Tempered Shift

Chapter nineteen
Realisation

The smoke seemed to take forever to clear, and Sakura's heartbeat sped to double time in the lull before the storm. Yumi had the power to summon, and any moment now, the something that she'd called to battle would be rushing towards her, ready to attack.

Sakura had mixed feelings about the Kuchiyose no Jutsu. She'd wondered about asking Tsunade to teach it to her, but then decided against it. It had come down to whether or not she felt a summons would be useful in fighting and in the end she settled on no. Her battle style was an odd mishmash of techniques, moves and stances picked up from the various influences in her life. Her strength from Tsunade. Her charge from Naruto. Her kicks from Sasuke. Her improved speed from Kakashi. So many people had helped to shape her, and she'd taken a little from each of them to make something entirely her own.

She'd thought long and hard about it, but felt that to gain a summons at this point would work against her in the long run. She was still growing, developing as a ninja. To learn the Kuchiyose no Jutsu at this point was to be offered an easy way out, a crutch of sorts.

Besides, not that she had anything against them, but slugs weren't exactly the...fleetest of animals. And even Katsuyu was limited to a few choice moves. She could spit acid, separate into smaller entities, or if all else failed, simply squash an opponent by sitting on them. If Sakura really wanted to, she could probably do any of those herself.

Except maybe the smaller entities thing.

The smoke began to clear. Her reaching fingers finally grasped the top of one of the senbon she’d concealed in her shirt and she withdrew it, slipping it between her fingers, ready to throw. She could be facing anything, an animal of any size, and maybe it was silly to put faith in a single length of steel. But if worse came to worst, she could drop the senbon and block with some taijutsu, and she was supposed to be good at evasion anyway.

And then the smoke faded entirely and the benefits of her senbon didn’t matter any more, because Yumi hadn’t summoned an animal, large or small. She was standing across from Sakura in the middle of an arrow formation, and flanking her in front and on either side were what seemed to be men.

Five of them.

Sakura blinked. She hadn’t been expecting people. In fact, she hadn’t even been aware that they could be summoned. It had been her belief that the only beings who could be called by the Kuchiyose no Jutsu were animals or inanimate objects, like Kankuro's puppets.

Apparently, she’d been wrong.

“What do you think, precious?” Yumi called, looking rather smug behind her barricade of men. Sakura was reluctant to categorise them as nin as their stances were loose and vulnerable and they wore simple breeches and boat-necked shirts.

In fact, their stances looked almost…sagging. Their heads were uniformly bowed and their arms hung limply by their sides, giving her a sudden disturbing thought. She took a deep breath and let her chakra net spread, reaching towards the group with small, focussed tendrils. They crossed the earth and got to the men, relaying their findings instantly and confirming her horrifying suspicion. She dropped the chakra and gave Yumi a disgusted look.

“They’re dead,” she said, and Yumi laughed, high and delighted.

“Well done,” she replied, bringing her hands together and giving a little clap. After a moment, the men followed suit, the flesh of their palms beating together with an eerie smacking sound. Sakura ignored the involuntary chill that spread down her spine and tried to concentrate on Yumi.

“It’s quite a thrill, you know,” the Sound nin continued, walking around her immobile arrowhead of bodyguards, who had stopped clapping after a moment. “Having the power to animate the dead. Being able to command your own little army. The perfect spies. The ideal soldiers. Bodies that can’t be killed because they’re already dead.” She stopped in front of the first man and ran a hand down his slack face, looking up as if staring into his dull, sightless eyes. “I find they’re so much more obliging when they’re dead, too, precious. They do what I want them to, when I want them to.” She turned back to Sakura and gave her a wink, the action made even more unsettling by the feral glow to her violet eyes. “If you know what I mean.”

Sakura felt sick. “You’re crazy,” she managed, but the observation only made Yumi laugh again, higher and louder, maniacal this time.

“I’ve been thinking, precious,” she said, dropping the kunai and drawing a finger over her bleeding palm. She brought the finger to her lips and licked the blood from her skin. “Maybe I’ll keep you. Orochimaru-sama will have no use for you if you’re dead, so we might have a little accident here and then I can take you with me. It would be…interesting.”

Sakura felt more sick. Nausea was never good and it was especially true for mid-battle. She had to ignore the Sound nin’s increasing insanity. She couldn’t read too deeply into what Yumi was alluding to. There was no time, and she could avoid all the trouble by simply not letting her win today.

“I reiterate,” she said, absurdly glad her voice wasn't shaking as much as she was, “you’re fucking crazy.”

And then, before the other girl had a chance to respond, she flung the senbon as hard as she could and charged along in its wake.

Kakashi blinked. The poison-pain still hummed at the edge of his awareness and Kabuto’s implacable grip still squeezed his arm into agonies, but it was the other man’s words that had all of his attention now. “You want to be Orochimaru’s vessel?” he echoed. “Why?”

Kabuto smiled and it reached his eyes. “Why not?” he countered. “Orochimaru-sama is probably the greatest storehouse of both jutsu and medical knowledge alive today. To have that knowledge and complement it with the immortality technique he has all but perfected…surely I needn’t go into particulars, Kakashi-san. I’m a scholar at heart, and what scholar wouldn’t want ultimate knowledge and all the time in the world to use it?”

Kakashi could only blink again. Kabuto wasn’t trying for something more devious? “Forgive me if I don’t quite believe you,” he said around gritted teeth, still trying to ignore the other man’s hold on his arm. “I knew you liked your research, but I hadn’t anticipated you’d be so studious as to concoct a plan ten years in the making.”

The Sound nin’s smile set and his face turned cold. “It was never meant to take this long, Kakashi-san. My patience has been tested sorely, ever since that first run-in with your annoying little team. Naruto-kun, Sakura-san…Sasuke-kun. Who would have thought that each of them would hinder me in their own way.” He paused and his grip tightened, his other hand coming up to twist part of Kakashi’s flesh in the opposite direction.

Kakashi bit his tongue and tasted blood. Torture was something every ANBU was educated to expect, and some of the training exercises had been more painful than he cared to remember. But he couldn’t honestly say he’d never been through this sort of situation before. He’d never been stricken by a cursed seal, then poisoned from within, then had his arm broken and then squeezed and twisted. It was a new and wholly unpleasant experience, and as soon as he got some strength back he’d be extricating himself and smashing Kabuto into the ground. And he’d have that strength back soon. Any minute now.

Fuck.

“I’m proud of them,” he murmured, focussing on the photograph from his dream, the one he’d left beside his bed back in Konoha. Back home. He thought of Sasuke’s face, cool and aloof, hiding the maelstrom of emotions that had sent him off on his quest. He thought of Naruto, the boy’s bright, cheerful face, and then his kindness and maturity that had developed over the years.

He thought of Sakura, and the pain lessened. His strength returned in a rush, flooding through his veins and chakra coils, spreading through his body beneath the flesh and removing some of the foggy numbness that had taken him over. “I’m proud of them,” he said again, louder and more clearly, before cocking back his uninjured arm and punching Kabuto in the face.

It was an idea he’d taken from Sakura and the welcome she’d offered him earlier in the afternoon. Probably not as forceful as her’s had been, but effective nonetheless. Kabuto dropped his arm but wasn’t quite quick enough to defend himself and Kakashi’s fist connected solidly with his face, snapping the delicate bridge of his glasses and causing them to plummet to the ground.

The Sound nin staggered back under the force of the blow and brought a hand to his face, touching his nose and peering at his fingers as if expecting them to come away with blood. He glanced up at Kakashi and squinted slightly.

“That wasn’t very nice, Kakashi-san,” he chided, cocking his head as if examining him.

“I’m not a very nice person,” Kakashi replied, straightening painfully and flicking his wrist. He hadn’t just punched someone in a very long time, and the crack of knuckle against bone had not only been unexpected, it had also hurt.

Kabuto nodded slowly. “I understand that it would be difficult to maintain a kind persona among the ranks of ANBU, doing what you had to do in the squad.” He paused meaningfully and Kakashi repressed a scowl, rotating his uninjured shoulder and wondering how best to attack. He was now vulnerable on the right side as well as being physically weakened all over from the poison-chakra. It was a not a matter of what he could do under the circumstances with his varied hurts, but what he couldn’t.

There was the possibility of using some ninjutsu, but it was going to be hard with his arm. He could still do some taijutsu, but again, his useless arm could hinder him. He needed some sort of attack that wouldn’t require too much physically but could help him defeat Kabuto with as little effort as he could get away with.

He slipped his good hand behind him as if reaching for shuriken, although the ploy was probably unnecessary with Kabuto’s glasses lying on the ground. He’d rather be too careful, however, and that was why he’d lived as long as he had. The smoke pellets had slipped down behind a bandage in his hip pack, what with all the moving around they’d done, and he fumbled with them for a moment before he managed to draw them out.

It was an old trick, and he’d relied on it already in this battle of wits. He was counting on Kabuto to expect him not to repeat it. Give me too much credit, he willed. And then he flung the pellet to the forest floor, using that first second of smoky surprise to bring both hands up to his face. He straightened the fingers of his broken arm, ignoring the tearing wrench that seemed to accompany the movement, and then pressed them against the pointing fingers of his other hand. This was one of the few jutsu he could perform in such a condition. It didn’t require a fancy chain of seals and it was something he could direct from a safe distance. He didn't care if it made him repetitive, but if something worked, why change the formula?

“Kage Bunshin no Jutsu,” he whispered, and as the clone puffed into existence he threw himself to the left and hid behind a tree. The smoke dissipated slowly and when it cleared Kabuto was in the same spot, and to all intents and purposed, Kakashi was, as well.

He directed the clone to move casually to Kabuto’s fallen glasses and glance down at them as if intrigued. “Why don’t you just heal your eyes?” he made the clone ask. “If you have this medical power and the ability to fix what is broken, why don’t you fix your eyesight, once and for all?”

Kabuto’s mouth thinned. “There are limits to everyone’s abilities, Kakashi-san. Even you have your weaknesses.”

Behind the tree, he scowled.

“It’s interesting, how these weaknesses develop. Like your interest in Sakura-san. No-one would have expected that five years ago. I must admit, I was somewhat surprised myself.”

Neither Kakashi said anything, and Kabuto continued, apparently on a roll.

“Funny what proximity can do to a relationship. And amusing, what exile can do to one’s thought processes. Perhaps you have lost your reason, Kakashi-san. Do you honestly think they’ll accept this relationship back in Konoha? You’ve crossed the moral line. You were meant to be her teacher, a figure she looked up to. Have you betrayed the trust a student should have in her superior? Have you twisted her feelings into something they shouldn’t be?”

Kakashi clenched his fist and the clone did the same, glaring at Kabuto with scarlet-whorled intensity. “You,” he made the clone bite out, enunciating the word like it was poison, and maybe it was, “go too far.”

“On the contrary.” Kabuto smiled, chakra building around his hand again, blue light bathing the clearing an eerie, ghostly cast, “I’ve only just begun.”

Sakura hadn’t really considered everything when she threw the senbon at Yumi. She forgot her debate whether to injure the Sound nin or stop her any way she could and the path of the projectile spoke volumes. Had it hit, the needle would have travelled through the girl’s neck and severed her spinal cord. Had it hit, she would have been completely immobilised and Sakura would have been able to finish her off in one more blow.

But it didn’t hit.

Yumi had obviously sensed the oncoming weapon and made a curt gesture, at which one of the summons-dead stepped in front of her, legs creaking from the leathery pull of disused muscle. The senbon only reached his chest and hit with a hollow thud, embedding itself in his sternum, the end of the needle still reverberating from impact.

Dammit. Her only weapon was now useless. She’d have to rely on her jutsu now, and thus far, she still had no clear indication of Yumi’s weaknesses. She could try a genjutsu, but she didn’t know what type Yumi was and whether she’d be susceptible or immune. She could try a ninjutsu, but what applied to this situation?

Yumi gestured again and the phalanx of manthings started shuffling forward, their steps dry as paper on the crumbling forest floor. “Nice try, precious,” she called again, and Sakura didn’t even spare her a glance, knowing the look she’d be wearing would be one of sardonic amusement. “But it would take more than a senbon to overpower me.”

Sakura gave a theatrical shrug and eyed the approaching men. “You’d be surprised at how useful a nice senbon can be. There’s a lot you can do with a well-aimed needle. I know exactly where I’d like you to ram one.”

The girl laughed. “You’ve got such a way with words, I simply have to keep you. I think you’ll be a nice addition to my little group here. How do you feel about living again?”

Sakura raised her fist and let chakra slide down her inner coils to pool just below the flesh, creating a thin, rock-hard shell underneath the skin of her hand. She thought momentarily of Kakashi, poisoned slowly as they talked, and let her face grow hard also. “I think once will be enough,” she replied, and readied her hand as the first manthing reached her.

He gave a weak sort of lunge and she dodged, stepping to the side and then in, close enough that she could smell his rotten, decaying flesh. She resisted the urge to gag and punched him instead. She used her strength, of course – she was on a time limit – and felt her chakra flow through her hand and into the body, forcing it into the corpse in an explosive release designed to push out the other side on impact.

Nothing happened.

She caught her breath and leapt backwards, staring at the still-approaching body in a mixture of apprehension and disbelief. “How?” she muttered, risking a glance down at her hand.

Across the clearing, Yumi laughed again. “How do you punch chakra through organs that aren’t there? How do you burst blood vessels that no longer pump with life? My corpse soldiers aren’t human, precious. At least, not any more.”

Sakura’s mind ran frantically over possibilities as she nursed her hand, which was jarred from impact against rigid flesh. Of course. She ducked under an awkward punch from one of the manthings and dipped her shoulder, rolling between the legs of another. Because they’re dead, she’s kept them in a perpetual state of muscle lock. She spun out of reach of a third corpse and gave it a once-over with professional eyes before handspringing backwards and taking refuge in one of the surrounding trees. She thought back to the explanation Tsunade had given her on death and the changes it brought to the human body.

“In the period immediately following cessation of bodily functions, the subject remains as if in life while the organs and tissue enter a state of rigidity. This state can take up to twenty-four hours to enter fully, but once it has, limbs are locked into place and movement of appendages will be difficult, if not impossible.”

At the time, she’d wondered why anyone would want to move a corpse’s limbs and Tsunade had answered her softly, eyes distant as if thinking of something else. “Not everyone dies a pretty death, Sakura,” she’d said, tracing a pattern on her desk with an abstract finger. “It’s a poor example, but say a teammate takes four or five shuriken in the back. The nin was weak, or they were poisoned – regardless, they fell forward, an arm coming up to cushion the fall. The body was discovered and carried back for a memorial, but because the fluids have drained from the body and the limbs have locked in place, it’s very difficult to pull that arm back to the side. The body lock fades after time, but in that period of rigidity, nothing can be done without damage to the corpse. And while the spirit is gone, of course, we try not to disrespect the dead by pulling every which way at their arms and legs.” She blinked and her eyes were focussed once more, and Sakura was left to wonder who had died so terribly in her master’s past.

Sakura inched around the tree, aiming for another look. She’d only gotten that one glimpse, and she wasn’t sure if what she’d seen was correct. Her tree shuddered and she realised that one of the manthings had reached the trunk and was now bashing his meaty hands against the bark, apparently trying to get her down. She braced herself and used their proximity to take another look.

She had! That Sound bitch was really something else. At all the major joint areas – the wrist, elbow, and what she could see of the manthing’s shoulder under his tattered shirt – extra skin had been sewn on with angry black stitches, puckering the dead flesh beneath. In doing so, Yumi had been able to keep the body in the rigid state, while still allowing simple, lurching movements, sacrificing none of the muscle stiffness that a corpse obtained. She’d managed to stitch together a hard warrior capable of basic movement that also had immense strength.

It was scary.

Sakura swallowed. They were slow and ungainly, and so posed no real threat. Yumi was the one to concentrate on, the one she should be worried about. But there were so many of them staggering around that it would be difficult to get across without having to face one. And even if they started fighting, Yumi could come over and distract Sakura from her task…

No. If she wanted to defeat Yumi, she’d have to get rid of the corpse soldiers first. And if fighting them wouldn’t work, then maybe the reverse approach would have some effect.

“You’re wasting time, precious,” came Yumi’s amused drawl. “I mean, you can stay up the tree as long as you like, but just hiding there won’t help Hatake, you know?”

Yes, she did know. “Shouldn’t you stop talking to me?” she called back, channeling chakra to her palms again. “It’s a poor technique, because while you blab your mouth, the enemy might just regroup.”

Yumi paused. “I don’t fear you, precious. Hatake, maybe, but I don’t fear you at all.”

Sakura set off at a run down the tree trunk. “Well, maybe you should.” On the last word she stretched out her hand and planted in the centre of a corpse soldier’s chest. Nothing happened for a moment. And then her chakra started working, and the manthing started to heal. She could feel the power flow through her body and into the other one, just enough to give the flesh a semblance of life. Taut muscles relaxed, stretched skin grew flaccid, and after a heartbeat or two – Sakura’s, of course, nothing could bring the dead back to life – the soldier folded in on himself, flopping to the ground in a lumpy pile of skin and bones. Another limped closer and she gave it the same treatment, feeling a fierce grin spread across her face at her success. She glanced up to rub Yumi’s defeat in, but took an involuntary step back when she saw the other girl had gone very pale under her bluish, blotchy skin.

“Doesn’t feel so good now, does it?” Sakura taunted bravely, disposing of another corpse soldier with the same technique.

Yumi raised her arms. “You try my patience!” she shrieked, as something rumbled and the ground beneath Sakura’s feet seemed to tremble at the sound.

She caught her breath and took another step back. The ground shuddered again. She glanced around and found the soil beneath the trees heaving, moving like it was being pushed from below, like something long buried was fighting to break out. Surely Yumi wasn’t…she couldn’t…there was no way…

No, she was a puppet master, like Gaara’s brother, only a puppet master. She controlled the bodies of the dead. She couldn’t revive them.

Surely.

Yumi brought her hands together and started a complicated seal chain. “We’ll see who feels good after this, precious. And,” she crooned, “it won’t be you.” She slapped her hands together in one final seal and Sakura’s skin prickled, the hairs on her arms and neck standing to attention as if electrified in the sudden heat. Yumi opened her mouth and Sakura started running forward, ideas of jutsu and speed and power fading as one thought came to the forefront of her mind and took control, forcing her body to move without direction, knowing only one thing. To save Kakashi, she had to stop Yumi, she couldn’t let her complete that jutsu. She had to –

“Yomigaerino Jut—“

Sakura stumbled as Yumi stuttered and then she was on the ground with a mouthful of dirt. She jerked her head up to see what happened and pushed against the earth, surging to her feet and snapping into a combat stance, ready to face whatever Yumi was going to do.

They faced each other and Sakura waited, her nerves twanging with anticipation. Yumi was just standing there. Nothing was happening. And then the air shifted slightly like a change in altitude, causing Sakura’s eyes to water and her ears to pop.

“What are you doing?” she ventured to ask, wondering if this was another one of the Sound nin’s tricks.

“Nothing!” wheezed Yumi, her mottled face darkening to a deep scarlet, and then deepening to an equally unhealthy shade of violet. The change to her features the curse seal had brought on was receding even as Sakura watched. “I’m doing noth—“ she croaked and gurgled and shuddered and fell, and in the time it took for her body to topple over and hit the ground, Sakura finally understood what she meant.

There was someone else, somewhere close, and they were powerful enough to have downed Yumi with a thought. The girl’s legs kicked feebly and Sakura could only watch, her mind going over who could possibly have that power and where they could be. She felt dangerously calm, indifferent and unaffected, even as Yumi’s breath was squeezed from her throat by phantom hands. The Sound nin shuddered once more before stilling, the life seeming to leech from her body even as Sakura looked on. As a medic-nin she was horrified, devastated to see someone die before her eyes. As a kunoichi, she felt only a numb relief to see an enemy eliminated. Yumi was dead, and someone had saved Sakura the trouble of killing her herself.

One wet thud, and then another. What remained of Yumi’s army dropped to the ground, whatever strange jutsu she’d used losing its effect with her death. Of course, her mind argued logically, without life there can be no chakra, and without chakra, how can the jutsu be expected to work?

She wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. There was something strange about this, about the change in the wind that made the air stick to her suddenly hot and clammy skin, while also making her shiver at an unexpected chill. The wind had a bite and Yumi was dead and that prickle at the back of her neck meant she wasn’t alone…

“You’re trembling.”

She didn’t dare turn around. At this point she couldn’t, even if she wanted to, and she most definitely did not want to do that. Because if she turned around she’d see the face that matched that voice - so familiar, and yet so different as well - and the tears that she’d been trying so hard to keep at bay would brim over once again and she’d be back where she started, crying over him. She couldn’t do that. She wasn’t that girl any more. Those feelings were dead and buried, like he should be.

“Shock, I expect.” She fought to keep her voice calm. It was a battle almost as draining as the one she’d just had with Yumi, and that scared her far more than she cared to admit. The mental fight was always tougher than the physical one, but for some reason the strength and will had been leeched from her bones. It was all she could do to not fall over, to not pull her arms around her body and hold herself close. She wasn’t ready for this encounter, it wasn’t time to see his face.

But even as she thought that, her inner self rallied the point. This confrontation was inevitable, she argued with herself, and she was forced to agree. It was never a question of “if”, but only ever “when”.

She cleared her throat as quietly as she could. “You’ve saved me a lot of trouble,” she said without turning, pitching her voice so that he could hear. And where exactly was he? Behind her, of course, but…he didn’t register clearly on the edges of her perception. There was no hot core of chakra to be felt on her alert net, no indication of another person at all. Why?

Why not? She swallowed, hard. He wasn’t a person, really, was he? He was more and less, same and yet other. She’d known but she’d never known, never could have known, until now.

A rustle in the undergrowth. He was approaching. She felt like the scene was oddly disjointed somehow, that it was like a film at the cinema playing wrongly for some reason. The reel wasn’t fitted properly, or the projector was broken…either way, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. She should be sensing him, not hearing him making his way across the grass. She should be facing him, not kneeling with her back turned. She should have someone to fight alongside, instead of crouching here all alone—

Kakashi.

Yumi was dead. Her chakra poison would have no effect on him now. But where was he? Still in the clearing? Still facing Kabuto? She could see now that it had been a trap all along, that there had been two enemies for a reason, that their movements were so predictable the Sound nins had choreographed the battle to suit themselves. They’d been obvious and it was almost disheartening, but then a shadow fell across her and she flinched at the loss of warmth.

“She served her purpose.” The voice was cool and the observation was a detached one, like he was talking about a horse or a farm dog or some other animal that lived to work. She felt a flash of perverse pity for Yumi, lying cold and twisted only metres away.

“And for that she had to die?” Honestly, she hated the girl. But she’d wanted to take care of things her own way and he’d stopped her, like he always had. He’d stunted her growth in every arena, and she had only just started to learn how to overcome the barriers he’d helped to put in place.

A whisper of fabric, cotton scratching over skin. He’d slid into a crouch behind her and her heart threw itself against her ribs, acting on instinct as fear took her over at his proximity and the dark power she could finally sense, now that he was so close. He was a predator, a great cobra, and at this moment Sakura had never felt more like prey.

He laughed. It too was cool and distant, and the situation seemed less than amusing. “She served her purpose, then lost sight of it. Ambition and emotion clouded her perception and she veered from the course she had been directed to. That is why I detest working with women. So emotional, and easily distracted.” She thought that his voice had changed over time; it sounded slightly different to all those times it had rung inside her head.

Sakura’s breath came in shallow huffs and she still couldn’t turn around. He could kill me, she thought in paralysed wonder. He could kill me right now and I don’t know if I could stop him.

“So emotional,” he repeated softly, pushing to his feet and moving in front of her, placing himself in her line of sight. She kept her head down and her eyes averted, still unwilling to look and see what time had brought to one for whom it had stopped. She wasn’t ready, would never be ready, and now she was—

The hand shot out quickly, the arm like rubber, stretched and sinuous and catching her unawares. She gasped at the movement, unable to shift her head from where he now grasped it, in the vice-like grip of one smooth, cold palm.

“In my research,” he continued pleasantly, that soft voice gaining another timbre, a slightly different pitch that she was still familiar with, nonetheless, “I found that men are far less likely to be ruled by their emotions. Women are weak because of their inability to look beyond the emotional blockade. And here, of course, is a prime example. It seems there are more advantages to this particular body than I previously calculated, if you are rendered immobile at first sight.”

She wanted to tell him she hadn’t looked yet, that it had been his voice that had paralysed her, his voice that had filled her with fear and something else. But her voice wasn’t working, and perhaps it was just as well. She was already caught.

“Look at me, Haruno Sakura. Look at me and give me what I need.”

And she didn’t want to because she was stronger than this, because she was a strong kunoichi and Tsunade was proud of her, because Naruto had told her to look after herself, because Ino wanted her to tell someone something, because Kakashi was, Kakashi was…

Sakura looked up.

And he was inside her mind and everything changed and nothing changed and he looked different only older but time stopped for him didn’t it? and time stopped for her and time stopped and he really did look different and all she could see were two pools of crimson each with three black, circling sharks and—

It was the wrong one.

The wrong one.

The wrong Uchiha.

Itachi regarded her. Orochimaru smiled. And Sakura screamed.

Notes on jutsus:

Kuchiyose no Jutsu: summoning technique.
Yomigaerino Jutsu: not a real technique, but yomigaeri seems to translate as something like "resurrection".

Sorry for the delay again, I haven't written TS for months. I'm hoping to inspire myself to finish it soon, but in the meantime I'm rediscovering the awesomeness that is The X-Files. I don't watch tv regularly, so it's nice having the whole series on dvd.

Thanks to everyone, but especially DS, Molly and Char. I also wanted to mention I wrote an AU Kakasaku lemon, which has been posted up at aff net and at my writing journal. The links to both are in my profile page if anyone's interested. Till next time!