Deviation Actions
Literature Text
*******
Looking back, it was the most terrifying kilometer of her life...but at the time, with the exhilaration of all the extra chakra coursing through her veins, she felt a hair’s breadth shy of invincible. The wind howling through her hair, falling amongst the trees, catching branches sticky with sap and spinning round them to lose momentum. Then in the next moment leaping from tree to tree, sometimes only the faintest touch of her foot or hand keeping her aloft, keeping her from plummeting to the forest floor below. A fall here would mean much more than broken bones, the woods were thick with the lobster tailed monsters, crashing through the foliage.
Soon the five of them came to a halt in a stand of tall pines, right on the edge of the wide clearing. In the center of the large glade, a rough stony hillock rose, making a small vantage point. On top of that tumbling pile of rocks, sat their quarry.
She looked almost exactly like one of the fish creatures, only larger… much larger. Her huge head hung about ten meters off the ground, but her lower, lobster half was a grossly misshapen writhing mass. Strange lumps bulged up and then retreated under her chitinous armor.
In small groups of three or four, the smaller creatures would come up to the queen, open their mouths doubly wide and then search around inside their gullets with their tentacles. They would pull out a dripping, oozing human or animal carcass and present it up to the Queen. Once the growing pile reached some specific height, the Mother monster would shovel all of the bodies into her gaping jaws. The huge lump could easily be seen working its way down her throat.
Lee looked at Neji. Neji looked at Tenten. Tenten turned to Sakura who in turn, faced Sasuke. “Okay,” she said nervously. The euphoria from all the excess chakra in her body had fled in the presence of such a horror. “What is the plan?”
Sasuke kept staring out at the enormous creature. “Same as before. Find the eye, destroy it, and then do whatever we can to kill it.” Sakura could see a red flicker through the eyehole of his mask. “With your permission, once we get rid of the eye… I’d like to burn that thing.”
There was a low guttural cry from the queen monster. A large mass undulated its way down her abdomen to the base of her tail. There was a disgustingly wet explosion of fluids. In the huge steaming pools of expelled mucus, a score of the smaller fish headed creatures flailed about and slowly got to their feet.
“Well!” said Tenten, trying to put a brave face on things. “I, for one, think that’s a great plan. Where’s the damn eye?”
Sasuke kept peering at the Mother monster. “That’s the one big problem… I can’t… I can’t seem to find it.”
“It’s along the middle of her back, near the fourth band of armor plate,” said Neji.
The cat mask turned sharply. “I don’t see anything there Hyuga.”
Neji squinted, the veins around his byakugan throbbing with power. “That might be because it is located underneath her shell.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from Sasuke. “Cracking the armor on a queen juggernaut… the Gods really do hate me.”
Lee gave him a questioning glance. “Why would it be so difficult? It seems to me that we only need an added step. First we break the armor, then we stab this eye... thing.”
“Breaking the shell of a queen juggernaut? Do you even know what you’re talking about?” A patronizing edge crept into Sasuke’s voice. “Those damn things can survive the pressure at the bottom of the ocean! You could drop a mountain on the damn thing and it would just get up and walk away!”
Sakura found herself scowling at Sasuke, upset at the tone he had taken with Lee. “So then why don’t you use your Susano’o and cut it in half?”
Sasuke shook his head vigorously. “No… I’ll only summon the Susano’o as a last resort.”
“Why?” asked Tenten voicing Sakura’s own question. Only as a last resort? Wasn’t he just about to use it a little bit earlier? They were surrounded... yes, but was that truly a ‘last resort’ type of situation?
In typical Sasuke fashion, he ignored the question. “We’ll need to find some other way of getting under the Queen’s armor. Explosives won’t work. My chidori can’t cut through it. Fire will just alert her…”
Sakura stared at the Queen as she expelled another brood of the smaller monsters. “Could we… lift up a segment?” Everyone turned to stare at her. “Look!” she said pointing to the queen’s writhing abdomen. “There’s a lot of play there! Someone might be able to get their fingers under and edge and pry up enough armor to get at the eye!”
“I will do it!” volunteered Lee. “I will open the seven chakra gates and…”
“And what if it isn’t enough?” asked Tenten. “If this thing can take as much damage as Sasuke says… that stuff has to be incredibly dense!”
“I can help,” offered Sakura.
“No!” The speed and forcefulness of Sasuke’s objection surprised her.
“No? Why not?”
There was the slightest hint of hesitation before Sasuke replied. “You’re our only medical-nin. You should stay out of combat in case someone gets hurt.”
Sakura narrowed her eyes. “I’m also just as strong Lee and better than that, I can use my enhanced strength without worrying about taking myself out of commission!”
Sasuke scowled and opened his mouth to reply, but Sakura didn’t give him the chance to. “Besides… ‘Stay behind in case someone gets hurt?’ think about that for a second… the four of you will be off on top of the Queen fighting hordes of its followers. How am I supposed to get there to help anyone?”
“You could use the slug to…”
“No!” snapped Sakura. “I’m going and that is final. I’m the one who got you out of jail, I’m the one who’ll take responsibility for anything that happens.” She leaned forward and glared at him. “I’m the one in charge… I give the orders here… not you.”
Sasuke glanced at Team Three, then Sakura. He gave the cat mask a shake. “Fine. Have it your way… So Captain Sakura-sama… What are your orders?”
She nodded once and turned to Tenten. “Tenten, what formation do you recommend?”
“Reverse Delta,” said the weapons mistress with certainty. “You and Lee in the middle. Neji and the Uchiha on the flanks, and I’ll take the rear.”
There was a slight cough from Sasuke. “Since we are about to be heading into direct combat and all… Can I borrow a katana... now?”
Tenten opened her mouth to reply, a sour look on her face, but Sakura spoke first. “Tenten… Just give him a sword… please… He’s already got full use of both his sharingan and his chakra… a katana can’t possibly make him that much more dangerous to us, but it may just help.”
Tenten glowered for a second, but then unrolled a scroll. ”Here,” she said grumpily. “Don’t break it. It’s my sixth favorite sword.”
The ceramic cat mask looked down at the blade and then back up at the weapons mistress. “You rank them? Do you give each one a cute little nickname too?” Lee snickered.
“Shut up Uchiha,” Tenten snapped. She straightened and resumed her briefing. “When we get to the Queen, our primary duty will be to protect Lee and Sakura while they make a hole. Once we can hit the eye… whorl… thing… well, whoever’s fastest gets to kill big ugly there… How’s that for strategy? Any objections?”
There weren’t any. All that was left was to attack.
The attack itself was a simple straightforward affair, sacrificing stealth for speed. They leaped out of the trees and ran full tilt at the queen monster, while using fire and wind to clear a path through the smaller creatures. Tenten spun the bashosen, and a bright light flared behind them, casting long dark shadows that crawled up and over the mother monster’s carapace.
Sakura found herself not paying much attention to her teammates, she trusted all of them, even Sasuke, to work together here. She focused on reaching the Queen Mother before either she or the other monsters could react to their presence.
It wasn’t fast enough. The Queen herself noticed their charge. She gave a ghastly warbling cry and ponderously turned to meet them head on. Her great tentacles came questing forward, those lamprey like mouths at their tips gnawing at the air.
There was an explosion of summoning smoke and a flight of fuma shuriken scythed their way through the Mother monster’s right tentacle near the shoulder joint. The gargantuan brutish head tilted up to the sky and screeched as the appendage crashed to the ground in a spray of foul blood.
There was an answering scream from Tenten. “I told you to keep your stinking hands off my weapons Uchiha! Gods dammit!”
Sakura dodged an enormous pointed leg that made an attempt to squash her, and scrambled up it to reach the Queen’s thorax. She saw Lee dart off to one side, blazing with an aura of bright blue chakra, and smash of of the smaller creatures with his fist. It rocketed into the side of the Mother with a loud crack.
She found herself safely on top of the Queen’s back. There was a sparse handful of the lobster beasts clambering around at first, but Tenten and Sasuke made a short work of them with their fire jutsu.
They had a brief moment to catch their breath before they had to face the horde of smaller creatures that were screaming with fury and indignation, which was determinedly trying to claw their way up the Mother monster’s back.
“Three rings back!” yelled Neji, running to a segment that was about thirty meters away from their current position. “Here!” he shouted, stopping down with his foot. “Right here!” The goal having been marked, the Hyuga prodigy whirled and cut loose with an air cannon jutsu that cleared a good dozen of the fish creatures that had scaled the steep sides of the Queen.
Tenten and Sasuke joined him. Together they formed a rough triangle around Sakura and Lee. She forced her chakra, felt the added boost from the Katsuyu piece attached to her back, and fed it all to her legs. “Remember Sakura-san,” Lee said to her, grinning madly through his aura of blue flame. “Lift with your legs, not with your back!”
“Ha-ha,” she deadpanned at him. As one, she and Lee forced their fingers under the edge of the gigantic armored ring, and pulled upwards.
The carapace slowly moved, but fought them every centimeter of the way. The flesh attached below refused to give way, and acted like an enormous elastic pulling the whole thing back down. Sakura felt her knees buckle with the strain, and pulling more energy from the slug, tried to redouble her efforts, but despite the force she and Lee were using, the armor wouldn’t let go from the muscle underneath.
Explosive tags detonated down the side of the Mother monster. That was a bad sign. If Tenten had gone back to using her ordinary weaponry, she must be feeling the need to conserve chakra. Whether she was running low, or because the number of enemies had drastically increased, neither was good news. The sound of the advancing creatures got closer. There was an angry wordless shout from Neji. She could feel the blowback from one of his air palm jutsu pulling at her blouse. “We need to cut it!” she yelled to Lee. “Get out a kunai!” He reached for his shuriken holster, but the moment he took his hand away from the armor, the ring sagged. Both he and Sakura almost bent double under the weight. Sakura had a moment’s panic that the whole thing would fall.
There was the high pitched crackle of electricity to her left. A katana blade blazing like a lightning bolt, darted in under her arm and parted the meat from the queen’s armored ring with one swift stroke.
The Mother of monsters screeched and the band of chitin was suddenly loose in her hands. Sasuke spun away and slashed his sword at a seething wall of the fish headed monsters. There was a veritable fountain of icho and falling tentacles, but somewhere in the scrum, one of the beasts got close enough to swing its tail and catch Sasuke a blow right along the side of his head.
He collapsed and slid along the Queen’s shell, landing a few meters away from Lee. “Sasuke!” Sakura screamed.
Her panic lent her strength. She pulled the newly freed ring sideways, rending more of the muscle off the sides, and exposing a wide swath of green tinged flesh. Without a word, Lee promptly released his hold on the ring and assumed a defensive position next to the fallen Uchiha, defending him with fists and feet.
A spray of senbon needles and kunai peppered the queen monster’s exposed tissue. The mother of the lobster creatures cried out, but other than that, there was no discernible effect. “It’s deeper than that!” Neji shouted. “Much deeper!”
“Where exactly?” was Tenten’s answering yell. Instead of responding, a single shuriken spun downward and lodged in the pulsating muscle tissue.
There was a burst of summoning smoke and a two meter long spear came sailing in from the other side and plunged deeply into the exposed flesh, right next to the shuriken.
It still wasn’t deep enough, the smaller monsters kept on attacking. There was a little less than a meter of the shaft of the spear still protruding outside the mother’s body. She heard Neji cry out in pain. Six of the monsters charged Lee all at once.
Sakura leaned over, one hand charged with so much chakra that it felt like her whole arm was on fire, and slammed her open palm down onto the end of the spear shaft. It vanished with a loud slurping sound.
An earthquake-sized shudder shook the Queen. Immediately all of the creatures swarming her back started to turn on each other, and even better, on the Queen herself, biting and gnawing at her armor. The melee grew even more chaotic, if not slightly safer… she and her friends weren’t the only targets anymore… but still, it was past time to go.
Lee was mostly unhurt. She pulled him up and together they each got an arm around Sasuke and jumped as far away as they could. All round them, the smaller monsters were making a beeline for the Queen in a great flowing tide.
She and Lee managed to come down feet first on the back of a ravening beast that was locked in mortal combat with one of its fellows. Something under their boots went snap. As they bounded away, there was a brief high pitched keening wail, that ended abruptly with a crunch and a chewing sound.
Off to her left a ring of flame blossomed briefly in the predawn gloom. Against the contrast of the bright conflagration, she saw the shadows of a pair of figures touch the ground and jump away again. That was good. Tenten and Neji had made it safely away as well. Changing the angle of their flight, she and Lee started heading towards the same area of the treeline that they were making for.
******
“I told you not to lose my sword you stupid jerk!” Tenten grumbled at Sasuke from two branches away.
Sakura was very thankful the Uchiha was sort of listening to her for once and didn’t try to open his eyes, or turn his head… now if only he would keep his mouth shut. “I already told you I was sorry… If it makes you feel any better it was probably ruined anyway. Once you put a chidori through an ordinary katana, the steel turns to complete crap.”
“Be still please,” Sakura muttered trying to hold on to his head as gently as possible.
“Ordinary?!?” sputtered Tenten. “Do you have any idea how much that blade cost me?” There was cough from Lee that might have been a chuckle.
“Somewhat less than all the lives in Konoha are worth? Because that’s what the Queen would have taken if I hadn’t helped to kill her right then.”
“Sasuke! I told you to stop moving!” Sakura snapped at him. “You’re making this more difficult that is has to be!”
Sasuke cracked open one eye for that. “I’m making it difficult? I’m not the one who decided to set up a field hospital in a tree!” He reached up and tried to grumpily brush her hand away.
“You have a fractured skull,” she said matter of factly, forcefully grabbing his hand and putting it firmly back down in his lap. “Hold still.”
“I feel fine!” he snapped back.
“You feel fine because Katsuyu-sama has been kind enough to pump you full of painkillers, anti-inflammatory agents, coagulating factors, and enough extra chakra to keep a hibernating bear awake… but that still doesn’t change the face that you’ve got a chunk of temporal plate the size of a peach pit floating freely around on top of your brain! Now hold still!”
They were both facing each other, straddling a thick tree branch about fifteen meters off the ground. It was not the most ideal manner to do surgery, but what the heck was she supposed to do? As Sasuke said, she really was trying to set up a field hospital in a tree.
They didn’t dare climb back down to the ground, the forest floor was teeming with fish headed monsters doing their best to eat each other. As she worked on Sasuke’s head, maneuvering bone fragments back into place, the wounded Queen, who had been dying for about twenty minutes now, used her one remaining tentacle to sweep a writhing mess of her offspring into her maw.
She felt Sasuke shift beside her. He was watching the carnage too. “I never felt bad about killing the Juggernauts… they always disgusted me the most,” he said in an off handed way.
“Why do they eat each other?” Lee asked. “You’d think they’d show some sort of... familiarity with their own kind.”
“It’s the Gedo Mazo,” Sasuke said with a grimace. “It twists everything it comes into contact with... All of its summons are hungry for chakra, bent on consuming anything living… The statue siphons off the extra life force through the eye or the whirlpool or whatever, and uses it to try to reanimate the Ten tails.” Sakura felt him shiver under her hands. “When you take out the eye, the Gedo Mazo loses control of the summons and it just becomes a remorseless eating machine… Not that they have much remorse in the first place.”
“Would that work?” Neji asked with a frown. “Could one revive the Ten tails without the chakra of the tailed beasts?”
Sasuke shifted again and took his time in answering. “I have no idea if it would work or not,” he said waving a hand at the carnage below. “But either way… It has to be stopped.”
Sakura pushed his arm back down into his lap. “I hold you to stay still! Gods! You’re a worse patient than Naruto!”
Sasuke slowly shut his eyes, but he did smirk. “Don’t tell the doofus that… he’ll take it as a challenge... and try to be worse next time,” he muttered loudly enough for the others to hear.
Sakura shook her head and worked silently for a few minutes. Finally she managed to align all the fragments of Sasuke’s temporal plate back where they should be. It took her another ten minutes to get all of his osteoclasts stimulated enough to knit everything back together at an accelerated rate. She decided to check up on what the official report was on all the carnage while she was monitoring Sasuke. “So Neji?” she asked, as chakra echoes danced around the edges of Sasuke’s wounds. “What’s the overall situation look like?”
The Hyuga was on a much higher branch and on sentry duty. “Konoha looks to be monster free at the moment. The Akimichi lands are no longer under constant attack, although there are still a few stragglers trying to get inside the walls. I predict that the defending shinobi should be more than capable of dealing with them.” Neji paused and scanned some more with his byakugan. “The bad news is… there are still plenty more of the creatures… and they are all headed here,” said Neji dryly. “We may be stuck up here for quite some time.”
“Excellent!” said Lee proudly. “Better us than the good citizens of Konoha!” He sat down on his branch with a thud. “While we’re waiting why don’t we have some breakfast! Tenten! What wonderful delicacies did you pack for all of us today?”
Tenten gave her teammate a look. “What makes you think I have enough food for everyone… or any at all for that matter?”
Lee raised his eyebrows in puzzlement. “Well, there was that one mission in the Land of Rain when we found those refugees and I saw you bring out a seven course meal for sixteen… Did you not bring that scroll?”
Everyone turned to look at the weapons mistress. “Just in case you weren’t paying attention Lee, until a few days ago, most people in Konoha were starving! I emptied out my stash and gave everything away weeks ago!”
“All of it?” asked Lee, his eyes growing even bigger. He blinked rapidly and tried to hold back the hurt look on his face. “Even the curry I asked you to save for me?”
“No,” mumbled Tenten. “Nobody was that hungry.”
“Wonderful!” Lee crowed gleefully. “Why don’t we pass that around?”
There was a long drawn out moment of indecision from Tenten. Sakura sighed and leaned back from Sasuke’s skull. “Well that’s going about as well as it can, don’t get into anymore fights for the next few days,” she mumbled to Sasuke before turning to the bun haired kunoichi. “Tenten, some food right now would be a very good idea, we’re all really low on chakra and need to replenish our reserves.”
Tenten hesitated a bit more before opening her scroll. “Your funeral,” she muttered. There was a puff of smoke and she held out a loose plastic bag holding five bento. The bag was lettered with the kanji for ‘World Famous Curry of Life take away!’
Neji took his with a very reluctant look on his face. Lee was overjoyed. With a very blank expression, Tenten handed one to Sasuke. “Now you owe me a meal on top of a sword Uchiha,” she muttered.
“Put it on my tab,” Sasuke grunted.
Sakura had heard about the infamous Curry of Life from Naruto. She prodded it carefully with one end of her chopstick. Gingerly she lifted the stick and touched the surface of her tongue.
It was definitely spicy. There was curry, and ginger and a bunch of other flavors she couldn’t quite identify, but all in all... it wasn’t too bad, certainly not the horror that Naruto had ranted about. It was obviously just another one of his… Oh Gods...
It suddenly felt like she had just swallowed a hot coal. She emptied her canteen in her mouth, and swished the water around urgently for a good minute before she recovered enough to look around.
Sasuke was sitting there, his jaws clamped tight, his chopsticks broken between his fingers. “What... the... hell... is this?” he wheezed around the mouthful. There were tears in his eyes and a stream of snot running out from his nose. There was a muffled sound of amusement from Tenten.
“Ah, Sasuke-san,” said Lee eating with gusto. “You may now count yourself to be among the privileged few to sample the wondrous bounty that is the Curry of Life!” Lee picked out a shapeless lump and happily popped it into his mouth. “Stewed for three days, the sauce contains over a dozen carefully selected rare and secret ingredients! I can personally attest to its nourishing and almost supernatural recuperative powers!”
Sakura watched the battle of wills as Sasuke forced himself to swallow. He nodded slowly. “It’s certainly… interesting. It tastes almost exactly like what Orochimaru used to give me to make my body extra resistance to poisons.”
There was a nervous half giggle, half snort from Tenten. “Well,” said Lee huffily. “I would say that just proves how good it is for you.”
They ate the rest of the meal in relative silence. Sakura may have ‘accidentally’ dropped a large portion of the sauce on the way to her mouth. She did notice that Tenten and Lee seemed to occasionally glance over at Sasuke as he sat on the tree branch, his legs dangling over the creatures cannibalizing each other below. Periodically one of them would take in a breath and then let it out sharply, as if they were about to ask him something, and then thought the better of it. Neji whose byakugan was constantly on, was probably keeping an eye on him too.
Sakura understood completely why they were studying him. She had also felt that brief tug of camaraderie with him as they were all heading into battle. She had seen how Sasuke had worked with the others, how he had watched their backs while they watched his. There was Tenten’s teasing about her lost sword, and he even joined in trying to joke about the curry.
It was tempting to assume that the ‘old’ Sasuke was back. The Konoha shinobi who dove headfirst into danger to protect his friends. The boy who haughtily looked down on everyone. The boy who was driven to achieve greatness…
And then he made that one little comment about Orochimaru… Reminding everyone why he had left.. what he had done. Reminding everyone that they weren’t really sitting back after a successful mission, eating with a comrade… not exactly.
Sakura understood their feelings. On the one hand, there was something so tantalizing about falling into the old familiar ways. On the other hand, the old Sasuke was gone forever. This person next to her was someone she didn’t know. There were bits of the old Sasuke that would occasionally shine through. Sakura’s instinct told her that she could trust him... with some things, like siding with the Leaf against Kabuto for example… But there was also so much he was hiding.
Sasuke stood slowly on the branch and handed the empty bento back to Tenten. “Well, Tenten-san, Lee-san,” he said in a forced voice, “I’d like to thank you for that... very unique culinary experience.”
“You can thank me by replacing the blade you lost,” the bun haired kunoichi muttered as she sealed the empty bento away again.
The ANBU cat mask dipped towards Tenten. “Unfortunately, there isn't a lot I can do about buying you a new sword.” He turned his pockets inside out, and made a small amused noise. “I haven’t had any need for ryo for a while now. But if you’re interested, I can tell you how to make one.”
“I know how to make a katana, Uchiha.”
“Not a sword like this one you don’t,” Sasuke said in an amused voice. “I’ve seen people shape the juggernaut’s carapace… They’ve made knives, spear points, arrowheads… It just takes forever to carve and even longer to put an edge on it.” He leaned forward. “But it's well worth it. A kunai made of that stuff will never get dull and it will never break…can you imagine what a sword made of that would be like?”
Tenten sat quietly for a second. “Really,” she asked, trying to keep the struggle between unease and interest out of her voice. “So how exactly would one make a sword out of it?”
“With lots of time and lots of tools… a whole lot of tools. They wear out pretty quickly. In fact, it’s best to make the tools, the cutters, shapers and grinders, out of juggernaut shell first, then you’ll have something that won’t be dull in a few minutes.”
“That’s an... interesting idea,” Tenten said in a circumspect way. “Is this what your own katana was made out of?”
Sasuke shook his head. “No. Orochimaru made my blade out of some chakra sensitive alloy he discovered. It’s got better transference than the standard…” This time Sasuke noticed the visible flinch that everyone had when he mentioned Orochimaru.
There was an awkward moment as everyone tried their best to pretend that didn’t happen. In the end Sasuke shook his head “You know what?” he asked quietly. “Forget about it… Hey Hyuga!” he said with a turn of his head. “What are the stragglers going?”
Neji put down his chopsticks and closed his bento. He scanned the area before answering. “There are fewer than thirty of the creatures outside of the clearing. Many of those are being hunted down as we speak.”
Sasuke shrugged. “I guess it’s time we wrapped up this little party then, isn’t it? Before all the little Juggernauts get bored with eating Mommy and wander off.”
“So what do you need us to do?” Sakura asked.
“You?” asked Sasuke with a hard edge to his voice. “Nothing… nothing at all.”
There was a familiar surge of power that flowed past her, like a cold shadow had just passed between her and the sun on a windy wintry day. The hairs on her arm stood up in the sudden chill.
The clearing below them erupted in a circle of licking black flames. Monsters shrieked and chattered and tried to climb up and over one another to keep out of the fire. The incendiary halo was spreading, the circlet tightening up around the creatures.
Team Three was staring at the scene below them, open mouthed. Tenten was the first to recover her voice. “Shit!” she yelled. “What the hells were you thinking? A fire that big is going to spread through the whole forest!”
Sasuke shook his head slightly. “Only if I want it to,” he said, the small amount of warmth that had been there before was now gone from his voice. “I can make the fire do whatever I need it to… whatever I want.” To make his point, the burning walls of the ring rose up and arched over, flooding the middle of the circle.
The flames began to rotate in a counterclockwise direction, whipping themselves into even greater heights. The heat was growing intense. The fire started to suck in a great updraft, sending a huge column of smoke high into the sky.
The wind grew from a stiff breeze, into a fierce gale. The branches of the trees started lashing at each other. The trunks of the smaller pines groaned as the hurricane like winds tried to pull them into the blaze. For a moment it seemed like the howling and keening cries from the center of the pyre might overpower the racket of the crackling blaze, but Sasuke sent out a second wave of energy, and the roaring flames vanquished all.
“That’s enough Sasuke,” Sakura said loud enough to be heard above the tumult. He didn’t react at all. He didn’t even turn to face her. It was like he was lost in his own little world. “Sasuke!” she said more sharply this time, putting her hand on his shoulder.
The masked jerked sideways, and for a second she found herself once again staring into a whirling set of glowing red designs floating over an inky field. Then Sasuke shook his head. “Fine,” he grumbled. “I’ll stop.”
The fires seemed to swallow themselves up, growing smaller and smaller until they vanished, leaving nothing but piles of steaming corpses on the ground. “Well,” Sasuke said dully over his shoulder. “There you go... plenty of stuff for you to make your precious replacement sword out of.” He spun on his heel and jumped away through the pines.
Sakura and the rest of team three looked at each other dumbly for a second. “Wait!” Sakura yelled, chasing after him. “Where are you going?”
He didn’t look back, but he slowed slightly. “I’m going to Kitsuen Yama village… Somebody needs to stop Kabuto before he can make any more of these things.” He paused for a second, and the cat mask turned to glance at her. “Thanks for fixing up my head,” he added dryly before leaping away to the next tree.
With a chakra assisted leap Sakura beat him there, but only just. “I can’t let you go,” she said in a low voice, her hand held out almost touching his chest.
“I’m flattered.”
“I mean it Sasuke! You and Naruto had a plan… We had a plan! You agreed that it would be best if we got all of Konoha and went to fight Kabuto together!”
“We did have a plan,” Sasuke muttered back. “And plans change… Deal with it.” He moved to one side to pass her.
Sakura stepped, still blocking his way. “I am not going to ‘deal with it.’ I went to a lot of personal trouble to spring you from jail… you owe me!”
“And I just repaid you and your stupid village!” he snapped back. “Don’t tell me you forgot all about killing the queen juggernaut already?”
“I spent weeks… Weeks!… Trying to convince the ANBU commander that you were trustworthy!”
Sasuke tried to rub his face but the mask was in his way. “Gods, you’re so annoying... Look, this has nothing to do with my trustworthiness okay? This is realism!”
“Then explain it to me!” she snapped. “Because it seems to me like you’re being a suicidal idiot!”
“Fine!” he shouted with a sneer. “First of all: We are out of time. If Kabuto can summon one Queen juggernaut, it won’t be long before he can summon two, then three… and four… and once he gets a couple of those running loose, it will be a very short amount of time before he has gathered enough chakra to fully awaken the Ten tails! Second: The only person who I really might need any help from is Naruto… He’s not here, but once he hears where I’ve gone, he’ll come running. Third and finally:” He gestured wildly at Tenten, Neji and Lee who were perched on surrounding branches. “They’re never going to trust me… People like them will never trust me! It’s time I faced the music… there never was any point in coming back here.”
Again he tried to step around her, and again she blocked him. “I can’t believe the great Sasuke Uchiha is such a whiny little crybaby,” she spat at him.
Sasuke paused. “Get out of my way!” he exploded.
“I said I can’t let you go!” she insisted.
“Oh yeah? Who’s going to stop me?” Sasuke asked with a sneer. “Your little team here?”
Sakura shook her head. “No… just me.”
She saw Sasuke’s shoulders tighten, but his voice was still full of arrogance. “You’re going to fight me?”
“If I have to,” Sakura said slowly. “I don’t want to, but I will… if that’s what it takes to keep you from leaving.”
There was a very long drawn out silence. “Why?” Sasuke asked eventually.
“Because Konoha needs you… even if they’re not quite ready to accept that fact yet.” She nodded back to Team Three and dropped her voice to a whisper. “And they are starting to trust you! If you run away now, you’ll lose whatever respect you just earned from them!” She leaned her face even closer to the cat mask. “You are only going to get one chance at this! People won’t forgive you if you run away again!”
There was another long pause from Sasuke. He turned slightly and she found herself staring into the deep black pools of his eyes through the holes in his mask. “Would you still call it running away if I said I wanted you to come with me this time?” he asked in the barest sigh.
Sakura felt a moment of lightheadedness. The whole tree branch seemed to shudder under her feet. She opened her mouth to stammer out something pithy to cover her shock, when Neji’s voice shocked her back to reality. “Sakura!” the Hyuga shouted. “There’s…”
He didn’t need to finish the rest of that statement. In a blur of movement the branches of every surrounding tree were covered with ANBU. The pine she was standing in shuddered again. An ichor splattered half man / half wolf was scaling the tree trunk using his claws for purchase. Once he reached a branch at almost the same level as Sakura, there was a burst of smoke, and the beast transformed back into a human.
A rather disheveled looking Jiro Inuzuka gave her a disapproving stare that she could feel straight through his dog mask. “Do you have any idea how deep the pile of shit that you are standing in, is right now my girl?” he said in a growl.
If training under Tsunade had taught her one thing, it was that it was always worth trying to bluster your way out of a situation when you’ve been caught red handed. “Far… far less than the huge pile of shit the village was in an hour ago,” Sakura retorted calmly. Beside her she heard Sasuke snort. “I take it that the defense of the Akimichi safehold went well, especially after we pointed out how to find the the weak spots on the attacking creatures?”
The dog mask shifted slightly. “I made things quite clear… The Uchiha was not to be freed under any circumstances!” He brushed at a bug that was orbiting his head.
“And I decided that since we were facing an overwhelming threat… It was time to take a chance!” Sakura waved a hand towards the still smouldering pyre of monsters. “I’d say it paid off… wouldn’t you?”
“And what, pray tell, happened to the men I left at the prison?” The ANBU commander asked the hint of a threat creeping into his voice.
Sakura felt Sasuke tense up. There was a chill spreading slowly through the morning air as he summoned his chakra. The encircling ANBU sensed it too and responded in kind. Sakura placed her hand on the Uchiha’s chest with a heavy thump and shot him a warning look. “I’m sorry Inu-san… The prison fell under attack by the monsters. By the time we got there the only survivor was Kaeru-san. He made a valiant attempt to stop me releasing the prisoner, but I defeated him.” She took her hand off of Sasuke and turned to face Jiro Inuzuka. “He should be awake by now, and perfectly safe … I left him locked up in a chakra cell.” She waved her hand in front of her face, the insects were forming thick swarms in the still morning air.
She could hear the ANBU commander grinding his teeth behind the mask. “While I was busy watching the Akimichi lose almost their entire herd, the Shimura clan was kind enough to take the time to inform me that they had just lodged a formal complaint with the Daimyo. They told me that they had concrete proof that last evening, you and a group of known associates trespassed on Shimura clan territory in an attempt to destroy the place. They’re claiming you injured a great number of their people and when the civilian ANBU tried to restore order, you attacked them too. They’re statement says that when you were discovered, you cowardly seized Eiji Shimura as a hostage, unlawfully placed a sealing jutsu on him, and threatened to have him killed. They claim that it was only through the valiant efforts of one Ryu-san that the poor man is even alive!”
“And what was that their excuse for not helping out with the defense of Konoha?” Tenten asked bitterly. “That they were too busy kidnapping orphans?”
Jiro whirled and pointed an accusing finger at Tenten. “Whatever unsavory deeds they’re making a half hearted attempt to hide, positively pales in comparison with what the four of you did tonight!”
“What I did tonight,” Sakura corrected quietly. “The decision to free Sasuke was mine, and mine alone. If anyone is going to get disciplined for this it should be me.”
“Bullshit,” said Tenten stepping up beside her. “It was our decision.”
“Tenten,” hissed Sakura trying to get her to relent.
The bun haired kunoichi nudged her out of the way and took another step closer to the ANBU commander. “We could have stopped her, but we didn’t. I’m glad we didn’t. He might be an obnoxious asshole,” Tenten jerked her thumb over her shoulder indicating Sasuke. “But he was dead on with everything he told us and he helped out in the fight…”
“He’s the most infamous missing-nin of his generation!” interrupted the ANBU commander. “Reviled and feared the world over!”
Tenten shrugged. “Seemed to me like that’s a great qualification for an ally when you’re being attacked by a guy who can summon things like that.” She pointed down to the still smoking clearing, and then tried to wave away a gnat that landed on her nose.
“That is quite true Inu-san!” Lee piped up. “Sasuke-san’s strength is not in question.” The taijutsu master glanced back at Sasuke. “What is in question is his loyalty… and personally, after tonight, I would be inclined to trust him.”
There was a pause followed by a long rumbling sigh from underneath Jiro Inuzuka’s dog mask. “As soon as the Daimyo hears that you freed Sasuke Uchiha, no matter what the circumstances or how well meaning they might be, he is going to add that up with all the other charming little complaints that the Shimura clan have been making against you together in one big lump and come to the rather predictable conclusion that as despicable as having a Shimura sit in the Hokage seat is… it’s far preferable to someone like you… You may have saved Konoha girl… but you’ve lost the war.”
“But she didn’t exactly ‘set him free’,” Neji pointed out calmly. “Before she released the seal on his sharingan and his chakra restrainers, Sakura-san put an explosive seal on the small of his back… I would hardly call that free.”
“Weren't you listening Hyuga?” growled Jiro. “It doesn't matter what I think. It’s what the Daimyo thinks… and he’s not given to deep introspection, if you know what I mean.” There were at least twenty small bugs dotting the ANBU commander’s dog mask.
“What about what the Hokage thinks?” Neji asked with a smile hidden in his voice.
“I’d love to ask her what she thinks we should do, but the Hokage isn’t here!” snapped the ANBU commander. “Do you know where we can find her?”
“Not yet,” said Neji dryly. “But I know that she is on her way.” He casually pointed up.
All sorts of insects were circling above their heads in a large lazy swarm of faint Kanji characters that shifted in the morning breeze. When they noticed that Sakura was giving them her attention, they stopped their drifting and solidified further. ‘Found her. Possible pursuit. Need Medics ASAP. Give location.’
*******
