[Red Sands: In Search of the Scarlet Dawn]

There was a train of disconnected thoughts running rampant through her mind as she hung there limply, her mind still trying to process exactly what was going on. Sasori knew about chakra. The rest of her family didn’t seem to know about her apparent second source of energy. Sasori also saw windows as a viable entry and exit point. She had yet to see any of her family do the same. Though technically Sasori was her family, being her uncle and all, so why the bloody hell did he know about chakra? She swallowed – that being about all she could do with the meagre senses she had regained after those needles had been unceremoniously yanked out of her neck. Though they had been pulled out with a careful precision which hadn’t seemed to damage the skin of her neck any more than it already had been… Sakura blinked, not liking the conclusions her brain was pulling even as she found herself carried outside and a good distance into the small forest closest to the mansion on the estate.

“Hold still,” her uncle said, placing her down with a surprising amount of care for who she thought that really was. “I’m not the best when it comes to Holy Magic, so you will have to patient, darling niece,” he murmured, and Sakura only felt herself become more confused. Because if that was the Sasori from her past world – or rather the Sasori of that world who remembered his past life in her own previous life’s cycle – then wasn’t he supposed to hate her guts? Perplexed, she could only stare at him, watching as a familiar glowing light lit his palms up.

The stiffness in her muscles dissipated, a soft sigh escaping her as she lay there, propped up against a craggy tree trunk she could feel pressing into her spine as the numbness receded. “Whadafuck?” the garble of words escaped her as soon as she felt her voice box, her uncle frowning as he moved one glowing hand to her throat and all the muscles around that area.

“Care to repeat that again?” Sasori asked, and Sakura could only swallow and laugh somewhat hysterically, even as she properly regained control over her limbs and pressed herself up against the tree behind her as if it could absorb her and hide her away from the suddenly rather intimidating uncle in front of her.

“I, uh, don’t suppose you, well, um, experienced Negative Mana Reflux by any chance?” she questioned, the short burst of laughter escaping her then sounding infinitely too high-pitched to be anything other than uncomfortable.

A huff of laughter escaped him, and her uncle sat back ever so slightly. “I am the Prince of Suna, you know – at least I would hope those idiot brothers of yours would have the grace to inform you of your importance and where your bloodline comes from.” He folded his arms, sighing again. “I had several half-brothers, all of whom were vying for the king’s crown, and they were all too happy to attempt to murder me for a better shot at the throne. Naturally, they were all quite unsuccessful.”

Sakura paused for a moment, wondering if that was a yes, a no, or a I’m not telling. “So is that a yes or a no for the Negative Mana Reflux?” she queried, mouth seeming to have a mind of its own as she continued talking to the uncle who remembered his death – that she had caused – in the world before that one.

Sasori sighed like he was in pain. “That was a yes, you little twit,” he said, rubbing at his brow as his eyebrows drew together in a frown.

“And you remember me killing you?” she asked, part of her apparently having chosen to throw caution to the wind as she lay there, slowly overcoming the tingling in her muscles, wincing as the pins and needles sensations started. Though given it had taken Zabuza a good week or so to recover, she was probably doing very well. The perks of having mana and holy magic, it seemed. “Bam, wham, death, you know…” she said, trailing off as she waved her aching fist half-heartedly.

“That… is an incredibly ineloquent way to put it, but yes,” Sasori remarked, pinching the bridge of his nose in what could only be exasperation. “I remember my death, the same way you undoubtedly remember your own… who got you?” he asked, and Sakura paused then, freezing as she remembered the squeal of tyres and brakes.

“That… that doesn’t matter,” she muttered, irritation flushing through her at the memory of just how pathetically she’d died.

“Hm,” Sasori hummed, side-eyeing her curiously. “So either traumatically or embarrassingly, or perhaps both. Though I suppose it’s unlikely you’ll get over it any time soon. Most people don’t tend to be as logically orientated as I,” he said, sitting back on his heels then, still crouched in front of her, and Sakura wondered whether she should expect to be murdered anytime soon.

“Logical? Is that what we’re calling an obsession with immortality these days?” she muttered, freezing moments later as she realised her mouth was completely ignoring her survival instinct and going off on a tangent.

Yet rather than murdering her or otherwise snapping at her as she thought the old Sasori would have, the Sasori in front of her only smiled. It was a soft, gentle, utterly human thing so removed from the porcelain visage of his puppet self that it made her thoughts screech to a halt. “I have lived in this world for nigh on fifty years – which I’m told is not even half of a mage’s expected lifetime. I regained my previous cycle’s life memories at twelve… That’s almost forty years I’ve had all these memories whilst living in this strange, slightly more peaceful world,” he murmured. “If there’s one thing I learnt, it’s that time changes people when they’re in a strange environment… and the people here around us who didn’t exist – to me in the same capacity, that is – in our previous world.”

“So, uh, to get things straight,” Sakura began, peering at her uncle. “You’re not, um, planning on murdering me anytime soon? For, you know, killing you in our last soul cycle, or however they put it here?”

One red brow rose in question. “Now why would I do something like that?” he asked, looking perplexed then as he reached out, pinching her cheek between his thumb and forefinger. “I found something precious in this life… someone who was always there for me, always telling me that things weren’t bad for her when really they were. She was sweet… sweeter than I deserved, and my one goal for this life was to ensure that she could be happy.”

Sakura blinked, her brow furrowing. “Was?” she echoed, that being the one thing her brain picked up on amidst the confusion swirling within her mind as she stared at that distorted Sasori in front of her – the one who was a mere shade of the enemy she had once thought she had known. Then again, she had never truly ‘known’ him as such, only what Chiyo had told her.

“I am your uncle, darling niece. Your mother was my younger sister in this lifetime – something I was utterly oblivious to until you grew into your features just a bit. Yet that hardly changes the fact that my sister’s dying wish for me was to protect her family as best I could. And you are her precious, youngest – and only – daughter who she longed to watch grow up. Though…” he trailed off, a frown crinkling at his brow as he stared at her and she wondered if he saw her mother in her then. “Though that was something she never quite managed, and so the duty falls to me.”

A hand ruffled in her hair, and Sakura rubbed at her pinched cheek as it stung ever so slightly. “I… see,” she mumbled, struggling to get her head around the fact that Sasori only saw her as his niece.

“I highly doubt that, but I do believe we’ve gone just a bit off topic,” he said, and at her confused look he sighed deeply. “You do remember why I dragged you out into the forest, do you not?” he questioned, one finely shaped red eyebrow curving into an arc. “Chakra point paralysis – False Death State, as it was more commonly known – and you still having chakra points is something we’ll need to discuss at a later point.”

“You mean you don’t have chakra still?”

A finger flicked her on the cheek. “Focus,” Sasori reminded. “Why were you intending to fake your own death?”

“Oh,” she mumbled. “Oh no.” She grabbed her uncle by the shoulders. “There’s a demon in the house,” she explained frantically. “And I know for a fact because I think it’s a high level one and it’s been possessing me and Itsuki. It prefers living hosts, so—”

“So you went to the extreme of faking your death to expel a demon?” her uncle tilted his head, hand on his chin as he considered what she had said. “A demon, hm? That would certainly explain your strange behaviour… and the fact that you’re aware of your possession is due to you being naturally inclined for holy magic. The only thing which doesn’t add up is the fact that I know your father checks the wards of the Haruno Estate meticulously, and keeping demons out is one of those wards many purposes. So, the question here is why the wards targeting demons – or perhaps the wardstone in its entirety – went down? And how did your father and elder brother – the wardstone’s main keepers – not notice?”

“I honestly have no, uh, experience with wards… my memories of this world… are scrambled, or maybe gone for good – I don’t know,” she murmured, scratching at her head then.

“I know the wards were last checked a few weeks ago before your arrival home, going by the calendar in your father’s office, which begs the question of through what method the wards were weakened by. The usual method would be to send a demonic object or something corrupted with—” Dark eyes flickered onto her, and Sakura only blinked as she spotted Sasori’s teeth grind together, an expression of pure, undilute rage crossing his face. His hands twitched, muscles in them tensing, turning them into clawed digits. “It would appear, that I might have to go and investigate your school after all,” he muttered, and Sakura felt a shiver run down her spine – along with the thought that if Sasori went to the school, then someone would wind up dead. By poison, probably, she mused, swallowing thickly at the killing intent she could almost feel radiating from her uncle in waves.

“Why… are you so upset?”

“When this demon in the house – when it possessed you, did you feel any pain?” Sasori asked, a look of impending knowing on his face as he stared at her.

Sakura cast her mind back. “No. Not really,” she said, thinking on how it had been more discomfort as it had forced its way down her throat that time.

“I see,” he muttered, a grimace twisting his expression into something vehemently displeased. “It would seem I failed your mother…”

“You’re confusing me,” she said, a frown marring her own face as she stared right back at him. “What does my pain have anything to do with this?”

Sasori sighed – a long, deep thing, and his fingers attempted to smooth the wrinkles from his brow. “Because natural holy magic users are the antithesis of demons. It’s why you retain your consciousness and some level of awareness while being possessed.” He closed his eyes. “It also means that when a demon possesses you, it is incredibly painful. The most painful experience of a lifetime, or so I’ve been told.”

“But it wasn’t painful for me,” Sakura murmured. “Am I not a natural-born holy mage or something?”

“Oh, you are a natural-born holy mage – that I can tell you for a fact,” he said, shoulders sinking then. “But it is only the first case of possession which causes the intense pain for a holy mage – the time when that first demon reverses the cycle of mana through your body and carves its own place for itself within your core. It’s also incredibly likely for the holy mage to die in the process of this possession, or for their consciousness to be wholly subsumed during the process rather than simply being suppressed. The fact that you’re still alive… well, I suspect your body might have a rather rare and interesting constitution, darling niece. Though heading to the Holy Lands and getting tested there would be the only way to safely check that matter…”

“So… what you’re trying to say…” Words failed her, and she bit her lip, wondering what exactly she was supposed to say to that.

“I’m saying that you were once possessed before you set foot on the property,” he said. “How you expelled the demon previously, I do not know. Yet unfortunately I don’t quite think this is the most pressing of our issues…”

“No,” Sakura said, shaking her head, shoving the idea that her possession had something to do with that weird room which kept cropping up in her nightmares. “It’s not. The demon on the estate is,” she clarified, hands curling into fists at the thought of how her strength had first faltered against that demon. “That’s what we need to deal with.”

“I am keyed into the wardstone, so I can access it – and that is going to be the first place I need to check to ascertain just how bad the situation is. The wardstone’s main keepers should have felt an abnormality with the ward system they’re linked to through mana, and the fact they haven’t…”

“What does that mean?” she asked, knowing then that it was probably the most she was learning about wards and whatever exactly wardstones were in that instance.

“I don’t like this,” Sasori muttered, his face grim as he eyed the forest they were hidden within – hopefully away and out of sight of the demon. “The wards failing… your father being summoned away at this exact time… the fact that no one has noticed what can only be a high-level demon on the estate… the matter of what’s happened to you… It’s like the Kuramas all over again… and I have the strangest of feelings that this didn’t just coincidentally happen, you must understand,” he murmured, and Sakura swallowed thickly at that.

“You’re saying… that this is part of someone’s plan? Someone is plotting against… me, and my family?” she questioned, feeling her hands curl into fists, arms shaking at the thought that… that she had been tortured and possessed by a demon before, and someone had intentionally made that happen.

“I do not want to jump to conclusions, but yes – that is what it looks like from my perspective,” he explained. “As for what we need to do, well. At this point in time, I think we might have to take some drastic action,” Sasori said, eyes darting in the direction of the house. “If that demon has already possessed you, and probably at least one other of your brothers… Time is of the essence, and as much as I would love to go into the house, I think it would be best if I checked the wardstone and you went to your father’s office.”

“You want me to go into a house with a demon which knows of my existence – and the minute it realises I’m alive, it’s going to come after me to either possess me again or kill me,” she stated, feeling her heart beating frantically in her chest at the thought.

Sasori chewed on his lip. “The demon. You saw it, yes?” She nodded. “What did it look like? Solid form, or gelatinous?”

“Gelatinous,” Sakura answered. “It’s body seemed… liquid in nature.” She rubbed her throat at that, remembering the way it had forced itself within her – overpowering her and subsuming her control of her body. A familiar anger stirred its head at the memory of how weak that made her feel.

“Then it’s likely of the Controller-Manipulator Class, and they never operate alone,” he said, expression the grimmest she had seen yet. “It’s vital I secure the wardstone, because if that falls out of our control, then whatever demons are waiting at the boundary of the estate will come pouring in with the intent of devouring everything and everyone within this estate,” he explained. “It’s also vital that you reach your father’s office and pulse your mana through the white scroll hanging up on the hook – left wall as you enter.”

“And what will that do?”

“Send a distress beacon directly to the Holy Knight Division of the Holy Lands, informing them that the Haruno Estate is in distress… and then they will assemble a taskforce of Holy Knights – and hopefully a Saintess – and then activate a transportation sigil which will bring them here.”

“And then we’re saved?”

“Essentially,” Sasori said, but the expression on his face told her otherwise. “The only issue is that there’s an average response of twenty minutes from the activation of the distress beacon to the arrival of the Holy Knights. If we can manage to survive that period, then yes, we’re saved.”

She squinted at him. “Something tells me those twenty minutes won’t be particularly easy to survive.”

Sasori smiled thinly. “And you’d be correct.”