Reborn

Chapter One

The Fall

SAKURA Haruno is panicking. Shivering from the jolts of fear and the crawling misty cold that prickles across her sweaty skin. The looming killing intent their enemies weaponize over them hovers thickly over the bridge. Sakura shivers, feeling hopelessly outclassed as she unconsciously cracks her ghost white knuckles that are painfully clenched around her kunai. The action brings focus to the uncontrolled trembling, shredding the illusion of militant professionalism to pieces. Frenzied verdant eyes dart around, frantically noticing the rapidly disappearing bridge in front of Tazuna and her. Mist had never been so terrifying until this moment as it rapidly crawls towards them, condensing on her skin as a sick sheen.

Tazunas’ deep, uneven breaths do nothing to ground her, it only feeds her mounting panic. She doesn’t want to die, Sakura wrestles emotionally with her own fears as the battles in front of her wrack up in intensity. This was not a battle meant for Genin, and Sakura feels hopelessly outclassed. Pushing back the hot tears that burn at the back of her throat, Sakura desires to be back home, where she would be safe and sound. She wants to be in bed, she wants to be with her parents, she wants-

“Sasuke!” Naruto screams, his voice hoarse with anger. Sakura's stomach drops as worry floods her system making her unbearably hot, but she can’t peel her eyes away from Kakashi-sensei who is in a death match against Zabuza. Their wild discard of weapons whistle in the air past them, alighting her nerves with wrecking paranoia at the possibility of being hit by one of their weapons. She cannot allow herself to be killed by the offhand discard of kunai, not when she has been charged with protecting the client. This was the one thing she could do, and Sakura would not allow herself to fail at this. Trembling alongside Tazunas heavy breathing, the sour stench of alcohol from his sweat begins to mingle with the heavy air around them. 

“Don’t worry,” Sakura tries to reassure Tazuna, unwilling to turn her back to the battles that have unraveled before them, “I’ll protect you.” Her voice breaks, allowing the fear to seep into her usually boisterous tone. It’s a terrible front, and Tazuna picks up on it immediately as Sakura can hear him start his prayer to the gods of the sea. She would normally feel rankled by such a clear dismissal of her abilities to perform, as she was the top graduate along with Sasuke, but even Sakura knows that this is not a normal situation by any means. 

Witnessing Kakashi unleashing a fury of hell-hounds eagerly tearing into Zabuza's flesh only reaffirms that thought. In turn, Zabuza begins his own defensive attack as Sakura feels herself begin to inch backwards in preparation for the jutsu he is summoning. Zabuza wastes no time summoning a monstrous wave to rip them off, and Sakura feels a flicker of raw anxiety at the usually calm element. In Zabuza's hands, water becomes violence, as waves of bloodied water ebb and flow over the bridge, soaking her exposed feet with the saltwater as it returns back to the river beneath them. 

“You’ll protect me from that?” Tazuna chokes out as Sakura's body almost folds under the killing intent that permeates the bridge. Lingering traces of disbelief stomp on her wavering pride. Could she even shield Tazuna if Zabuza was to come at her?

Run, her inner voice trembles, you cannot do this. Sakura grits her teeth at the insecurities that resurface, and decides to spitefully stay. Sakura must prove to herself that she can stick this out. Continuing to look at the ferocious death match, she opts to say nothing, unable to bring forth words that could bring her reassurance. I’m going to die here, Sakura thought blankly, as if it were a fact.

 How would Naruto or Sasuke be able to do it? Sakura questions, finding herself falling short, the answer eluding her as the question festers. Sakura hadn’t seen Sasuke or Naruto since the ambush, and with how quiet they are, it only adds to the uneasiness. What could have happened while she was standing on the fringe of the battlefield? Sakura mentally calculates her options: to stay or abandon the mission. She knows she cannot survive this. Not if Sasuke couldn’t. She double grips her shaking kunai. 

The world is then painted in her favorite color: red. 

Kakashi and Zabuza freeze in the presence of a terrible catalyst of death and fire unleashed upon the poor soul that had opened it. The bridge violently shakes, its structures crumpling under the heavy pressure, a deep groan of metal cuts through the tense air. Sakura hears the violent shattering of mirrors and the rough declaration from Zabuza. 

“Is he a fucking jinchūriki?” Zabuza hisses out, blocking his eyes from the shockwaves that rock the bridge. Kakashi releases a string of curses in response, already moving through rapid hand signs. What’s a jinchūriki? Sakura bewilderedly thinks as the mist begins to whip by her. Her thoughts fall silent when a guttural snarl pulls all the attention to Naruto. His happy face is warped from the glow of blazing red eyes and demonic teeth. Peeling skin reveals raw, agitated flesh as his nails and teeth grow sharp, glistening bone emerging from his small mouth. But that wasn’t what caused Sakura to despair. 

It was the fox. 

The demon she had heard from terrible night time stories, a monster that only brought destruction and death to all those who came across it. The demon who had plagued Konoha: the Kyuubi. It was horrific to witness an unholy mirage of a laughing, devilish fox with protruding malice forming from Naruto's body, the unholy glow of red painted over the bridge, causing the sky to turn orange as stifling heat flooded the domain. Her lungs burned with every scolding hot breath, the shockwaves of power blasting out from Naruto seared her skin. A bubbling cauldron of hell-fire that had been tipped over and poured out onto the strained bridge as the shockwaves made it difficult to see past what was happening in front of her. 

Unable to overcome the waves of power coming from Naruto, Sakura feels her kunai slip from her slimy grasp. His presence had emanated death, only leaving behind a power that inspired dread. That can’t be Naruto, Sakura struggles through her blanketed fear, legs barely able to keep her standing. That’s a demon. 

She hears the faint trickle of urine coming from Tazuna, as the wild howling of a demonic looking boy charges with finality towards Haku. Tazuna caves, finally hitting the floor as he begins to beg death for mercy and forgiveness in the face of an unfolding disaster. Sakura feels something click into place for her.

Oppressive heat still sears underneath her skin in a way that burns, but urgency springs forth. Training preparation from the Academy shocks Sakura out of her spiral, and Sakura decides to cut her losses. They cannot stay here any longer. There is nothing she can do, it is futile to stay. A cold pragmatic train of thought ceases her inaction, pushing her into moving boldly. Sakura's feet begin to inch back but duty hollers at her stay. She is breaking the code, but Sakura wants to live. She doesn’t want to die yet. 

The mist quickly falls back in, as the world reflects scorched earth with the unnatural glow of red painting over the mist obscuring her vision.  Unable to forget the horrific scene as it is burned into her eyelids, Sakura takes her chances. They need to leave right now.  

“Get up.” Sakura hisses behind clenched teeth as a trickle of sweat rolls down her face. Tazuna is frozen in shock, unable to get up from his knees. Annoyance and desperation cut through her dying professionalism. “Get up right now, we cannot waste time.” Angrily gripping his shoulder with all her strength, Sakura holds back the urge to shake him. Tazuna aggressively blinks away the fog that had settled over him. 

“Move.” Sakura snarls, in a voice unlike her own. Tazuna stumbles to his feet as Sakura refraines herself from helping him up. Her jellified limbs were useless from the threat of death at their front door. They had already wasted precious seconds of time to retreat. Turning around to look for any weapons that could kill either of them, Sakura sees the brief outlines of Zabuza and Kakashi. 

“Shit.”A curse slips out of her bitten lips, “they are already here.” Sakura’s hands jerkily go towards her kunai pouch to retrieve her last sharpened weapon as the mist begins to untangle itself from the bridge. Tazuna goes stiff from the scene they are unknowingly privy to. The wind pierced through the hold Zabuza had only to show to them both how Kakashi-sensei obliterated the heart of the beautiful hunter ninja. Traces of eerie shrieks of wild lightning rapidly cooked the raw, bleeding insides of the boy named Haku, showcasing the powerfulness of her sensei’s arsenal. Haku had been deemed a prodigy by Kakashi-sensei, and Kakashi-sensei had killed him as easily as a fly. Sakura knows she should feel horrible at the violent display of death in front of her, but she just feels numb. 

She needs to leave right now. 

Urgently moving back, while pushing Tabuza behind her, the smell of burnt, cooked meat wafts relentlessly towards her. The air turns thick with tension as Sakura is unable to tear her eyes away from her first scene of death. Gaunt with dread, Sakura can’t help but note how their corpse still moves from electric shocks even after passing away instantly. Even after her sensei retreats his hand from their open chest, smoothly like butter.

Suddenly, the aspect of her own death becomes too real. This is too out of her league, she couldn’t even walk on water yet! It couldn’t get any worse than this, she hysterically thinks. Her skin goes cold at the thought, the kiss of her steel kunai doing nothing to sooth her frayed nerves as the final battle begins to loom over all of them. 

It is at this moment, the shinobi world decides to teach her a cruel yet simple lesson: it can always get worse. With Haku’s death, the mist further unravels enough for her to spot Sasuke limply crumpled in a pathetic position. He is too still, too quiet. Nothing at all like the proud boy he is, and that's enough to throw everything out the window. 

In a moment of irrationality, Sakura feels her body move to him despite leaving her post. She abandons her station without thought as cold air freezes her lungs and dries out her mouth, as she pants through her desperate dash towards Sasuke's frozen body. Ungracefully falling to her knees, her heavy breathes are all she can comprehend as snow quietly falls onto the bridge. The world freezes alongside her as she shakily reaches out to the deathly still boy she has grown to love since she was a young child. The sudden drop in temperature pulls her focus to the glinting gleam of shinobi issued steel that sticks out of Sasuke’s neck, a choker of rods that looked displaced on a face that was inhumanly peaceful. Sasuke is covered in snowflakes, steel and blood when Sakura feels herself become slowly untethered from reality. 

This is a dream, this isn’t real. Sasuke was strong.

Descenting into sorrow, Sakura pulls Sasuke’s body towards her chest, not noticing the army forming before them. Sasuke’s cooling stiff body rests in her shaking arms as tears fall down her blotched face. Sakura wipes her tears that fall onto his unblemished face, focused on preserving all the saintly features that she had once dreamed of holding in her hands. His face is stiff in her cradled hands and oddly heavy, its center of gravity difficult to grip as she tries to shield them from the world that continues to plunge them into a cold hell. This was not how she had wanted their first moment to be like. 

Sasuke looked so peaceful, an expression she had never noticed on his face before. It almost felt wrong to disturb it, but Sakura couldn’t let him go. “Wake up.” Sakura softly whispers, using her long hair as a curtain to spare the world from her begging. Her hand burns as the cold creeps into her bones as she softly rakes it across his ebony hair as she chants, “Come on Sasuke, wake up.” 

Minutes pass by with no response, her throat closes up under the pressure of tears being pushed back as she softly begs, “please, if you wake up, I promise you that I’ll never be annoying again.”She can’t help but release a little hysterical laugh as soon as she said that, “you always did think I was annoying, didn’t you? I’m sorry for that, but if you get up and show the world how amazing I know you are, I won’t bother you anymore. So c’mon Sasuke, get up!” 

Desperation almost makes her scream out those last words, getting garbled on the way out as Sakura begins to shake. Sasuke’s face continues to remain peaceful, as the needles that stick out of his neck stay. Silver dully gleams in the glow of red and orange as the battle continues. The reality is staring her in the face, yet Sakura cannot bear to see it. Everything she thought she knew is crumbling down around her as she dissociatively thinks how small Sasuke is in her arms. How childlike he looks when his guard is down. 

It isn’t until someone screams her name (she isn’t sure who, her head is stuffed with cotton, hell is snowing-) Sakura looks up to see the hordes of ugly bandits with rotting teeth throw themselves into the frey, soon flooding the bridge's cobblestones with blood and viscera. It doesn’t take long after for Gato to get thrown off the bridge, but Sakura doesn’t focus on that. 

Not when Sasuke continues to coldly rest in her arms filled with needles. Sakura wants to remove them, but if there was a chance of him being alive, then she should wait until reinforcements come.

What reinforcements? It’s already too late, her inner voice notes. Sakura doesn’t give a damn about the mission anymore, all she cares about is the boy in her arms. She tries to shift her hold on him, attempting to move Sasuke away from the bridge and back to the forest. 

That's when the bandits notice her.

Move, the pragmatic part of herself orders. Sakura struggles to drop Sasuke's body onto the floor, standing up apishly to defend herself. Rummaging frantically through her pack, Sakura pulls out the few exploding tags she has left and a sole, dull kunai. Her fumbling hand ties an exploding tag to her kunai and lets her reflexes do the rest. She isn’t prepared for the damage it causes, or the horrible deaths, as it explodes. The screams momentarily distract her from the greasy bandit who begins to throw back his sword. 

Move! Her inner-self screams. 

Sakura snaps out of it just in time to hear the familiar sound of whistling parting the air. Raggedly throwing her body out of its way, she feels relief flooding her system from the close call until a wet shick from forged metal and flesh embrace each other. The possibility of her death snaps Sakura back into the bloodied warzone that she is in the midst of. 

Hearing the dull thud ringing out from behind her, Sakura hesitates to look over, afraid of what she might see. Crouched stiffly on the stones that bite into her exposed skin, the world slows down for her to fully acknowledge. Fluttering ashes swirl lonesomely in the wind, burnt cloth from strangers that are put down like flies as they storm forward with reckless abandon. Quick sprays of blood jut out into terrible strings; wide arcs dancing until hitting the wet stones sloppily. 

Sakura takes into stock the first battlefield she has ever been in and can’t help but think this is hell. The tremors of remnant jutsu vigorously shake the half-built bridge as the rampant waters that flow beneath them call out hungry for corpses. Loud war cries fade soundlessly into one another as ill-apprehension makes her hesitate to see what happened to her abandoned post. She doesn’t want to turn around to face what she might see but forces herself to, her heart picking up in pace to thunder in her ears. Slowly turning, Sakura is faced to stare at Tazuna gazing at her, sword in his chest as blood spills over onto his clothing.

 Without a doubt, it's a fatal wound. Her expression drops at the sight of it. Tazunas' face breaks out into bleak understanding. Her bright eyes cannot help but see the rage flickering in his dying brown ones aimed at her.   

She had caused the mission to fail. She had abandoned the mission, she had left Tazuna to die. Sakura sways on her feet from the epiphany. She is the reason the mission failed, that meant this was all for nothing! Sasuke was unresponsive (he’s dead Sakura, you have to accept-), Tazuna would never be able to finish the bridge, a demon was on the loose and Naruto had gone off the rails. Swimming in her overwhelming thoughts, Sakura doesn’t see the man pummeling into her from a ninjutsu attack that she should have catched. 

The force brutality hits her, sweeping her off her dainty feet; the screaming and clanging of metals rampaging in the background as the air whoshes out of her lungs. Oh, Sakura softly thinks, stunned, this is my punishment. Her mind disconnects as she watches herself go over the low railings of the hastily built bridge, the wet cold air biting into her as she feels herself begin to drop. 

It's a quiet affair. 

Her life begins to flash before her eyes as she falls towards the unforgiving currents of the angry river, staring up blankly into the orange tinged skies. Time slows down just before she hits the water, and Sakura can’t help but think: those who break the rules are scum but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum… Am I scum? 

Before she can contemplate her question, Sakura slams into the violent whirlpools of the river. Opening her mouth in a soundless scream as her bones break upon impact as she sinks into the dark depths of the basin.

☁☁

HIS boots crunch into the wet mess of eroded sand and unleveled rocks that litter across the uneven landscape. His sole eye is viciously throbbing, splitting his skull in two from his abuse of the sharingan. Tobi knows that Zetsu won’t follow him here, it has nothing to do with the mission. Sometimes he just got like this. Tobi was a wandering ghost, a dead man walking along a river drowning in his heavy thoughts. It had taken a painful, gut-wrenching amount of  years to finally hover on the precipice of his plan. For peace, for Rin. 

His eye flares in pain, a low hiss escaping his lips. His gloved hand takes off his mask and for once in a long time, his face is revealed to the world (to no one; they are all dead). He wanders aimlessly in a country that is a prime example of how the world is wrong, Tobi steps past the starved children and dead parents hanging on wooden beams as the wind makes them sway. The grip on his mask tightens, lessons and memories entangling themselves within each other until he doesn't remember which is which. 

There were no sounds of birds here in this decaying dystopia (a part of him snarls at this weakness he carries), just the crunching of sand under his boots to ground him. He is in an open space, no caves in sight, yet Tobi still doesn’t feel free. Tobi cannot be free from the shackles of his destiny, not when the one he had loved most is decaying in the ground with no one to know her name. No one to remember but him.  

The waters lull him into a contemplative state. Tobi pauses and looks into his shadowy reflection, his face now one of a jaded man. His thoughts always go back to her. 

(sometimes he wishes he could forget)

He doesn’t know how long he stares into the water, lost in the past, until a quiet splash makes him stand attentive. He slips his mask back on and checks his surroundings, it is then that he stumbles across a girl. A strangled gasp leaves him, his persona cracking around the seams as he stares into the pale face of a ghost who haunts him. 

(its Rin, the boyish voice covetly whispers) 

One moment Tobi is on the riverbed and the next he is fishing for a girl who has the face of his most beloved. He lugs her limp body back to safety, pushes his warped lips onto her blue ones and forces air down her throat. 

He repeats until doe eyes flap open and water erupts from her mouth, he is breath taken by her similarly shaped eyes. Her limp hair darkened enough to believe that it could be brown rather than mud and grime. 

The ghost of a girl looks at him, Rin's face weakly acknowledging him. (he never had the chance to hold her even when her blank blank eyes still wouldn’t see him) 

“Who…” Rins ghosts rasps, breathes are uneven, “are you?” 

His sharingan spinsandspinsandspins.

“My name is Uchiha Obito.”