Obito-Sensei Chapter 68
Does Their Best To Pick Their Battles, Even If They May Fail
Though there would always be some disagreement about whether the Devastation of Amegakure marked the first day of the Fourth Shinobi War or merely the very dramatic prelude, almost all those with the benefit of hindsight would agree that the initial battles which defined the war took place three days later, on April 16th in the Land of Frost.
It was a quietly bloody Monday when shinobi of the Hidden Cloud and soldiers of the Land of Lightning began pouring into the country. They rushed over the border and were initially unimpeded by the large mountain ranges that had separated Frost and its neighbors for nearly two-hundred years. They were joined by several groups of Cloud shinobi that had already infiltrated the country in the preceding weeks, and both invading forces began the process of taking over the country. It was projected to be, at worst, the work of about a week.
Frost was dramatically smaller than the Land of Lightning, with a limited professional army and less than one-hundred shinobi at the service of its Daimyo, a younger woman named Koike Damedayo who had inherited the position from her ailing father after her elder brother had died in a boating accident (which many supposed to not be an accident). Thus, the Land of Lightning was confident the country could be seized simply by intimidating local leaders and lesser government officials into swearing fealty to Lightning, as well as locking down trade routes and ports to cripple the country's economy and pressure both its leaders and citizens into a quick surrender.
Naturally, it was also critical to this plan that they would quickly kill, imprison, or bribe the shinobi that were native to Frost and would present a troublesome guerrilla force. It was also necessary to imprison the Daimyo for her own good, so as to keep dangerous revolutionary ideologies from influencing her until she could be convinced to govern Lightning's new mineral wealthy province on their behalf.
However, Cloud's shinobi were not the only ones that had been entering the country undeclared in the weeks before.
Early on the 16th, Cloud ninja which had infiltrated the Daimyo's estate ambushed and attempted to kidnap her. Three of them were cut down in as many seconds.
Their killer was an eighteen year old shinobi named Chojuro, Mist's sole remaining Legendary Swordsman, who had been sent with instructions to protect and conceal the Daimyo at any cost. He went about his mission with nervous professionalism, and Frost's Daimyo was spirited away to one of the Hidden Mist's countless coastal hideouts, not to be discovered for the duration of the war.
For obvious reasons, this presented complications to the Land of Lightning's plans for a swift conquest, but it was at first perceived as a temporary roadblock because both the Daimyo's Court and the Village Hidden in the Clouds did not understand, or initially believe, the true level of the Hidden Mist's involvement in Frost. They had both been under the impression that Mist was a fragile village (which was not true), and that its shinobi had been sufficiently depleted by civil war, mass defections, and rising criminality in the Land of Water (which was somewhat true) that it would not be able to pick a fight with a superior neighbor simply to avoid sharing a coastal border even if it wanted to. Which it definitely would not, since it was 'common knowledge' that Cloud would crush Mist in a war.
This 'common knowledge' did not prevent Mei Terumi from dispatching fifty elite Jonin, with each commanding a mixed squad of ten battle-hardened shinobi. This was a commitment of five-hundred and fifty experienced ninja, nearly half of the Hidden Mist's reliable fighting force of ninja that had either experienced war firsthand or been on multiple A-Rank missions where conflict with other shinobi was expected. They departed with simple commands.
You have free reign. Pick your battles. Lightning has always expanded like this, and now they are using the Hidden Cloud to do it. After Frost, the Land of Water will be next. Fight with safety as your first concern and savagery as your second. Make them bleed; show them that Kirigakure cannot be ignored.
Emboldened by a generous contract given by the Land of Water and their Mizukage's words, Mist's shinobi wasted little time. They were vicious masters of the art of ambushing, and repulsed Cloud from the southern settlements of the country before the invaders could understand the scale of the counterattack that was occurring.
Whether by serendipity or because of some level of collusion, shinobi from the Nation of Rain arrived mere hours after this southern assault had begun, pouring in from the west after carefully circling around the Land of Fire. They were led by one of the Amekage, Konan, and numbered about eleven-hundred ninja, twice that of Mist's commitment. Rain's ninja quickly broke open hasty blockades on the country's main travel routes and routed Lightning's soldiers before they could begin to settle in, throwing Cloud's shinobi into a retreat as their commanders realized too late that not only had the Chakra Cannon's alpha strike not sufficiently humbled the Hidden Rain, but that the attack on Frost had broken open two deadly hornet's nests simultaneously.
So, by the end of the 16th of April, a country that had less than one-hundred shinobi in it at the start of the week was now hosting slightly more than three-thousand, and blood had begun to spill across the land.
###
Though she didn't know it, Sakura Haruno was meeting her former sensei for a late lunch at around the same time that Cloud's Head of Operations, Cee, was giving a general retreat and reorganization order to his ninja in the Land of Frost.
They didn't choose a restaurant; Sakura grabbed a hamburger from a food cart, while Obito picked up a teriyaki bowl nearby. They sat down next to each other on one of the public benches that lined many of Konoha's avenues and ate in awkward silence for several minutes, garnering a couple curious looks from passersby but otherwise written off as two ninja enjoying the sunny, warm weather and each other's company.
Sakura was the first to break the silence, putting down the third of a burger she had remaining and glancing over at her teacher. "Sorry I yelled at you," she said, and Obito shrugged, setting aside his bowl. "When you came over." They hadn't talked since that disaster.
"Don't worry about it," he said, which was precisely what Sakura was doing, so his words didn't help at all. He might as well have said 'stop thinking.' Her gaze was drawn again and again to the medical eyepatch over his left eye. It hadn't been there before, and she wasn't sure why it was now.
'He doesn't trust you anymore. He's writing you off.'
"I am worried about it, sensei," she said, gripping her hands together. "No matter what's happened… that wasn't fair of me. You just wanted to talk, and I…" She laughed. "I wasn't in the mood, but that didn't make it okay." She looked up at the blue sky, wondering if this should have been harder but glad that it wasn't. "I know you're scared I'm going to run back to Rain. Everyone else is too."
"You tried once already," Obito pointed out, and she nodded.
"Yeah. I felt desperate," she admitted. She still felt desperate, felt like she was a coward who had abandoned people who needed her, and was torn between the two great terrors of not being somewhere she needed to be and of being seen as unreliable. "But that was something I did without thinking. I didn't understand how much me leaving with Naruto and Sasuke had hurt people…" She hesitated. "And gotten you hurt. I was selfish."
"That's a bit strong," Obito suggested, and Sakura shook her head.
"I want to start over," she said.
'You're running away from your responsibilities.'
"I would be really proud to have you as a teacher again," she said, trying to ignore her own poisonous thoughts. "I have to figure out how to live with everything I saw over there, and live here again. Otherwise, I feel like I'm going to go crazy."
"Plenty of shinobi go crazy, Sakura. There's not much shame in it. Hell, look at Gai," Obito said as he leaned back against the bench, and Sakura coughed up a laugh.
"You know what I mean," she said with a grimace, and her sensei nodded with a bitter look.
"Yeah. I do," he admitted. "But unfortunately, I don't think I have any grand advice for you." A sigh, which Sakura didn't know how to take. "No matter what, I'd be proud to have you as a student again. If you want to start over we can do that, but I don't think it's necessary. Life is about taking everything that comes your way, one way or another. You're always going to be the sum of your experiences."
"But what if they're bad experiences?" Sakura asked, only now realizing that Obito sounded different than she remembered. It was her first chance to talk with him with a clear head, and she found herself looking him over, analyzing him. He was more relaxed, she thought, and less terse. After what she'd heard about how he'd been treated she had expected the obvious, but the year had changed the both of them.
It helped her calm down, though she didn't fully understand why.
Obito pursed his lips, glancing over at her. "For most ninja, they are," he said frankly. He turned more fully to face her, propping on leg sideways on the bench as the wind rustled their hair. "I'm not trying to make this a competition, Sakura, when I say I've been through some terrible things. You've probably got me beat with what happened in Amegakure, but my life has taught me some lessons."
'He's dismissing your experiences.'
He smiled, a little too sadly for her taste. "You're right to look at what you have in Konoha. You're lucky, in a lot of ways. You have a family who desperately loves you, who was overjoyed to see you come back. You've made friends everywhere you've gone, for better or worse, because you're likable and humble and stand up for others and what you believe in, and people can see and admire that. Naruto and Sasuke, and Ino, Hinata, Shikamaru, Tenten, and the rest of your class; even after you 'defected,' they would still do anything for you. It sounds like Rain has plenty of people like that too, maybe even among the Amekage with how they treated you."
'You are betraying them.'
"I'm betraying them," Sakura said, and Obito shook his head. "I am. I left them behind when they needed help, when they've got the most dangerous Hidden Village in the world trying to destroy them. Even if I know I have to stay here, for now, that's how I feel. It's like with Haku. It's my fault he's…"
Her voice hitched, and she couldn't finish the sentence. Sakura closed her eyes and tried to crush her grief as it pushed up against her, threatening to burst out.
She heard Obito shift. "That wasn't your fault," he said, his voice flat.
"It was my fault," she said, struggling to keep her voice as steady as his. "He fell. I missed him. If I'd caught him… we'd both have been okay."
'It's true. You failed him. It's your fault Haku is dead, and if you don't do what needs to be done so many more deaths will burden you.'
Obito didn't speak for several seconds, and Sakura kept her eyes shut and tried to breathe deeply to keep herself from crying. She was sick to death of tears. Her eyes ached, the inside near the nose feeling like a sunburn. Even after two showers, she still felt like there was burned blood sticking to her skin.
"I told you that Kakashi died back in the last war," Obito said, in a tone that made it clear he thought the last war hadn't been the last war, and Sakura nodded. "That was my fault. So let me be clear, Sakura." She opened her eyes to find Obito staring at her, eyes narrow. "If Haku's dead, it wasn't your fault."
'Obito saved Kakashi, and got his arm broken for his trouble… and then Kakashi saved him, and got crushed.' Not her voice; Rin's, from an age ago.
She stared back, suddenly extremely aware of the gap in experience, in years, and in heartache. Obito's best friend had died right in front of him when he was younger than her: his parents and brother not too many years after. He'd lost other friends in the war too, and Sakura was sure many of those deaths were burned everlasting into his Sharingan. The desperation he'd fought with to protect her and Naruto and Sasuke was hard-earned.
But she couldn't let go of the feeling that easily. Sakura dropped her head and muttered to herself, ashamed of her childishness.
"I'm betraying them," she repeated, and Obito grunted.
"You're not betraying them," he said firmly. "They're big boys and girls. They can handle themselves. If they need help, they will ask you for it. They'll ask us for it." He looked back to the street. "Yahiko has agreed to meet with sensei in a couple days at Mount Myoboku."
Sakura's heart picked up. "Really?" she asked, her chest pounding. "The Hokage and the Amekage?"
"A little Kage Summit all their own," Obito confirmed. "Jiraiya-sensei will be there too. If I were Yahiko, I'd be doing it to ask the Yellow Flash to work with me to kick the shit out of the people who bombed my home." He hesitated. "I don't want you to see war, Sakura, but honestly, we're past that point. And some wars…"
"Can be necessary," Sakura finished, and Obito nodded. "I've been thinking about that, sensei. I've been thinking about that a lot since we got back."
"I've been wondering about that," he said. "Since you managed to get into the Akatsuki and all. It must have been jarring to go from that to… well, what happened." He frowned, trailing off.
"I only got to attend one meeting," Sakura said with a laugh, because really, it was pretty funny. She was sure she was the only person ever to only go to one Akatsuki meeting. "They ended it with a good toast." She raised what was left of her burger in a salute. "'Towards Peace!'" Her arm dropped, and she took a perfunctory bite. "And I know it's stupid to say 'Oh, these are my beliefs now,' like they'll be set in stone forever, but I think that's where I've ended up after being so…" She bared her teeth despite herself. "Angry."
'Hatred. You're filled with hatred. It's scraping away everything unnecessary and revealing the truth underneath.'
"Where, exactly?" Obito said with genuine interest, and Sakura shrugged.
"That if you're doing something, you should do it with the idea of moving towards peace," she said. "Ultimately, anyway. Obviously fighting a war for the sake of peace sounds ridiculous. I said something like that at the meeting to Kimimaro." Obito cocked his head. "One of the Akatsuki's commanders, Kimimaro Kaguya."
"Oh, yeah." Obito snapped his fingers. "Bone guy."
"Uh, sure." Sakura had no idea what that meant. "Anyway, he told me that 'Shinobi make war as naturally as they breathe,'" she said, imitating his flat voice. "Which, to him, meant that war was inevitable but needed to be directed."
"And you're saying, in this case, it should be directed towards justice?" Obito said. Sakura couldn't decide if he sounded dubious or not, but she nodded nonetheless. "It sounds sensible enough to me."
"When Kimimaro said that, I told him I was more interested in preventing war outright," Sakura said, looking down. "But I didn't realize what that would mean. Not then."
"It's not naive, if that's what you're saying." Obito gave her a curious look as he reassured her, and Sakura shook her head.
"That's not what I meant." She hesitated.
'Would he help you? He's the strongest ninja you know. He might be your only hope.'
"How so?"
"I realized in Rain that the only way to prevent violence was by deterrence," Sakura said. "The only reliable way, anyway. You can't trust that someone won't go insane and kill thousands of people just because they're living a different kind of life. Not now, probably not ever. So to keep that from happening, you need to be able to hit them before they can hit you, and so hard that they can't even think of attacking you in the first place, because doing so would be the end." She stared at the tiles and the cracks between them, tracking a lost ant. "That's why the Villages have Jinchuriki, and why there have been three wars already but no one's been wiped out or absorbed yet. Because the Tailed Beasts keep the balance."
She finally looked over at Obito, and her stomach dropped.
He didn't look interested. He looked disturbed. Was it because she was talking about what Itachi was planning? Sakura found she didn't really care; she kept going.
"But if one group had all the Bijuu, they couldn't be challenged. That would be the ultimate weapon," she finished. "I guess Cloud's cannon serves a similar purpose, but it's not enough, because it didn't kill Rain in one shot. Nine Tailed Beasts though… nothing could stop that." She remembered riding atop the Nanabi, seeing the world rush by as Itachi commanded it to erase Waterfall as easily as she could step on the ant scurrying near her foot.
"Nothing is a dangerous word," Obito said. Sakura couldn't read him. "It's easy to slap down and declare that the end of it; it can blind you to what lies beyond."
"Do you think there's anything that could stand up to all the Tailed Beasts, sensei?" Sakura asked rhetorically, and Obito didn't immediately answer.
"I'm not sure," he said, and Sakura frowned.
'He's hiding something from you.'
"Do you think I'm wrong?" she said, and this time he didn't hesitate.
"I think you've put some thought into this," he said, standing up and taking his food with him. Sakura, startled, almost leaving what was left of hers behind as she rose to follow him. He started meandering down the street and she pushed to his side, ignoring the occasional look of recognition she got from those she passed. "And to be honest, I haven't. I've been looking inward while you looked outward, I think."
He looked over at her. "I can't say you're right or wrong, Sakura, only that putting all the power in one group's hands could probably end in just as great a disaster as what it would try to prevent. There's no perfect solution; so long as you know that, I've got faith in you to try and do the right thing."
"I know that, sensei," Sakura said. She'd been ready for an argument, but Obito's kindness had shot her down more swiftly than harsh words ever could have, and filled her with doubt once again. She trailed after him, trying to find something to say that wouldn't feel pointless. "What do you mean by looking inward?"
"Trying to figure out who I am," Obito said with a laugh. "I realized after you left that I was pretty much just a killing machine since I was, well, your age. Great for the village, not so great for me."
'I refuse to be a tool.'
"A weapon," Sakura muttered, and Obito heard her.
"Yup," he said. "So I started making changes. Picked my own missions, got a summoning contract with the Toads…" He paused as they turned, following a road Sakura half-remembered and passing by a series of grocery stores, souvenir shops, and laundromats. "Asked Rin out."
"Finally!" Sakura burst out, all her bitterness and sorrow vanishing for a moment of rude glee. Obito flinched. "Sorry, but that was so painful to watch! Naruto and Sasuke talked about it behind your back all the time, you know! I learned half of what I know about you from them gossiping when we first teamed up!"
"Yeah, seems like everyone was doing that," her sensei groused. Sakura giggled as he continued. "Too bad no one bothered to talk to me about it."
"We thought you knew what you were doing!" Sakura said, trying to defend her friends. "How could you not?"
"How could I not?" Obito echoed with a grin as they passed out of the thicker part of the village and onto a thinner, forested path. "Guess you were already ahead of me in at least one place, Sakura."
"I thought about trying to push the two of you together," Sakura said, remembering a much simpler time. "A million years ago, before we even went on that first C-Rank. I thought Ino would love to work with me on that." Her smile faded. "But then everything happened, and then kept happening. I guess I haven't thought about that kind of stuff in a long time… but I'm glad you started to, sensei."
"I'm not sure I like that," Obito said, and Sakura finally realized where they were going; the Memorial Stone. "But I guess it's out of my hands by now."
They walked up the paved path and the stone came into view, and Sakura started to fidget as they drew closer. There were other people there, an older woman and someone who was clearly her son, kneeling before the Stone and praying, but they didn't pay Sakura or her sensei any mind when they arrived. Obito stood before the Stone, his hands slipping into his pockets, and Sakura waited.
After a minute, the woman and her son left, and they were left alone. Still, Obito didn't speak. Sakura waited another minute until the silence became too much to bear.
"Why are we here, sensei?" she asked, and her sensei glanced back at her.
"I've been trying to come more often," he said. "To visit Kakashi, and my brother, and others. I fell out of it when I took you guys on, but it's important to take time for the people important to you."
'But they're dead and gone, never to return.'
"Even if they're dead?" Sakura found herself asking, and Obito didn't reprimand her. He just gave her a solemn nod.
"Especially if they're dead. That's what the Will of Fire is about, at least for me. Carrying on people's memory, respecting their wishes. I'm sure wherever they are, they're watching." He laughed. "And Kakashi, at least, is definitely judging."
Sakura looked at the Stone, which she had never really spent time with, and wondered how much bigger it would have to be to fit all the names of the people who had died in Amegakure on it. There would need to be ten more, at least. What about all the names of all the people who had died in all the world wars, ninja or no? How many stones would be needed to chronicle them? She pictured the clearing covered in towering obelisks, a maze of stones that blocked out the sun for those within, coated in countless dead, and shivered.
"Did you bring me here for a reason?" she asked. Obito shrugged.
"I'd like you to spend the day with me," he said, and Sakura cocked her head. "I don't want to start over; I just want you to see what I'm up to nowadays, and I want to spend more time with you. I've had time with Naruto and Sasuke already." He took a deep breath and turned away from the Stone, and the vision of the compressed graveyard vanished. "Are you up for that?"
'You need to be close to him so he can help you save the world.'
That wasn't the reason Sakura nodded. "Of course, sensei," she said, stuffing the last of her food in her mouth.
Well, she prayed it wasn't the reason.
"I'd like that. Where are we headed next?"
###
On the dawn of the 17th, Noroi looked out over the town, squinting as he futilely searched for any sign of trouble.
He was a Jonin of Kumogakure, thirty-two years old, and he'd been given a very simple command to watch over this very simple town, Nikko. It was serving as a supply dump while his commanders tried to figure out how to counterattack enemies of unknown numbers and disposition. Not a complicated situation, but he'd also been cursed with very simple subordinates.
"Maybe we just ring them a little," Goro muttered next to him. Goro was a huge man with pale skin and short hair, nineteen years old though he looked twice that, and would have been a Chunin a long time ago by his skills in battle alone if he weren't an impulsive, simple person with a rotten attitude. They were both there on the roof on the dawn of the 17th, along with Noroi's second, a short bald woman who went by Wy. Among them, Goro was the only one wearing two Iron Wrists, one on each hand.
He fiddled with the steel devices as he talked, toggling a switch at the top of the spider-like apparatus on and off and filling the air with the ozone smell of excess chakra.
"We don't even know where they are," Wy pointed out, and Goro grunted as he fiddled with the switch, a spark appearing in his palm and then flickering away.
"Who cares? If they're foreigners, they came here to defend Frost. If some people start screaming, it could draw some rats."
"It's likely the Hidden Mist," Noroi said quietly. "That's the simplest option. Not a village known for its abundant compassion."
"Can't be them. They're too weak," Goro said with a sneer.
"Who told you that?" Wy asked innocently. "Or did you just come up with it yourself, big guy?"
"Everyone knows," Goro insisted.
"Who's everyone?"
"Just shut up, would you? What's the point of disagreeing with something like that?" Goro continued, his face twisting into an ugly look. "Mist's got as many ninja worth shit as you have hair. It's gotta be Leaf. I wanna try this thing out on one of those bastards."
Noroi glanced down at the Iron Wrist, noting that it was starting to heat up and vibrate from the level of chakra Goro was pouring into it. "I wouldn't rely on it," he said. "It's not too-"
Wy shushed him, pointing out towards the northern outskirts of town, and Noroi followed her finger to find a shadowy shape pressed against the top of the treeline about a hundred feet away. The shadow skulked forward, and a second later Goro spotted it as well, a grin splitting his face.
"Here's one now," he said, lifting his arm towards the distant shadow. Noroi's hand came up as well, clamping down on Goro's elbow. The larger man shot him an annoyed look.
"What? Just let me blast him," he hissed, and Noroi shook his head.
"It's too obvious," he said, though the shadow would be impossible to spot from the ground and could not be seen without chakra-enhanced senses in the first place. "That's bait. Trying to make us give away our position."
He'd seen this kind of thing in the last war, though he'd been much younger and stupider then. In Noroi's experience, battles between shinobi, real battles, started and ended with the moment of discovery. An ambush was sprung or ambushed in turn, and then shinobi would flock to the violence, the certainty of combat and depleting enemy forces, like a feeding frenzy that would turn the most innocuous place into a battleground. If they attacked the shadow, they could be starting something that would burn down the whole town; they needed to be sure of their enemy's strength first.
As Noroi was thinking this, there was an electronic whine and then a crack, like a miniature thunderclap, and a ball of glowing orange light streaked past him, illuminated a path through the town for a moment, and then struck the treetops with a loud krump, blowing the top off the tree with a bright explosion that immediately banished any sense of stealth.
"Whoops," Goro said, obviously not meaning it as steam poured out of his other Iron Wrist.
Noroi was already moving, instincts screaming that Goro had just thrown away their lives. He watched as the shadow that Goro had blasted flitted away instead of disintegrating, splitting into countless pieces and drifting up into the sky. Some kind of clone, and his simple subordinate had fallen for it. As he cleared the roof, there was a sonic boom and a counterattack burst out of the forest to the west, a lightning bolt with a dragon's head striking Goro's position and sundering the concrete.
Noroi didn't see if the man was hit or not. The whole town was suddenly lighting up; ninjutsu, Iron Wrists, smoke bombs, and other explosives starting going off in a staccato tempo as attacks seemingly came in from every direction, blasting in on the entrenched Cloud ninja, who fired back with vigor, some roaring and charging towards the source of the attacks. Wy was at his side; the canny woman had jumped just a second after him and her head was swiveling, taking in the situation.
"We're surrounded, or close enough to it," she said, and then there was a whistling sound and she gasped as a pinwheel, no, a paper shuriken slammed into her throat, blood spilling freely. They both landed in the alley next to the building, Noroi turning to her with a grunt and throwing his body in front of hers. He felt another three shuriken slam into his back, fast and hard enough to penetrate his vest and dig into his flesh. He spun, making handsigns and dragging the street up beneath his feet as he channeled vengeful chakra through his core.
When his spin completed and his foot came up in a kick, the earth jutsu burst forth, a shotgun blast of mud and gravel. There was a shinobi there in the alley they'd dropped into, and the jutsu tore her cleanly in half, but the top of her body didn't fall as the legs were shorn away. Instead, the torso rushed forward, and the impossibility of it made Noroi hesitate just long enough for her to get on top of him. His hands came up, not to defend himself but to dispel what he had realized had to be a genjutsu.
It wasn't one. He realized that, and his mistake, when the woman's hands wrapped around his head and slammed him through the brick wall.
When Noroi woke up, the town was quiet. His eyes and mouth were covered and he was pinned to the wall, practically cocooned in an unsettingly firm yet soft substance.
More paper, he realized after a second. Paper shuriken, paper cocoon, and, he groggily thought, a paper person. The woman who had drawn Goro's premature attack and defeated him had taken the elementary techniques of manipulating and hardening paper and turned them into something entirely ridiculous. Not simple at all.
"If you answer my questions, we will ransom you back." It was a woman's voice, and he was sure it was the paper ones'. There was no joy or mercy in it. "Were you this squad's leader?"
The paper peeled away from his mouth, but Noroi remained silent. The woman gave him five seconds, and then sighed. "There was a contingent of both Lightning's soldiers and Cloud's shinobi here. Are all of your operations joint ventures?"
That one, he had no compunction answering. "We have the Daimyo's full support," Noroi said. "In this venture, Lightning and Cloud are one."
"Where are your other supply depots?" Again, he didn't answer. "What are those devices your ninja have on their wrists?"
"Proof of Cloud's superiority," Noroi said, only half believing it but knowing in his heart his subordinates were already dead and that he would be joining them shortly.
"If they're the product of your chakra weapons program, then they're just more proof of your worthlessness," the woman said furiously, as if he'd personally insulted her.
Ah. That, finally, was a simple fact he could seize on.
"You're from Rain," he said with a grin. "Isn't your village burning as we speak? You'd think that would give you some perspective."
"Rain lives," the woman said, her anger so heavy he could feel it compressing his lungs. "The Akatuski is here to punish you. As Amegakure burned, Kumo will be erased."
Noroi tried to say something witty, but before he could a knife went through his skull with a thunk louder than anything he'd heard in his life. It didn't hurt, but the world rushed away in an instant, like it was draining out through the hole in his skull.
When the draining sensation was gone, Noroi was as well.
###
Around noon on the 17th, Sakura was at an early lunch that was half uncomfortable relief and half just uncomfortable.
In Rain she'd had plenty of meals alone, but since getting back to Konoha it seemed she always ate with company of one sort or another. Sometimes her mother; sometimes her friends. Today, with her mother, Ino, Shikamaru, Choji, and Asuma crammed into the booth seating of an east-south fusion restaurant (which Sakura had come to learn meant a lot of fish and heavily seasoned rice), it was a mix of both.
"What do you think, Sakura?" Asuma asked. Sakura hadn't been paying attention, and she slowly looked up and blinked as Asuma stared at her. She nodded her head, and he took the cue. "Of the food, I mean."
"It's fine," she said. After that night in Rain she'd been convinced all food would be ash in her mouth, but in fact the poke she was having was actually excellent, and Sakura found herself a little resentful of that. Why should food still taste good, after what had happened? After she'd missed Haku?
'You don't deserve to feel joy. Not until you've made things right.'
"Have you had poke before?" Choji said through a full mouth, and Asuma gently swatted him. "Sorry."
"No, but I had something like it in Rain." Sakura stared down at her bowl, astonished to find a smile spreading across her face. "You would have liked it, Choji. Rain, I mean. There were so many different kinds of people there, and they'd all brought their food. There were so many things I'd never seen here in Konoha… still haven't."
"Huh!" Choji said, like the thought had never occurred to him. "Did you have a favorite?"
"Pizza," Sakura said without hesitation. "It was melted cheese and tomato sauce on flatbread with meat and vegetables. I'd never had anything like that; apparently it's from the northwest, around the Land of Earth. Haku…"
She trailed off, her throat closing up, and no matter how much she struggled to finish Sakura couldn't bring herself to keep speaking. The table had been organized with all the girls on one side, and Ino wrapped her arm around Sakura's shoulder as her mother traced a circle on her back.
'Are you that weak, that people need to console you like this? So fragile that if someone's not touching you you'll break?'
"We still don't have any missions coming up, Asuma?" Shikamaru said, pivoting the conversation so fast Sakura couldn't help but choke down a laugh. "Even I'm starting to get bored."
"Still nothing," Asuma confirmed. "Until things calm down a little out there, the Land of Fire is preferring that its ninja stay in the country. And the Hokage is trying to keep us as uninvolved as possible."
"I don't mind it," Ino said, squeezing Sakura's shoulder and releasing it. She felt a flash of gratitude and humiliation. "After Waves, I've enjoyed having some time off."
"It really sounds unbelievable," Mebuki cut in. "But I've heard the city is recovering, even if it will take years for the bridge to be repaired." She glanced at Sakura.
'Walking on eggshells around you. Aren't you tired of it? Everyone's done that for you your whole life.'
"You all did something amazing there, you know. I'm sure you've heard that many times."
Ino and Shikamaru stayed silent as Sakura had an errant thought.
"How is Kurenai-sensei doing?" she asked Asuma, who glanced at her over his glass of water. "Last time I saw her, she was pretty beat up."
"She recovered fine," Asuma said, scratching his chin. He fumbled for a cigarette, but Mebuki gave it an incredulous look and he tucked it back into his vest with a grumble. "But I'll tell her you asked, I'm sure she'll appreciate it." He leaned forward. "Actually, on that subject, I had something to ask you about, Sakura."
"Oh?" Was that someone treating her like she wasn't made of glass? Sakura leaned in, resting an elbow on the table as Asuma continued.
"I know you heard a little about what happened with Obito while you were gone," Asuma said. "I was wondering if you could pass on my apology to him for me."
'Coward.'
"You haven't apologized yourself?" Sakura asked. She only distantly noticed that the table had gone quiet at her tone.
"He's hard to catch," Asuma said, playing it so casually. Sakura smiled.
"Well, he can't use the Kamui right now." She'd learned that when she'd finally asked about his bandaged eye. With one of his eyes being replaced, her sensei's Sharingan wasn't controllable at the moment, and would stay that way for a week and some. "So it should be easier for you."
"Sakura, I'd really appreciate-"
"He deserves it," Sakura said flatly. "If you're going to apologize for what you did to him, apologize to him. Don't send me to do it for you. Aren't you an adult?"
Asuma's face went red, and for a second Sakura wondered if she'd gone too far.
"She's right, sensei," Ino said. "It's your job, not Sakura's. Man up a little!"
Shikamaru and Choji sniggered as Asuma deflated. "Fine. Sorry I asked," he said, defeated.
'He's not going to apologize. You know that, right? His pride won't allow it. Pride like that is destroying the world.'
The rest of the lunch passed without too much of note, but Sakura was relieved when she slid out of the booth.
"Did you want to go anywhere?" Mebuki asked her as Ino hung by her side, and Sakura shrugged.
"I thought I might go see what Naruto was up to," she said, feeling clingy but unable to deny what she wanted. Mebuki nodded with a grin that Sakura hated.
"Alright then. I was thinking about heading home. Your father's getting back tomorrow, and I want to make sure the place is cleaned up," she said with a laugh. "That'll be a nice surprise, right?"
"Dad will be home tomorrow?" Sakura asked, and her mother nodded.
"Yup! We'll finally have that family dinner, right?" Mebuki said, so delighted over such a simple thing, and seeing her mother so happy made Sakura feel lighter. "Well, you girls have fun, alright?"
"You don't mind if I come with?" Ino confirmed, and Sakura shrugged.
"I don't mind," she said. Ino raised an eyebrow at her.
"You could sound more enthusiastic about it! It's been a little bit since we've hung out, you know!" she said, which squeezed a laugh out of Sakura.
"I'm just going to go mope somewhere else," she said, and now Ino was the one who laughed. "If you wanna be a part of that, go for it."
They started walking. "Well, my dad told me that half of grief is just being with someone while they mope," Ino said. "So if that's what you need, I don't mind."
"Your dad said that?" Sakura asked, and Ino nodded. "What's the other half?"
"That's different for everyone." Not the answer Sakura was hoping for, and Ino saw it. "But he'd probably say time. 'Time heals all wounds,' or something like that," she said, affecting her father's deep and steady voice.
"But leaves scars," Sakura said. Ino nodded.
"Sakura…" she said carefully. "None of us want you to just move on like nothing happened. That's obviously impossible. I think everyone just wants you to be happy again. Or at least feel like you can be happy. That you're allowed to be."
'You don't deserve to feel joy. Not until you've made things right.'
"I don't know if I can do that," she said, trying to be honest. Ino grimaced.
"You always were too hard on yourself," she said. "At the academy, in the Exams, your missions, Waterfall, and now Rain…" Ino mulled it over as they made their way towards Naruto's house, walking along a canal that was practically flooded with winter melt. "Sakura, most things that happen in your life are out of your control. That's the way it is for almost everyone. You don't have to carry them around like you do. I'm worried it'll hurt you."
"It might," Sakura said, staring resolutely ahead. "But I don't really know another way to do it."
"Maybe you should think about how to change that, then." Ino stared at her for a moment, long enough to make Sakura uncomfortable, and then shook her head. "Sorry. Forget it for now, would you? I didn't mean to get this intense. I'm just…"
"Worried, yeah," Sakura said with a grimace. Or maybe a sneer? She wasn't sure what was showing on her face. "Everyone is."
They walked the rest of the way in an uncomfortable silence broken by the occasional stillborn conversation, Sakura feeling heavier as she went. Why was she being so short and cruel? She itched to apologize, but couldn't bring herself to do it. It was like there was a lock on her tongue.
When they reached Naruto's home, Sakura let herself in the front yard and knocked on the door, but there wasn't a response. After a moment, one of the Hokage's bodyguards came around the corner of the building. He was moving fast enough that before she'd gone to Rain, Sakura wouldn't have even seen him arrive; now, she turned towards him with a knowing look and he stopped, obviously surprised at having been spotted.
Ino jumped. She hadn't seen him coming? Weird. As Sakura regarded the masked ninja, he gave her a polite nod. It was a hawk mask, and Sakura wondered if it was the same man who Naruto had pushed past when he'd learned the Rasengan so long ago.
"Sakura Haruno. Are you looking for Naruto?" he asked, and Sakura and Ino nodded. "He and the Lord Hokage are at training ground twenty-six."
"They're both there?" Ino asked. The masked man nodded. "Are they…?"
"Training," Hawk said with an obvious but hidden grin. "Maybe you can catch the show if you hurry."
"Huh!" Ino turned to her, and Sakura gave the masked man a small bow of thanks as he retreated back to whatever lookout he had over the house. "Have you ever seen the Fourth training?"
"I haven't," Sakura admitted. "But I'm pretty curious."
"Same!" Ino said, beaming like there wasn't an invisible wall between them. "Let's hurry then!"
They ran instead of walking, heading north-east towards the clump of training grounds that lay between Konoha's suburban areas and the outskirts of the village's land. It felt good to run, and Sakura let herself fall into the feeling, racing ahead and falling back, leaping off of walls, roofs, and power lines, flipping through the air and feeling the wind rush through her shortened hair. It still felt crispy in places, no matter how many showers she took, but she hadn't minded the closer cut look when she'd looked at it in the mirror. That had been after her mother had cleaned it up, of course.
'You couldn't even do that yourself-'
"Ino," she said as she and her friend both leapt over a clothesline, bright shirts drying in the lukewarm April air below them. She buried her own poisonous voice, for just a second. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude to you."
"Huh?" Ino slowed down, looking over at her as they leapt down and landed in a grassy field, training ground twenty-four. "Sakura, it's fine. I get it. After what happened-"
"It doesn't excuse anything," Sakura said. "Some days I feel okay, and others I can't stop crying. I'm just… frustrated. I don't know how to handle it."
"You'll figure it out," Ino said, which Sakura deeply disbelieved. But Ino said it so sincerely she couldn't disagree, even silently. "We'll help you. We all get it. And-"
There was a loud crack not too far away, and Sakura realized they were coming up on number twenty-six. The training grounds were separated by a thick copse of trees, and both Sakura and Ino slowed down as they threaded through the low-lying branches and weathered trunks, coming to a stop at the edge of the wide field run through with several trenches that was training ground twenty-six.
Naruto was standing in the center with an intense look on his sweat-soaked face, but there was no sign of his father. He didn't even seem to notice them, his eyes darting back and forth as he shifted from foot to foot. Ino waved, but he didn't respond.
"Where's the Hokage?" Ino asked, and Sakura narrowed her eyes. She hadn't seen it at first glance, but the whole field seemed to be shimmering. Tufts of grass and dirt were flattened in places at random, slamming down and then springing up, and there were gusts of wind being pushed out in every direction sendings waves through the grass.
She focused, channeling chakra which seemed colder than usual to sharpen her vision, and sucked in a breath.
"He's here," she said, and Ino gave her a confused look.
"What? You mean…" Ino looked back out, and Sakura saw that she understood. "No way."
It was like Naruto was surrounded by his father. Whether it was his Hiraishin technique or just his raw speed, Sakura wasn't sure, but the Yondaime seemed to be everywhere at once. He darted in and out, appearing for just fractions of a second even to Sakura's enhanced sight to tap Naruto before disappearing again. Naruto had begun lashing out, furiously trying to touch his father, but as far as Sakura could tell he wasn't having any luck. It was the most ridiculous game of tag she had ever seen.
They both watched, entranced, for several minutes.
'This is why he's Flee on Sight. What would you do if this man tried to kill you? You wouldn't even have time to summon the Flowing Hail Blade.'
Eventually, Naruto whipped out his arm with a yell, and though his father disappeared again he came to a stop only a couple feet away, standing up with a smile.
"You got me," he said as Naruto straightened up, panting. "Well done." He looked over at his observers, and Sakura felt a chill down her back. The Yondaime wasn't even breathing hard. "Sorry for ignoring you both. Everything alright?"
"Sakura! Ino!" Naruto seemed to snap out of what was practically a fugue state, limping across the field towards them. "Sorry! How are you doing?"
"We're okay, Naruto!" Ino said, bright as ever. "Training, huh? Looks hard!"
"It is!" Naruto said, like that was all there was to it. "But it's helping me speed up, and uh…" His face dropped a little. "I need to be faster."
Ino didn't seem to know how to respond to that. Sakura did her best to fill the void.
"Could you… see him?" she asked, and Naruto shrugged.
"Could you?" he asked, and Sakura shrugged back. "Yeah, it was about the same for me. But it's good practice." They met halfway on the field, looking one another over.
'How can he smile like that, after everything that's happened? Could it be because he's smiling at you?'
"Are you done for the day, Naruto?" his father called out, and Naruto's smile faded a little as he turned to nod at his father.
"I'm all set. Thanks, dad." The Hokage grinned and gave his son a thumbs-up and then vanished without a sound, just popping out of existence.
"How are things going there?" Sakura said. "I know things were a little…"
"Weird, yeah," Naruto admitted. "But with everything that's going on, I'm just trying to appreciate being back."
"See, that's what I've been telling her to do!" Ino said. "You've got the right idea, Naruto. And training with the Hokage! That's some really advanced stuff, even if it's just tag!"
"Yeah, it's not that much," Naruto said, rubbing the back of his head. "I'm just trying to stay busy. We all should be, I think." A smirk crept across his face. "Did you hear about Sasuke?"
"Sasuke?" Why was her heart speeding up? That wasn't the right response. She shouldn't be afraid just from that. "Is he alright?"
"What? Yeah?" Naruto said, looking confused. "It's not like that. He's going on a date."
"A date? What-?" Sakura stalled out, blinking.
'One of my teammates? Naruto, or Sasuke?'
"No way," she said. "Hinata?"
"Yup!" Naruto said, practically cackling. "Only took him a year, right? Can you believe she forgave him for ditching like he did?"
"Well, that was my fault, not his," Sakura said, and Naruto laughed.
"He was the one who went along! Not that he even knew until we told him!"
"Wait, Sasuke and Hinata?" Ino asked, more thrilled than shocked. "Really? When did that happen?"
"At my birthday, first," Sakura said, "before I left. I guess it must have been something, if it survived us being in Rain."
"Well, she did always like him," Ino mused. "But if she was brave enough to actually make something happen, you're right, there must be something more to it."
This had been the right idea. She was feeling better.
'For now.'
"Do you know what they're doing?" she asked.
"I don't think Sasuke even knows," Naruto said with a snort. "From how he said, Hinata's gonna have a chaperone, so probably just getting a meal or something."
"A chaperone? That's a clan heir for you. Two of them, I guess!" Ino laughed. "I doubt Hinata likes that though. She never did appreciate being watched, right?"
"No, definitely not. Can you blame her?" Sakura said. "I thought about it sometimes, growing up in a place like that, where everyone can watch you all the time? I would have been a wreck."
"What's worse, you think?" Naruto said, stretching his obviously sore limbs. "No attention, or too much?"
"Too much," Sakura said.
"None," Ino said simultaneously.
"Well, that doesn't help at all," Naruto said. "Were you guys going anywhere? I'm starving."
"We just ate," Ino said, "but maybe we could get a snack. Sakura-"
Ino glanced at her, and Sakura felt something like shame or embarrassment burn in her chest. "Sakura just ate too," Ino finished, which definitely wasn't what she was going to say from the start. "Let's just wander for a bit, huh?"
"That sounds good to me," Naruto said with a grin. "Sakura?"
"Yeah," she said, feeling distant. She looked up at the blue sky as they began walking. "I'm fine with that."
Walking alongside Naruto and Ino and talking about things that didn't matter, Sakura felt peace spreading through her body, like cool water washing away a burning fever. Was this fair? No, obviously not. She'd already had this epiphany, hadn't she? About refusing her humanity? Why was she backsliding, ricocheting between extremes like this? Something inside her head was broken, surely. It was infuriating and terrifying.
Was Haku at peace? Looking up at the sky, Sakura accepted for the first time that Haku was certainly, truly dead. He'd been thrown out into the firestorm; there was no way he hadn't become one of the hundred-thousand who had died that day. Haku was special, but not that special; Haku was strong, but not that strong.
She felt like she should have started weeping, and while her throat did constrict and her eyes burned no tears came. Maybe after the last couple of days she was just out of them.
Would he forgive her for missing him?
'How could he?'
No, of course he would. Haku hadn't been that kind of person. He would say something like "I'm just glad you're okay," or "It was only bad luck, Sakura," his beautiful face wearing an annoyingly benevolent smile. If Haku were here, seeing how she was moping around, he would be disappointed in her in his quiet way. So why was she still living like this, trapped in the past, returning again and again?
'I won't let you walk away.'
She thought about the Akatsuki outfit tucked under her bed, and despite the blue sky and gentle breeze, Sakura shivered.
###
At midday of the 18th, Yasa was moving along a rocky and uneven ridge covered in snow and ice on the northern edge of the Land of Frost with two squads of fellow Cloud ninja. She was a recently promoted Chunin, seventeen years old, and though she wasn't in command of either squad she still felt responsible for them. The ridge was dotted with white-draped trees and shrubs that obscured deep crevices that snaked through it in several places, like several rocky apple slices placed next to one another, and she was scanning every one of them, feeling sure that at any moment any enemy shinobi would leap out and attack.
"Chill," Date said, and Yasa did the opposite, tensing up. The short man with long brown hair was her commander and had a harsh voice, even when he was speaking calmly. "We're far from the battlefields up here. No one would be stupid enough to pull an ambush alone."
"What if they were just happy to sell their life?" she asked, the two of them matching speed as the squads surrounded them. They were spread out, every ninja at least twenty feet apart to prevent a single attack from hitting multiple targets, and advancing west across the ridge at a good pace.
Yasa, this squad, and dozens others like it were all part of the same wave of reinforcements pouring into the Land of Frost from the east; what had started, as she understood it, as a simple suppression intended to clear out revolutionary dissidents and secure the Land of Lightning's borders against terrorists like the Akatsuki had become a full-blown invasion, with bloody battles being fought in the south across the countries scattered towns and cities, bodies tumbling down the mountains with increasing frequency. Despite Cloud's obvious superiority, the jealousy and spite of the weaker Hidden Villages had driven their ninja into Frost to fight and die for a country that wasn't theirs.
They were fighting fanatics, Yasa thought, people who would do anything to overthrow the order of the world. Even a normal ninja understood the value of trading lives; surely, people like these would wholly embrace it?
"Then they'll sell them for cheap. All the better for us," Date grumbled. "Our opponents are Mist and Rain; they are both short of shinobi, so any casualties they suffer give us the advantage."
"And Leaf?" Yasa asked, remembering every horror story she'd ever heard about the Yellow Flash and Konoha's many infamous clans, from Akamichi to Uchiha. Date shook his head as they both leapt over a ravine, a tangle of thorn bushes and stunted trees hidden away from the sun below them.
"The Hidden Leaf hasn't moved yet. They're not as stupid as the others," Date said authoritatively. "They know that Cloud is their equal, especially with our technological advancements. The shinobi we fight won't be up to their quality."
"How are we going to crush them if they never make a move?" Yasa asked, and Date clicked his tongue.
"We probably won't. The Fourth Hokage is a monster, and a smart one. Even with our new weapons, in the end, the world will probably be divided between the Land of Lightning and the Land of Fire. From there, who knows-"
As Date was speaking, they leapt over another ravine, this one deeper and darker than the rest.
Something surged up out of it, something that didn't make any sense to Yasa. It made so little sense that she didn't really make a defensive move, just watched it come with a perplexed expression.
When she landed on the other side of the ravine, Date wasn't at her side. Yasa turned around, feeling just as confused, and in her peripheral vision she watched as the other traveling shinobi slowed and turned to look at her. None of the rest of them had seen what had happened. Gradually, they began to converge on her as she tried to figure out what she'd just seen.
She'd been to the ocean, once, and seen fish, but what had come out of the ravine she'd only seen pictures of. It had a long, sleek body, and three fins, with a long powerful tail and jet black eyes. It had erupted out of the ravine without a sound, its mouth wide open, and swallowed Date whole.
She was in terrible danger, Yasa thought, her body fatal seconds behind her mind. There must be a shinobi here. After all, there was no possible natural explanation for a shark, a huge one, being here in the mountains and living in the crevices of the ridge. It had to be some sort of summoning technique, or ninjutsu, or-
She was in shock, she finally realized. She may have been a Chunin, but only barely, and she'd only fought other ninja twice, rogue weaklings both times. She'd never encountered a situation like this, and now her training had failed her, and now she was in shock and pondering the situation academically instead of moving.
Water exploded out of the ravine, a fountain one-hundred feet high, and Yasa scrambled backwards as its shadow fell across her and both of the assembled squads. There were cries of shock and panic, but her mouth was glued shut. The water crashed down on all of them, washing ninja and snow away. It wasn't enough to hurt, but that wasn't what it was for.
The liquid was sticky like only a chakra technique could be, and it clung to their clothes and skin with a greedy hold. A puddle several hundred feet in diameter instantly formed and then began sucking in towards the ravine, like it was rushing down an unseen drain. Yasa was pulled off her feet, her hands desperately scrambling to find something to grab onto without her direction. There was nothing; even outcroppings of stone and thick roots poking through the earth were being pulled away by the tide.
All around her the same thing was happening to her comrades, some of them fruitlessly firing their Iron Wrists into the water or at the ravine, others using Water, Fire, or Earth techniques to try and break free. Yasa didn't see if any of them succeeded, but she did see two of them get pulled into the ravine, the two who had been closest. There was a sudden cacophony of screams and the sound of tearing, and then they were silent.
She was swept to the edge of the ravine, finally able to see down into the darkness. There was a whirlpool in there filled with countless fins, sharks cutting back and forth in a ceaseless pattern beneath the impossible water. As the whirlpool spun faster and faster, Yasa was drawn down into it.
Her parents had a garbage disposal, the kind that shredded any leftovers you put down the drain. Her father was very proud of it. For some reason, it was that mundane thought that unstuck her mouth.
"No!" she screamed, driving her fist into the ground so hard she broke it, doing whatever she could to keep herself out of the whirlpool for even another second. "No no no no no no no no no no no no no no-!"
But screaming didn't do any good, and neither did a broken wrist. Within five seconds Yasa and the rest of the Cloud ninja, bar one who managed to wriggle free of the water and run for his life, were gone.
###
At midday on the 18th, Sakura was training with Naruto, Sasuke, and Obito, the first time Team Seven had trained together since they'd gotten back to the Hidden Leaf. It was a three on one spar against their sensei, which to her recollection they hadn't done since the bell test Obito had given them so long ago.
When they'd started, she'd had a faint assumption that the spar would be lopsided. Fighting more than one opponent was always difficult, even with the skill gap between them and Obito, and they had all developed so much in Rain that surely even their sensei would be caught by surprise.
But even with her Flowing Water Blade, Naruto's medical techniques, and Sasuke's Sharingan and ninjutsu, even with all that and their sensei being down one eye and not able to use his Sharingan, the fight was almost even.
She swung her blade low, its edge safely blunted. She'd tested it, and with her control she could now use the water blade nonlethally, like a huge cudgel. It left nasty bruises but no worse, and that was incredibly useful for things like this. Her sensei stepped over it, his feet a blur. He couldn't jump because if he did Sasuke would tackle him out of the air, which had happened once already, so one of his feet was always on the ground.
They had fallen into this strange stalemate for nearly a minute now. Sakura attacked from medium range with one longer blade formed around her knife and the other, shorter one around her bare hand. Naruto circled on the other side of her, throwing small explosives and clones in equal measure into the mix to try and disrupt Obito's rhythm and knock him down. Sasuke was in close, his Sharingan whirling as he dueled Obito, switching from martial arts to grappling from moment to moment as he tried to bring down the larger man, and contending with both his own teammates' attacks and his sensei's.
And, despite all that…
Obito was holding his own.
'He's a legendary ninja after all, Mangekyo or no.'
It didn't seem physically possible to her, if she were honest. Dodging and deflecting both her blades, sure. Knocking away Naruto's explosives before they went off, often into his own clones? Absolutely. Fighting Sasuke in hand to hand when only the younger Uchiha had eyes that Sakura was pretty sure could literally predict your moves before you made them? Yeah, alright, Obito was a well established badass, she could accept it.
All at once? Bullshit. Had he been like this when they'd left? She knew Obito had taken Naruto and Sasuke at the same time without difficulty, but they had been kids (even if it was only a year and some ago). They'd grown!
'I've been looking inward while you looked outward, I think.'
Had he meant something more by that, or had the changes Obito had told her about actually made him faster, stronger? Had he grown alongside them, despite being separated? Or because of it? How could a legendary ninja like him keep going?
'You'll have to do the same, if you want to meet the coming challenge.'
As she swung again, both blades coming in at undodgeable angles, Sasuke managed to bury his fist in Obito's gut, staggering the older man. But instead of folding, Obito just grinned; as Sasuke tried to pull back, he seized Sakura's teammate and pulled him forward into the path of one of the blades. As she diverted it, he flipped both himself and Sasuke sideways through the air, his feet leaving the ground for the first time with no one ready to take advantage of it. They both slammed into the dirt, Obito on top of Sasuke. As the younger Uchiha struggled to escape, Naruto charged in, and Sakura pulled back to deliver another strike, Obito wiped some blood from his nose and formed a hand seal on Sasuke's back.
"Kuchiyose no jutsu!" There was an explosion of smoke and Obito flipped off Sasuke's back, slamming both his feet into Naruto's chest and sending Sakura's other teammate flying back with the wind knocked out of him. However, Sasuke didn't rise. When the smoke cleared, Sakura could see there was a toad the size of a large dog sitting on his back, pinning him down despite its apparently small size. Sasuke clawed at his back, but was unable to reach it as the toad stared placidly at Sakura, its hooded green eyes blinking out of sync.
"Pffffffft." She couldn't help it, and as Obito rolled to his feet he grinned at her over Sasuke's prone form.
"Alright," he said with a small groan, straightening up. "I think I'll go out on a high note, okay?"
He clapped his hands and the toad vanished, but Sasuke stayed facedown in the dirt for a second longer, obviously humiliated. Eventually, he flipped to his feet with a sigh.
"Since when could you summon toads?" Naruto groused, nursing what would probably be a bruise on his chest. Gentle green and orange light burned around his hands, and he rose to his feet as well, fully healed. "Dad didn't tell me that."
"My bad, Naruto," Sakura said, letting her Flowing Water Blade whip away. Only a couple drops of water spattered into the dirt; she was almost perfect at getting back all the chakra she'd formed into water, but being close to perfection was way more irritating than being far away. "He told me a bit ago, but I forgot to mention it." She looked at Obito brushing his hands off and prodding at his nose; Naruto made a motion towards him and walked over, bringing his glowing hands up. "I didn't think you'd use it in a spar, sensei."
"Well, I was outnumbered," Obito said with a shrug. "I told the Toads I wouldn't need their help to fight, but I didn't know I would be taking my brother's eye when I said that. Not having the Kamui changes the math a little. I'm sure you could tell."
"Not really," Sakura grumbled, and her sensei laughed.
"I'll take it as a compliment!" he said.
"You're faster," Sasuke said, wiping dirt off his face. "Even without the Sharingan. I could barely keep up."
"Stop, I can only take so much flattery," Obito said, sounding sarcastic but seeming serious. "Seriously though, all of you, good job. It's good to see how much you've grown. It makes me feel a bit better about letting you run off, you know."
"Ah, glad to hear it," Naruto said, stretching out. "Are we done then, sensei?"
"For now, yeah," Obito confirmed. "Do you all have plans?" He looked at Sakura in particular when he said it, and she twitched.
"I'm going to go spend some time with Tenten," she said, and Obito gave an approving nod. "We trained a little, but that's not the same as just hanging out. I want to…" She took a breath. "Know how her year went."
"Good. Sasuke, you've got a date, right?" Obito asked. Sasuke just blushed, very slightly, and nodded. "Adorable. Hope that goes well. I hear Kurenai's chaperoning, so she should keep to herself. Just try to have fun, would you?"
Sasuke, apparently still tongue-tied, nodded again, and Sakura spared him a smile. Obito turned to Naruto last. "What about you?"
"Spying on Sasuke's date!" Naruto declared, and Obito blanched.
"No," Sasuke said steadily. "You're not."
Naruto examined his friend's face, and came to what Sakura thought was the smart decision.
"Nevermind!" he said brightly. "I'm going to go bother my mom about seals!"
"Well, bothering Kushina isn't much better, but it is better," Obito mused. "I'll take it."
"What about you, sensei?" Sakura asked, and Obito sighed.
"I'm meeting Asuma for lunch. Apparently, he has something to say to me." He scratched his newly healed nose. "It's going to be awkward."
"If he's apologizing, it's overdue," Sasuke said quietly. "That will make it worth it."
"Hope so," Obito said, and then stood still for a moment before snapping his fingers. "Right. Can't teleport. Guess I'm walking."
"You really got too used to that, huh sensei?" Naruto said as they left the field together, and Obito smiled ruefully.
"It was easy to," he admitted, and Sakura found herself nodding along. She'd thought about how amazing it was how quickly moved around many times. "But it'll be back soon enough. And it will be worth it. I'm not sure if Itachi really thought I would help him with his insanity out of gratitude or whatever, but with both my eyes being Eternal…" He grew distant, not seeing them anymore. "I'll be able to do things I could only dream about before."
"Like you needed to be stronger," Naruto scoffed, and Obito laughed.
"What are you going to do, once they're finished healing?" Sakura asked, and Obito turned to her. She was sure he wasn't the only one who could detect the buried intensity in her voice, but Naruto and Sasuke didn't pay her any mind; they might all have been on the same page.
'Will he go to the Hidden Cloud? Will he avenge Haku, Kabuto, Suigetsu, and all those countless lives? Or will he squander it?'
"That will depend on how sensei's meeting goes," Obito said frankly. "He should be leaving any minute, actually."
"For the meeting at Myoboku?" Naruto asked. Obito nodded. "Good. I hope…" His hands curled into fists. "I hope everything goes well. That everyone listens to each other. I wish we were there."
"Your dad knows what he's doing," Obito said. He squeezed Naruto's shoulder, though his grin was more like a grimace. "He'll work it out."
The reality of things happening outside of their control squeezed the mirth out of them for a couple minutes, and by the time they were speaking again they had entered Konoha's residential district.
"I'm heading off here," Sakura said, pointing down one of the main thoroughfares. It was stuffed with people and market stalls, the village violently shaking off winter and embracing spring. "Naruto, do you want to meet up for dinner or something?"
"Sure!" Naruto said, with a bit of a blush. "Sounds good!"
"Alright. My dad was supposed to be back in the village today, but I haven't seen him yet, so we'll play that by ear. It wouldn't be the first time he was late," Sakura said, and Naruto vigorously nodded. "Sasuke, sensei… good luck, for different reasons, alright?" Both the Uchiha gave her amused looks as she locked eyes with them in turn.
"Have fun. Don't be weird," she told Sasuke, and he snorted.
"I'll do my best," he said, and Sakura gave him a little hug which he broke off with an uncomfortable cough.
"And sensei… don't have fun, and don't be mean," she said, and Obito laughed. "Well, not too mean."
"It'll be fine," Obito said. "Enjoy your shopping, Sakura. We'll meet up later, alright?"
She nodded, smiled, and broke off, striding into the village on her own. She was planning to meet Tenten in front of Parcu, one of the larger downtown clothing stores, and found her just where she thought she would. Tenten was lounging on one of the double-backed stone benches that dotted the center of the street in between installations of trees and ferns, and she popped up with an adorable amount of excitement when she spotted Sakura threading through the crowd.
"Hey!" She called out, greeting her with a bone-crushing hug that Sakura did her best to return in kind. "You said you needed new clothes, but you look great!"
Sakura looked down at her training clothes, a red tank-top and black shorts, and then back up at Tenten with an arched eyebrow. Tenten snorted. "Okay, it's not very fancy, but you still look good."
"I only have four sets that fit me, including this one," Sakura said, which was both pretty funny and also hurt to say. "Not including my Akatsuki uniform and what I was wearing under it when Rain got attacked, and that's all a little burned." Tenten's face twisted a little, and Sakura let out the painful laugh. "And I think wearing that around here wouldn't be the best fashion choice."
"Not the best," Tenten admitted, looking around. "Well, I'm excited to help you pick out some new stuff then. Where did you want to start? Some more ninja clothes, or day-wear?"
"Where do you get yours?" Sakura asked. She'd always liked the older girl's utilitarian but colorful sense of style. Tenten shrugged.
"Mostly clearance sales at the bigger department stores," she said, which Sakura really should have seen coming. "The rest I make myself."
"You can sew?" Sakura asked, surprised she hadn't already known this, and Tenten gave her a smirk. "Since when?"
"Since I entered the academy, I guess," she said. "It was cheaper. But I was always embarrassed to tell people I made some of my own clothes."
"Why? They're great!" Sakura exclaimed, and Tenten blushed.
"I didn't want the other kids to think I was cheap. I already got made fun of for being an orphan, sometimes," she said, and Sakura briefly considered murdering some of Tenten's classmates. "But thanks, Sakura. That means a lot, actually."
"I'm not saying it just to be nice," Sakura said earnestly. "I never would have guessed any of your stuff was homemade-"
She froze, the words dying in her throat as her eyes locked on the roof of a store across the street.
"Sakura?" Tenten said, waving her hand in front of her. "Hello?"
Someone had been there, stepping out of her line of sight right as she'd looked up. Long black hair. She was hallucinating, Sakura thought. That wasn't a good sign.
"I just…" She stepped forward, and Tenten moved to the side with a confused look. "Hey, did you see anyone up there?"
"Up there?" Tenten said, following Sakura's line of sight to the roof. Like most of Konoha's buildings, it was stacked on top of another, the twisting skyline obscuring most of it from view. "No…?"
"I'm going to…" Sakura took a deep breath. "Hey, come with me just in case I'm crazy, right? I think I'm about to have a breakdown or something."
"Well, that's not great," Tenten said flatly, but when Sakura stepped past her, picking up speed and jumping straight up to the roof, Tenten followed after her good-naturedly.
They landed on the roof as a couple people on the street called after them to be careful where they were going, but Sakura didn't care. She looked around, her heart beating a thousand times a minute. It was going to explode out of her chest.
Once again, she only caught a flash. Long black hair trailing around the corner of another nearby building, this time behind a water tower.
She jumped again, Tenten leaping after her. "Sakura, seriously, what's going on?" her friend called, Sakura's heart beating so hard in her ears she could barely hear. "What's wrong?"
"It's not… I mean…" They landed on the other building and Sakura stumbled around the water tower. "I thought I saw…"
She'd expected there to be no one there, to have to break down in tears and turn to Tenten with an unbearable pain threatening to overtake her that would ruin the rest of her day.
But instead, it was exactly who she'd thought it was.
"Sakura," Haku said with a warm smile. "Sorry. I wanted a bit of privacy."
Sakura stared, and Tenten came to her side and stared as well. She wasn't hallucinating. This was actually happening.
She stumbled forward, arms wrapping around Haku and pulling him into a hug. "Haku?" she whispered, and he hugged her back, impossibly warm and alive. She heard Tenten stiffen behind them, but right now, that was the farthest thing from Sakura's mind. She pulled back, looking her friend over. "You're alive?"
'What is he doing here?'
The thought didn't even register against her relief. She looked back; Tenten was tense, her hands straight at her sides. Why?
"I'm alive," Haku confirmed. "And I need to talk to you." He gently pulled free, brushing down his Akatsuki haori, and Sakura held back a sob. Grief, relief, disbelief, too many feelings were pushing their way to the surface.
'The wrong ones. Focus!'
"I'm sorry," she said, feeling herself starting to collapse. "I'm sorry I missed you, I tried, I tried so hard, but I didn't know what was happening, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"
"Sakura." Tenten's hand came down on her shoulder, rock hard, and Sakura tensed. "Calm down." She could feel all of her friend's attention being directed at Haku, like a spear plunging over her shoulder.
"What? Why?" Sakura said, barely keeping the tears back. "He's okay! Tenten-!"
"Why are you here?" Tenten said bluntly, and the haze in Sakura's head finally dispelled. She froze, staring at Haku as the question ricocheted around her head with such force it was like it was breaking off pieces of her skull.
'What is he doing here?'
Haku looked sad. No, more than that. His perfect makeup was streaked. He'd been crying, and was pale. And, Sakura somehow noticed for the first time, he had piercings, something he'd never had before. Six small black bars were stuck in his body, four in his shoulders and one through each ear. They didn't look painful, but they were new and wrong, and suddenly her mind was working, screaming into overdrive.
Those were the same kind of bars that Konan had given them, the ones Nagato used to summon them. They were something to do with the Rinnegan. Why were they stuck in Haku?
"I'm here to talk to Sakura," Haku said gently.
"So talk," Tenten said. Her other hand was still by her side; she was ready to spring into action at any time.
Did she need to be? As Sakura's hopes and fears came to an unspeakable collision and crippled her, Haku shifted, extending his hand, and spoke with a voice filled with quiet desperation.
"Sakura, please… you need to come back to Rain," he said.
No. Begged.
"Before it's too late."