Sasuke's body lay slumped inside the barrel, hurtling away from Konoha with a speed that would've made his stomach drop if he'd been conscious for the adventure.
Sakon glanced over at Kabuto, adjusting his gait when the gray-haired man suddenly diverted to the right. They were abandoning the charted course.
Kabuto began to leap through the trees in erratic bursts and Sakon realized that they were beginning an evasion course. He couldn't detect anyone following them, but he trusted Orochimaru's second to catch something like that. Kabuto's attention to detail filled him with dread— if he did not perform well on this trip he knew that it would undoubtedly not be missed.
Tayuya swore, slipping as she readjusted her course. "What's the big idea, you four-eyed freak?"
Kabuto sighed heavily, the physical embodiment of long-suffering. "We're being followed."
Jirobo and Kidōmaru exchanged glances, looking more excited than scared.
"It's not like they're gonna stand a match against us!" Ukon crooned, leaning further out of Sakon's body.
"Get back in, you idiot, you're throwing me off balance," grunted Sakon, readjusting the barrel with Sasuke's body in it a little higher on his shoulder.
Kabuto increased the pace, his eyes narrowed with concern. "I wouldn't be so sure about that, Ukon."
The limbs of the trees they were jumping through began to shake rhythmically.
"What the hell is that?" Tayuya barked, her hand white knuckle grasping onto her flute.
"A better question," quipped a deep voice, "Is who the hell is that, young lady."
Her pale complexion paled even further as she took in the towering figure of a toad and the man hanging off the side of its head.
Kabuto's face twisted into a scowl and he leapt into the fray.
"Do you think we're good to enter in? Or should we wait?" Kankurō asked, using a senbon as a toothpick.
Temari stopped examining her nails to glare at her idiot brother. "He said to wait until he started spitting oil."
Gaara didn't speak. He stared at the carnage below, one hand braced against the tree they were hiding in and the other clenched in a tight fist.
Jiraiya and Gamabunta were wreaking havoc on the Sound Four. Jiraiya had created a Kage Bunshin that was keeping Sakon, Udon, and Kidomaru busy while Jiraiya himself and Gamabunta occupied Jirobu and Kabuto. Tayuya was unlucky enough to be a genjutsu type against such a combat oriented fighter like Jiraiya and had already been eliminated from battle. Her unconscious form lay in the middle of the battlefield while the fight and all its players danced around her.
Tsunade had been quite clear in her instructions to them about the requirements for mending the relations between Suna and Konoha. Even a toe out of line was enough to jeopardize the budding reparations between the two villages.
The wind picked up as Gamabunta swayed and crushed anything in his path. Kabuto was having to move a lot quicker as the large toad had singled him out.
There were smaller toads that Jiraiya had summoned, though they were still bigger than any of the fights involved. Jiraiya had called them his battle toads.
Kankurō looked on the toads with appreciation, wondering what it would be like to fight in tandem with them, weaving his puppets around their motions. He wondered if it would actually come to that. Jiraiya seemed to be handling it rather well.
And he was. Until the people began to change, their forms pitching and yawing with the force of ungodly chakra beneath their skin. Before their hellish transformations could be completed, Jiraiya began to spit oil over them in a passionate slew. In the confusion, Kabuto summoned snakes of all sizes.
Temari flew into motion, moving herself so that she could strategically fan the plumes of oil so they'd spread further. Kankurō deployed his puppets, laughing to himself as he tripped an unsteady Sakon. Ukon had been trying to pull himself free and the unsteadiness of his mass had made it easy to trip his sneering twin.
Gaara's lips curled in satisfaction as he reached out with his sand, crushing the ankles of the outer-brother Sakon. Temari wasted no time in fanning the flames in the direction of their new opponents. She wore a feral smile as snakes began to catch fire left and right.
Jiraiya didn't acknowledge their presence, unwilling to lift his focus from Kabuto. His smaller toads began warring with the snakes, picking them up and chucking them into the many fires around them.
There was a loud roar as Jirobo's transformation was complete and he launched himself at Temari. With a simple swipe of her fan he was repelled. Karasu, one of Kankurō's puppets, was on him in mere seconds. The clacking of the puppet was loud in her ears.
Jiraiya continued to expel oil as he parried attacks and pursued Kabuto.
Sand enveloped the container that Kabuto had been forced to abandon in his fight with Jiraiya. Gaara pulled the container to himself, setting it next to him on the broad branch where he was perched.
He stared at the barrel with fascination, wondering at the boy inside. Why was the village going to such efforts to protect him? When he'd heard about how the heir to the Uchiha name had been abducted, he'd marveled at how quickly the village had moved. It was like there had already been a plan in place.
But he remembered how fondly the blonde had spoken of his friends as they worked to dismantle his worldview of loneliness and struggle. He'd never had a friend before.
"Gaara!" His sister was calling.
He looked down to her, tilting his head to the side. Jirobu had her by the wrists and for some reason the colour was rapidly fading from her face.
"Please, Gaara! Help me!"
It only took her asking for his help for him to realize that she'd never have to ask for it again. Something deep and guttural in him felt hot fury at the idea of anyone ever hurting her. Sand was wrapped around Jirobo's body before he could form a thought or a plan of attack.
"Sand coffin." He sneered, snapping his hand shut. Jirobo's body was crushed before he could even shout. Temari fell to the ground, covered in the viscera of her attacker. Her close brush with death was equally as terrifying as the rescue.
Kankurō was next to her in an instant, his hands on her shoulders. "You okay?"
Kidomaru was there just as quickly, spitting strange gold liquid at them. His skin was brown where it had been tan before, the whiteness of his hair harsh and ugly.
With a flick of his sand, Gaara was able to interrupt the gold fluid but his sand fell to the ground afterwards unresponsive. That had never happened before and he stared after the unresponsive sand.
Temari recovered herself, lashing out with her fan to hit Kidomaru in the temple. He parried with golden rods of goop, laughing to himself as she struggled.
Kankurō retaliated by attaching chakra strings to the monster and flinging him away from him and his siblings.
"That's the only time that'll work on me, you freak!" Kidomaru screeched.
"Oi! Watch who you're calling a freak, you creep!" Snapped Kankurō, throwing knives at him.
"Do you think he's got him back yet, Granny?" Naruto asked, pacing back and forth in the corner of the room she'd come increasingly comfortable calling her office.
Tsunade sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. She looked at the ceiling, wishing she had more resources. What a horrible time to take office.
"He's a Sannin, Naruto, have some faith."
"That's my best friend, old lady, have some heart," he whined, squatting down to practice a meditation technique. He could feel himself getting agitated, his heart thudding against his ribcage in a crushing pattern. "But if I was there—"
"If you were there, you'd probably be a hindrance. I know you wanna be there but you'd just be in the way and become leverage against Jiraiya like the last time."
Naruto scowled, clenching his fists. He glared at them in disdain, wishing for them to be mightier than they were.
Sakura had been there for a long time as they waited, her gaze cloudy and unfocused as she glared at a crack in the floor. "Sasuke… I can't believe he's…"
"He's not leaving the village, Sakura! He's been kidnapped, there is a difference." Naruto's voice was tight. He was convincing himself.
"He's not abandoning the village. I talked to him myself," hissed Tsunade. "He knew this was the best move, strategically."
Sakura closed her eyes. "I can't believe you gave him over like that." She fisted her shirt in her hand, clutching at her chest.
"Listen, kid, Sasuke is a shinobi of this village and you need to respect his decision. Stop acting like you've been betrayed," snapped Tsunade. "He will be fine."
She downed a saucer of sake and slammed it down on the desk. "Get out of my office. Go sort out the minor missions requests. I want them sorted by date and then alphabetically for anything falling on the same date."
Sakura scoffed and stomped away, her tears spilling over. She quickly wiped them away as Naruto followed her out, huffing and puffing as he went.
"Stupid mission requests." Sakura grumbled, shoving open the door to the back room where the Chunnin worked. Red embarrassment stained her cheeks.
Naruto exhaled, blowing his fringe straight up with the force of the breath. "Yeah."
He shut the door behind them a little louder than strictly necessary.
Temari's brow was dripping with sweat. The oil was burning mightily in some places. She was grateful for the areas it wasn't, though.
Kankurō had understood her knowing looks towards the Jiraiya, realizing that she intended to take Kidomaru down by utilizing Jiraiya's original plan.
Her brother was currently grabbing any and all loose debris from the grow with chakra strings and using the extra items as barricades and distractions while he hoarded the monster away from them. When the guy had started changing colours they had all felt a bit more anxious about the end-result of the battle.
"Temari," Gaara intoned, "Help Jiraiya for a moment. We can handle him for a while."
Temari paused, mid-lift of her fan. The gust of wind swirled through the trees, heightening the flames. She could see Ukon darting about, trying to provide cover for his wounded brother. Jiraiya laughed easily, keeping up with the pace of the stronger brother with ease. Gaara was wanting her to do the opposite of what she'd been planning.
Kabuto's hands were glowing and he was slashing recklessly at the giant toad. Temari glanced again where she'd last seen the container that held Sasuke's body. It was gone.
"I moved it. Go," Gaara ordered. She was moving to obey him before she could even reason against it further. Her fan nestled into her shoulder, she leapt towards the fray on the other side of the battlefield.
She circled around the outside, where she knew Jiraiya would see her as she leapt from tree to tree.
He was hand-to-hand with Ukon still, a wicked grin on his face. Another Jiraiya — she had lost track of who was the clone and who wasn't— was dramatically writing on a scroll as Kabuto attempted to hack at the toad.
When she got into position to fan the flames, the Jiraiya that was occupied with Ukon smirked and slammed his foot into the head of the cocky twin. The twin flew backwards into a tree with such force that the tree itself rocked at the foundation.
Sakon swore with exuberance that Temari had not yet encountered. He flung himself at one of the version of Jiraiya, though the attack was deeply limited by his crushed feet. All of his advances were useless and he was knocked back again and again. Temari set to work on fanning the flames that were already blazing so that they would spread and make the battlefield work more to their advantage.
The Jiraiya that had been working on the scroll suddenly jumped into action, shouting something that Temari couldn't hear. The scroll wrapped itself around Kabuto's body; it looked like it was wringing the gray-haired medic out like a rag.
Her insides curdled when she heard the muffled sound of screaming and saw smoke curling out from the bindings. Her distraction was short lived when she half-heard, half-felt the whizzing of a projection closing in on her.
Muscle memory kicked in and she lurched to one side and hefted the fan up to protect herself. There was a strange whistling as something circled around her.
She chuckled when she realized it was a floating kunai. Her and Kankurō had practiced this sort of communication numerous times. She looked in the direction that it pointed, the laugh dying on her lips when she realized that whatever this Kidomaru guy had going on was not looking good for them.
Gaara's breath was coming out in heaving gasps, his one arm bloated with the chakra of the demon inside of him.
Against her better judgment, she lurched closer. She didn't need to know where Kankurō was to protect her little brother. Kidomaru was shooting webs at Gaara, trying to trap him. Gaara knelt down on a cloud of sand, shuttling himself around the six-armed war genius. He needed to get behind him to send a spike of sand through the back fo his skull.
Temari tried to be sneaky, setting her big fan back in the crook of her shoulder so she could move more freely. If she could just get a good whack in—
An ugly scream ripped through the air and she couldn't help but look. Kabuto was free from the binding of the scroll that Jiraiya had launched at him. He also appeared to be free of most of the skin on his body.
Steam poured off of his body as he glowed a bright green, healing and regrowing his skin. Wordlessly, he leapt away from the clearing.
"Come back you coward!" Sakon screamed, tears streaming down his face. He looked back and forth from Jiraiya to his brother's crumped form. The curse marks on his body were beginning to recede.
He struggled towards his brother, laying on top of the body so that he could reabsorb it. One of the Jiraiya's sighed wearily and packed the scroll away. The other chased after Kabuto without a word.
Kidomaru groaned in annoyance. "Prick! Little prick. He's always leaving when things get good."
"Put your weapons down so I don't have to kill you," Gaara croaked. "Mother wants your blood but I don't want her to have it."
Kidomaru tilted his head to the side, his arms still raised defensively. "Why should I trust you?"
"Because I've been holding back from killing you this whole time. Don't make me change my mind!"
He was shaking, his whole body trembling with the reality of his words. Kidomaru relented, dropping his hand to his side.
"Alright, fine, I—" He cut off mid-sentence when Jiraiya delivered a quick chop to the back of his neck.
"Thanks, Gaara. Four out of five is pretty good for our intel." Jiraiya laughed loud and brash like they hadn't just been in a brawl. "Good work, Temari; Kankurō."
Gaara nodded, almost confused. He was so involved in his fight he'd forgotten the main reason they were there. Sasuke. Like a lightbulb turning on, he flinched. He moved his sand to retrieve the Uchiha heir from the hiding place he'd tucked him away into.
Smoke was beginning to come out of the container.
"Hmm. That looks decidedly not good," Jiraiya said flatly. "I need you three to bring these criminals back to Konoha. I'll leave some toads with you. Get them there by evening and I'll have a treat in store for you. Betray me and I can't promise what will happen."
The Sand Siblings looked at each other in relief. This was looking like a good start to reparations for the two villages. "You have our word," Gaara intoned.
"You've got it Jiraiya-sama," Temari affirmed.
"Ah, I love it when a young lady calls me that," Jiraiya grinned lecherously, picking up the container. Kankurō cringed but didn't say anything.
"And just like that, I'll never do it again, pervert," Temari whispered to herself with a shudder.
"That's super pervert to you, miss!" He yelled, jumping into the trees.
A/N: I know this isn't the best thing I've ever written. Just needed to get this out so I can move forward. Constructively review, please.