Obito-Sensei Chapter 5
The Bear
Kurasen turned out to be an older man, probably closer to sixty than fifty, with a round, deeply creased face and fantastic posture. Though he wore only a simple workman's shirt and long pants, he nevertheless radiated calm authority. He was rather tall, just over six feet, and there wasn't a speck of hair on his head. He had a lovely voice, Sakura thought, and honest eyes. They compelled her attention as he sat at the head of the table, earnestly speaking with their team's leader.
She and Obito had eventually caught up to Naruto and Sasuke, who had been bickering with an irritated teenager. Obito's casual questions had sent the teen running off to find Kurasen with a bitter frown, and in the lull he had admonished Sakura's teammates. They wanted to make a good impression on the locals, after all. They were being paid for this, he reminded them; clients, and anyone connected to them, should always be treated with respect. Naruto had blushed, but Sasuke had just nodded his head.
A minute or two later, Kurasen had arrived with an uncertain grin. Obito's disarming manner had soon put him to ease, though, and he had invited the jōnin and genin to his home. He could explain the issue in more detail there, he said with a smile.
The man's house wasn't very large, only a little bigger than Sakura's apartment, but it was extremely clean and filled with attractive furniture. There had been a simple meal: rice, meat, and some vegetables, laid out on a rough wooden table in the kitchen, and Kurasen had implored they take some of it. Everyone but Obito had done so, with Naruto loudly thanking the man.
Now, the genin were gathered around the table, their packs left in the entryway, and Obito was in conversation with their host.
"So they just vanish wholesale," Sakura's sensei confirmed. Kurasen nodded.
"Completely," he said in his deep voice. "Transport, merchants, cargo. All gone. There's rarely even any sign they were taken in the first place."
"Ah," Obito said, not quite grinning despite his eyes suggesting he could have been. "So there is some sign."
"Blood," Kurasen said flatly, and all the shinobi at the table perked up for a second. Naruto shot a glance at Sasuke, and then at Sakura. She shrugged back. If a group of bandits, or maybe even some rogue shinobi, were picking off a caravan, then blood was to be expected. She was less uneasy with the notion than she thought she'd be.
"Well, that sounds about right," Obito said, half-jokingly. Kurasen shook his head, deathly serious, and Obito's eyes narrowed.
"I don't think you understand," the tall man said, glancing back at Sakura and her teammates. His face betrayed his uncertainty. "They're just children. Are you sure-?"
"Hey!" Naruto shot to his feet, bumping the table. "Who're you-!"
Obito shut him down with a glare, and the Yondaime's son shrunk back into his seat, blushing furiously.
"They're my team," Obito said, looking back to Kurasen. "And they may look like children-" Sasuke made a noise Sakura could only describe as a chuff, and it nearly made her giggle, "but they are shinobi. Anything you tell me, you can tell them."
Kurasen still looked skeptical, but Obito nodded, and he shrugged and began speaking again.
"I don't mean a little blood," he said. "Three groups have gone missing, ten people total. The first two vanished with barely a trace. But the third…" he frowned, and his voice dropped a little. Sakura had to lean in to hear him better. "The third was when we knew we needed the help of ninja."
"How much blood, Kurasen?" Obito asked. The man's eyes narrowed.
"A lot," he said. It was very clear by his voice that he thought "a lot" was completely unable to get across just how much blood there had been. "I don't know if there's even that much blood inside a person, or four of them. It soaked the ground into mud, painted the trees nearby. The whole place was red, and the smell…" he paused, taking a deep breath through his nose, and one of his hands clenched into a fist. "We couldn't even tell if it had been Haruka's group, but it was on their route, and she never came back."
Sakura blinked. She could see Sasuke was frowning, his hands coming up to lace in front of his mouth; Naruto was behind her, so she had no idea how he was reacting. The thought of that much blood sent her stomach turning. What could do something like that?
"I see," Obito said, leaning back. "Thank you."
The room fell into silence for a minute, and Sakura's eyes strayed around it, trying to expel the image of a road made muddy with blood from her mind. There was a cabinet across from her, filled with pictures. Most of them were of Kurasen and two others: a woman with long brown hair and a boy with striking orange eyes. They must have been his family.
She hoped none of them had been in the caravans.
As was characteristic of him, Naruto broke the silence.
"Can you show us where?" he asked confidently, and Kurasen's head swung toward him. The older man frowned.
"It's quite late," he rumbled. "I don't think-"
"We can see in the dark," Naruto said matter of factly. "And we're not too tired." Sakura was watching him with interest now, along with Sasuke. Obito cocked his head. "And this jerk, and that bigger jerk," Naruto continued, pointing to Sasuke and then Obito, "have special eyes. They might be able to find something you guys couldn't."
"Are you sure you wouldn't rather wait till morning?" Kurasen asked. "I have some spare beds-?"
"We really appreciate the offer." Sakura surprised herself when she spoke up. "We really do. But Naruto's got the right idea; the longer we wait, the harder it would be to find anything. If we can, we should go tonight."
Kurasen watched her, and Sakura resisted the urge to lower her head. 'A little girl with pink hair and too big a forehead,' she thought he must be saying to himself. 'Why is she talking at all?' The man turned to Obito with an inquiring look, and their sensei smiled, activating one of his eyes. The tomoe of the Sharingan spooled into being, the eye gaining its red and black sheen.
Kurasen blinked, and then nodded. "Alright," he declared, pushing himself to his feet. "Let me get my coat then. It's not very far from here. Just thirty minutes or so."
Team Seven rose along with him.
It turned out that what Kurasen and his companions could cover in thirty minutes, shinobi could easily cover in about five. When Obito finally lowered the man off his back, Kurasen was somewhat pale.
"That was… fast," he said, his complexion shifting to greenish for a moment. He took a deep breath or two of the crisp air, and it seemed to put him back on his feet. "Alright. It's just over here. Follow me." He set off at a brisk pace, his boots crushing loose twigs and pebbles underfoot, and the ninja walked after him, unconsciously falling into a simple diamond pattern with Sakura on the right, Sasuke on the left, Naruto at the back, and Obito and Kurasen at the head.
Sakura had brought fifteen kunai, three explosive tags, and the tin her father had given her. The first two she figured were just a healthy precaution, and the tin was for in case they didn't find anything; at least they'd have something to eat. She could tell from the way it shifted in her taped-down pocket that it was full of food, but she was content to let it be a surprise.
She hadn't seen what her teammates had grabbed from their packs, but Naruto had another one of those water balloons. He was focused on it, his eyes practically bugging out as his hands encircled it, while Sasuke walked with cool alertness, his eyes darting back and forth. All of them could see through the darkness perfectly well now that they were channeling some chakra; Kurasen was probably limited to a dozen meters or so, out here away from any artificial light on a cloudy night, but to Sakura it seemed like it was the tail end of evening.
Chakra really was amazing, whenever she thought about it.
"It was right up here," Kurasen said, slowing down. He squinted, before nodding. "Yeah, just over there." He pointed farther down the dirt road, at a spot that was darker than the rest. In the night, it seemed like a patch of independent shadow.
Sasuke moved ahead, activating his eyes as Sakura held back with Naruto. Obito stayed with Kurasen as the younger Uchiha scanned the ground, dropping into a squat. He turned back to the team with a frown.
"I've got something," he said, standing and pointing towards the woods. "Bloody footprints. Looks like five sets. Obito, can you see anything more? They stop at the edge of the road."
Obito peered, his own Sharingan activating. "Hmm." Sakura tried to suppress a bout of inferiority. What she would give to be able to do something like that. "Sasuke, look closer."
"It doesn't work like that," Sasuke said flatly. Obito chuckled.
"I think it does," he said good-naturedly. "The blood vanishes, but the depression in the dirt doesn't."
Kurasen made a noise of disbelief. "This happened three days ago. There's no way-"
"No, you're right," Obito said, turning to him. The man stared into Sakura's sensei's red and black eyes, practically entranced. "It's not like just seeing footprints. It's the way the dirt's spread, how some plants are only just growing back up, the angle of some grass…" He shook his head. "You know what, it's hard to explain. Just let me just assure you that I do in fact see a trail, and that most of the world very badly wants to yank these eyes out of my head for just that reason."
That got a grim chuckle out of Kurasen. "I'll take your word for it, then," he said. "In any case, what now?"
"We follow it!" Naruto said cheerily. "Sasuke, you can see it now right?"
"Yes," Sasuke confirmed begrudgingly. "I know what to look for; I can see it."
"Great!" Obito said with almost mocking cheer. "Sasuke, you lead on the rest of you midgets. I'll take Kurasen back, and then come rejoin you. Maybe if we're lucky we can wrap this up tonight."
The older Uchiha gestured, and their client clambered onto his back hesitatingly. "Could we perhaps go just a bit slower this time?" he asked, just a bit of levity lightening his voice. It seemed like seeing Obito at work had brought him some peace. "I just ate, after all."
"You got it," Obito answered. "Try not to do anything stupid!" he yelled at his team, before running off with Kurasen on his back. The genin watched their sensei go, Naruto cocking an eyebrow.
"Does he really think we'd do something stupid?" Naruto asked. "What could we even do out here? We're in the middle of the woods!"
"I'm sure you'd find a way," Sasuke deadpanned, turning back to the trail only he could see. Sakura laughed, and Naruto snorted.
"You're just jealous. The both of you! Just watch! I bet I'll find whatever the hell it is we're looking for before your fancy eyes do," he declared.
"Of course you will, Naruto," Sakura said, smiling a little. Sasuke began stalking into the woods, his gaze locked on the ground, and his teammates followed him.
They walked in silence for about a minute, listening intently to the forest and not making a sound with their steps. Sasuke stopped twice, looking around slowly, before continuing. Sakura figured that it couldn't be easy following whatever trail Sasuke could see out here; the trees were thick, sometimes grouping no more than an arm-length apart, and the grass was knee-high in places. The constant buzz of nightlife, insects and small animals, surrounded them. It was actually incredibly relaxing. Sakura felt a bit of tension seep out of her shoulders.
"Hold up," Naruto suddenly stopped, grabbing her shoulder. Sakura froze at the contact, looking back at him, but her teammate wasn't looking at her. He was staring up into the canopy, his eyes half lidded. They darted left, and then right, and he turned his head slightly. Sasuke stopped, looking back at the both of them.
"Listen," Naruto said quietly. "Do you hear that?"
Sakura listened, and Sasuke too.
It took a moment, but she heard it. Off in the distance, to the south, there was a rumbling noise, like a small earthquake, and a crack-thump: the sound of multiple trees falling.
"What…" she whispered, and as she did everything around her went silent. All the insects, small animals, even a deer; they all went as quiet as the grave at the same time, as if by some invisible claxon, and moved north. The genin could hear them streaming past them, rustling the grass and snapping low-lying tree branches.
"They're relocating," Sasuke said.
"Should we follow them?" Sakura asked.
"No. We're not some animals; we're ninja," Naruto declared. "Whatever that is, it's fast, and it's coming this way. I say we get up in the trees and wait for it."
The genin all glanced at each other, and came to a hesitant agreement. They leapt upwards, alighting on higher branches, and settled in to wait. Sakura focused on her hearing, attempting the same trick she had with her lungs. The crashing of falling trees was getting closer, and there was something behind it. It almost sounded like a burbling creek.
No, not a creek. It was close now, closer than she'd thought. It was like a pant. A ragged, watery pant.
"What the hell?" Sasuke said, barely audible, and Sakura scanned the forest, trying to find where he was looking. It took less than a second. There was a huge, dark shape, barreling through the forest at them, like a living shadow. There was slick darkness covering it, dripping from its flank and masking its muzzle. One burning red eye, lacking a pupil, seemed to glare directly at her.
"Bear!" she shouted, and the huge creature, nearly twenty feet tall, smashed through the last of the trees between them and it. Naruto squawked in surprise, and the beast's lone eye snapped to focus on him. It snarled, an avalanche of noise, and rumbled forward, its paws tearing grout gouges from the ground. Blood dripped from its open mouth like a stream of thick red paint, some flecking onto its forelegs and the rest slicking the ground beneath it red.
"Oh shit," Naruto cursed, and for a ludicrous second Sakura thought about reprimanding him. "That's nasty."
"Heads up," Sasuke said. He didn't sound worried, but there was a certain edge to his voice. "That thing is faster than it should be."
The bear charged forward, slamming its head into the tree Sasuke was perched in. There was a massive crack and the whole thing tilted, roots ripping out of the ground. But it didn't fall. Smashing its skull into the tree didn't seem to faze the bear whatsoever; it backed off, roaring in fury, and swiped at the base of the tipping tree. There was an explosion of bark and pulp, and the tree began falling in earnest, toppling towards the one Naruto was perched in.
"Sasuke!" Sakura yelled, pulling a kunai from a pocket. She hadn't see Sasuke fall; where had he gone?
"Oh jeez!" Naruto yelped, jumping away as the tree reduced the branch he'd been sitting on to splinters. He alighted on a nearby tree and turned, his eyes narrowed. "That thing really is-"
Sasuke came plummeting through the night, a wispy shadow with two bright red highlights in the darkness, and landed atop the bear's head. The thing screamed, rearing up, but before it could do anything more Sasuke buried two kunai, held in each hand, up to their handles in its skull. There was a great spurt of blood and a disgusting squelch of a sound, and the bear's roar petered out. It toppled forward, landing flat on its belly, and Sasuke gracefully dismounted as it fell.
"…pissed," Naruto finished, his eyes wide. Sakura dropped her hand, and the kunai it was holding, to her side. The forest seemed quieter than ever as Sasuke took a step or two towards them.
"Man," Naruto said. "Don't you think that was a little much?"
Sasuke shrugged. "It was crazed with pain," he said, a little stone-faced. "When something dangerous goes crazy, you put it down. That's just how it is."
"It was just a bear…" Naruto muttered, staring at the enormous corpse. Sakura found herself nodding. It had just been a bear. Twenty feet tall, and grievously injured, but a bear nonetheless. It hadn't been that much of a threat to them-
The bear wheezed, and blood pulsed from its side. Sakura blinked, and Sasuke started turning, confused at the noise.
The animal struck out faster than Sakura thought possible, a flash of claws in the night, and Sasuke tumbled forward with a hiss.
"Sa-!" Naruto started to shout.
"Just a scratch!" Sasuke interrupted him, spinning about so fast the dirt around his feet was thrown out in a wide crescent. There were two long gashes ripped in the back of his shirt, but he wasn't lying; he was hardly scratched himself, with just two long lines of blood slowly flowing but fingertip-deep slashes. It was hardly anything.
"How the hell is it alive!?" Sakura asked shrilly, watching the bear with alarm as it groaned and dragged itself back on all fours. Sasuke's kunai were still buried in its skull, and more and more blood gushed from its mouth and the hole in its side, but it was gurgling and alive all the same. That was impossible. It had two knives buried in its brain.
"You missed!" Naruto shouted.
"I didn't miss!" Sasuke yelled back. "That thing should be dead!"
"Well, it's not!" Sakura interrupted the both of them. She raised her kunai; less than half a foot of steel seemed completely inadequate when placed in front of the bear, which had finally made it to its feet, huffing blood and glaring balefully. "What do we do?"
"Kill it again!" Naruto decided for them, and Team Seven spread out, loosely encircling the thing. Sakura gulped, but her hand stayed steady. It was just an animal, and her team was here. She could handle this.
There was an awful lot of blood though. Maybe this bear had been the one behind the disappearances? Though a bear wouldn't be taking the shipments as well, and it couldn't have been moving around for three days with these injuries…
Then again, it shouldn't have been moving around with two knives in its brain. Maybe there was something to that theory.
The bear went after Sasuke first; maybe it had realized he had been the one who'd stabbed it the first time. Its single red eye seemed a perfect contrast to Sasuke's Sharingan in the dark, but the Uchiha darted around its almost clumsily blows, leaping over a low sweep and rolling out of the way of an overhand blow that left a paw-shaped crater in the ground. He slashed at the paws as they missed him with another kunai, but the deep knife wounds hardly seemed to slow the animal down.
As Sasuke dodged, Naruto moved in from the side, sprinting forward. While the bear completed its overhand smash, the blond leapt into the air and delivered a flying kick to its side. The bear hardly flinched, but it slid a foot or two to the left, towards Sakura. When it started to turn towards Naruto, he kicked again as it fell, smashing the animal a couple inches upward. Sasuke capitalized on the beast's moment of dizziness to hurl a kunai at its eye, but the animal jerked away and the knife struck its forehead.
The bear roared, spinning its whole body. Sakura ducked beneath its flailing back legs, feeling the enormous air pressure of the near miss, but the bear smashed its bulk into Naruto, flinging him to the ground. He rolled as he landed, but slid a couple meters backwards anyway, flattening all the grass in his path and leaving a stream of obscenities in his wake.
Sasuke was under the bear, and it tried and failed to trample him, stomping wildly. The Uchiha peppered its legs and belly with stabs, but accomplished nothing more than flesh wounds, which the bear seemed to completely ignore. Sakura, however, was on the side of the animal where it was particularly injured.
It was clear to her now that much of the blood on the animal's fur was coming from one particular wound, high on its left flank. There was a hole there, a great gash in the skin where the flesh and musculature had been partially peeled back. It would have probably been the death of a normal animal, but this bear clearly wasn't normal.
Seeing the hole, Sakura got a disgusting idea.
She drew another kunai for her other hand and took a deep breath through her mouth, gathering as much courage as possible.
Then she shrieked like a terrified pre-teen girl (for indeed, that was precisely what she was) and leapt forward, burying both knives in the bear's side, right at the bottom of the hole. There was no tough skin and thick muscle there to catch her knives; they sunk in as if it were butter and blood –sticky and hot so much hotter than Sakura had expected– poured over her hands.
The bear screamed, and Sakura screamed back. She planted her feet on the bear's hide and pulled downwards, yanking the kunai down the monster's side.
There was a tremendous ripping noise, and the knives tore a gaping gash in the bear's side, opening its gut to the cold night. Something thick and rubbery uncoiled, brushing against Sakura's thigh, and her gut did several somersaults in a row. She hurled herself backwards, away from the animal, and landed with a thud in the cold, wet grass. It was a relief from the bear's unnatural burning heat, and she sat there for a moment in near shock, watching the animal screech and stumble clumsily away from her as its guts unlooped from the greatly widened hole in its side.
Something in her head clicked, a gear catching and refusing to keep up its normal operation. The smell of the bear's innards washed over her, like a busted sewer system filled with rotting crows and god knew what else. Her whole body tightened, goosebumps rising on her skin.
'This is not how I thought this day would go.'
Naruto gave a triumphant yell from somewhere Sakura couldn't see. It sounded almost like "Take this!" As he did, Sasuke darted out from under the bear, coming to a skidding stop next to Sakura.
A moment after he did, there was a flash of light and a wham. Smoke exploded out from the bear's mouth along with a particularly violent spray of blood, and its lone red eye disappeared in a burst of yellow fire. The animal screamed one last time and toppled over on its side, smoke drifting from its eye socket.
Naruto leapt over the body with a wide grin, his hand covered in unidentifiable grime. "I had no idea water could be explosive!" he said excitedly. "This changes everything!"
The bear's guts kept leaking from it in a slurry of pink flesh and sluggish, nearly black blood, and for a moment Sakura felt lightheaded. The smell was even worse than before, and her legs drew up protectively on reflex. She felt her gorge rise, but Naruto didn't seem to notice the mess behind him.
"What did you-" Sasuke started to ask.
"I blew up that water balloon inside its mouth!" Naruto proclaimed proudly. "And it worked! Man, mom is gonna love-" He paused, tilting his head, and his expression became a little more concerned. "Sakura, are you-?"
It was too much. Sakura threw up, a sudden burst of mostly clear vomit to her side, away from her teammates. She shuddered, disgusted at the burn in her throat, and with a gag turned back to the boys.
Suddenly, she was mortified. She lowered her head, doing her best to disappear between her knees. "I'm sorry," she practically whispered, mortally embarrassed. She almost wished she'd drop dead along with the bear. "Just… oh god, there's so much blood. And that smell-"
Both her teammates were frozen, obviously surprised. And disgusted. How could they not be disgusted with her. But it was barely a second later that Naruto stepped forward, his hands up placatingly.
"Hey hey, hey," Naruto said, coming to stand in front of her. Sasuke just watched, looking the slightest bit concerned, occasionally looking back to the bear to make sure it was still lying still. "It's all good, it's okay," Naruto said, kneeling down. "That thing was-" He finally noticed all the blood, coating Sakura's arms almost up to the elbow. He cracked a grin, clearly trying to cheer her up. "Man, you really got in there. Listen, it's okay. I bet if I'd gotten like that, I'd be throwing up too."
'You don't mean that.' It was a mean thought, but Sakura couldn't help it, even as she looked up. 'You're the Hokage's son. You wouldn't throw up because of something like that.'
Naruto stuck his hand out; he didn't seem to care that both of Sakura's were slick with the bear's blood.
"C'mon, get up. I got my canteen; we can clean up a little. I bet Obito will be back soon anyway."
"Naruto, I can't. All the-"
Naruto ignored Sakura and took one of her hands, pulling her up. She let herself come to her feet, feelings Naruto's hand in hers. It wasn't burning like the blood; it was just warm, and comfortably solid.
"…Thanks," she said after a moment. Being on her feet seemed to have cleared her head, at least a little.
"Hey, don't mention it," Naruto said with a good-natured grin. "I'm not just gonna leave a teammate on the ground."
There was a comfortable silence carried with that sentence, but Sasuke mercilessly cut it to ribbons before it could settle.
"Obito is gonna kill us," he muttered, inspecting one of his kunai.
"Hey, it's not our fault some giant psycho bear came out of nowhere!" Naruto insisted with a frown.
"We could have run," Sasuke pointed out. "Obito would have wanted us to run, actually."
"Pssh." Naruto clearly didn't think much of that. "Why? We handled it just fine."
"…We might not have," Sakura said quietly, and Naruto shrugged.
"Yeah, maybe. But we did, so that's what's matters," he grinned, before looking back at the animal seriously. "Still… Obito might kill us, yeah."
"We'll just blame it on you," Sasuke suggested, and Sakura managed a little laugh at Naruto's rather loud "What?"
"What."
The flat echo of Naruto's words spun Team Seven around, and they found themselves staring into the baffled face of their sensei. As he was wont to, the man had appeared seemingly out of thin air. He stared first at them, and then past them to the corpse of the bear in total disbelief.
"I was gone for eight minutes," he said softly as he turned to Naruto. The words were directed as much to himself as they were to them. "How did this happen?"
"Well, there was a bear," Sasuke said in a matter of fact tone.
"And Sasuke stabbed it twice in the brain and it didn't die," Naruto added in.
"So I uh, tore it open while Sasuke was distracting it," Sakura said, fighting her gorge for a moment at the thought, "and then Naruto blew up its head."
Obito stared at them. After a moment, his gaze shifted to Sakura.
"Are you okay?" he asked, quite seriously.
Sakura nodded. "I'm fine," she said, and she was reasonably sure she wasn't lying. "Sasuke got hit, actually, but nothing happened to me. But I, uh…" she blushed a little, and withheld a shudder at the memory. "Threw up a little. It just smelled really… really bad."
Obito wrinkled his nose. "Yeah, I can tell," he said, but there was a little smile to accompany it. "Sasuke, you got hit?"
"It surprised me after I stabbed it," Sasuke said, turning a little to show Obito the scratches on his back. They had already mostly stopped bleeding; just two angry red lines remained. "I thought it was down. My mistake."
"Well…" Obito murmured, looking from the marks back to the bear. "Damn. Naruto, you're good, right?"
"'Course!" Naruto gave him a thumbs up, and Obito sighed.
"So much for a simple C-Rank," he said begrudgingly. "Then again, the blood should have tipped me off. Okay, how about-"
There was a gurgling groan, and behind them, something massive shifted. Sakura and her teammates looked back to see the bear stirring, its ruined head flopping from left to right.
"Sh-" Naruto shut himself up before Obito could. "It's still alive?!"
Obito narrowed his eyes. "That's wrong."
"It doesn't die, sensei," Sakura said, keeping an eye on the bear. It seemed mostly helpless now, with the gaping gash in its side and its eyeless state, but it was still moving with purpose. "No matter what we do to it, it doesn't die. It showed up heavily injured, too."
"Weird," her sensei said thoughtfully. "I've never heard of something like that."
"What should we do with it?" Sasuke asked. He didn't seem concerned by the bear. He probably didn't regard it as a threat now that it was so crippled. Despite the fact it had attacked them, Sakura felt a pang of sympathy for the massive animal. "We can't just leave it lying around. And if it won't die…"
He trailed off meaningfully, but Obito shook his head. "No way am I dumping that thing in Kamui," he said. "That place already gets cluttered. I have a better solution." He clapped his hands together in a simple prayer-like pose, and then rapidly ran through several handsigns, too fast for Sakura to make them all out. Then, he bent and flattened his hands on the ground.
"Doton: Iwayado Kuzushi," he intoned clearly, and there was a rumble, completely unlike the bear's growling. The earth cracked, fissures racing away from Obito's hands towards the animal. When they reached it, the ground beneath the bear collapsed. It fell with a surprised moan, landing out of sight a moment later, and then the earth crumbled over it, leaving a mound of plain dirt in the middle of the grassy, torn up field. An impromptu and rapid burial.
"Whoa," Naruto said, and Sakura knew he was legitimately impressed. She was too; she hadn't expected Obito to pull out such an easy fix, even if he was a famous jonin. "That's handy. Where'd you pick that one up?"
"Oh." Something about Obito's voice seemed off to Sakura; like he was talking to someone else for a second, before actually focusing on Naruto. "A long time ago."
Where the bear had been, there was nothing but an unmarked grave. It was probably still alive down there, Sakura realized, alone under the earth. But maybe that was better for it down there in the silent dark then up here, crippled and blind in the cold air. There was a kind of peace to that.
"So," Sasuke said. "Are we going to figure out where it came from?"
Sakura blinked. She hadn't considered the notion, but now that her teammate had said it… "It did leave a very obvious trail," she said, half to herself and half to her teacher. "And it was very unusual."
"No way." Obito's mouth thinned into a line. "You guys wandered off for less than ten minutes and ran into a giant immortal bear. That kinda luck screams 'Don't investigate potentially suspicious activity in the dark.'"
"So what?" Naruto asked. "We're just gonna leave it for a day? Go back and have a good night's sleep?"
Obito crossed his arms cooly. "Optimally, yes."
"That's dumb and you know it," Naruto shot back, taking a step forward. Sakura watched him argue with their sensei with an edge of discomfort. Going up against a more experienced shinobi, even just through words, seemed a dangerous thing to her. "We can't just let a trail go cold like that. We've got to at least check wherever this thing came from."
"I don't think-"
"He's right," Sasuke cut in.
"Shhh." Obito flashed his Sharingan, and Sasuke shut up. "As I was saying, you guys have already had a long night. I don't think it's a good idea to just be rushing off. We've got no idea what we could find."
"But you'll be with us," Sakura said, and Obito turned to her with a startled jerk of his head. She did her best to gather her thoughts as her teammates watched. "Sensei, I think you're worrying too much. It was just a bear, even if it was weird. It's just common sense to check out wherever it came from, assuming it's not too far. We could find something critical to the mission that might not be there in the morning." She looked around, and down at her bloody forearms. "And we… we handled ourselves fine. With you there, I don't think we'd have to worry about anything."
Her teacher let that one sink in, turning her words over.
"Only if you're all sure," he decided, in a tone that clearly showed he already knew the answer. Sakura nodded first, followed by Naruto and then Sasuke, who merely inclined his head.
"Alright," Obito said, blowing a puff of air between his lips. "It'll be a little adventure then. 'Where'd the zombie-bear come from.' Jeez…" He pinned them with serious looks. "You guys are gonna stay behind me. You know that, right?"
"Yup."
"Definitely.
"Hn."
"Fantastic," Obito said, striding past them. "Let's get going, then. The night's still young."
Team Seven set off down the path of destruction the bear had left, an avenue of toppled trees and ravaged earth. As they passed over the bear's grave, Sakura wondered if it could hear them moving over it.
"Sorry," she whispered, but the sound was swallowed by the night.
AN: Haha gross. Been looking forward to that one.
Well, the fic's moving along. I apologize that the update schedule can't be quicker, but hey, school. I hope you enjoyed it anyway.
Serendipity, out.