Chapter 46

Even from within the hospital, Sakura could hear the sound of fighting.

Most of the screams and shouts were muted by her classroom’s thick white walls, but she could feel the explosive tags that detonated close by as a passing tremor through her feet, and the largest of the blasts caused several of the beakers and flasks displayed along the walls to slide off and shatter upon the wooden floor. After hesitating for one more panicked moment, she ran out of the room and into the corridor, only to find the rest of the hospital staff looking just as alarmed and confused as she felt.

“Shizune-sensei!” she cried out in relief when she finally spotted her teacher. “What’s going on? Who-”

“Sakura, thank goodness,” Shizune said. Her haggard-looking teacher sounded just as relieved to see Sakura as she was. “I need you to go to Tsunade’s office and tell her to stay where she is until we receive our orders from Intel. If this is an attack by the Sand we’ll need her to counter Lady Chiyo’s poisons, and there’ll be dozens of her victims coming in any minute now, if she is anything like what the stories say.”

Sakura glanced at the other teachers, who seemed to be running through the featureless white corridors without any plan or sense of direction. “But wouldn’t it be better if…”

“Now, Sakura!” Shizune put her hands on Sakura’s shoulders and pulled on them until Sakura could almost feel the back of her feet being lifted off the ground, though her teacher probably was not even aware of how much strength she was using. There was a haggard look in Shizune’s tired black eyes, as though she knew exactly what horrors were about to be unleashed upon the Leaf but was powerless to do anything about it. “There’s no time: I still have to prepare the defences and set up extra hospital beds and find out what’s going on and reassure everyone that everything is going to be all right, and I need someone I can trust to look after Lady Tsunade for me. Please, Sakura, I know I can count on you.”

Sakura felt the muscles in her body slowly relaxing, in spite of the constant explosions in the background that seemed to be growing ever closer. “Of course, sensei,” she said. “You can leave her to me.”

Shizune let go of Sakura’s shoulders, her own muscles seeming to unclench as her face lost more years than Sakura had lived. “Thank you,” she whispered, ever so softly. And then she was gone.

Sakura blinked, briefly staring at the place where her teacher had been, and then she herself was running in the direction of Tsunade’s office. Her legs carried her almost automatically down the familiar white corridors as she pushed past endless streams of students and teachers, all of whom seemed to be following after Shizune, and then her legs screeched to a halt as she recognized a certain blond ponytail that also seemed to be going against the tide.

“Ino, hold up!”

The Yamanaka clan heir either did not hear her or else she had her own intentions, because she quickly ducked into a nearby empty classroom. Sakura cursed and, after hesitating only a second, pushed her way upstream through the masses and towards the door where Ino had disappeared.

I’m sorry Shizune-sensei, but I’ve only known you and Lady Tsunade for a few weeks, and childhood friends come first, no matter how annoying they can sometimes be.

She pushed open the door and quickly shut it behind her. Ino was sitting by herself in front of the classroom’s only window, and from her posture it was clear that she had been looking for a place where she would not be disturbed. Her eyes were closed and she was forming a seal which Sakura recognized as a Yamanaka clan sign, though she did not know what technique it was used for.

“Ino, what are you doing? The Village is under attack – you should be regrouping with Shizune-sensei like the others.” Sakura hesitated when there was no response, growing suddenly worried. “Ino?”

“Shhhh, I’ve almost got it.” Ino glanced behind her as if to make sure it was just her and Sakura, and then turned back to the window. “Someone is blocking our mind-transmission technique: I have no idea what jutsu they’re using, but whoever is controlling it is absolutely brilliant. Every time I change frequencies they change their interference pattern to match – it’s like they know what I’m going to do before even I know it, but even if they were reading my mind that shouldn’t be possible.”

Sakura frowned at the sight of the strange girl sitting there by herself, seemingly shut off from the world. They had known each other and been best friends/mutual pests for as long as she could remember, but she would be lying if she said she had ever really come to understand Ino when she was like this.

“Ino,” she said, “I know I can’t ask you about your clan secrets, but whatever is going on I’m sure your father can handle it. He would want you to stay safe, not put yourself in danger by remaining behind and taking on an enemy using an unknown technique by yourself.” There was no reaction. “Ino!”

Ino nodded distantly. “Right, you’re right. Just… give me a second, okay? I’ll be right behind you.”

Sakura groaned in frustration. She hated to leave her friend behind, but she could not afford to fail her teacher either, and she knew from experience how impossible it was to change Ino’s mind when she was truly set on something. “You have one minute,” she said, as if her words would make any kind of difference. She ran out of the corridor, not bothering to close the door behind her, and sprinted at full speed towards Tsunade’s office. If it turns out she left her office while I was talking to Ino and I end up missing her because of that, I’ll… She briefly entertained a pleasing image of her hands wrapped around Ino’s slender neck, but deep down she knew that that picture was doomed to forever remain a fantasy.

When she finally arrived, her heart pounding far heavier than was right for such a short run, she was alarmed to find the door unlocked. When she pushed the door open, however, she found the Legendary Sannin right there in her office… on the floor. She was lying on her back with a bottle clutched in her arms like a new-born baby, with several more of her offspring spread liberally around her on the ground.

“Lady Tsunade!” Sakura ran into the well-lit office, her mind only faintly registering that someone must have repaired the burning oil lamp which hung from the ceiling, and knelt down next to her master. Where in the Seven Paths did she manage to find sake? Did she threaten someone into giving it to her?

There was the faintest sound behind her, and Sakura spun on the spot with a dagger already leaping from the sleeve of her white medical robe, only to nearly collapse in relief when she saw Kabuto standing in the doorway. Her fellow medical student stared at Sakura and Tsunade first with concern, then faint suspicion. “Sakura-chan? What are you doing with Lady Tsunade?”

She opened her mouth to protest. “I didn’t – I mean, I wasn’t…” She clumsily put her dagger away, struggling to fit it back into the holster from which it had sprung. She took a deep breath, trying to shake off the feeling like she had just gotten caught cheating on a test. “Shizune-sensei asked me to look after her,” she finally said. “It looks like someone gave her – like someone has been drinking with her.”

“I see.” Some of the suspicion seemed to fade from his handsome, bespectacled face. He turned and quietly closed the door, exposing his back to Sakura in the process. “Do you think you could give her a quick examination? Just to make sure it’s nothing serious?”

“Uh, of course.” Sakura ran through the hand seals for the diagnosis technique and held her palm over Tsunade’s forehead, but aside from the fact that her master had apparently drunk enough to land her in a near-coma she could not sense anything out of the ordinary. It was most likely not an attack then, she concluded, since an enemy would surely have stayed around to finish the job. “It looks like she just has too much ethanol in her system,” she said. “I should be able to fix that pretty quickly.”

Kabuto’s eyes widened. “A detoxification technique? You can do that?”

“I can’t,” said Sakura, “but she can. All I have to do is cast a Hell-viewing genjutsu on her to make her think she’s in mortal danger so that she instinctively activates her Creation Rebirth technique, which will regenerate her body to a pre-drunken state. Then she’ll be able to tell us what happened.”

Kabuto let out an appreciative whistle. “Amazing… You really are the most talented kunoichi of your generation, Sakura-chan. I can see why Tsunade-sama took you on as her apprentice.”

Sakura mentally pictured the bespectacled boy as he approached her from behind. The grey-haired upperclassman that Ino had instantly taken a liking to; the charmingly inept genin who had been forced to take the chūnin exams five times because as a medical ninja he simply could not compete in a straight fight. The roguish clever boy who had tried to make the best of his misfortune by selling dubious Intel on the other contestants to clueless newcomers, and who Naruto had mistrusted so much as a result…

Naruto, who had always mistrusted anyone richer or better looking than him. Naruto, who mistrusted Sasuke of all people. Naruto, who could not help but make a fool of himself by saying crazy things like there being such a thing as poison release, or that there was a war coming for them any day now…

Sakura twisted around and caught the dagger that had been coming at her soundlessly, grasping not the blade but the hand that held it and bending it until her attacker was forced to let go, and then she shrieked and pulled back her hands as all of a sudden Kabuto’s fingers carried an edge that tore through her tendons like an invisible scalpel. She stumbled backwards and kicked blindly at her opponent, but though she struck him square in the chest he merely rolled along with the force of the blow and landed on his feet as though nothing had happened. At some point during his roll he had thrown a shuriken at her which she batted aside using the dagger that shot from her sleeve, but her ravaged hands could not close around the hilt and the crucial weapon immediately fell from her fingers again.

Think I have to think

Kabuto rushed at her, and she shrieked as she threw herself behind Tsunade’s desk, desperately flailing through the seals for the mystical palm technique. Her torn hands mangled every single one of them but it did not matter because her mind was already correcting the flaws in the pattern of chakra as it flowed through her palms until a green glow began to emanate from them, only for Kabuto to rush forward and kick the desk directly at her so that the heavy wood smashed into her ribs and crushed her body against the wall – she tried to scream but all the air was taken from her and no sound came out and suddenly she felt like she was drowning as the world started to turn black around her.

Can’t breathe can’t think

Kabuto leaped on top of the desk, his fingers shimmering as they flashed towards her neck, and she pushed herself down and let the heavy wood collapse on top of her as its weight crushed her against the floorboard. She tried to suck in a breath but there was already a cracking sound as Kabuto tore apart the wood to get at her. Sakura fumbled at her weapons pouch but the world was black and she couldn’t feel her fingers, so she grabbed the whole thing and thrust it straight through the broken wood and at Kabuto’s face while forcing chakra through it until every single one of the explosive tags inside started to go off.

Kabuto stumbled back in a panic, fumbling with the bag of explosives as though he did not know what to do with it, and then he dashed towards the window and hurled the entire pack straight through the glass and into the open air where it exploded as just one more thunderous detonation among many. By that time Sakura had pushed the desk off her and channelled medical chakra to both of her hands even as she used the oxygenation technique to fill her bloodstream with air, forgoing the need for hand signs entirely as she merely willed her chakra into the desired patterns; she had resuscitated those stupid dead fish so many times now that she practically was one herself. By the time Kabuto turned back to face her, both her hands were back in working order, and she flexed her fingers experimentally.

All right, you fucker.

Kabuto began to rush at her once more, but a whip of water formed in her hands and she lashed it across his cheek, leaving a bloody gash. He ducked his head and rolled under the whip to try and get within her guard but she merely dissolved and retracted the technique until it was an orb of water in her palm that she blasted directly in his face, slamming him in the head with a gallon of pressurized water. He staggered back, his nose broken and with blood pouring out, but she was not done yet: She mentally called upon the chakra strings technique that Naruto had insisted she learn, and one by one tendrils of invisible chakra began to stretch from her fingers as she reached out at the medical equipment displayed all around her. Kabuto’s eyes widened in panic as all of a sudden glass projectiles were flying at him from every angle at once, but then he moved his own fingers and suddenly the flasks and beakers all changed direction and began to rush back at Sakura instead.

It’s the same technique!

She shrieked and ducked her head as flasks impacted the wall behind her and showered her with glass, while yet more projectiles struck her arms and legs, shredding her clothes and skin like a storm of knives. Kabuto flexed his fingers once more, and this time there were no bottles moving at all, and she realized that what was coming was far far worse. She leaped to the side as invisible fingers began to claw at her flesh, tearing not at her skin but seeking to worm their way towards her inner organs as Kabuto channelled his chakra scalpels through the chakra strings until they were like strands of razor wire; like coiling and twisting ethereal snakes whose venom pierced straight through to one’s very soul.

Can’t fight him at range can’t fight in melee

She ran at full speed in a desperate bid to get away, but the wall of the office was already in front of her and she had no choice but to run up the wall and along the ceiling as the office turned and tumbled all around her. She could no longer tell which way was up and down but that did not matter: She had to get away, she had to keep running, and that was when she saw the window. She began to run towards it, only to realize that Kabuto was not stopping her, and she skidded to a halt at the last instant as the faintest shimmer in front of her betrayed the invisible strings that were already waiting for her.

Can’t run can’t see can’t fight

She turned and threw herself behind the overturned desk, praying it would buy her even a second of time as she flashed through the seals for her genjutsu technique. She directed the hell-viewing technique at her unconscious teacher on the other end of the room, hoping feverishly that Tsunade would wake in time to save her, but almost instantly she could feel her technique being rebuked. She latched onto the hostile presence, tearing at his mind and seeking to inflict as much pain as physically possible – there was no time for subtlety, no time to do anything but try and buy even a few seconds of time so she could catch her bearing. Almost immediately she could feel his presence give way as if a wall she had been leaning on had suddenly collapsed, and then her mind was at the place where he had been and all the needles she had aimed at him were carving into her instead. She flared her chakra and fell back with a tortured scream, the raw agony proving almost too much for her mind to handle, and then she was back behind the desk with real tendrils of chakra coming to claw at her instead.

Can’t beat him with genjutsu, can’t outsmart him

She threw herself to the side as the invisible scalpels came at her once more, only the faintest hope driving her forward; the faintest memory of something she had once talked about with Naruto. She had been inside Kabuto’s mind and she was still holding on to that raw connection, feeling out the trace of chakra that had been left inside his mind and the body it still touched – the body of her enemy and the tendrils that stretched from his fingers, tendrils which were not weapons but an extension of his soul…

(Naruto had claimed that there was no such thing as inherited techniques and that Ino was simply using advanced genjutsu techniques, which meant that it had to be possible for Sakura to learn her sensing ability as well, and Ino had all but confirmed that to her just moments before: “Well maybe Sakura could learn it because she is a cheating cheatster with perfect chakra control, but no normal person could…”)

She ducked underneath one chakra string and spun between two others, then leaped back towards the roof and vaulted off it and towards her enemy while at the same time lashing out at Kabuto’s feet with her own chakra strings. She landed directly onto his chest even as she pulled his legs out from underneath him, and she could feel his ribs give way beneath her feet as she collapsed on top him. She immediately pushed herself up and began to form a fist, but his chakra strings coiled around her arms and pulled them apart, cutting into her skin like razor wire even as the rest of his snake-like tendrils began to burrow straight towards her heart. The world began to darken and fade around her once more.

Fuck you

I’m not dying

I’m not

She hurled her upper body forward and slammed her giant forehead directly into Kabuto’s broken nose, causing blood to spurt all across his face as he screamed with muffled pain and rage. Liking the result, she drew her head back and resolved to do it again, but his chakra strings pulled on her arms with all their might and hurled her bodily away from him. She half-way crumpled into a heap, but a deep well of stubborn spite forced her back onto her knees and bade her to glare at her enemy across the room.

Kabuto glared back at her. It was hard to describe his expression through the wall of blood that splattered his face, not to mention the uncertain light of the lone oil lamp that swayed unsteadily from the ceiling, but if there was one emotion she could still manage to transcribe it was that of contempt.

Contempt.

Her enemy had contempt for her.

A mad impulse almost made her want to burst out laughing. If there was one thing Kakashi had taught her, it was that no ninja worth the name ever, ever treated their opponent with contempt. Right as she thought that his old lessons began to repeat themselves in her head, far faster than should have been physically possible: Don’t be clever, don’t abandon your friends, don’t make excuses. Battles are decided by the time swords are drawn, not sheathed. You must look underneath the underneath, play at the second level and use the simplest possible strategy that can be made to work…

But the worse the situation you’re in the cleverer you’re allowed to be.

Sakura flashed through the seals for her hell-viewing technique, this time breaking off her attack before Kabuto could turn the illusion back on her. Right as he moved to dispel the technique she hurled a volley of broken glass at him, which he dodged with a contemptuous grunt. She formed the seals for her genjutsu technique once more, this time using it to craft an image of her using the clone technique to charge at him from every direction at once. At the same time she used the chakra strings technique to pick up the shards of broken glass and hurled them at him from all sides. This time he used his own chakra strings to pluck them out of the air, barely even bothering to dispel the illusion, but by now Sakura could sense his tendrils clearly and she easily dodged his attempts at a counter attack.

She could sense Kabuto’s frustration clearly now, his contempt practically oozing out of every pore. He was better than her, he knew he was better than her and yet she was delaying him with these petty tricks, he had a mission to fulfil but this obstinate apprentice medic was just refusing to die…

She cast one last genjutsu at him, conjuring an almost offensively shoddy image of her casting the grand fireball technique at him. He knew that there was no way she could cast that technique, he had written the information card on her himself for crying out loud, and yet she still had the gall to try and fool him with such an appalling illusion. He pushed himself to his feet, not even bothering to dispel the poorly-crafted image of a raging inferno that was coming straight at him to–

(Sakura pulled the lamp from the roof with her water whip technique and then rammed the water technique directly through the container of burning oil, setting off a chemical reaction that she had known about even before she became a genin, the water evaporating instantly and exploding the burning oil into a blazing fireball that overlapped almost exactly with the illusion she was casting at him)

-consume his flesh and it was burning and he realized far too late that it was no illusion, he was on fire and the pain was worse than anything he had felt in his life. He tried to douse the fire with a water technique but the flames only seemed to leap up higher as a result and it hurt so much and yet it was so satisfying to see

Sakura broke off the connection, drawing back her chakra so that it no longer mixed with his own. For a moment there she had been able to sense Kabuto’s thoughts, even influence them to some degree, almost exactly as if she had been casting Ino’s mind control technique. Now she was back in her own body and she was watching her enemy burn in front of her as though he was a summer bonfire, and she realized with a note of horror that it was her own mind that was thinking that, yet her body was still awash with adrenaline and the flush of victory and she no longer had the energy left to care.

“I am Sakura of the Haruno clan,” she said to Kabuto’s burning corpse. “Go fuck yourself.”

After her first mission she had told Kakashi that she wanted to quit as a field ninja, and yet it had not been because she was terrible at it, but rather because it had started to feel good and the very thought had terrified her. She could still remember hurling shuriken at those drunken bandits as they came at her one by one, watching their bodies pile up before her and feeling almost perversely proud of her accomplishment. That memory had haunted her dreams for months afterwards, and she had finally started to sleep well again, but now Kabuto had made her remember and she felt an irrational hate at him for that.

That’s not who I am. I’m a good girl. I’m not some cold-hearted killer.

I’m not.

She watched as the flames slowly petered out, the blackened body of her enemy still twitching slightly as the last of the fire faded. As she began the slow process of healing her wounds she could not help but wonder if this was the kind of thing that had earned Kakashi his gruesome nicknames – if this was the kind of terrible experience that turned you into a hardened veteran and made you feared across the world.

“Kukukuku… now that is a pretty sight to see, don’t you think?”

Sakura froze. There was something behind her, something so terrible that it could only have slithered out of the Forest of Death: The guards at the training area must all have been killed and the walls of Konoha must have failed them, for something dreadful had come out of the darkness and now it was here to devour her. She could feel it, could hear the sound of leaves rustling in the middle of the night, yellow eyes following her movements from the shadows. It was watching her, a forked tongue licking dry and cracked lips as it savoured the taste of her fear. There was something behind her but her body would not move, her limbs had abandoned her and as her legs gave way the floor came up to meet her. As she fell she could hear a horrible clacking sound, a terrifying anti-laugh, dry and cruel as a desert that denied all water to any who were foolish or desperate enough to travel through.

“Kukukukuku….”

Sakura had collapsed onto the floor face-first, unable to move even her eyes. All she could see of her assailant was a single pair of sandaled feet. They were the most beautiful feet she had ever seen: There was not a single flaw or irregularity on that perfect, creamy skin – not a single hair or jagged toenail that stood out. These were not the feet of a man or monster, she decided. These were the feet of a god.

A voice spoke then, and at once she realized she had been a fool, an utter fool to ever think that the sound of its laughter had been ugly. The voice that spoke was golden, beautiful and sweet as honey, like molten sundrops or the condensed essence of all the hopes and dreams of humanity combined.

“Arise, Kabuto,” the voice said. “Here is not the time or place to be sleeping.”

Impossibly, unbelievably, the corpse of her enemy began to rise to its feet, as if not even death could refuse the sun god that had spoken. Before her eyes, Kabuto’s wounds began to reknit themselves, healing in almost the exact same way as she had once seen done by her master, Tsunade – though Sakura could not quite remember why she had ever considered her as such. Next to this living deity, the broken drunk old woman that lay at his feet did not seem so impressive.

“I underestimated her,” Kabuto said, when he was healed enough to speak. “If I had-”

The divine being let out a long sigh. “Kabuto, how often must I tell you? If you underestimated your opponent, it only means she managed to outwit you.” The deity seemed to turn in her direction, though it was hard to tell just from the movement of its perfect, flawless feet. “It has been a long time since anyone has embarrassed my lieutenant as thoroughly as you, Sakura-chan. I must say I’m impressed.”

Kabuto opened in his mouth in protest. “Master, you can’t mean to-”

The sun god clacked its golden tongue. “I have already decided, my dear boy, and there is precious little you can do about it. Now, be so kind as to clean up over here, will you? Sakura-chan and I are leaving.”

The last Sakura saw was a perfectly smooth, pale white hand reaching down to grasp her.