Sakura panted harshly, more in worry than in actual out of breathness, due to her training with Lee, who was running a few paces ahead of her. Even farther ahead was Hinata, short hair rippling with the surprising speed of her run, despite her injuries.
Must be the clan training.
The rest of them were behind her, even Sasuke, although not by much. Her training with Lee had greatly increased her speed to the point where, when properly motivated, she could outstrip even Sasuke.
The fact that Ino was in mortal peril served as great motivation.
Sakura felt bile in her throat and swallowed it with sheer stubbornness, ignoring the fact that it felt terrible as it went back down.
Haku and the girl said they sense a huge malicious chakra signature right over where Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji were. Haku almost fell backwards when he had realized Ino was in trouble. Naruto had to catch him. Right now, Haku was pulling ahead of her, masked face firmly staring ahead, and Sakura Increased her own pace in turn.
When Karin suggested they stay behind and away from danger, Sakura had snapped. No way was she leaving behind Ino. They had just gotten back together. Not again, never again.
"We made a pact! All Konoha teams help each other out when they need it, and they need it!" Naruto had exclaimed, before breaking into a run after Sakura. Everyone else soon followed.
Someone screamed. High and shrill, filled with such a bloodcurdling note of terror it could cut glass. Sakura would look back and still wonder who it was, even after it was all over with.
"Look out!"
Sakura threw herself to the side just as the massive tree branch she was on exploded into tiny wooden shards.
The tiny pieces peppered her arms like bee stings and she screamed. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw the rest of them dodge just in time to avoid being crushed to death by a giant arm of...sand?
Sand was swirling all around them, and at the eye of the storm was the same red haired boy that Ino had said looked like trouble.
He was screaming, something about a mother. His fingers scratched at his face, but instead of drawing blood, sand fell down. His green eyes were wide open to the point where they looked like they were going to pop out of his skull. She could see a clear ring of white around the irises from her position of over 40 feet away.
He was insane. Crazier than a bag of cats as Haruhi would say. If a tinfoil hat had a smell, he would be it.
"You idiots, get out of here!" Someone screamed again.
It was the older sister. Hair like a desert bush and teal eyes glowing like fire. She was batting away sand with her giant fan, deflecting and dodging it while the other one used chakra strings to pull himself to safety.
The older genin-Temari, sliced an arm in half with her huge metal fan panting harshly as she shouted something to her brother.
"It's not the right time-" Temari was cut off as she dodged another arm.
Her eyes tracked the movement before stopping on two figures huddled over something. The one figure was significantly slimmer than the other, with a spiky ponytail, another heavier figure with his hair split down the middle with cloth. She looked down at the figure lying in the grass and her blood turned to ice.
She couldn't breath.
She was suddenly watching Haruhi, small, so small and sleeping after using up all her chakra.
She was on the bridge again, watching as Zabuza's sword cleaved towards Sasuke.
"Sakura!" Lee tackled her out of the way of another lashing sand tentacle. It would have knocked the wind out of her if the sight of Ino's prone lower body hadn't already.
She looked around in a daze. Gaara had stood up, attention on them now. Sand was lashing out in all directions. Neji and Hinata danced around the sand whips, disintegrating them with touches. Haku was firing off icicles to split them in half and shield the others. Sasuke's fireball muffled the worst of the attack and Naruto's shadow clones confused Garra enough that he went for them instead of the others.
Karin stood in the back looking unsure while TenTen threw explosives tags at sand that tried to sneak up on Haku, scattering it.
Garra screams again, and releases a burst of energy that sent Karin and Haku to their knees, and had even Sakura, who is not a sensor, gagging on the chakra. It felt like trying to breath in honey.
'Snap out of it!' Inner screams and then Sakura is moving. She grabs Haku and the pair ran towards Ino while the others kept him distracted. Naruto snarls, pupils turning into slits and a red energy emitting from him. Before Sakura can ponder what this means, Ino's upper body comes into view.
The screams of the battle behind her are tuned out, faint and muddled like she is under water. Ino is suddenly all she can see. Haku trembles in horror beside her, one hand reaching out, but she doesn't notice.
All she can see is what's left of Ino's face.
The bile she had previously swallowed came back up.
Ino's face, her pride and joy. The various creams and lotions and tips they used to trade, what they started trading again, all useless. The makeups, lipsticks, and eyeliner that made them feel big and powerful, all gone.
She wiped her mouth, only to see Haku had fallen to his knees next to her. She hauled him up and dragged him towards Ino. He stood up then, staggering towards her, hands already glowing green.
Sakura follows, eyes locked on to the place were Ino's face should have been.
The damage was extensive. Broken cheekbones, broken nose, exposed jawmusclesexposedteeth-
'CALM DOWN SHE NEEDS US!'
Sakura crouched next to Haku and got to work.
The fight raged in the background, and Sakura looked up for a single second, gasping when long chakra things, chains erupted from Karins back. She screamed, and held down the rampaging Gaara, who was being engulfed by sand. His eyes lost their green, being replaced with a grey that Sakura knew didn't bode well for them.
She looked down again.
Haku didn't have the accuracy or the supplies to fix Ino's face, and neither did Sakura. Hell, just stemming the flow of blood was exhausting, even with her stellar chakra control. Haku was dealing with the worst of the injuries, but the damage was so severe and extensive, one wrong move could mean Ino lost her vision, or taste or smell.
They shouldn't be touching her at all, but if they didn't, she would die from blood loss, or infection.
This was all wrong, this wasn't supposed to happen! Why did they have to go through this!?
Screams erupted from the clearing as sand wrapped around Lee's torso. Her heart jumped into her throat, because she couldn't bear to see another friend get hurt, but before she could jump into action Hinata sliced the arm in half with her palm.
But Sakura could see them wearing down. They weren't moving as fast, and were starting to slip up. Gaara was slowly slipping back towards them.
Sakura needed to slow the tentacles down.
"Haku!"
He looked up, sweat dripping out from under the mask. Sakura ran through the hand signs.
"Water style, water wave Jutsu!" This part of the forest was extremely damp, providing all the water Sakura needed to send a giant wave towards Gaara on the ground while everyone else moved into the trees. It hit him full on, soaking his sand.
"WE'LL KILL YOU!"
His sand moved, noticeably slower, towards Sakura before Haku got the hint.
He put his hands to the dirt and released his chakra.
Like her wave before, it encompassed the clearing. It froze the watery sand in place. The ice crackled as it rapidly spread towards Gaara, who could do nothing as it engulfed him.
Silence.
Haku panted heavily, before running through hand signs again, biting his finger, and slamming it to the ground. If Sakura hadn't seen Kakashi-sensei do that, she would have thought he was insane.
Smoke billowed outwards, and suddenly a giant rabbit the size of her house was in the clearing, resting atop the frozen sand.
"Get on!" Haku barked.
Nobody needed to be told twice.
Sakura ran over and helped Shikamaru and Choji move Ino without jostling her too much and the giant rabbit bent down to let them on top of it.
They heard a noise and turned to see Temari scooping up the other brother.
"This wasn't supposed to happen." Her face was ashen pale, ponytails lose. Before they could ask her what that meant, a ear splitting cracking noise had Temari using a wind Jutsu to propel her and her brother away and had Haku screaming for the summon to jump. It did just that, and the sheer force of the wind had Sakura's throat in her stomach. As she turned to look back, she felt liquid trickle down her thigh.
The treetops shook as Gaara-no, the sand demon rose, roaring. Gaara was unconscious in the middle of its forehead as it chased after them.
They were screaming and yelling, Hinata was coughing up blood while Neji held her, Shikamaru and Choji were clinging to Ino, Sasuke's eyes were bleeding, almost all of Shino's bugs were dead, Kiba was cupping his face as if trying to block put a putrid smell, and Naruto was unconscious, having been hit in the stomach. Karin was clinging to the back, staring at Ino's face with a strange expression that Sakura didn't have the time to figure out.
Gaara's sand shredded the ice to the point where the shards made it looked like it was snowing in summer. The giant sand demon laughed maniacally and came after them.
Trees wider than her house snapped like toothpicks. The giant sand demon opened its mouth and roared, shaking the treetops that hadn't been felled by the sweeping tail. Sakura felt her ears pop and she had to brace herself and Ino's prone body as the rabbit summon gave another great leap, barely dodging the giant sweeping sand paw.
The creature roared, words so loud they were indecipherable. Neji spun in a circle, a move Sakura have never seen before, that blocked a sand whip lashing out at them. TenTen threw a spiked bomb that exploded in the sand demon's face, blinding it and putting distance between them. Sakura turned to see that Kiba and Hinata had secured Naruto, Ino, Haku, and Karin to the back of the rabbit with ninja wire. Shino, TenTen, Lee, and Kiba were hurtling projectiles at the demon as it recovered.
"We need to get to the tower! I need to count all our scrolls!" Shikamaru shouted, gesturing to Choji who started digging through pockets. Hearing the normally laidback Shikamaru yelling at the top of his lungs only further set her on edge.
'That flash bomb wont hold forever! We need to take out Gaara, and soon!' Inner shouted.
Sakura shouted this to the others, and Kiba shouted something as the sand hurtled their kunai back at them. TenTen quickly intercepted by furiously unraveling a golden tipped scroll, extracting a metal whip she then used to slash the kunai out of the sky.
"Boost me!" TenTen shouted.
Sakura jumped behind her with Lee in a smooth cohesive moment. Tenten jumped into the air, and just as she started coming back down, Sakura and Lee cupped their hands, catching Tenten's feet then hurtling her upwards with all their might.
TenTen unfurled a giant scroll she had kept on her back, and, in a move that blotted out the sun, a storm of weapons of all shapes and sizes exploded from her scroll. They hurtled through the air, like a swarm of angry hornets, directly at Gaara's prone form.
"Yeah!" Sakura cheered, forgetting her fear for a moment as she watched the amazing display put on by Tenten. Only for realty to come crashing down as the weapons thudded harmlessly into the sand demon's raised arm.
"YOU FOOLS THINK YOU CAN DEFEAT ME, SHUKAKU, THE ONE-TAILED-AGH!"
Mouth agape in awe, Sakura watched as the previously invisible chakra threads became visible at the edges of TenTen's fingertips like a spider web. With a shout and a jerk of her arms, the came flying from all angles towards Gaara's prone form, so fast and abrupt that the sand demon couldn't block or see them.
They harpooned it's arms and face, and the creatures angry roar had them clutching their ears in pain.
Sakura looked up just in time to see one of the fuma-shuriken slam into Gaara's chest.
"..."
The world seemed to stop. The abrupt silence was like a gaping hole, where no birds chirped or trees rustled, the giant rabbit summon had stopped bounding, now just watching to see what happened next. Even their breathing had stopped.
It started to collapse. Gaara's shocked face falling to the earth was all she could see as the behemoth crumbled into dust.
A glint out of the corner of her eye led her to seeing Temari swooping in on her metal fan, scooping up Gaara's prone body and gliding out of sight.
TenTen landed on her feet a bit behind Kiba, starling him. Karin, Ino, Naruto, and Haku were still unconscious.
"Well?! Take us to the tower, as quickly as possible, please!" Sakura asked.
The Rabbit's nose twitched, and with a jerk of its body, they were flying over treetops.
"Kakashi." Haruhi said, voice stiff with worry. She was taking careful measured breathes through her nose. Her hands itched, like they were too tight on her, like a pair of gloves. She felt like shedding her skin like a snake and crawl into a hole somewhere.
Kakashi gently rested a fingertip onto her back, and rubbed it into a soothing circle. Haruhi could tell he was worried too.
Once the cameras went out from a whirlwind of sand, how could they not be?
This was wrong. Gaara wasn't supposed to go off his rocker until way past the third stage of the exams.
Kakashi didn't respond from their position in the screen room, still staring at the blacked out tv's. Medics ran past them, going to meet the kids at the tower.
"Kakashi, we should go."
Kakashi paused, then nodding slightly. Instead of putting her on his shoulder like she expected him too, he surprised her by tucking her carefully into the vest pocket.
His hand hovered for a second, before going back to his side and he began walking. She noticed the minute tremble in it.
She wanted to be on his shoulder. She desperately wanted to see if the kids were alright, but she knew Kakashi needed the security of her safe in the pocket.
And so did she.
What will happen next?
Many thanks to reebajee