Into The Distance
Sakura takes a deep breath, the humidity levels are absurd and she has already drank more than half her canteen of water at this point. She looks ahead at the boys who are walking towards their designated area with the confidence they have been this way before. Naruto’s broad shoulders and Sasukes lithe form stalks towards the brush off the trail to take in the shade it provides. Meanwhile Sai is scouting up ahead on his ink bird and Tenzo and Kakashi are behind her keeping watch.
“We should alert Sai this is a good place to rest, Kakashi.” Sasuke says.
Kakashi nods and turns to Tenzo, “We'll rest here before finishing our trip. The humidity is too oppressive to travel anymore today. Sakura, I want you to find a water supply nearby and Naruto and Sasuke, you guys set up camp.”
Tenzo puts his hand to the ground and a giant oak tree with red leaves shoots towards the sky just above the other local trees giving Sai their location. Within seconds Sai is landing besides it and jumps off his bird before ending the jutsu.
“Thanks, the sun was getting overwhelming.” Sai's hair is plastered to his head with sweat and his face is red.
Sakura takes a cloth from her bag and drenches it with her water as she walks over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. “You need to sit down.”
Sai crouches down and lets Sakura put the wet cloth over his head and sighs in relief as the water runs down his face and neck.
“You should relax the rest of the night, you shouldn’t have been in the sun for as long as you did today. Heat exhaustion isn’t a joke, you know?” She freezes for a second before she puts her hand to his neck letting her cool chakra flow to help regulate the temperature in the area she applies it too.
As Sai’s breathing evens out she pulls back and realizes he’s fallen asleep in a crouched position. Kakashi walks over quietly and lays the brunette in a lying position under the shade.
“Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me.” Sakura smiles at him and turns away as a pain shoots up her head. She places a hand to her head but shakes it off and looks down at the ground and takes a breath.
“Maybe you should sit down too.” Kakashi says frowning, he has been watching his team work with Sakura during the travels and for the most part they have been all getting along. Not much has been happening… The heat wave they were hit with was unexpected and for most it wouldn’t be a big deal.. but there was something off. Something wasn’t right with just how hot it was.
Kakashi turns from the pinkette dimension traveler and goes over to Naruto and Sasuke who are sitting underneath some shade next to their tent. They stand up at attention.
“Listen you two… I need you guys to be on top of your game. There’s something going on and I don’t believe this heat wave is normal.” Kakashi says already feeling nauseous under the mask. Why is it so damn humid?
”Sure thing, Kashi… you think this has something to do with our mission?” Naruto asks, rubbing his neck then taking off his jacket.
Sasuke takes off his as well and places it in the tent. “I can’t remember ever being this hot, even when we went to Suna.”
“I don’t know but whatever it is just try and save your energy. I’m going to send one of the pack to Konoha to alert the Hokage. This might be global for all we know.” Kakashi turns and looks over at Tenzo and gives him a signaled nod. Once Tenzo has Sakura away he will summon Pakkun.
Tenzo nods back and looks down at Sai to check him over then over at Sakura who is staring off at Kakashi and the other boys as they are in a meeting formation. The sadness on the girls face is so obvious it hurts to look at so he decides to grab her attention.
“Sakura, we should refill the canteens now so we can rest up.”
She doesn’t respond and is still staring off and as Tenzo gets closer he realizes her eyes are glazed over and doesn’t look to be aware of him. He waves a hand in front of her startling her to jump back and pull out a kunai. She blinks back into awareness as her body moves in automation from years of experience that Tenzo knows their Sakura never had ingrained in her. She would have nicked his artery if he wasn’t fast enough just now. He frowns, this isn’t good if this is her auto response but it’s likely due to the heat.
“Oh! Haha, Tenzo… I didn’t see you there.” Sakura puts her kunai away and runs a hand through her hair and quickly throws it into a ponytail with a hair tie. “Let’s get some water…” She doesn’t spare another glance at the boys and heads off. Sakura rubs her sweaty hands trying to stop them from shaking.
“You know what way to go?” Tenzo asks following her.
“Yeah, I’ve been on this trail several times during my career. The river should be right over here.” She points ahead of her as they are going back into the sunny path with no shade but to go the way of the trees would take longer and it doesn’t matter at this point if they are in the sun or not, the humidity is still awful.
She trips over a root and Tenzo is too far to try and catch her. Sakura huffs as Tenzo asks if she’s okay and dusts off her knee and heals the bruise before it appears. They continue to move on and finally get to a wide opening from the trees to a river bed that has wide rocks and logs surrounding the bend. Sakura takes out her emergency scroll that holds spare canteens and pulls them out to fill, she hands two to Tenzo.
“Let’s get this done.” She puts the canteen in the clearest spot she can find for water after scoping out to make sure there’s no dead animals upstream.
Blond hair, cheery smile. ’Hey Sakura! You have any water?’
‘No Naruto! You dumbhead, didn’t you think to fill your canteen when we were camping at the last stop!’ Exaggerated anger.
‘I did! I just drank it already, I’m sorry! Now can I have some please! I beg you!’ Begging. Loving.
‘Fine… I swear Naruto…’ I’ll do anything for you. Stupid.
‘Hehe… Thanks Sakura! You’re the best!’ Faded sunshine and greenery everywhere.
Sakura turns around, the haze and the tiredness she feels is like she’s drowning, and when she turns around she finds Naruto pouring the water on his toad summons.
‘Wha!!! NARUTO!! I’M GONNA KILL-‘ Her scream echoes inside her head and it feels so hot and bright.
“-kura! You okay? Sakura!” She feels a wet slap against her face and she blinks several times before realizing she’s not in front of Naruto but Tenzo who is staring down at her with those dark eyes. Not her Tenzo… not her Naruto here. She takes a deep breath and nods.
“Thanks for that, sorry.” She apologizes.
“Let’s get back to the team so we can rest.”
When they get back to camp Sai is up and they are all sitting in a circle but there is no fire lit and they are eating their dried food. Kakashi tosses them both their bagged portions.
“It’s your lucky day, they packed us dried green beans and beef.” They both catch their bags. Tenzo immediately ripping into his.
“Uh what?” Sakura stares at the bag. This is new, in her dimension they always just hunted if need be or carried their own food they decided to bring. And then during the war and Danzo's reign of terror they just lived off soldier pills. Looking at this dried food she was tempted to save it for later in case. She didn't have money or any way to buy any food for this trip and had no way to get soldier pills before her trip either... She doesn't want to risk being without food when she was really hungry and right now she has no appetite. The flashback she had earlier of Naruto watering his stupid toad is enough for her, why did she have to yell at him like that. She bites her lip.
“Yeah, that’s what I said. Where’s the ramen Kashi!” Naruto whines.
Sasuke scoffs. “Idiot, it’s too hot for ramen.”
“Stop complaining, Naruto.” Sai says munching on a green bean.
“So who packed this lunch for us?” She asks after taking a deep breath.
“The Akimichi clan, they make prepackaged protein based foods that should last several years. It’s something they have been working on for a while, and it has been a big help especially for long missions and when you can’t always forage for food. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of it.” Kakashi says.
“What happened to not telling her anything?” Sasuke says and Kakashi shrugs.
Sakura ignores Sasuke and looks down at the package analyzing it. It even has the nutritional value and everything that is included in it, storage recommendations. It’s interesting to think how they came up with this idea here but never did in her dimension. The headache from before is coming back so she rubs the side of her head with acouple chakra fingers to the temple.
“We had soldier pills. It was a pill you ate and you could only limit yourself to one or two depending on how bad the situation was but it did the job. In the end we didn’t have much time to forage for foods… and-"
‘we are konoha’s tools’
“we are Konoha’s tools to be,”
‘to be used however’
“used however Danzo wants.”
‘danzo wants’
Sakura feels like the air is so tense and thick. She opens her eyes to see Team Seven staring at her each with varying expressions but she focuses on Kakashi's. Kakashi she can stand. Kakashi is her leader. Kakashi will tell her what to do.
"Stop." Kakashi commands. "Refocus Sakura."
Sakura's back straightens, "Yes, Sir."
"You are not Danzo's warrior here. Danzo is dead." Kakashi snaps out aggressively. All of them are sitting up straight now, food forgotten.
She gasps and nods a few tears leaking from the sides of her eyes. "Yes, Sir."