Chapter 25—On the Road
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The Tangerine Cat
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Chapter 25—On the Road
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The first three hours on the road had been, by Sakura's accounting, the easy part.
The gate had taken eleven minutes, which was eleven minutes of Tazuna-san squinting at her and her large, oversized block of a backpack, over the brim of his sake bottle as if he had somehow paid for the wrong product.
Naruko had crash-tackled Sakura in the middle of the staring contest, and Sasuke had arrived half a step later.
When Sakura was finally released from Naruko's hug, she studied the two of them, properly, and felt her eyebrows climb.
"Naruko."
"Hm?"
"Don't tell me... You didn't bring your travel pack." Sakura shifted, and the straps attached to the sixteen-kilo block behind her dug into her shoulder as she was once again, since weighing it herself on the bathroom scale last night, reminded of what she'd have to haul across the dust roads of Hi no Kuni for the weeks to come. "I could believe it if it were just you that forgot... but Sasuke as well?"
Naruko's hands flew to her hips. "Hey! Why would I forget it and not the Teme?"
Sakura stared at her. She blinked, slowly, once.
"Sakura-chan! BETRAYAL!"
Sakura coughed into her fist. "I didn't say anything."
Naruko lifted her chin. "I'll have you know that I did not forget to bring my backpack." Her right hand dipped into her hip pouch, and she produced a small scroll which she held high into the air like a torch, and beamed. "Ta-da!"
Sakura studied it for a couple of seconds, confused. Then it clicked. "...You sealed it? Your backpack? You sealed it into a scroll. You know fūinjutsu?"
"Yup!" Naruko swiped her nose with a knuckle. "Pretty amazing, aren't I? I even made this whole scroll myself, dattebayo. Wrote it from scratch!"
"...Whoa." Sakura looked Naruko up and down. First, the Kage Bunshin. And now, fūinjutsu… Maybe, her wish for a nice and competent teammate would be fulfilled by one loud and klutzy girl who smelled like a small, warm, and furry animal. "Naruko, that's—that's really amazing. They only taught us the theoreticals and some rudimentary applications at the Academy. They never had us write our own scrolls…"
"It's just the very basics of writing fūinjutsu onto a scroll, Sakura." Sasuke's dry voice cut in. "The kind of storage-scroll merchants buy in bulk from stagnant chūnin who don't have any paths to promotion. Please don't let it get to her head."
"Hey! You shut up, teme!"
Sakura giggled before she could rein it in. "It's still a lot more advanced than what anyone can do in our graduating class, though."
"Here, Sakura-chan!" Naruko's other hand was already back in the pouch and pulli ng out a second scroll. "Use this to seal your bag too."
The weight of the roll pressed it into Sakura's hand before she could protest, and something tiny and warm settled in her chest. "...Thanks, Naruko."
"Yep! I got your back covered, unlike the stupid-teme!"
Sakura sneaked a glance to the side to where Sasuke stood, where he held the same laid-back posture like Naruko's declaration had been all but Sakura's imagination.
The three of them waited with Tazuna-san, and just when Sakura thought their sensei was going to leave them hanging on their first proper mission—because why wouldn't that lazy, deadbeat of an adult be late, again—he appeared with a small wave.
"Maa, if it isn't my cute little students. Good morning, everyone, and Tazuna-san."
"Ah," Tazuna-san finally brightened up, or, at least, however much one can physically brighten up when they were an old, grumpy drunk. "Sensei, you've finally arrived. I suppose we can finally set off?"
Sakura felt the weight lift from her shoulders. And no, not her sixteen-kilo block of a bag, because that was already sitting in the seal that Naruko gifted her, tucked safely away in her hip pouch under the incredulous gaze of one old drunk—
Take that, Shānnarō! Witness the power of a kunoichi!
—Rather, it was because, somehow, Kakashi-sensei had arrived at the dot of six. On time. For the first occasion—by Sakura's very educated guess—in his entire jōnin career.
And so they were off on their first ever C-rank, marching away from the village walls she had never stepped foot outside of for her twelve, long years of life—and apparently neither had Naruko—and accompanied by the occasional grumbling of a drunkard and the chirps of forest birds.
The journey had been interesting in the first twenty minutes, and then it became repetitive. She'd read it in the textbook, but there really were only massive trees beyond Konoha, and beyond the trees, there were more trees.
The only thing that kept the trip alive was, unsurprisingly, Naruko.
By the third hour, Naruko had worked her way from whether sake bottles counted as weapons-for-travel-pack-purposes, to whether ramen and dango should be classified as equivalent food groups under the wider category of shinobi rations.
And by the sixth hour, Sakura had found herself running out of responses and simply let the words wash over her. She was beginning to understand that the only sustainable strategy for traveling on long mission days with Uzumaki Naruko was, for the most part, to listen and nod.
That was, unless one were Uchiha Sasuke. Because he was somehow managing the same dry and occasional replies to Naruko, never offering a beat more, and never a beat less than what he had maintained since the morning.
Then Sakura's eyes caught it.
A puddle.
About thirty meters ahead, in the middle of the road. Dead center.
She looked around, but nobody else seemed to notice it.
The road was dry. The trees overhead were dry. The dust under her sandals had been kicking up in soft pale clouds since they left Konoha, because the last rain in Hi no Kuni had fallen two weeks ago, and the afternoon today smelled like dry leaves and cicadas and sunbaked stones.
Six hours of road.
All of it was dry.
The puddle ahead, by any honest accounting, was the wettest thing in either direction for half a day's walk.
She glanced back. Sasuke had drifted alongside Kakashi-sensei towards the tail of the column before she realized.
Sakura frowned. Was she mistaken? Her hand drifted toward her hip pouch regardless.
Shānnarō. Of course. Of course it was the first C-rank. There was, in fact, no other mission in her life so far that the universe could possibly have chosen to interrupt with, oh, a puddle, in an area that hadn't rained for days.
"—and Sakura-chan, did you hear what Tazuna-jiji said about the broth, dattebayo, the broth is the thing, it's what makes the ramen the ramen—"
"Naruko." Sakura's voice came out tighter than she meant. "Walk closer to Tazuna-san for a moment, please."
Naruko's mouth, which had been gathering itself around the rest of the broth-thesis, closed.
"...Why?"
"Just for a moment." Sakura pointed her eyes towards the puddle ahead.
Naruko followed her gaze, and then her right hand, which had been gesturing the shape of a bowl in the air, dropped to her thigh pouch and hovered just above the kunai holster.
They passed the puddle.
Sakura felt the shadow first before the air moved.
The chains came out of it fast.
It crossed Kakashi-sensei's back twice on the way through, and then Sasuke's. Two figures lunged out of the puddle towards opposite sides. The chains snapped tight, and Sakura watched her sensei and genius teammate come apart in four wet sections on the road in front of her.
Her eyes widened as her mind went numb for a split second.
"...Te-Teme...?" A whisper echoed to her side.
Sakura sucked in a breath, hard, and then her body moved.
They died?
They were turned into for chunks on the road.
…They died.
Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke were gone.
The two strongest individuals on their squad were dead.
She put herself in front of Tazuna, sandals sliding across the dirt and her kunai out. "N-Naruko!"
The two figures split. One came for her. The other went for Naruko.
"Naruko!"
"Y-Yeah...!" Naruko threw together the cross-seal. "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
A dozen bodies of smoke puffed into existence, and Sakura tightened her grip on the kunai.
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Kakashi turned his head towards the boy on the adjacent bough, his stare flat. His second foot had barely touched down on the bark before Sasuke flickered into existence beside him.
Below, the tiny and teary war cries from the Narukos reached their canopy from some thirty-odd meters away.
"What are you doing here, Sasuke?" He arched an eyebrow.
"Assessing the situation. Isn't that obvious, Kakashi?" The boy folded his arms while taking in the skirmish through the leaves. "What are you doing here?"
"Maa..." He scratched the back of his head. It wasn't like he had expected this one to act normal. Kakashi had already learned the lesson the hard way, every day for the past month and a half. "I'm assessing the situation as well."
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Whsssh...!
The chain whipped past Sakura's left ear close enough to part her hair, her kunai held for a second longer, the sparks flying and scorching her skin before her wrist caved.
A cut opened on her forearm, the chain blurred to the side, wide, and she couldn't even feel the pain as her heart pumped and screamed at her body to move.
Eight of Naruko's clones were already gone, and the ninth went as the shinobi yanked his side of the chain in a short arc that wrapped two more Narukos at the ankles. They were flung off the road and destroyed in a loud pop.
Sakura felt her own breath rasping in her throat, dust on her tongue, her sandaled soles slipping on loose gravel as she stayed between Tazuna-san and the enemy.
Her grip on the blade was correct, just like how she'd practiced according to the textbook. She was struggling, but somehow she was still alive, even despite her guard giving under the weight, the attack from her opponent had been deflected with only the cost of a shallow wound and not her head flying.
Somehow.
And that was unfortunately where the good news ended.
The bad news was that they were losing the rhythm of it.
Naruko's hands had been flickering through the cross-seal in a furious metronome for almost a minute now, replacing the clones as fast as the enemies could pop them, but their foes were beginning to read the pattern.
The one on the left had already learned to feint with the chain and break the seal on whichever original Naruko he could spot through the swarm. He guessed wrong twice and right once, and the once had been enough to put eight clones down in a single sweep as they jumped to protect the original.
Sakura bit her lips.
Maybe it was the wrong choice to take a C-rank after all.
Two more shuriken flew at her.
She moved to catch them on the flat of her kunai. A small whimper escaped her chest as her shoulder jarred in its socket.
The shinobi who threw the blades vanished.
"Sakura-chan!"
Her eyes went wide as the taller silhouette blinked towards her side. A shoter and blonde one raced towards her. Naruko barreled into the gap at her flank. The gauntlet clawed through her chest, and she went up in white smoke.
Another Naruko ran to her side—the real one, if Sakura had to guess—and skidded to a halt with her kunai ready.
The two enemy nin flickered onto the road a dozen meters out. They were already setting their feet.
Sakura swallowed. Her limbs were shaking, and from the periphery, she caught Naruko shaking too. Sakura raised her guard anyway. "...They're coming."
"...Yeah."
Sakura had the time to think shānnarō, and that was all.
The enemies lunged.
And then they slammed into something midway before Sakura could even blink.
Their legs kicked up, every part of their body below the head swung forward as the familiar green vest of Kakashi-sensei flickered into existence between them, the crook of his sleeved elbows catching them by the neck.
His arms flexed, and the enemy nin went a slow purpling shade before going slack, before they were dropped to the ground in two unconscious sacks.
"Good work, you two."
Sakura's kunai was still in her hand, and her hand, she noticed distantly, was shaking even more than before.
"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruko's mouth was gaping beside her, and that was until Sakura found herself doing the same thing and quickly shut her own. "You're alive!"
"You're—Kakashi-sensei, you're fine...?" Sakura glanced back and forth between her sensei and the enemy on the floor. "I thought you were—you—"
"Maa." Kakashi waved lazily. "I was alive the whole time. It's just a simple use of the Academy's Kawarimi, Naruko, Sakura."
"But—teme, Sasuke-teme, the chain went through him too, dattebayo, where—Kakashi-sensei, where is the teme—"
Sakura felt her own stomach drop.
"He's behind you." Kakashi-sensei splayed out both hands.
Naruko turned so fast Sakura heard her neck pop, though she herself didn't fare any better.
Sasuke was coming out of the tree line at an unhurried walking pace, his hands in his pockets, his shirt completely intact.
Naruko charged him. And then she skidded to a halt at the last possible meter as she apparently remembered, at the very last instant, who she was tackling.
Sakura's own shoulders dropped several fingers' width, and the breath she had been holding for an indeterminate length of time left her chest in a single quiet wash.
"T-TEME." Naruko sniffled. "You—you—you almost—you let the chain go through you, dattebayo, the chain, I saw it, I saw it cut you in four, I thought you were—you were—you—"
"It was Kawarimi, Naruko."
"I thought you were dead, dattebayo!" She socked him in the shoulder. "I didn't even get to beat you up yet!"
"Well, that's most reassuring. What's this?" Sasuke looked over Naruko's shoulder, his eyes landing on Sakura. The faintest dry curve tugged at the corner of his lips. "Don't tell me... Were the two of you, perhaps, worried?"
Sakura blinked, and Naruko's sniffling lagged.
Then something cracked in her mind, and Sakura took a very, very deep breath because the clench over the grip of her kunai was beginning to seriously hurt. That, or one raven-haired boy was going to be seriously hurt, Shānnarō!
"WHAT?!" Naruko's whole face went a violent shade of pink in the space of one breath. "NO!"
"Oh? I must be seeing things then."
"You are!" Naruko wiped her face in two short strokes of her sleeves. "I was not worried, dattebayo!"
"Hm… If you say so."
"O-Of course! Who the h-hell would cry for someone like you! I definitely wouldn't, I'll let you know, o-okay? You hear that? You stupid, duck-butt-haired, smug bastard, piece of dried turd—no, actually, runny turd...!"
"Right, right." He reached out and nabbed the cuff of her sleeve.
Naruko barely put up a resistance as Sasuke led her back towards the group.
"Sakura," he looked her over, his gaze lingering on the cut on her forearm. "Their weapons are coated in poison—"
Sakura's heart skipped a very reasonable beat.
"—We should get both you and Naruko treated before it spreads too far."
"…Poi…son?" Sakura looked down at the cut on her arm. It wasn't darkening or anything. It just looked like a normal wound. But now that Sasuke mentioned it... she frowned and closed her eyes. And sure enough, there was an odd tingling numbness on top of the burn that was coming on fast after the battle had ended.
"Poi-Poison?" Naruko had gone all stiff in Sasuke's hold as she goggled at the nick on the back of her own hand.
"Sasuke's right." Kakashi-sensei lowered the claw he was inspecting, still kneeling between the foreign nin. "The weapons are coated in a standard, slow-acting poison. We need to open the wound and release the contaminated blood from your bodies."
"O-Open the wound and r-release blood?" Naruko's face went a bit pale, and Sakura felt herself do the same.
Sasuke ignored Naruko and looked over at her. "Sakura, you've been studying the basics of Iryō-ninjutsu, correct?"
"...Y-Yes?" She gulped. She had. She'd been reading the books on medicine and Iryō-ninjutsu since she was eight, after she had finally conceded to the reality that she would always be second to Uchiha Sasuke at the Academy's theocraticals. Eight-year-old her had concluded that the only avenue for victory would have to be through something beyond the Academy.
She didn't like how he was mentioning this now, of all times, or how he even knew. And she most certainly didn't like—even more—how he had identified the poison on the blade when she hadn't.
A creeping chill gripped her neck, and she wasn't sure if it was the poison suddenly acting up or something much more inappropriate for the moment and childish.
Sasuke's hum broke her out of the trance. "Why don't you take this opportunity and get some practice in?"
"...Me?" Sakura pointed at herself.
"Yes, you'll handle the treatment for both you and Naruko. Worst comes to pass, both Kakashi and I are still here, so you'll lose a hand or an arm at most."
Sakura stared at him, her jaw falling open, and a third kind of chill settled over her this time. Naruko had also turned into a statue behind him.
...What the hell was this person saying, Shānnarō!
"Don't listen to Sasuke, you two." Kakashi-sensei was dragging an enemy over in each hand, his stare even flatter than usual. "You won't lose a limb."
Sakura breathed a sigh of relief. Thank kami Kakashi-sensei was here. They at least had one person on the team speaking sensible things—
"You'll just be paralyzed for the rest of your very short lives."
...Or not.
Sakura clenched a fist.
Apparently, there was not a single trustworthy teammate on this squad except for Naruko. And Naruko had already passed away on the spot, mumbling words like "one hand," "paralyzed," and "hokage" in a broken track as her large blue eyes stared hollowly into the distant skies.
Sasuke shrugged. "I suppose the two of you had better get to it quickly, then."
"So, Tazuna-san." Kakashi-sensei was already turning towards the drunk, who had been oddly silent this entire time. "Mind telling me why these foreign shinobi were targeting you?"
Their conversation was distant and muffled under the ringing in Skura's ears. And this time, she was quite sure it wasn't the toxins acting up.
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Sakura woke with a forearm across her sternum
"We're going to help this stupid old drunk build his stupid bridge, dattebayo!"
"Everyone get down!"
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