sand armor. The thing they'd been fighting had essentially been a golem, and Gaara had been concealed in its chest, in the most protected section.
Of course he'd improved just as much as them. Why wouldn't he have? He'd been dreaming of killing them.
"Close," he said with a grin as more sand constricted around Naruto. He screamed as his arm was twisted out of position by the tendril impaling it. Suigetsu began rushing forward, but Gaara gestured and sent a wave of sand crashing over him, burying him completely.
"Gaara, don't!" Sakura shouted, knowing that if she ran in without a plan she'd be ripped apart. Gaara actually stopped, glancing back at her with a curious look.
"Come on, Sakura," he said patiently, and his tone froze her. "Don't you understand now? Didn't it feel good?" Naruto was wriggling, trying to form another hand-sign to produce more clones: he might be able to manage it in a second, if Sakura kept Gaara busy. Her hands were shaking, blood dripping from her torn palm as she placed both hands on her knife. It felt pathetic in the face of her opponent.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said. Gaara laughed.
"You're not stupid," he said with a genuine smile. "You killed me, or you thought you did. Didn't it feel good?" His eyes were yellow, his body still vibrating with the chakra of his Tailed Beast. "Didn't it make everything feel worth it?"
Sakura wished she could lie. Gaara saw the truth in her lack of response.
"Yeah, you get it now." He flinched, pressing his hand against his head with a growl, and then raised his other hand. Naruto's arms were yanked apart again, the Shadow Clone seal incomplete. He let out another groan of pain, and Sakura prepared to sell her life to save him. "Now, we should finish this."
"That's enough."
The voice was so unexpected by both Gaara and Sakura that they had the same reaction, twitching and looking to the east, Gaara glaring out from between the fingers he had splayed across his face. They found Baki standing there, his hands open and at his sides. Far behind him, Gaara's siblings were staring in disbelief. Gaara was doing the same. Baki kept speaking, his voice steady.
"Gaara," Baki said, taking a step forward. He'd gotten rather close without either of them noticing; he was an experienced ninja after all. "This has gone too far already. Don't forget why we're here."
"Why we're here?" Gaara muttered. He was confused: Sakura could see it clear as day. "What? Shut up. Be quiet."
"Even if Namikaze has gone rogue, he's still the son of the Hokage," Baki said. Sakura didn't understand what was happening; how could the man who'd been too afraid of speaking back to Gaara to even regard her as human step in now? It being Naruto instead of her wasn't enough to explain that. That kind of cowardice didn't discriminate. "He's not someone you can kill without consequence. Your father will punish you."
"Father will punish me?" Gaara's voice was low. "Only if someone told him." He was vibrating, gold chakra boiling off him. "And you'd never-"
Sakura, still sure she was about to watch one of her best friends die, didn't actually see Sasuke arrive.
He came down from out of the night like the moon had spat him out, both of his hands aflame, and fired out two beams of fiery light as he hit the ground. The first carved a semicircle through the air and severed the sand holding Naruto, who dropped to the ground and scrambled away from Gaara in obvious terror. The second beam slammed directly into Gaara's chest and knocked him back a step, leaving behind a sheen of melted sand over his heart.
"Naruto, go!" It was an unmistakable command, and Naruto followed it, running away on three limbs, his broken ankle dragging behind him. Gaara let out an unintelligible yell and sent his sand after Sasuke, but somehow his Sharingan kept him safe as he danced through the onslaught, firing off another laser and then bringing his hands to cup his mouth, flames dancing at his lips.
The fireball that emerged completely engulfed Gaara, but Sasuke didn't press the attack. He just ran, circling around the lunatic and reaching down into the mud to pull a sputtering Suigetsu from the ground, dragging him away from the fight.
"Sakura, you too!" he shouted as he ran past her. "Back up! We're not fighting unless-!"
Sakura didn't listen. Instead, in the moment where she was obscured from Gaara's sight by the explosion of fire, she stepped forward, channeling all the chakra she could muster into her knife. Something flexible wouldn't cut it here: she needed strength, enough strength to cut down a monster, and that kind of power was rigid. Her Flowing Hail Blade doubled and then tripled in length, becoming a crude butcher blade run through with hail and particles of her own blood, and then she swung into the fire with all her might.
As Sakura attacked, the fire and smoke was cleared by the rain and wind and Gaara was revealed. He was unharmed, shielded by a thin dome of sand that extended several feet out in every direction. Sasuke's fireball had melted the sand together, turning it to rough glass in places. Gaara was looking in Sakura's direction with an irritated smile. Though he had less than a tenth of a second to react, his sand automatically rose to meet her sword, which she had swung directly at where his head had last been. True to his habit, Gaara hadn't moved an inch.
It wasn't enough. Parts of it were brittle and semi-solid, and what was left couldn't turn back a blade that could cut past steel like it was liquid. Sakura's extended knife passed straight through Gaara's infallible defense for the first time that night, cutting an arc of water and ice in the night and straight through Gaara's face.
He almost dodged. He was moving even as his defense failed, leaning back to put his face out of range of Sakura's blade and raising his hand. It was a mindless instinctive reflex that saved his life when his sand couldn't. Instead of slicing off the top of Gaara's head, Sakura's extended Flowing Hail Blade cut into the center of Gaara's palm and came out the side, nearly cutting his right hand in half as he raised it. It passed through the bridge of his nose, leaving a deep divot, and carved a path across his forehead before either wound had time to begin bleeding. The blade narrowly missed his left eye, passing over it and through the large red tattoo on his head, the kanji which read "Love."
The kanji was bifurcated, the tattoo obliterated. Gaara fell backwards in an explosion of blood, his face obscured by crimson, and Sakura took another step forward to finish the job, raising her knife over her head.
But before she could swing down, something in her shoulder popped, and her vision went white, swimming spots wiping away the world. The messy hole left by Gaara's sand detonated pain throughout her whole body. Her left arm went numb and collapsed, blood running down it in thick streams. It was like it weighed a thousand tons, dragging her down to the ground.
"Sakura-!" she heard Sasuke shout from behind her, and then the docks exploded.
Golden chakra and sand poured out of Gaara's prone body, and he screamed, long and loud. Sakura thought her ears might burst as she was buffeted by wind and sand and chakra that melted away some of her skin and jacket where it touched her, driven back from Gaara even as she anchored herself to the ground with chakra. Her Hail Blade was blown away, the wavering lattice of ice and water collapsing under the explosion of chakra.
It was just like with Fuu, she thought as she struggled to stand her ground, no matter how stupid a decision that was. She'd experienced something just like this when Fuu's Tailed Beast had been released by Itachi. The aftermath of her last fight with Gaara flashed across her mind, crystal clear.
'So when I stabbed him, the Tailed Beast came out?'
She needed to have killed him in one hit, and she'd failed.
She thought that Gaara would immediately pursue her. He rose up out of the explosion with his face utterly covered in his own blood, thick crimson liquid dripping down and covering the entire front of his body. But to Sakura's shock, his focus was elsewhere.
Whips of sand lashed out and wrapped around Baki, lifting him into the air without resistance. Gaara snarled, his teeth covered in blood, and threw out both his hands, clapping them together. His half-severed hand flopped, the muscles too savaged to function.
"You distracted me," he hissed, and Baki let out a gasp as one of his legs snapped beneath the sand. "That won't happen again."
"Wait!" Sakura shouted, not sure why she was speaking up. She raised her knife, trying to summon up her elemental blade again, but Gaara wasn't phased.
The sand constricted, coating Baki from head to toe. As the sand covered his face, Baki suddenly started thrashing and struggling, his expression morphing into abject terror. It was like a switch had been flipped, that he'd suddenly realized his mistake.
"Gaara, wait!" he shouted. "That wasn't-!"
"Sand Coffin," Gaara grunted, and his hands balled into fists. The sand closed with a terrible crunch, and blood began seeping out of it like water from a rung cloth.
Sakura blinked, barely able to believe what she'd just seen.
Gaara had just killed his own teacher without a moment of hesitation just for drawing some of his attention. Somehow, she hadn't considered that a real possibility. Even if Baki had clearly feared it… but then why had he done something that could get him killed in the first place?
As Sakura's brain stuttered, she heard a distant scream from farther down the dock. It sounded like Ino. Nothing was making sense, so one more scream didn't make much of an impression on her. Gaara's chakra hadn't abated: if anything it was getting more intense, washing over her and crushing her heart in its grasp. She started backing up.
Gaara had paused, looking at the crushed remains of his ward. Now that some of the sand had receded, it was clear that Baki had been reduced to an unrecognizable ball of meat and bone. His sister was screaming while Kankuro stood gormlessly at her side.
"Sensei!" Temari's face was bloodless, her eyes wide in fear. Gaara twitched, looking towards her and ignoring Sakura at his back despite her dancing blade.
"Shut up!" he roared at her, and she did, staring at him in terror. "Shut up, or you're next!" He spun, glaring at Sakura. His face was a mask of blood, his pupiless eyes murderous beneath it. "Anyone who gets in my way, that's what will happen to you! I don't care who you are: everyone's the same when they're dead!"
He advanced on her, and Sakura spun the chakra in her single remaining blade, the water and ice rotating so quickly the sound of it tore through the air. There was a fantasy in her heart that she now knew would never come to pass, that she could lash out with her little blade and this time, she would cut him down for good.
"You're still fine," he muttered. His hand wandered up to the deep wound carved into his face, and he pressed his finger into the place where his tattoo had been, burying them in sticky blood. Sakura thought she might have glimpsed the palid white of his skull for a moment. Gaara's whole body shuddered, and his voice cracked. "Why are you still fine?"
Sakura, who had broken ribs and a messy hole in her shoulder rendering her left arm useless, didn't feel like she was fine. She felt like Baki looked. She retreated as Gaara advanced, back towards Sasuke and Suigetsu. She didn't look away from Gaara, but she ignored him as she spoke.
"Where's Haku?" she asked, and the one to answer her was Karin. Sakura hadn't seen her arrive, but it made sense; she must have come with Sasuke.
"Coming!" The Uzumaki sounded panicked. "He and Zabuza were fighting ninja from the Hidden Mist!"
That raised a couple important questions for Sakura, but she didn't have time to voice them before Gaara charged on a wave of sand. They were back to their old game, feeling almost familiar now. Gaara advanced, and Sakura retreated.
But this time, it was different. As Gaara moved forward, the sand beneath him swelled, pouring out in apparently endless amounts and pushing him up into the air. More and more, until it was obvious what was coming out was chakra shaped as sand and not the material itself; there was simply too much to be contained even within the oversized gourd.
Sakura realized that her sword wouldn't be nearly enough. It had never been enough. She'd shown up to this battle without the means of finishing off her opponent.
"Back up!" Sasuke roared as the sand flooded out. "Sakura, get some space!"
This time, she obeyed the order. With nothing but a ten foot water blade against the onrushing tide, Sakura turned and ran, pushing herself across the docks as fast as she could as Gaara grew behind her. It was like his initial transformation, but so much bigger and even more unstoppable.
A glance back told Sakura that there was nothing she could do to fix this anymore. Gaara was rapidly pushed up into the sky by the tide beneath him, which was forming a distinct body: arms, legs, a huge tail and a rotund torso. Sand cut through with veins of blue blood coursed across the body, like a wave of tattoos. With terrifying speed, a monstrous tanuki was taking shape.
"This is it, Sakura Haruno!" Gaara called from atop its head. He was half melded into its forehead, concealed and shielded by the endless sand. His blood was pouring out and coloring the body of sand around him a deep red, like a new oversized tattoo to replace the one he'd lost. Two blank white eyes opened on either side of him, dwarfing his body. "I may not even notice when you die!"
"Oh, make up your mind!" Sakura screamed back as she ran. "Do you care about killing me or not?!"
Gaara's answer wasn't the most eloquent, but at least it couldn't be misinterpreted. The tanuki swung at Sakura with a claw ten times her size.
Big, way too big, and way too fast. Sakura couldn't help but laugh. At least the thing that was finally going to kill her literally couldn't be avoided. That meant she'd done her best, right? She swung anyway, just so she wouldn't die without fighting back, and her Flowing Hail Blade cut a satisfying gash into the palm of the hand that was about to crush her.
Something crashed into her: not the claw, which would have reduced her to a smear, but a person, from behind. Sakura was actually bowled over from the hit, sent flying to her left as a high pitched scream passed her. She caught a glimpse of Sasuke in her peripheral vision, hurling himself towards the oncoming claw. There was a point of blinding blue light in his left hand that burned away the rain and sleet and sand that filled the air and left a smear on her vision that stayed behind even after she blinked.
'What?' she had time to think before she hit the ground and bounced. 'What the hell is that?'
There was a crack, and then an explosion so loud that Sakura went deaf for a moment. When she rolled and came to her feet, she didn't understand what she was seeing.
The claw was gone. A truncated arm swung past her and Sasuke, missing them completely and smashing the top off a nearby building. Sasuke was on one knee, gripping his right arm as his face twisted up in obvious agony. His cloak was burned away on that side, and his entire arm covered in horrific cracked red skin.
He jerked towards her, already moving, Sharingan wildly whirling. "Run!" he shouted, and Sakura did, turning to sprint with him.
"Sasuke, what the hell-?!" she started to ask. He shook his head.
"No talking!" he demanded. "Just run!"
Sakura wanted to scream at him, to ask why he hadn't led with that, whatever insane mystery jutsu Sasuke suddenly had that could turn aside the attack of a Bijuu, instead of a fireball that had accomplished nothing except giving her an opening, but she had the feeling that she'd ignored enough of Sasuke's commands for the time being. She put her head down and ran, not daring to look back at the monster behind them.
The Tailed Beast couldn't be ignored; its thunderous steps shook the world as it started chasing after them. Farther along the docks, Sakura could see Ino, Shikamaru, Hinata, and Kurenai: they were staring up into the sky in obvious horror. For some reason, Ino was holding on to Shikamaru for support, one leg dragging. Even from a distance, Sakura could tell it was obviously broken. How had Ino broken her leg?
"Suigetsu!" Sasuke barked. "Can you slow him down?"
"What?! No! Are you crazy?!" Suigetsu asked with a look of horror. "That's a Bijuu! What the fuck do you think I could-?!"
As Suigetsu was shouting, Sakura heard a pause, like the weather had been forced to slam to a stop. She finally looked back to find the tanuki stopped in its tracks, Gaara gesturing at them from its head. The stump of its hand was pointed at them, the sand of the wrist violently wriggling.
"Sand Shotgun."
Huge pellets of sand exploded out of the stump at supersonic speed and tore what was left of the docks to shreds. The attack wasn't directed or accurate in any way: it simply blasted everything in front of Gaara with indiscriminate power, punching person sized holes in the concrete and many of the buildings that lined the docks. By this point, many of them were emptied out, their occupants having fled, but Sakura could still hear screams as part of Fukami City was smashed to pieces.
Sakura barely avoided a pellet, but a near miss still picked her up and threw her with the force of its impact. She saw Sasuke dance through the volley, his Sharingan keeping him safe, but couldn't track Karin and Suigetsu in the chaos. When she slammed to the ground, her shoulder blinded her again and she lost track of where she was.
"Still alive?!" Gaara screamed down. Sakura started running again, determined to put one foot ahead of the other. She couldn't see the Leaf team ahead of her anymore: they'd either been blown away, or taken cover. It was impossible to track anything in the chaos.
She had to get away from everyone else, she thought. Gaara was focused on her; he'd chase her. She had to draw him as far away from everything as possible. Right now, she was running west. That would work, it would bring him out to sea. Out there, she could-
'You could do what? Die alone?'
When she looked back again, she could see that the Tailed Beast was swarming with dozens of Narutos, clambering over it and trying to reach Gaara. Naruto was still alive, and still fighting despite the impossible odds: he must have retreated and fixed his ankle. It was slowing Gaara down a little, but it wouldn't be enough. The clones were dying so fast that by the time Sakura noticed them most of them were gone, pierced or consumed by the sand they ran across. None of them left behind a body, and Gaara raged and swung wildly as they attacked him from every angle. One of his attacks stirred up a solid wall of wind: it shot off south into the city, knocking down everything in its path.
Think, think! A building collapsed, another. Sakura's head was going to split open. What could she do? Could she fight back? She had to reach his real body, all the way up on the head, an impossible journey away. Her sword could hurt him, even if all she had left was her knife. She had to reach the real him!
"Wow," a calm voice said from her right. "This seems pretty bad."
Sakura looked over in disbelief and found Haku at her side. His face had a small smear of blood and his normally perfect hair was frazzled, but he looked perfectly fine otherwise. He smiled at her, and she thought she might cry.
There was a lot she felt she needed to say. I'm glad you're okay; I'm sorry; how'd you find me in all this? What came out was much more direct.
"I need to get to his head," Sakura said, and the absolute hatred that filled her voice surprised even her.
Haku looked her over with an obvious appraisal, eyes lingering on her shoulder. "I don't think that's a good idea," he said, and Sakura flinched.
"We have to stop him." At that, Haku nodded.
"We will," he said, stepping forward and placing his hand on Sakura's. She stiffened, and he smiled. "Master Zabuza is already on it. But for now, we should get you out of here."
Far behind them, Gaara was raging. There was an explosion of chakra that hollowed Sakura out, and she twisted to see a tsunami of sand rolling out in every direction from Gaara, leveling what was left of the docks and bringing down even more nearby buildings. Haku stepped in front of her, still holding Sakura's hand as he made a trio of signs with his free hand and stomped down hard enough to crack the concrete beneath his feet.
All of the condensation in the air and on the ground solidified, drawing up around them in a ridiculously thick dome of ice. Sakura could see her breath as the sand rolled over the dome, encasing them completely, and began to constrict. The ice cracked, but Haku breathed out a cloud of steam and the dome held, standing up to the unbelievable pressure of Gaara's attack.
"My," Haku muttered. "He has even less control than last time."
"He killed his teacher," Sakura said, wondering if she was going to pass out. Numbing pain was radiating throughout her whole body. "I think that let him… let go."
"Only a true idiot could believe something like that wouldn't just put more chains on you," Haku said with uncharacteristic disgust. "So I guess he would."
He made more single-handed signs and the dome of ice began expanding, freezing the sand as golden chakra fled from its cold embrace. But they were still trapped: Sakura grit her teeth.
"We can't reach him like this," she growled. Haku grinned.
"We can't," he said, and then grimaced as the pressure of the sand obviously increased, more of the ice cracking. The dome buckled. "But we don't have to. We just have to keep his attention."
More cracking, and Haku sank to his knees as the pressure of Gaara's sand became obviously unbearable. Sakura was dragged down with him as the dome shrunk, compressing around them. "And he obviously very much wants you dead."
They waited like that, Sakura feeling her heart beat faster and faster as the clear ice made it obvious how much closer to death they got every second. The sand pressed in remorselessly, eager to smash them to paste, and she found herself squeezing Haku's hand in a death grip.
"Haku," she said, her voice rasping, and Haku glanced at her with curious, beautiful eyes. "I don't know if I ever…"
Before Sakura could understand what she was about to say, she was interrupted by a scream.
Gaara had been screaming a lot that night, and so Sakura knew the sound intimately. But this scream wasn't like any of the others she'd been assaulted by. This was a scream of agony, a sound he hadn't even let out when she'd scored his skull with her blade. It was so loud that it penetrated the distance, the wind, the rain and snow, the sand and ice surrounding them, and set all of Sakura's hair standing on end as she crouched there clutching Haku's hand.
"Ah," Haku said, just as mild as when he'd arrived. The sand around their dome of ice began to withdraw, slipping away as the energy animating it retreated.
"I think Master Zabuza made it."
###
Hinata watched with wide eyes as Gaara's arm fell through the darkness of the night. It hit the top of the Bijuu's head, bounced, rolled, and tumbled off towards the ground, turning hand over stump and leaving behind a trail of dark blood that was washed away by the horizontal rain before it could follow its origin.
The blow should have been fatal. The shinobi from Rain, Zabuza Momochi, had leapt from a collapsing building as Gaara had knocked it over, the rain and debris and his near total suppression of his chakra hiding him completely from Gaara as he approached. The man was soaked in blood from head to toe, so much even the rain hadn't managed to wash it off. He'd swung one of the Legendary Swords of the Mist at Gaara's head like a human guillotine, determined to strike it off in a single sudden attack.
Gaara couldn't have reacted, but something had alerted him at the last second. Hinata was sure it was the sand that filled the air around him, suffused with his own chakra. It had functioned as a radar, telling him that imminent death was approaching as Zabuza had swung his man-sized sword. Gaara had raised his uninjured arm, coated it in several feet of steel-hard sand as a shield.
All that, and Zabuza's blade had hammered right through it, severing the limb at the elbow and spilling even more of Gaara's blood across his summoned Bijuu.
Gaara was screaming as Zabuza began to take another swing, but the man was forced to retreat as the sand of the Bijuu blasted out as blades and shuriken, forcing him off its nose. The scream was so loud it made it all the way to the Leaf team's position hundreds of feet away from the fight, rattling their bones as Hinata unblinkingly observed.
Then, the Bijuu turned tail and ran.
"He's retreating," Hinata said. It was like she was talking from the bottom of an immeasurably dark and deep well. Using her Byakugan at all right now was stupid, but she felt compelled to watch. She'd helped cause this in some small way, and now she couldn't turn away. "Zabuza Momochi cut off his arm."
"His real arm?" Shikamaru asked as he finished securing Ino's leg. Hinata nodded. "Jeez. I can't believe anyone managed to reach him."
"Zabuza is pursuing him," Hinata said, her voice still distant as she watched Gaara flee to the east, bulldozing everything in his way with deceptive speed as the swordsmen ran after him. "He wants to finish him off." That was more than obvious to her. Now that the attempted killing blow had been struck, Zabuza's chakra had ricocheted from utter silence to a deafening, murderous screech. It was rising up around him, wreathing his shoulders in crimson energy and screaming his intent to the heavens with the snarling face of a bloodthirsty monster. Hinata was sure it would be faintly visible to ordinary eyes, but to the Byakugan it was painfully bright.
One demon was chasing down another, and Hinata found pleasure in the justice of it.
"What about everyone else?" Ino asked with a hiss. Her leg had been shattered by the psychic feedback of Gaara's attack on his teacher: Ino had managed to withdraw before Baki had been crushed, but that hadn't been enough to escape the initial injury. They'd never dreamed that Gaara would actually kill his teacher; it just hadn't been within their frame of reference.
If they'd thought it had been a possibility, Ino never would have attempted the possession, never tried to make Gaara back down with someone else's authority. But she hadn't, and now Baki was dead, and she'd barely said a word since returning to her damaged body.
"Sakura and Haku are closest," Hinata said, gesturing to the north. Her team had retreated off the docks to take shelter from Gaara's insanity, and that put almost everyone closer to the sea than them. "Sakura's badly injured, but Haku is fine. Beyond them… Suigetsu has been buried, but he seems okay. He's still moving, anyway. Karin ran into the city. I lost track of her. Naruto's in the sea, pretty hurt as well, but he's using medical jutsu on himself. Sasuke…"
Hinata's throat closed as she looked at Sasuke. He'd fled into the sea as well, following Naruto's example to avoid Gaara's final wave of sand that had turned the northwestern side of Fukami City into a desert. But where Naruto could heal himself, Sasuke had no choice but to endure as he waited below the waves, unsure of whether it was safe to surface. He was badly burned across his entire right side, the result of an unknown Lightning jutsu, and had nasty bruises and lacerations from Gaara's sand and wind. His arm hung limply as he stared up through the salt water at the night sky, waiting for his powerful intuition to tell him it was time to move.
The sight of Sasuke having no choice but to wait and survive put Hinata's heart in a vice. She took a deep breath, trying to recenter herself as the night threatened to bury her alive.
"He's hiding in the sea. I think he'll be okay."
"Good," Kurenai rasped. Her sensei was on her feet now, but leaning against a nearby wall in obvious pain. "Listen, all of you: if Momochi kills that little bastard, none of us saw a thing, you understand?" She took a shuddering breath, the rapidly formed scar tissue on her throat straining. "I don't care what Sand says, or who asks. That kid deserves everything that's coming to him."
Hinata, Shikamaru, and Ino all nodded in agreement. The decision was unquestioned among them, and by Hinata especially. Even if her range had been reduced to about a thousand feet, she could see in all too much detail the consequences of Gaara's rampage. Hundreds were dead, and thousands more injured; Fukami City had had a chunk torn out of it. It was the kind of nightmare that made people the world over hate and fear shinobi, but Hinata had never had a chance to witness something like it firsthand.
Gaara's siblings were following him. The both of them were chasing after the retreating Tailed Beast, leaving the crushed and buried remains of their teacher behind. Hinata didn't know what they thought they could accomplish; if Zabuza turned around he would probably cut down both of them before they could realize it had happened. However, the man seemed content to pursue Gaara and ignore any hanger-ons; he was reaching the edge of Hinata's vision, but she could still see just how focused he was.
"They're out of my range," Hinata said after another couple seconds, allowing her Byakugan to recede. She was lying on the ground once more, staring up into the sky and being blinded by the rain. Her body was empty now: all out of chakra, and almost out of the will to continue. Her forehead burned, the phantom pain of a seal she hadn't been branded with because her father had been born first. "I can't see anymore."
"You've watched more than enough," Kurenai said, limping to her side and offering a hand. Hinata stared, pondering if she really wanted to get up or not, and took her sensei's hand after two or three seconds. Kurenai hauled her to her feet and Hinata stumbled, nearly falling before she was caught by both Kurenai and Shikamaru.
"He's shrinking," Ino noted, and Hinata looked to the north to see that it was true. The monstrous Bijuu Gaara had summoned was gradually getting smaller and smaller, and not just from the distance. The sand was falling away, the beast diminishing. It went from taller than all the buildings around it by several stories to the same size as them in just ten seconds as it kept rushing northeast.
"Yeah," Shikamaru agreed. "Maybe he can't keep it up when he's that hurt. Sakura landed a pretty nasty hit too. He might be bleeding out." His face hardened. "Though…"
"What?" Kurenai asked, and Shikamaru cocked his head.
"I don't think he's just mindlessly retreating," he said after a moment. "He's headed for the Great Channel Bridge."
They digested that supposition in silence, and Hinata shivered. She wasn't sure if it was from the cold or her exhaustion.
"We need to keep an eye on him," Kurenai declared. "Hinata, if you can't do it, I'll go. We have to confirm when he dies, at the very least."
Was it just that, or was there something else? Hinata was too tired to put the potential pieces together, but as she lowered her head, feeling the flow of chakra behind her head, she slowly nodded.
"I can do it," she said. "I'll need a soldier pill. Sakura had a few. I bet she'll let us borrow one."
It slipped out as natural as anything else. Kurenai nodded, Hinata thought, because they'd been working together, so sharing resources made sense even if they were from different villages. But when Ino glanced at her, she knew the two of them were thinking the same thing.
Sakura would definitely let them borrow one, because Sakura was still a shinobi of the Leaf, and she had the Hokage's mark to prove it.
They moved out slowly, though they were going as fast as they could. With both Kurenai and Ino having a broken leg and Hinata's existing injuries, there wasn't much they could do to set a pace appropriate for shinobi. Still, Sakura and Haku weren't too far away, and they were staying put. They both were waiting in the center of a circle of mud, sand made damp by the ice Haku had gathered, and Sakura waved as they approached over the thin artificial desert Gaara had created.
"Hey!" she shouted out. Shikamaru lazily waved back. "You guys are okay?!"
"Barely," Shikamaru groused as he helped Ino along, her arm slung over his shoulder. They joined up, Sakura and Haku obviously appraising them. Sakura looked awful; the left side of her body was soaked in blood, and her arm hung limp, but judging from the way she and Haku were looking at Hinata she probably looked just as bad. "We need a soldier pill for Hinata. Kurenai-sensei wants to track Gaara."
"He won't get far," Haku said. As he did, Sakura started weakly rummaging through one of her hip packs, her fingers fumbling over unseen tools. "Master Zabuza is after him, and he's never let someone get away."
It sounded cocky, but Zabuza had cut off Gaara's arm, so there was clearly some truth to his ability. Sakura finished searching and pulled out two pills clutched between her middle, index, and ring fingers. They were both bright blue, a color Hinata hadn't seen in Konoha before.
"Does anyone else want one?" Sakura asked, breathing heavily, and everyone shook their heads. "Okay, one for me too then. I thought I…" she paused, laughed. "Well, you know."
She handed Hinata hers, and they ate them together. Soldier pills never tasted good, but this one had the taste and texture of rotten blueberries. Hinata struggled to get it down, and though she knew it was partially a placebo effect the second it hit her stomach she felt a burning energy race throughout her body, so much it made her shake and jitter with excess adrenaline. She could see the same effect in Sakura, the girl shivering as she clutched her bloodied arm to her side.
"Sorry," Sakura said between chattering teeth. "Little strong."
"It's alright," Hinata said, feeling a giggle worm its way up from her chest. Now that she wasn't running on empty it was easier to find something like that funny. She brought her hands up, trying to activate the Byakugan once again, and her body burned.
Hmm. Little too early. She let her hands drop, looking to the north. "We should get closer," she decided. "It'll be easier for me to observe then, at least."
"Are Naruto and Sasuke okay? And Suigetsu and Karin?" Sakura asked, and Hinata nodded.
"They're in the sea. Suigetsu is around here somewhere, and Karin ran into the city. I don't know where they are now," she said apologetically.
"I'll come with you then," Sakura decided. "We'll find them once Gaara is dead."
"We'll stay here then," Shikamaru said, looking incredibly unenthusiastic about looking after a grand total of two broken legs.
"We will be back soon," Haku said serenely. "It shouldn't take long."
Hinata, Sakura, and Haku set off through the devastated city, heading for the Great Channel Bridge and keeping an eye out for Sasuke and Naruto. They had probably come in from the sea by now, Hinata thought, but without her Byakugan she couldn't pick them out. What had been the docks of Fukami City were now a desert strewn with shattered buildings and corpses. It didn't affect her as much as Hinata thought it should have. Maybe there had already been too much in the night, especially with her clansmen, for more death to make a strong impression.
She wondered about the shinobi from Grass. Hinata hadn't seen her among the bodies: had the woman gotten away in the end? She turned to ask Sakura and found her walking forward mindlessly, her eyes flicking from one corpse to another in the seemingly endless plane of destruction Gaara had left behind.
"Sakura?"
Sakura took a deep breath. "Yeah. Are we close enough?" She looked up into the night sky. "I can't hear anything, or see him. Do you think the Bijuu is gone? It looked like he was shrinking when he ran."
"I'll try," Hinata said, and she did. Like she was a child again she ran through several hand-signs to help channel her chakra, and activated her Byakugan once more.
It hurt, like something in her head was straining, about to tear, but as she focused the burning feeling receded. The world opened up, spreading in every direction. More sand, more corpses, the trail continuing north. Gaara had run people down in the streets as he'd fled towards the bridge, and it was in its massive shadow that Zabuza had finally caught him. Hinata was about fifteen hundred feet away from the fight.
It was beneath the bridge that two demons were raging at each other. Even Hinata's essential omniscience couldn't give the clash the clarity she was used to: Gaara's chakra stormed with sand and golden energy, and Zabuza's matched it with crimson malice and thick mist that obscured the entire area from sight. Hinata could only catch glimpses of the battle. Zabuza was accompanied by clones, perhaps a half dozen, all made of water and fragile for it, but Gaara was alone and badly injured.
He had made his final stand in no particular place, standing atop the heavy current that rushed beneath the bridge and sweeping his sand around in titanic attacks that could easily capsize and crush a ship. Zabuza was constantly attacking, rushing in and retreating alongside his clones as the sand formed deadly walls and lashed out in whips and blades, looking for the opportunity he would need to end Gaara's life. It was a dangerous endeavor, but the mist kept him relatively safe. It concealed him from Gaara's sight and blunted the counterattacks. With only his automatic defense to rely on, Gaara was withdrawing inward, seeming to become smaller as he curled up in anticipation of the strike that would end his life.
He was terrified and enraged, and yet Hinata didn't have a drop of pity for him. But as she watched, two things became apparent to her.
The first was that Gaara's sand extended out beyond the mist, rushing down below him and into the seabed. There, it had joined a huge amount of sand that was already present, thick and resonant with Gaara's golden chakra. When Hinata saw the saturated seabed, she had a horrifying epiphany.
Gaara had in fact been retreating towards the bridge on purpose. He must have spent the last few days preparing the sand beneath the waves there, filling it with his chakra and making it his own. But to Hinata's confusion, despite having such an incredible trump card just beneath his feet, Gaara was keeping his massed sand in reserve. There was enough that it could simply rush up and overwhelm Zabuza, but it stayed there beneath the water. That was probably because Zabuza's mist made even a massive attack untenantable: Gaara barely knew where his opponent was, and if he revealed the sand too soon, Zabuza would probably be able to avoid it and strike him down regardless.
The second thing that became obvious to Hinata was that Gaara's siblings were preparing to intervene. About two thousand feet away from Hinata herself, far away from the bridge and the coast and standing upon the water, they were both removing their weapons from their backs, a puppet and a tremendous war fan.
How they thought they could make a contribution to a fight of this magnitude, Hinata didn't know, but the fact they were considering coming to their brother's aid even after what he had done made her want to vomit.
"Is he dead yet?" Sakura asked. Hinata shook her head.
"Zabuza's still fighting. They're both beneath the bridge; everything is covered in mist. I can barely see a thing." She frowned. "But I think Temari and Kankuro are about to try something. They're getting ready to-"
As Hinata spoke, Temari swung her fan and produced a hurricane headed right for the bridge. It traveled faster than the speed of sound, tore the ocean in front of it into a flurry of white, and blew away Zabuza's mist jutsu in an instant.
"Oh no." Hinata stared in horror as Zabuza was revealed, and Gaara immediately struck upwards with his massed sand. Most of Zabuza's clones died in an instant, and the real one only barely avoided being impaled as spears of sand the size of a person pierced up through the waves. She started running, her legs screaming. "We have to go!" she said, turning back to yell before she realized that Sakura and Haku were already in front of her. Even with Sakura's injuries, the soldier pill was pushing her far past the point of exhaustion.
Hinata found that she couldn't keep up, so she resolved to shout after them. "The mist was blown away!" she screamed as Sakura and Haku pulled farther and farther ahead. "He has more sand, from the sea!"
"We'll finish him!" Sakura shouted back. "Stay back, Hinata! You've done enough!"
Hinata's legs were failing under her. Even with the soldier pill, there was something Sakura had that she just didn't. Maybe it was the poison, or her dead clansmen, or the half-healed hole in her side, or something else entirely, but she found herself watching Sakura's back as she raced towards a final confrontation with Gaara.
'Watch my back.'
I couldn't, Hinata thought. Not long enough for it to count.
Please, Sakura.
Kill that monster. I think you're the only one who can.
###
As Hinata fell behind, Sakura felt weightless.
She and Haku ran side by side, and even though one of Sakura's arms was useless she felt invincible with Haku there. She would have preferred it to be Sasuke or Naruto, but right now Haku was enough. He was strong and sure, and he would help her kill Gaara without hesitating.
The devastated streets of the city passed them by in a blur, and Sakura readied her knife. They might have to fight Gaara's siblings as well, but that was fine. If they were helping him even after he'd done all this, they deserved to die too anyway. It was like her mind was becoming a knife of its own, sharp and solely devoted to murder.
When they passed the bridge and started to make their way below it, running across the choppy sea, there was a crack.
Sakura looked around, unable to locate where the sound had come from. It was like it had come from all around her, a low groan that swept over the whole world. Without being able to locate the source, her knife-mind discarded it. Another turn, and Zabuza and Gaara were in sight.
Gaara was hurt, bleeding, on the edge of defeat. Zabuza was too: he had a gash in his side and his face was covered in his own blood, but he was still pushing on. As Sakura and Haku arrived he threw his sword up, making a series of hand-signs and slamming his palm into the ocean. Gaara was assailed from all sides by multiple Water Dragons that smashed his defenses to pieces, and then Zabuza grabbed his blade out of the air and leapt forward into an overhead strike that would split just about anyone in half.
But Gaara wasn't done: he drew up the sand that Hinata had mentioned, a sheer wall several feet thick, and turned Zabuza's fatal attack back, nearly taking the man's arms in the process. Even with one arm severed and his other hand rendered useless, he was still unbelievably dangerous.
He jerked like an animal with rabies as he saw Haku and Sakura arrive, his lips curling back from his teeth in a hungry sneer. "Again," he muttered, the blood from the cut on his forehead still flowing freely and almost obscuring his eyes. "You're here again."
Gaara's smile got wider. "Finally."
The Jinchuriki drew down as Haku and Sakura hurled themselves forward without a word, Sakura stabbing forward with her Flowing Hail Blade and Haku hurling a brace of needles as ice turned one of his arms into a blade and spread across the sea towards Gaara with obvious malice. Zabuza, sensing the opportunity had arrived, launched forward as well, a three-pronged assault that even Gaara's perfect defense couldn't turn back.
There was another crack. Louder. So loud Sakura glanced up, even though looking away from Gaara could be suicide.
When she did, as if out of mocking consideration, time froze.
In that frozen time, Sakura realized that she had been baited by her need to finish Gaara off. That by turning her mind into a knife, she had blinded herself to other considerations. Important ones, considerations like: why was Gaara in Wave in the first place? For what purpose had he massed the sand Hinata had been talking about, something which had obviously taken time and deliberation? Did he still have one last push in him, the same way Sakura did, soldier pill or not? A shinobi was supposed to be more than a mindless weapon, but Sakura, in her righteous lust for revenge, had forgotten that.
As Sakura experienced all those thoughts that she'd forestalled simultaneously, she watched the Great Channel Bridge buckle and collapse right on top of her.
It was a controlled demolition; sand had carved out the foundations of the huge bridge, worked itself into the cracks of the concrete, and suffused the breakpoints of the structure. Sakura was pretty sure Gaara wasn't an architect, but he certainly had a talent for destruction, and he'd had days to work his magic on the bridge. It collapsed inward instead of outward, hundreds of thousands of tons of steel, rebar, and concrete coming down all at once as the bridge twisted and shattered like a huge living creature with a scream to match. People fell too, several dozen, midnight travelers who had already been on the bridge when the carnage in the city had started and had either been fleeing towards the coast or moving towards the city, just trying to get somewhere less exposed.
Rubble rained down on Haku, Sakura, and Zabuza as they attacked Gaara together. A dome of sand came up around him, but both Sakura and Zabuza's blade penetrated it as Haku's ice covered everything else. Sakura felt her blade hit home, sinking into something, but Gaara didn't scream.
Some of the sand around her blade crumbled away, and she twisted it and yanked it out. It carried blood with it, and Sakura glimpsed the inside of the dome through the hole she'd made. It was utter darkness within except for a single glowing yellow eye, wreathed in blood. She didn't know where she'd stabbed him, but Gaara still wasn't dead.
As the bridge collapsed on top of the both of them, Sakura had a moment of connection with Gaara, staring at his glowing eye in the darkness and breathing out as she realized that it was very likely she was about to die. She heard his voice with dreadful clarity, as if he was whispering in her ear.
'Sakura Haruno.' He sounded happy. 'I hope you know this is all your fault.'
Then the bridge crashed down and obliterated all senses, something hit Sakura in her injured shoulder, and the world was erased by white.
The sound defied description. So did the pain. Sakura wasn't sure if she passed out or not, but she had the sensation of movement, agony, close calls. A country's hopes and dreams smashed down on top of her.
But Sakura didn't die.
When Sakura regained consciousness, Haku was standing over her, blood streaming from a horribly deep cut in the boy's head. He was staring back at something, and Sakura raised her head, in so much pain that even that small movement nearly knocked her out once more.
Haku had dragged her to the shore. The Great Channel Bridge was gone, even its foundations crumbling and barely sticking up out of the water. Where it had stood, there was a cairn of concrete and steel protruding up out of the sea, a ziggurat formed of destruction.
Neither Gaara or Zabuza were anywhere to be seen.
"Haku?" Sakura croaked. He was holding her uninjured hand again, she realized, so tightly that the bones creaked. His whole body was shaking.
"Master Zabuza pushed me out of the way," he said faintly. "He pushed me onto you. And I…" Blood dripped from his face onto his cloak, smearing the symbol of the Akatsuki.
"Where is he?" Sakura said, the weakness of her voice terrifying her.
The way Haku's grip on her hand tightened even more told Sakura all she needed to know.
Zabuza had been buried at sea.
"His brother and sister," Haku said, his voice faint. "I'm going to kill them." He staggered forward, but Sakura clutched his hand in a death grip. She wasn't sure if it was because she was terrified of being left alone, or because of what came out of her mouth.
"Don't," she whispered. "Haku, don't."
He looked back at her with empty eyes.
"They're still ninjas of the Hidden Sand," Sakura said, knowing she was on the edge of passing out once more and desperate to get everything out. "Gaara was one thing, but…"
She swallowed, even that unconscious response unbelievably difficult. Just a minute ago, she had wanted to murder them as well, but now, the idea was obviously stupid. Rushing ahead had caused this in the first place. "We've already lost too much. Please, don't go."
Sakura didn't get to see if Haku listened to her. Speaking was all she could have managed. As soon as the words slipped out, she fell back into infinite darkness and left the ravaged Land of Waves behind.