Obito-Sensei Chapter 70
Kills Their Heart
How do you destroy a Hidden Village?
The best way to destroy a minor village is to crush it from the inside and out, overwhelming its ninja with simultaneous internal and external attacks. But destroying one of the major Hidden Villages is an entirely different proposition. Konoha is a full city, home to more than one-hundred thousand people, and more than fourteen-thousand of those people are shinobi, many of them legendary for their skill. On this day, the majority of Konoha's shinobi are within its walls, a force of around ten-thousand ninja ready to leap at the call and defend their home with their lives.
Ten-thousand ninja by itself is frightening, but that alone does not encompass the grave dangers of attacking a Hidden Village like Konoha.
The village is surrounded by tall walls which are patrolled at all hours of the day by teams of chunin and jonin. Beyond the walls, a barrier of marvelous complexity covers the entire Village Hidden in the Leaves: it extends a mile beyond the walls and three miles above and below, a sphere of invisible chakra maintained by several dozen shinobi whose sole job day to day is monitoring the Village's defenses, even though it has been years since they were tested by an enemy.
The barrier is based on a secret jutsu formula that is nearly a century old and has undergone constant revision, each of which has given it additional detection methods. It is tuned to alert the Barrier Corp if it is touched by any chakra signature above a certain altitude; if shinobi who haven't entered it before passes through it; if certain shinobi who have entered before but have been flagged by the Barrier Corp pass through it; and most recently, if a shinobi feeling malice towards Konoha or aspiring for revolution passes through it. If the Barrier Corp is alerted, the Barrier Patrol Corp is mobilized as well, which is a rotating quick response force of three-hundred shinobi who are required to carry radio earpieces with them at all times during their active duty so that they can be informed of any incursions.
The Barrier Patrol Corp is, naturally, immediately dispatched to destroy any intruders.
So, ten-thousand shinobi and a near unavoidable barrier which can dispatch a quick response force the moment it is touched. Overwhelming, but still not the full picture of Konoha's defensive strength, since it does not fully account for the village's most fearsome shinobi, who can credibly be claimed to be as dangerous as hundreds of their fellows.
Anyone dreaming of destroying Konoha must account for Minato Namikaze, Kushina Uzumaki, Obito Uchiha, Hiruzen Sarutobi, Might Gai, and a half dozen other S-rank ninja spread among Konoha's famous clans. Any one of these shinobi could potentially brutalize an entire invading force if allowed to operate unimpeded, and the world knows it. Every other Hidden Village has been searching for the answer to the problem of the Yellow Flash for decades, and none except the Hidden Cloud have gotten close. The same can be said for Kushina Uzumaki, a Jinchuriki with some command of her Tailed Beast who also happens to be a master of sealing techniques and wields the unbreakable Adamantine Chains, and Mangekyo no Obito, Konoha's untouchable bloodsoaked ghost. The Sandaime Hokage, the clan masters, and Might Gai are merely unbelievably dangerous, but it is these three ninja who have secured Konoha's invincibility for a generation.
So, with the picture complete: to destroy a Hidden Village like Konoha, one must be ready to fight thousands of ninja in their home territory while gravely outnumbered, avoid a near unavoidable barrier to get the drop on them, and do battle with a dozen of the most feared shinobi in the world at the same time, ideally in such a way that it locks them down in one location for a long enough time that they are not able to assault the main force and decimate it.
Combined, this is an impossible problem, but these challenges can be individually surmounted.
How do you prepare to fight thousands of ninja in their home territory? Send a thousand of your own, but only the most elite; a force large enough to be devastating but small enough to be flexible, a dire commitment of strength but one you can be sure will be able to retreat in order if it suffers more than fifty-percent casualties (which is a horrendous number, but not unusual for large shinobi battles, which are astonishingly lethal). Send S-rank ninja of your own, either to lock down the aforementioned best ninja in the world or to slaughter a vast number of Konoha's ninja should they be given the opportunity to battle without being checked themselves.
Send a Tailed Beast, which will destroy everything in its path.
How do you get past a barrier that can detect new arrivals, those flagged as enemies, and malice? Send a shinobi to start the assault who is not a new arrival, who has not yet been flagged as an enemy because the village is in the middle of negotiating non-aggression guarantees, and who feels no malice towards the city they are about to attempt to destroy. All the better if that same ninja can alter the environment of the Village and negate some of the natural home-field advantage that Konoha will enjoy in the battle, even by an infinitesimal amount.
How do you battle the most feared shinobi in the world, perhaps in history? Whenever you can, you do not. You force them to leave the village for insincere negotiations, block whatever means of communication with them you can, and waste their time for as long as possible while their home burns. If that is not possible, you send elite shinobi of your own in greater numbers to slay them, kill teams of fanatics who go to their likely dooms intending to buy with their lives the death of a legend.
And, whenever possible, you turn their strength against them, be that their compassion or their pride or the very power within them. You use it against them, against their village, and you pray it is enough.
This is the best way to destroy a Hidden Village. With strength, forethought, precision, and most of all, luck.
Because with the quality of the enemy, it only takes one part of the plan going wrong for everything else to collapse.
###
Sakura stared at Haku's outstretched hand, her heart hammering in her chest.
"Haku, what are you talking about?" she asked, wondering if this was even happening. A delusion, a genjutsu, a dream? It all felt real, so she had no choice but to treat it like it was. "What's going on?"
"Sakura," Tenten said quietly. "Do you want me to get help?" She looked Haku over with obvious wariness. "There's no way he's here with permission. He must have snuck into the village."
"I…" Sakura faltered. "Wait. Please, just wait. Haku, tell me what's happening."
Haku's hand shook, and he closed his eyes. "I'm not here alone," he said, and Sakura's heart, which had been beating against her ribs so hard she was worried it might break out, stopped.
"I'm… the vanguard."
"The…" Sakura stopped, the words too massive for her to handle. "No…"
There was a rush of air and the scrape of steel, and suddenly Tenten had a sword at Haku's neck; it appeared from nowhere, its edge crackling with lightning. Haku didn't flinch away from the blade even as flickers of electricity danced between it and his skin. He kept eye contact, staring at Sakura with nothing but sorrow.
"You son of a bitch," Tenten hissed. "What the hell are you playing at?"
No, no no no no. Sakura was frozen, seeing the past play out before her once again. She couldn't do this. She couldn't do this.
"I'm to give the signal," Haku said, looking over to Tenten. "Do you understand? I came to talk to you first; I needed to talk to you before it started."
"And if I cut your head off?" Tenten said, and Haku shrugged.
No. Sakura tried to say it, but nothing came out. No, please, don't. Both of you, stop.
I can't handle this. I won't be able to come back from this.
"You couldn't," he said sadly. "I'm stronger than last time, Tenten." He slowly brought his hand up, as if to place it on the blade.
Tenten swung.
"No!" Sakura gasped, but it didn't matter. It was like they were both moving through water. Tenten went for the decapitating strike without hesitation, and Haku stepped back as a mirror of ice fell across the front of his body. The lightning blade pierced through the ice, but Haku was already moving forward and around, sliding across the ground with preternatural speed.
Tenten twisted, her face furious, but she was too slow. With the ice shielding his movement, Haku had already slipped past her side. He surged forward and took her back, putting her in a headlock: ice spread from his skin, sliding across Tenten's face and covering her mouth. In just a second, Tenten was grappled, ice pinning her joints and rendering her mute, and Sakura was too frozen to do a thing about it.
"Sakura," Haku said, obviously struggling to hold Tenten in place but keeping his voice level nonetheless. "I don't want to fight you. I don't want to hurt you."
"So don't," Sakura whispered. "Haku, what are you doing? What is Rain doing?" Seeing Tenten stuck, struggling and failing to break the ice-assisted grapple, lit a fire in her heart. "How stupid are you? Cloud's your enemy. Why would you attack Konoha?"
Haku hesitated, but didn't back down. From the beginning, he had been so sure of himself. Always composed, always perfect, flexible in his thinking but not in his beliefs. This happening was a nightmare, but it wasn't one Sakura could banish just by disbelieving. "It's the Amekage's orders," he said. "They don't trust the Hidden Leaf. You didn't either; that's why you ran."
He smiled, though he looked like he was about to start crying again. "So run again. You can come back, Sakura. Just run, and don't look back. Go back to Amegakure. Bring Naruto and Sasuke with you, if they'll come. We can make a peaceful world together, without regrets."
"Without…?" Sakura stared. "No, Haku. I couldn't." The fire grew to an inferno. "I wouldn't."
"That's what you said the first time," Haku insisted. "But-?"
"You do it!" Sakura said, her voice suddenly a shout, and Haku flinched. "You defect!" She stepped forward, hands clenching and unclenching. "Here, now! The Hokage is out negotiating with Yahiko right now, and yet you're here, about to attack us?!" She was twitching, the rage suddenly so overwhelming, pouring out of her heart without end, threatening to drown her. "Don't give the signal, if you're so important!"
How dare they? How dare they?! Betray her, betray their ideals, betray the world, to get an advantage? Out of fear, when she was here?
'The Nation is exactly what you created it to surpass.'
"Sakura, I couldn't-" Haku said, his grip loosening. Tenten stared at her, eyes full of fury. Sakura thought the feedback loop between them might make her explode.
People were being drawn by her shouting; a chunin in plainclothes and a vest jumped up on a nearby telephone pole with a curious expression. Haku looked around, bleeding desperation and confusion.
'I feel like we're moving steadily towards something horrible.'
"You couldn't?!" Sakura shouted, water swirling around her arms in a whirlpool. She couldn't hold her chakra back; the world went red, and the sound of her heart in her ears drowned out everything else. All of existence had been narrowed down to her and Haku's disgustingly sad face. "You couldn't, but I could?! You hypocrite! Everything you talked to me about, everything you said the Akatsuki stood for, and now this?!"
Another step, and now she was screaming in Haku's face. "You want me to just walk away, let you kill my friends, my family?! For you?! If this is what you're doing, you're just another ninja, Haku! Just another tool!"
Haku jerked as if she'd slapped him. "I can't choose between you and Rain!" he said, his voice rising to a shout as well. The chunin on the pole called out to some others on the ground. "Please, Sakura, don't make me!"
`That's how organizations like the Akatsuki function. They make you make impossible choices; no matter which one you make, you feel like you've failed somehow.`
"It's the same for me, idiot!" Sakura screamed. "Rain's making a mistake: don't make it with them!" She threw out both her hands, seeing the water wreathing them, and held them out to Haku, palms up and trembling. "Drop her! Leave the Nation! Don't make me fight you, Haku!"
For a second, it seemed to work. Haku froze, his entire body shaking. The ice around Tenten started to melt, and she began to struggle free.
He dropped his head, his eyes hidden behind his long black hair. "The Nation gave me a home," he whispered, Sakura straining to hear. "It gave Master Zabuza a purpose. It showed me the truth of the world. I…"
"Haku!" Sakura begged. She suddenly couldn't hear her heart; only him. She could feel hot tears running down her face, but her voice was crystal clear. "Please."
He looked up at her.
'If you ever feel like you need to fight injustice in this world…'
"Sakura," he said. "I'm sorry. I can't-"
Sakura screamed and charged.
Haku threw both his hands up, releasing Tenten. A ball of water and ice formed between his hands, so dense that he actually sunk into the concrete roof, and as Sakura tackled him, it fired up into the sky, soaring towards the clouds and leaving a trail behind it like a comet.
They hit the ground, tumbling across the roof. Sakura was vaguely aware in her peripheral vision that more ninja were converging on their position, including some wearing the grab of ANBU. The shouting had attracted their attention, and what was happening was obvious enough to anyone with eyes, though not the scale of it.
High above them, the comet exploded with a loud crack, raining glittering snow and ice down across the entire village. It froze where it landed, creating patches of slick frost. In an instant, Konoha was transported to winter, and snow continued to ceaselessly fall.
'He is stronger. What happened?'
About four seconds later, as Haku kicked Sakura off after a brief struggle and spun to his feet with tears streamed freely from his eyes and freezing on his cheeks, the entire sky went red.
"It's started," he said. "There's no going back now, Sakura." Ninja were all around them on the roof, Konoha shinobi shouting out alarms and words of warning.
Sakura panted, whipping out the Flowing Hail Blade in both hands and cracking them against the air, producing a sonic boom. Tenten broke free of the ice, her face and arms covered in frostbite burns and her teeth bared.
"I'm going to break every bone in your body," Sakura whispered. "And then I'm going to drag you to the Amekage. I'll make them answer for it."
Somehow, Haku gave her a weak smile. "Well," he said, and the ninja surrounding him all sprang, looking to bury him in bodies and steel. "Good luck."
It was six on one, but Haku didn't fight back; a sheet of ice opened up beneath him and he fell into it, vanishing from sight. The air was full of snow and sleet raining down across the village, and Sakura looked around, remembering the Chunin Exam as countless ice mirrors began to form in the air, an endless parade of them extending across Konoha to the north.
The village was under attack. Haku had betrayed her. The Akatsuki had betrayed her. The world had betrayed her. Sakura felt that she probably should have collapsed and curled up in a ball and cried until she died.
Instead, she started running, chasing Haku's reflection.
'Hurt him like he's hurt you. Make him regret this.'
She bared her teeth and shouted at the top of her lungs back at the ninja on the roof. "The village is under attack!" she screamed. "It's the Hidden Rain! Warn everyone; I'll handle him!" She took a deep breath, about to leap off the roof. "Tenten! Let's go!"
Just like that Tenten was at her side, still spitting out ice, and they raced off into the village after Haku. There were distant explosions, and then a thunderous SMASH, followed by more crashes; screams of fear and anger started spreading across the village. The battle had already started.
Sakura barely heard or saw any of it; she maintained one-hundred percent focus on Haku, watching him zip between the mirrors and heading farther north.
"Where's he going?!" Tenten shouted as they sprinted from rooftop to rooftop. She couldn't see him? Sakura threw her hand out, pointing and screaming with all her strength. It felt like her entire body was pushing beyond its limits, so enraged that she couldn't even remember what she was supposed to be capable of.
"The Hokage's tower!" she said, not caring why but knowing it was the truth. "Tenten, don't kill him! He's mine!"
"No guarantees!" Tenten shouted back, and Sakura couldn't bring herself to disagree. What was happening was too apocalyptic for promises like that. Their home was under attack. Tenten would fight for her life like everyone should: without holding back.
The tower drew closer, and Sakura watched as Haku pinballed between mirrors, building up speed until he was a sleek silver bullet. Then, he threw himself into the tower, smashing through the wide windows of the Hokage's office in a spray of glass.
Sakura flung herself up towards the broken window, feeling Tenten right behind her. Today, she was faster than her friend, though Sakura couldn't remember that ever being the case before. She cleared the window, landing on the Hokage's desk and feeling it slide beneath her from the impact; she was sloppy, chakra spraying everywhere and not lightening her steps. She didn't care.
Two of the ANBU that always traveled with the Hokage, his personal guard, were inside. The room was already coated in ice; one ANBU frozen to the wall, alive but pinned, and the other trapped in the center of the room, his feet locked to the floor by thick rime as Haku attacked him with an ice knife in one hand and senbon in the other. He dueled Haku with a laser focus, a tanto in either hand as he repulsed a dozen attacks in a second, knocking needles away and diverting the knife from his vitals.
Sakura didn't say anything: she just swung her longer blade into the room. Haku jumped, the blade slicing under him and cutting right in front of the trapped ANBU, landing on the ceiling and hurling more senbon at everyone in the room. The man stuck to the wall twitched as four needles buried themselves in his neck, but only one found its mark in the other ANBU's shoulder. He flinched, but kept hold of both his blades.
Sakura advanced, her teeth bared in a snarl as she opened up with both blades, striking out and filling the room with supersonic slashes; a heartbeat later Tenten arrived. Haku leapt from the ceiling and tumbled along the wall, Sakura's blades chasing him and ripping gashes in the ice and the walls beneath it. Before he could catch his breath and attack again, Tenten joined in, hurling braces of kunai and shuriken from some hidden pocket as she stood in the window. The first barrage missed, but the second struck one of the kunai which had ricocheted off the thick ice and sent it flying into Haku's back.
He slammed to the ground on all fours and Sakura roared and took her opportunity, bringing both blades around in a strike that, blunted as they were, would at least break his ribs.
For the first time, Haku roared back. A shell of ice covered him, and Sakura's blades struck it with a resounding crack, failing to break through. Needles of ice exploded off it, filling the room with deadly shrapnel and perforating the ANBU. Sakura blocked as many as she could, but more than a dozen got through. She fell back with a hiss of pain, needles coating her arms and torso, but as she did Tenten charged ahead, having ducked behind the Hokage's desk to avoid the barrage.
She still had her lightning coated sword and she led with it like a spear, slamming into Haku's ice-shell even as it prepared to explode out again. The sword pierced right through the ice and into Haku's shoulder, blood splattering the inside of the shell.
It hurt. It hurt like she was the one being stabbed. But Sakura couldn't stop, not until Haku did. If her blunt blade couldn't pierce the shell, she had to do something else.
"Tenten!" she shouted, charging forward and sheathing her knife. A Rasengan grew in her hand, keening at a painful pitch, and Tenten took the hint, leaping away and leaving her sword embedded in Haku's defenses. Sakura could see him inside as she sprinted forward, raising up the Hokage's jutsu.
She wondered if she looked as betrayed as him.
Sakura brought the Rasengan down like a hammer, slamming it on top of the shell of ice. The jutsu detonated, blowing a hole into the shell and crushing Haku down. He screamed, and Sakura's heart broke.
What happened next, she couldn't understand. Deafening dark blue chakra poured out of the black rods embedded in Haku's back, and Sakura froze. For a moment, she was being crushed alive; she wasn't in the Hokage's office, but in a plain of infinite ice, and there was an alien, craggy face leering down at her with a single ringed eye. The chakra poured over her like a heart attack.
It was just like Gaara, she thought. But that was impossible. Haku wasn't…
As Sakura recoiled in shock, Haku shot upwards, knocking her away as he smashed straight through the roof and out of sight. His body was coated in dark blue chakra, and Sakura couldn't see his face.
She stood there stunned for at least two seconds, an eternity in a situation like this, and then a choked gag returned her to the present. The ANBU pinned to the wall was already dead, but the one in the center of the room was still alive. His entire body had been perforated by ice needles, and as he twisted his head to face her and Tenten, Sakura heard his spine click. His Hawk mask had shattered above the nose, revealing the top of his face.
"A Jinchuriki," he said with clear eyes and a steady voice. "We were trying to summon the Hokage…" Blood started dribbling from beneath the mask, pouring down his chest. His lungs had been shredded. "Warn… Minato…"
He died then and there, unable to fall, his feet frozen to the floor and his muscles locked by senbon.
Sakura couldn't tear her eyes away. Haku had killed him. How many more would be killed if she didn't stop him?
'Killing someone is a terrible crime.'
"Sakura," Tenten said, panting and pulling a rogue needle from her arm. "We can't get the Hokage. We have to go after him."
"Right," Sakura looked up. "Sorry."
"You're holding it together?" Tenten said, and Sakura nodded.
'I just want people to be safe.'
"Somehow," she said. There were more explosions outside, and she glanced out the window. It was snowing so heavily that she couldn't see the walls of Konoha, and what she could see of the village was wreathed in smoke. Far to the south, there seemed to be hundreds of people flying around in the air, fighting giants swarming with people of their own. It was too surreal for Sakura to understand. "C'mon."
They swung out the broken window and ran up towards the roof, Sakura pulling her knife back out. She didn't bring out a second water blade; Haku's defenses were obviously strong enough that she needed more power in a single weapon, rather than distributing her chakra through two. They crested the roof, leaping apart at the last second to present a harder target, but no attack came.
As they skidded to a stop across half-frozen pools of water, Sakura saw why. Haku stood stock still in the center of the roof, staring up into the snow. Blood dripped down his arm and back from his wounds, starting to freeze the second it left his body. Sakura felt cold, even with all the chakra running through her. Haku's presence alone froze everything around him solid.
The dark blue chakra still poured out of the rods in his shoulders, lifting up into the air like a cloud of solid smoke. Sakura could swear she could see the one-eyed face in it, swirling around and refusing to fully form. As Tenten circled around his other side, more shuriken falling into her free hand, Sakura approached head on.
Haku looked down at her.
"That hurt," he said mildly, but his wounds weren't bleeding as much as they should have been. Had he frozen them over, or were they closing up? Sakura couldn't tell.
"You killed the Hokage's guards," Sakura said, and Haku nodded. "Why?"
"They were part of my orders," he said. "I was told that they needed to be among the first to die. I'm not sure why." He said it so matter of factly that it left Sakura shaking. Had he always been like this, deceiving her, or had he shut himself off for this, killing without thought? She needed to find out, to talk to him and learn the truth, but there was no time.
"Haku," she said, swallowing her yearning and uncertainty. "I can't forgive you for that."
His face was pure melancholy. "I told you, Sakura, back in the forest. I was always going to follow the Amekage, wherever they led me." He shifted to keep Tenten in his peripheral vision, frozen blood cracking beneath him. "Even if it's to kill… those were the orders I was given."
She couldn't bring herself to attack. That war between rage and relief began again, but Tenten held back too, analyzing the cloud of chakra. "That night, you said he, not them," Sakura said, and Haku shifted. "I didn't think anything of it then. You meant Yahiko, didn't you?"
"He was always the one I admired the most," Haku said. "And the one who invited Master Zabuza."
"Why did he make you a Jinchuriki?" Sakura said. From here, she couldn't see much but the cliffside of the Hokage monument, but there were even ninja fighting there. No one was coming to help them. How large was this invasion? Who was winning? All of that was far beyond her; she only had room in her mind for Haku.
'The one who betrayed you.'
"It was Nagato," Haku said. "To save me. But I'm not a normal Jinchuriki, Sakura."
She hesitated. "What?"
"A normal Jinchuriki will die if the Beast leaves them," Haku said. "But if I'm a tool like you said, then I'm a tool that unleashes a Tailed Beast."
Sakura sucked in a breath. "Was that part of your orders too?"
Haku nodded, his mouth pressed in a grim line.
The growing cloud. The familiar feeling of deadly chakra pressing down like a physical weight.
They needed to stop him. Right now.
Sakura made eye contact with Tenten, and she nodded.
They charged simultaneously, Sakura swinging high and Tenten going low, flinging shuriken as she went and then readying her sparking blade with both hands. Haku threw his hands out and stomped down, and the falling snow around the roof collapsed into a ring of mirrors, and then a full dome, dozens of floating reflections enclosing the entire roof of the tower.
All the while, more and more of the Tailed Beast's chakra poured out into the air, leaking out from between the mirrors and growing thicker and darker every second. It was almost too much to see through now. Sakura could have sworn her blunted blade connected with Haku's head, but the shadow he'd become just flickered out of existence, and there was no recoil on her sword.
Tenten spun past and put her back to Sakura's, the both of them turning and searching for Haku. The mirrors were empty, and for a second Sakura wondered if he had simply left.
"Damn," Tenten muttered. "Wish I had my scroll."
"Don't have anything bigger?" Sakura said, and her friend shook her head.
"We won't be able to smash our way out. We'll have to catch him between the mirrors, when he attacks." Tenten tensed up. "Get ready."
Sakura could feel it, the swell of chakra, the way the thick air surrounding them started to swirl. Haku was dashing between the mirrors, invisible to the naked eye. This was the same technique he'd used to defeat Tenten in the Chunin Exam, but pushed to an insane level.
Sakura didn't know the attack had started until she took a needle to the knee, her leg buckling. She ripped it out with her free hand, blood running down her leg, and suddenly the air was full of senbon.
Swords weren't the best weapon for defense, especially not against dozens of senbon pouring in from every direction. Sakura did her best, widening her Flowing Hail Blade to catch as many projectiles as possible and weaving a spherical pattern around herself and Tenten, knocking countless needles out of the air, but it just wasn't enough. Even with Tenten playing defense as well, senbon were getting through and slamming into their bodies with enough force to make them stagger against one another.
"Go!" Tenten shouted, and then somehow, impossibly, she began pushing through the storm. Sakura followed her, focusing solely on defense as Tenten began hurling kunai and shuriken, some with explosive tags attached. The dome rapidly filled with a complete cacophony of projectiles colliding and small explosions going off, Sakura swinging her blade faster and faster by the second. She had achieved a state of perfect focus.
She could see him. Sakura didn't know what had changed, but she could see Haku cutting through the smoke and snow and chakra, throwing himself from one mirror the other and hurling senbon at them as he went. They were both filled with needles, but Haku hadn't struck any vitals and they weren't slowing down. Was he holding back, or was her defense just that effective?
Sakura paused, breathed in, and struck out, the world freezing around her as her blade whipped forward.
It slammed into Haku's side mid-leap and smashed him down into the roof, right beside Tenten. Tenten didn't hesitate, didn't even question how Sakura had just done the impossible. She just reversed the grip on her sword and drove it down.
Haku rolled at the last second, and the blade went through his side instead of his spine, pinning him to the concrete.
They were winning, Sakura thought, noticing that her arms were studded with needles but not yet feeling the pain. Haku had taken several disabling wounds. Just one or two more, and-
Sakura started falling over.
What?
Sakura tried to keep her feet, and realized it wasn't just her arms she couldn't feel. She couldn't feel anything. Her grip loosened on her knife, and the Flowing Hail Blade disappeared. She collapsed to the roof, completely paralyzed.
`There has to be a better way, right?`
He'd been going slower to aim more carefully, she thought. He'd hit something vital on her, something in her spine or neck. She could still breathe, but that was it. There was no sensation below the base of her skull.
All at once, Sakura started panicking.
No. No no no no no no!
Tenten hadn't seen yet. She dove for Haku's prone body, leaving her sword where it was and pulling a final knife. But she was too slow; despite the agony it must have caused, Haku twisted, bringing an arm up and catching Tenten's kunai with his bare hand.
The kunai froze in an instant and shattered. Tenten pulled back: the tips of two of her fingers had broken off as well. She kicked out and struck the blade buried in Haku's side, and the boy howled as it came loose, skittering across the ground. Tenten dove over his body after it. It was only then that she realized that Sakura wasn't doing anything; Tenten looked back as her hand touched the blade, and her eyes went wide with horror.
Haku staggered to his feet, forming icicles of blood from his heavily bleeding wound as more and more dark chakra poured out of the rods on his back. He was growing pale, but still moved with remorseless energy; all he spared Sakura was a sorrowful glance.
Don't. Don't! She couldn't speak, couldn't do anything but lie there. Tenten took up a ready stance, but Haku just walked backwards, sinking into another one of the mirrors as Tenten staggered after him. Like Sakura, her whole body was studded in needles, blood running freely and pooling around her as she moved.
Stop. She's going to die. She's going to bleed out. Please! I don't want this! This is pointless! We want the same thing! You're my friend! Why are you doing this?!
Haku began attacking again, hurling senbon as Tenten clumsily tried to deflect them. Sakura could still see him; his injuries slowed him down, but not nearly as much as Tenten's. Tenten was hit in the legs, the chest, the back, the shoulders, the neck: a needle dug into her temple and one of her eyes closed, blood pouring from beneath the lid. Her movements grew more sporadic, more savage; she kept swinging, like she was relying on a single attack miraculously bringing Haku down.
Sakura started crying, tears freezing on her cheeks.
'It exploits and destroys people.'
Haku leapt from a mirror high above.
'You picked up a sword, Sakura.'
Both his hands sprouted knife-sized ice blades. He swung down, face expressionless.
'Tenten… we're friends, right?'
Tenten spun, already going through the motions for an overhead strike, but far too slow.
'You know you're my best friend, right?'
Haku was going to fall on Tenten and impale her. Certain, instant death. The fight was over.
Sakura's hands tightened around her knife. A keening sound filling the air, a burning feeling filling her up and burying her pain and sorrow and fear and leaving behind only hatred. The darkness within the dome was so thick she couldn't see the skin of her arms; they were cloaked in shadows.
'What are you doing, lying on the ground while your friends kill each other? Stand up.'
It wasn't physically possible for Sakura to stand up. Her tenketsu were pierced by Haku's expert aim; she was paralyzed, helpless as a baby.
Nonetheless, Sakura stood up, surging to her feet and taking her blade in both hands. She saw Haku look towards her, his beautiful face twisting in confusion. She didn't feel confusion, only clarity.
She swung upwards, a form-perfect vertical strike, and her Flowing Hail Blade screamed into existence, whipping out so fast that it vanished from Sakura's sight.
It was blunt. She'd made sure it was blunt the whole fight. Sakura had never wanted to kill Haku, only beat him senseless. While everyone else had been fighting without holding back, Sakura had known she couldn't possibly survive cutting Haku down. Doing that would be killing her own heart.
The strike should have taken Haku right at the wrist of both his hands and broken them, slamming him up into the mirrors above. With two broken hands, he would have been out of the fight; they could have disabled him, somehow. Maybe that was a fantasy, but it had been Sakura's plan.
Instead, the blade cut off both of Haku's hands.
There was a spray of blood; it rained down on Tenten and froze, coating her in a thick layer of red. However, at that moment even dying wouldn't have kept Tenten from completing her attack: she threw her entire body into her overhead strike. As Haku landed in front of her, the stumps of his wrists slamming into her shoulders…
Tenten cut him open from throat to hip.
Sakura blinked.
"No," she muttered. Tenten collapsed and dropped her sword; Haku staggered back, clutching at his chest with hands that weren't there and falling to his knees as his life poured out of his shorn body. "No! That wasn't-!"
Haku looked over at her. "How…?" he said, his voice barely audible. The chakra pouring out of the rods on his body began slowing down, like a dam that was nearly empty. His haori was soaked, wiping away the red clouds and leaving everything black. "Sakura…?"
She heard a ringing sound, and looked down to find a circle of bloodstained senbon surrounding her. Her neck, she realized, had been pierced with them. Sakura had no idea how they'd fallen out; right now, she couldn't think about anything but Haku and Tenten. She staggered forward, collapsing and bleeding beside them.
Haku stared at her, his mouth moving but nothing coming out as he tried to push his legs under him, to stand. The chakra coming from his back finally tapered off, and around them the mirrors began to melt away even as the snow grew heavier and thicker.
"Haku…" Sakura gasped. "No! I didn't mean it! That's not what I meant to do!"
He stopped trying to move, just staring at her. The blood pooling around him began lapping at Sakura's knees; it no longer froze just from proximity. Haku's chakra was all but gone. His eyes were dark as bottomless wells, and Sakura started shaking, all the pain and grief and regret and rage crashing into her at once and rattling her body so violently it felt as though her bones were breaking.
He spoke, but no words emerged; there was no air left in his destroyed lungs. Sakura focused on his mouth, desperate for him to say something impossible. That he'd be alright, that this wasn't happening, since it couldn't be. It was too horrible to be real.
Sakura, he mouthed.
I…
He stopped talking. She crawled closer, needing him to continue.
He didn't. Haku's mouth fell slack, and his eyes stared ahead, seeing something beyond her.
Sakura stared back, waiting for the nightmare to end.
It never did.
She started screaming. There was nothing coherent, just pain. But after a moment, something screamed back.
Sakura turned her head and watched, suddenly mute with terror, as the great cloud of chakra Haku had released coalesced and fell into Konoha just beyond the Hokage's tower. It landed on four legs, pulling together over the course of several seconds into a tremendous monster; a turtle, its shell covered in spikes, which stood well over seventy feet tall. Its shadow fell across her, and it bellowed again, like an earthquake that had learned how to talk.
Then, it started lumbering forward away from the tower, picking up speed and demolishing everything in its way.
There were more screams, explosions, buildings crumbling. Looking out over her burning home, Sakura had a realization. It was the same one she'd had in Rain, taking in a similar scene of devastation.
Sakura burned away, and resolve was all that was left.
This shouldn't have happened, she thought. I let this happen. I wasted my time feeling sorry for myself instead of doing something to prevent this.
If I had the ultimate weapon, I wouldn't have let this happen.