The jōnin looked over them as if taking note of their faces one last time, and then she was gone.
The rest of the equipment check was conducted in silence.
At least outwardly. Inside, Sasuke's mind burned.
Itachi. Itachi. Itachi. Kinslayer. Guardian. Archenemy. Idol. The last bond left to Sasuke, to be severed with his own hand. Everything in his life had been building up to this moment. Today, he would exact the answers he was due, and mete out judgement on the man who had abandoned him.
Wait. Naruto might interfere. A boy who loved only himself, and lived only for himself. A boy who had proved truly unpredictable. Sasuke couldn't afford the time to fight his way past him, not now when every second counted.
Sasuke glanced at Naruto out of the corner of his eye. The opening was there. Casually, without any conspicuous movements, he laid out a certain pattern of ninja wire on the ground, flicking a few loops back over his shoulder to a nearby tree.
Preparations complete. Sasuke activated his Sharingan, leaned forward into running stance, and stopped suppressing his killing intent. It was time to fulfil his destiny.
As suspected, Naruto reached out to grab him. "Sasuke, you can't go after Itachi. You'll—"
In one swift motion, Sasuke pulled hard on the concealed wire. The design was flawless, an unused counter-prank now invested with a more profound meaning. Naruto flew backwards, slamming against the tree, hands tied apart and waist bound tightly to the trunk.
"Shut up, Naruto," Sasuke growled. "You don't have the right to say anything to me."
Turning his back on his team, he leaned forward, arms out behind him in the classic ninja running posture, and prepared to head for the Hokage's Office building to begin his search.
The second he began to move, though, his sleeve snagged on something. Impatient with the tiniest delay, he turned around to brush it off—and saw someone he'd forgotten to factor into his planning.
-o-
"Let go of me." The words were cold, low, dismissive. Sakura felt as if at any moment that focused lance of killing intent might turn to aim at her instead of its intended target.
But she couldn't let him go face Itachi. She couldn't. Not only because they were soulmates, and until he realised it, it was her responsibility to protect their destiny. Not only because they were teammates, and she knew with the certainty of a thousand lessons that looking out for your team was part of what made you a ninja. But also because something in her, some part of her that wasn't a student, wasn't a genin, wasn't a rebellious daughter or a lovelorn twelve-year-old or even Inner Sakura, whispered: this, this was the rite of passage meant just for her, and if she wasn't capable of doing this one thing, then she might as well not exist.
A peculiar mixture of resolve and desperation focused her mind. She, Haruno Sakura, had it in her to get through to him, even if she'd already failed to do it dozens of times. She had to believe that somewhere inside her, somehow, she had what it took to be more than Team Seven's dead weight.
She had the irrational, untamed confidence of Inner Sakura. She had the courage with which she'd drawn the full attention of an unstoppable monster. She had the boundless intelligence that had conquered exam after exam. She had the defiance that she'd been able to awaken, just once, to stop being Ino's timid little sister and start being herself. And finally, she had true love, which was sometimes made of more than desires and daydreams.
Sakura spoke with all the conviction she could muster. She had to be slow enough to give her words weight, yet fast enough that Sasuke would hear them all before he could pull away.
"Sasuke, if you've ever respected me for anything, if you've ever once thought of me as a member of Team Seven, then please listen to me. You owe me that much."
He was looking at her now. He was looking at her, as if she was actually there, actually a person. Under different circumstances, it would have been breathtaking.
"Thirty seconds." His voice was still cold, but he was speaking to her. Sakura dared to hope.
"If you face Itachi now, you'll be throwing away your chance at revenge."
She had his attention. Now she had to persuade him, with no time to create a structured bullet-point argument, only an improvised attempt to shape her words into something convincing as they continued to stream out of her mouth.
"If you go out there right now, you'll be a genin trying to fight an S-rank criminal. You'll die. You're strong, you're the best of us, but you've only had a few years at the Academy. You've only been a ninja for a matter of months. If you fight Itachi now, he'll kill you. Not because you're not good enough, but because he's had time to grow to his full strength and you haven't."
Sakura wanted to have perfect control of her emotions the way Sasuke did, but she was showing him her true feelings for the first time, and she might as well have tried to hold back a tsunami.
"And if you die... If you die, then that amazing jōnin, the best ninja ever, the one who's going to sweep away Uchiha Itachi with a single wave of his hand—he'll never exist. Instead of your revenge, instead of anything, there'll just be a tombstone somewhere saying, 'Uchiha Sasuke, genin. Died heroically in defence of the village.'"
It began to feel less like she was trying to express her feelings, and more like they were pouring out of her. She couldn't stop them if she wanted to, only attempt to steer their flow to try to make them say what a rational argument couldn't.
"I know I've been as much use to you as a chocolate teapot. I know you've had to protect me when you could have been fighting on your own terms. And maybe that's reason enough to ignore me. But here and now, just this once, let me be Team Seven's voice of common sense. Let me do the only thing I can do, and give you another..." she briefly flailed for words, "another way of seeing the world. Not as a genius, not as a visionary, but as someone who can only see what's there."
Sasuke looked at her for an endlessly long moment. He looked her in the eyes for the first time she could remember, maybe even the first time ever.
"...Fine."
Sakura gave an exhausted smile. "After all, if you die, who's going to save us if Naruto ever manages to become Hokage?"
-o-
After a brief battle with temptation, the two finally decided to untie the third member of their team.
Having waited for a moment when Sasuke was distracted, Sakura leaned over to Naruto, and said in a low voice laced with steel, "That was personal. And you didn't hear it. Not a single stray syllable. Are we clear?"
Naruto shivered. "Yes, ma'am."
"So," he said with considerably more cheerfulness than he felt, "anyone up for a refreshing run to Meeting Point Four?"
-o-
There were perhaps twenty ninja at Meeting Point Four, most of them genin. A couple of foreign teams were scattered among the Leaf majority, looking even more bewildered and disoriented than everyone else.
A one-eyed chūnin counted the numbers, consulted a scroll, and loudly cleared his throat.
"A group of mercenary ninja have penetrated Leaf's defensive barrier, and are currently attacking the village. As genin, your sole task will be to oversee the evacuation of the civilian population. You are not, I repeat, not to attempt to engage the enemy in any way. If they come to you, you are to lead them off, distract them—do whatever you can to keep them away from the civilians until backup can be dispatched to your location.
His eyes swept over the assembled group. "Those of you from other villages: I remind you that your superiors all signed agreements before the Chūnin Exam, committing you to defending Hidden Leaf in the event of an emergency exactly like this one. This is a mission backed by your villages of origin, and you are expected to lay down your lives to complete it if need be."
Naruto normally considered politics as exciting as collecting ball-bearings after a successful prank (the things rolled into the most inaccessible places, and Naruto had to retrieve every last one because he couldn't afford to buy more). But after Kakashi-sensei told him about the Chūnin Exam, it had occurred to him that the future greatest Hokage could benefit from the opportunity to observe international relations in action from the comfort of his own village, even if he was doing so as a ground-level pawn rather than a player. Thus, after a flurry of last-minute reading, he was aware that the exam was a diplomatic tool, a means for villages to establish relative power levels (which would then inform conventional negotiation) without the need to spend resources on direct conflict. As Onigahara Tariki had said, skill was worth more than numbers when it came to ninja warfare, and so the two strongest indicators of a village's power were its overall training quality and its number of jōnin. The filtering stages served to show off the former, and the finals, which by definition featured some of the best genin in the world, could be taken as an early forecast of the latter.
While being the host village (and thus determining the content of the exam) was a massive advantage, it would be insane to invite foreign military forces past your defences without a guarantee of safety. Thus, all participating villages had to pledge to defend the host during the Chūnin Exam if necessary, formally from external threats but implicitly from each other. The idea that they were under attack by a force that deemed itself powerful enough to challenge this united front sent a chill down Naruto's spine.
"One final instruction," the chūnin added. "Leaf Teams Four and Seventeen have been eliminated by a new Kōtsū ninjutsu reportedly called the 'Clone Disruption Technique'. Do not under any circumstances use clones until countermeasures have been developed and delivered to you."
Naruto winced. He'd just been thinking that a few dozen shadow clones would make guiding the civilians a whole lot easier, not to mention being able to assign some to protection and some to combat. Then he winced again as he realised the specific implications for Uzumaki-style combat.
"Leaf Team Seven: Third District, Route Fourteen, Evacuation Plan Two."
It was time to go.
-o-
"Look, kid, you've got nothing to worry about. The world's strongest ninja are out there taking care of the bad guys right now. And you are under the personal protection of Uzumaki Naruto, ultimate badass and future Hokage. Oh, and those two over there may look pretty lame, but you can tell they're strong because they're on my team. Now wipe your nose and go help your grandma up the hill."
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but you really can't take a wheelbarrow into the shelter. Yes, I'm sure those are priceless family heirlooms in there, but the shelters simply can't accommodate..."
"Put that hoe down and get back in line now. I'm here to protect you, but I will knock you out if your idiotic posturing slows down the evacuation for one more second."
It was gradually becoming apparent to Team Seven why genin were given so much practice with tedious menial tasks that seemed to last forever. The evacuation wasn't glamorous. It wasn't exciting. It wasn't exactly difficult either, but it just kept going on and on, and half the people they were guiding were scared out of their wits, and the rest were burning with outrage, and both groups seemed to have nothing better to do than to take out their feelings on the very people trying to help them. Every few minutes, Naruto found himself tempted by the fact that while everyone was supposed to arrive at the shelters as safely and quickly as possible, nowhere was it specified that all of them had to be conscious.
The only good thing about the endless herding of human cats was that it kept everybody busy. Naruto didn't have time to dwell on the fact that Old Man Hokage, his alternating nemesis and victim, the closest thing he'd ever had to a grandfather, might be dead, and that any number of the people he knew might join him before the day was over.
It was when the evacuation was nearly over, with one last group of people to move to the checkpoint and hand over to the shelter guards, that something interesting finally happened. A battered-looking figure in torn black robes, with red cloud patterns marred by equally red blood, staggered into the light, leaning heavily on some long, bandaged object. His pale grey-blue skin and ragged breathing suggested that he'd been hit by some sort of powerful draining ninjutsu. Upon seeing the three ninja, he turned, and began to slowly flee back where he came from.
Naruto glanced to the side, and met Sakura's eyes. The same thought, "The three of us can take him", flickered between them, and doubtless through Sasuke's head as well.
It was an opportunity to make a real contribution to the greater battle going on around them. To win the glory and acclaim that they'd been supposed to get by beating the Chūnin Exam. To earn the valuable combat experience that they'd been cheated out of. After hours of unbearable tedium, the temptation was almost overpowering.
But Naruto knew, and so did the others, that even if it only took a few seconds to defeat the enemy, for those few seconds the civilians would be defenceless. A single area-of-effect technique could kill dozens. And while Naruto did not for a second believe in the Will of Fire and its commandment to protect, he didn't believe in pyrrhic victories either.
Team Seven watched the invader warily, but did not move to engage as he staggered away.
Then, at the very last second, the man turned around. Coughing up blood as he collapsed to the ground, he had time for one final act. "If I die, you die with me!"
He snapped his hands together.
"Water Element: Water Bullet Technique!"
The globe of water was enormous, much bigger than Zabuza's, big enough to be visibly slowed by air resistance. With unerring precision, the enemy ninja spat it right at the middle of the crowd of civilians.
"Fire Element: Great Fireball Technique!"
Sasuke's counter was near-instant. But Water continued to beat Fire in the circle of elements, and though slowed and reduced, the water bullet was still going to hit its target.
Naruto could see it with agonising clarity. A water bullet that huge wouldn't just kill the people it hit directly. If they were lucky, the healthy adults on the edge of the concussive blast might get away with a few broken bones. But the frail, and anyone closer to the point of impact… they wouldn't stand a chance.
There was no time to arm and throw an explosive tag (and, at the speeds involved, he probably wouldn't connect). Placing and transforming clones would take even longer, and that was if he wasn't in range of the Clone Disruption Technique. There was no possibility of swapping with the thing, for any number of reasons, and no objects within line of sight that could be instantly adapted into anything useful.
On the other hand, the unhelpful voice of spatial intuition whispered to him, a trained and hardened ninja body, positioned and braced just so, might be able to deflect the missile's trajectory by just one or two crucial metres.
This wasn't fair. It wasn't supposed to end here, to some random invader's random technique. He had so many plans, so many ambitions, so much—finally—to lose. He was supposed to beat this stupid world, to blaze a trail of genius that would change it forever, not die in the street for the sake of people who'd spent their lives tormenting him.
By the time all of this went through his conscious mind, however, he'd already made the snap decision. For once, Naruto cursed his intelligence as he sent all his chakra down to his feet.
-o-
It was amazing, the things a person thought of at the last moment.
She wouldn't have to worry now about that library book she couldn't find.
She'd finally made Sasuke look at her, and now she'd never find out what that meant.
She'd had her last conversation with her parents, and it had been an argument about chores.
She was in the middle of making a heroic sacrifice, and Naruto still managed to get in her way.
-o-
Sasuke couldn't die here. He had to live, to face Itachi again and to revive his clan. He couldn't do something as, as absurdly unimaginably stupid as throwing himself in front of a moving ball of destruction just because there was no time to come up with any other options.
He couldn't die here. His life was important. There'd be nobody to take up his mantle, nobody to find out the truth, or restore justice, or bring the Uchiha Clan back from the edge of annihilation.
And it would take so little to save his life. All he had to do was be somewhere else while the civilians, the men and the women, the elderly and the children, were massacred by a force against which they had no possible defence.
Just like last time.
-o-
Three fractions of the same second. Three bodies in one line, bracing for impact. Three tiny flashes of pride, that all of Team Seven had made the same choice.
Then nothing.