[Red Sands: In Search of the Scarlet Dawn]

Tiredness ate at her eyelids, even as she pored over the many tomes of precious knowledge in front of her. There was an answer in there somewhere to her predicament, she knew. She just had to find it and figure it all out. That was all she needed to do – an idea, a musing, which sounded ever so simple in her head. Undoubtedly the solution would be obvious in hindsight, and yet hindsight was a precarious thing which she didn’t have right then and there.

Nevertheless, a single demon has a single preference, and once it has made itself known, you can be certain that it will seek out its preferred kind of host, barring all other options failing.

The words of that book she had read however many days ago swam in the forefront of her mind, and Sakura could only wonder what connections her mind was subconsciously making. There was a key in it, she had long since figured. Something about the demon possessing her having a preference for living hosts was important, thought she didn’t know how. It wasn’t like she could die and then come back again. Her death would hardly solve anything, and it wasn’t like she wanted to die, what with the family she had mysteriously found there.

She wanted to learn more about the strange new energy running in strange new pathways within her. She wanted to claw her way back up to the levels of strength she had once had after a childhood of training, and a few years with the woman who had turned her into what she was right then and there. A fighter. A survivor. Idly, she wondered what her once-mentor looked like there. If she existed at all. Then she remembered what Sasuke was like there, and promptly wondered whether or not she really wanted to find out that much.

Her shoulders sunk, head plonking itself down on the open pages of the book as if it might let her absorb its information via osmosis.

She was tired. She was ever so tired. Was it too much to ask for some adjustment time? She had woken up in a strange place in a world unlike the one in the memories she had, and just as she had been getting to grips with that… Her hand clenched into a fist, tears of frustration biting at the corners of her eyes as she sat there, loose puppet strings and all. Idly, she wondered if that demon would drop by to torment her that much more that night.

Her father was gone – left the property to deal with demons encroaching on their lands. Her eldest brother was seemingly clueless. Her second eldest brother was just as clueless as the first. Her last brother was just as possessed as – if not more possessed than – her. Holy magic and that demon’s magic didn’t seem to mix well, or so she had come to understand, which supposedly made it harder for her to be possessed, though far from impossible as she had long since found out. It was probably why she had a sliver of control over herself, which soon vanished whenever she was around others. Whenever that demon decided to directly pull the strings rather than leaving those strings tied up in some manner.

None of that information helped her out of that situation though.

The best slice of information she had learnt was that the only way for a person to rid themselves of possession was to have a particular innate ability within the holy magic classification: that of an exorcist. Even then, they had to be highly trained in order to both trap the demon within their core and then expunge it through sending holy mana in a reverse flow – a single misstep of which could lead to negative mana reflux or occasionally death – through the holy gate back into the very core of where mana was produced and stored.

That wasn’t something she could do, and she was starting to understand that if she wanted to be rid of that possession, then she needed to think out of the box. Way outside of the box – of the logic of that world. She chewed on her lip, part of her wanting to throw the nearest book at the wall Certainly, it wouldn’t help her generate ideas, but it would probably make her feel a bit better than she did right then and there.

Familiar phantasmal strings tightened their grasp on her, a herald to the arrival of—

“Go to bed, sister,” Ichiro demanded, and she cranked her head around to glance at her eldest brother as he stood there, blissfully oblivious to the demon in their midst, and oh how she envied him for it. “If you are that tired, then you should sleep on the bed designed for that purpose – not the table. I have on good word from Ren that books make for terribly uncomfortable pillows.” He folded his arms, and Sakura felt herself begrudgingly climb to her feet. “Sleep is important. Breakthroughs in research and understanding come from a good night’s rest.”

Sakura blinked, glancing at him briefly, even as those puppet strings tugged her towards her bed. She wondered then if sleep really would prove to be the breakthrough she needed to figure out the situation unfolding around her.

“Goodnight, sister,” her eldest brother murmured. “Will you need any help falling asleep?”

“No,” she answered sharply, having known what the thing controlling her mouth would say at the idea of holy magic being used on her – even if only to help her get to bed.

Ichiro sighed softly. “You haven’t been looking very well recently, you know,” he said, and something like hope blazed in her heart then. “I… understand that things have been hard on you recently, with… well, everything that’s been going on, but I’m always here, if you need to talk about anything.”

Sakura closed her eyes, almost wishing that she could talk to him without that looming presence controlling her. It wasn’t a matter of wanting to speak to her brother, rather it was the fact that she couldn’t and no one had yet to be able to realise that much.

It wasn’t that her brothers were clueless, sans the possessed one, she realised with a startling clarity. It was the fact that they were all still adjusting to the new, slightly different her and they were still treading ever so lightly around her, not wanting to break her boundaries and scare her into running off. They wanted her there, she was reminded, something crystallising in her heart – a desire to end that demon and whatever schemes it hoped to accomplish.

She wasn’t the helpless little girl like she’d been on her first C-Rank mission, she mused, burying her face in her pillow, even as her brother’s weight left the bed and the lights clicked out.

Her eyes opened slowly, the nostalgia of the dream she’d had hitting home then as she lay there in her oversized bed, not quite ready for another day to begin. She still remembered her genin days with a vivid clarity, more so the C-turned-A-Rank mission which had set the ball rolling so to speak. The mission which had taught her so much that the academy had never truly prepared her for. The mission which had ultimately made her start to realise that greater strength was what she needed. Her fingers curled, hand turning into a fist which she lifted into the air to stare at .

Certainly, her punches packed quite a bit of power – yet she still had yet to reach the earth-shattering levels of strength she had been renowned for… in another life, that was. She closed her eyes again, breathing out, remembering the awe-shattering terror which had overtaken her when Zabuza had appeared, when he had started whispering to them of Larynx, Spine, Lungs, Liver, Jugular, Subclavian Artery, Kidneys, Heart. Watching her once sensei battle him had started to open her eyes to just how weak she was in the shinobi world. She remembered the way those needles had pierced his neck when Haku had arrived, fooling her into thinking that their enemy was dead—

Her thoughts ran to a halt, and she blinked, wondering why the memory of the false death state had her pausing so much.

Nevertheless, a single demon has a single preference, and once it has made itself known, you can be certain that it will seek out its preferred kind of host, barring all other options failing.

Sakura sat bolt upright, the thought striking her like lightning. The demon possessing her liked living hosts… so wouldn’t that mean it would leave her if it thought she were a corpse? She held her breath, throwing the covers from her legs moments later as she raced to the tall set of ornate drawers. “Please be here,” she murmured, fingers scrabbling to open the drawers to find the medical based supplies. They had acupuncture needles there, didn’t they? Drawer after drawer was pulled open, relief seeping through her when she hauled a thick bag out from its hiding place among other first aid supplies and revealed the needles hidden within. Needles that could pierce her skin, and target the three chakra points which ultimately induced the false death state.

When they discovered her, someone would remove the needles, wouldn’t they? Healing magic would likely be able to deal with the side-effects from that state. Those were the main concerns. Weren’t they? She chewed on her lip, part of her wanting nothing more than to plunge those needles into the back of her neck and get rid of those puppet strings binding her. Yet that was a tad impulsive, wasn’t it? Then again – it wasn’t like she could tell someone what her plan was. Otherwise it would know of her plan, and everything would fail.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” she muttered, throwing her apprehension and worries out of the window as she grabbed a hold of those three needles and carefully lined up where she needed them to sink into her skin.

Either she acted then, or she could delay and delay and never get anything done.

Certainly, she had lost most of her physical skills and was slowly regaining them through her own efforts and hard work, but something she had never lost had been her medical knowledge. Her body had changed, but her mind hadn’t, she mused, stabbing those needles into her neck.

Her face slammed into the ground with an almighty thud, part of her musing how she could certainly have planned that out better, even as she felt her heart start to slow. Her breathing became shallow, muscles slack and unresponsive to any attempt at movement, part of her feeling locked in her body as she lay there on the floor, listening silently as the heartbeat in her chest seemed to fade out. It was strange – experiencing that false death state, and it made her wonder about the effect her mana had. Certainly, she’d read about it, but being trapped in a paralysed body and only able to watch when she should have probably rightly been unconscious was something of an interesting scenario. She wondered if the reason she didn’t feel absolutely terrified was that it had been her choice that time around.

She hadn’t had a choice when she’d been possessed, and there was something so eerily freeing about choice after too long a time spent dancing as a marionette to another’s tune.

Dimly she felt something within her moving, a surging, churning sensation. Had her gag reflex worked, then she would of undoubtedly been choking and vomiting at the sensation of something swelling up from her throat. It spilt from behind her lips; a gelatinous, black substance which seeped out across the carpet leaving nary a trace of its passing.

She remembered the moment it had forced itself down her throat and possessed her originally. It brought the strangest relief to see it go as she lay there, slowly beginning to understand, perhaps, just how reckless she could be.

Yet her recklessness had paid off that time around – like her reckless decision to burst into Tsunade’s office and demand to become her apprentice had paid off ever so long ago.

She was free.

The door slammed open, and Sakura could only lie there, sprawled on the floor where she’d fallen, her face smooshed against the hard wood – and she knew that was going to leave the side of her face a bruised mess. A cost of being impulsive, it seemed. “Niece,” a familiar, demanding voice came, and she knew the minute her uncle spotted her lying there on the floor with three needles sticking out from her neck. “Ah. Well, I was just about to come and interrogate you about your peculiar behaviour as of late… I see that won’t be necessary.”

Footsteps sounded, a pair of fancy, black polished boots coming into her eyeline, and Sakura watched as Sasori knelt down beside her, dark eyes locked on the needles in her neck.

“I suppose this is all the confirmation I need to know which world your previous soul cycle was in,” he said, and her mind raced to try and figure out what that meant. “You couldn’t achieve the false death state normally since mana doesn’t have chakra points. Yet why would you inflict that upon yourself?”

Mentally, she paused at that, wondering then why her uncle knew of chakra when nobody else of that world seemed to have the slightest idea about that different energy.

“But on that topic, darling niece,” he said, carefully prying those needles out from her neck then, leaving them on the floor and plucking her limp body up. He moved over to the window then, sliding it open, and Sakura had the distinct impression that he was about to leave through a manner that most people there didn’t often use – if ever. “You’re very lucky it was me who walked in first.”