[Red Sands: In Search of the Scarlet Dawn]

She lingered in the shadows of the treeline, swallowing thickly as she reminded herself of the task at hand: activating the distress beacon and then surviving the next twenty minutes as unscathed as possible. Easier said than done, she mused, eyeing her uncle as he stood next to her, waiting to see her off into the house before he ventured to wherever the wardstone was.

“Father’s office is up the right staircase, down the right corridor, turn left at the first intersection, and then the last doorway at the very end of that corridor, right?” Sakura quizzed, praying that she wouldn’t get lost on the way to her father’s office. That would end badly, she knew, and her life there was only just starting. She hardly wanted it to end before she had lived her life to the fullest. Before she could properly understand how that strange world had turned Sasori of the Red Sands into that strange man she called her uncle.

“Yes, and remember left wall, white scroll,” Sasori reminded pointedly, staring down at her flatly. “You were once a shinobi. You can do it.”

“And yet my chakra isn’t what it once was, and in case you forgot, the shinobi world didn’t have gelatinous demons which can rob you of your body by shoving themselves down your throat,” she hissed, glaring at the doors to her own home there. Yet home was now enemy territory, and she had a retrieval mission for a scroll.

“You’ll be fine,” Sasori grumbled, folding his arms. “Take my cloak. It will only be able to identify you by sight rather than mana, I believe – so concealing your head will give you a few more seconds at minimum.”

She took the cloak, pulling the silky black fabric over to cover her more prominent features as she mentally readied herself to sprint like her life depended on it. Probably because it did. If either of them failed, then the stakes would be raised and the danger would increase… and if she didn’t manage to signal the backup to come, then they would likely be overrun.

Her eyes narrowed. “Well then,” she mumbled. “No time like the present,” she muttered, feeling her uncle vanish from her side, and Sakura hurried towards the front door, yanking it open both as quickly and as relatively quietly as she could. No need to draw any more attention than she already would. The butler and the few maids who worked on the estate were mercifully nowhere to be found, and she wasted no time in legging it up the stairs.

Right stairs, mentally she recited the route even as she ran it, breath coming in large gasps as she sprinted headlong down the corridor, almost tripping at the sharp left turn she made. The hallways were too long, she decided then, scenery outside flashing by in the windows as she made her way towards the black doors which led to her father’s office. Her footsteps scuffed the carpet, and she almost ploughed straight into the door as it opened. Her heart leapt to her throat, relief seeping through her when she spotted the pink hair and the blue eyes so much like their father’s. “Sister?” Ichiro mumbled, stopping her with a hand on each shoulder.

“No time,” she declared, barging past him, eyes alighting on the left wall. Dread thrummed through her, heart seeming to stutter as she stared at a hook on the wall which had nothing hanging from it. “Fuck,” she muttered, because somehow she didn’t think there were spares for an emergency summons for Holy Knights.

“Sister, is everything alright?” Ichiro asked, tilting his head and blinking owlishly.

“Where is it?” she demanded.

“Where’s what?” Ichiro queried, looking exceptionally confused all of a sudden.

She raised one shaking finger to point at the empty hook on the wall. “The white scroll that’s supposed to be there!” she hissed, whisper-shouting at her brother then as panic surged through her. Her job was supposed to be a simple retrieval mission, but her information was lacking, it seemed.

Ichiro stared at the wall – at the hook – a pensive expression crossing his lips. “It shouldn’t have been moved… Nobody is allowed to do that,” he muttered, a dawning look of horror on his face. “Why—Sakura.” Blue eyes narrowed on her. “The fact you’re looking for it…”

“Uncle told me to,” she said, before she could have another Ren situation on her hands.

Blue eyes turned into flinty steel chips of ice, a glint of realisation gleaming in their frosty depths. “Sakura. Has this estate been… compromised…?” he questioned, the terror on his face giving way to something a little bit more scary and determined than that.

“Yes,” she answered succinctly, and her mind raced to figure out where that scroll could be. The demon had probably disposed of it—

“The scroll cannot be taken out of the house without an alarm going off, nor can it be destroyed by… anyone, human or other,” Ichiro informed her quickly. “We need to find it.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “We do,” she added, watching as Ichiro hurried around their father’s desk and remerged moments later with two swords. “Where would it hide it?” she muttered, pacing back and forwards ever so slightly, acutely aware that every second she wasted there was a second closer to being discovered by the demon in their midst.

“Somewhere either with more scrolls to conceal it in, or close to its nest,” Ichiro said, attaching one sword to his belt.

“So, the library,” Sakura mumbled, remembering where it had first emerged, even as she pulled her hood back up from where it had fallen. “Or… Itsuki’s bedroom,” she murmured, remembering just who it had possessed first.

“Why Itsuki…?”

“He’s… compromised,” she informed him.

“Shit,” Ichiro muttered, pinching at the bridge of his nose. “I’ll check the library, you check Itsuki’s room. I’ll show you where it is, and I’ll come back to get you either after I’ve found the scroll or determined that it’s not in the library.” His hand closed around her arm, and then they were off, hurrying through the corridors in an incredibly fast walk. She could barely remember the exact route they took through the winding hallways of the estate, mind running a mile a minute as she tried to reassure herself that things would work out.

When she had been on Team Seven, they had always found a way to make it through. She had figured a way to free herself from possession, no matter how reckless she had been. Her boys had rubbed off on her in some ways, even if she no longer could see the versions of them she’d loved and lost.

“Here,” Ichiro spoke in a low voice, stirring her from her daze, cracking the door open and putting his head in. “Itsuki’s not here,” he told her quietly, and Sakura took that as her cue to barge into the room.

It was a room as opulent as she had first found her own to be – all heavy wood furniture stained a deep, chestnut brown, walls partially lined with blue-and-gold damask print, intermixed with panelled wall of the same wood as the furniture. Large windows let enough light in to make up for the dark theme, the space large enough to fit everything in and then some. The only thing it didn’t have was a desk, unlike her own room, though Sakura supposed that meant one less place to have to search in her quest to find that blasted scroll which had gone missing.

“Go,” she hissed at her brother, hurrying over to the nearest set of drawers and pulling them open. “White scroll, white scroll,” she muttered, all but ransacking the chest of drawers and coming up empty handed. “Where would it hide it?” she whispered to herself, casting open the wardrobe and searching through there.

Clothes hung there, neat and orderly, and Sakura couldn’t quite say the same thing once she had finished rifling through the wardrobe. Yet there was still no white scroll, not even in the pockets she had frantically rifled through. She glanced around, panic growing the longer she remained there, no scroll in sight. Yet it could have been in the library, and Ichiro could be on his way back to tell her he’d found it in the library and that they had twenty minutes to survive until back up got there to exorcise whatever demon was lurking within the bounds of the Haruno Estate. Though the opposite could be just as true, and she wasn’t leaving until Ichiro returned, or until she found the scroll.

She lunged up, grabbing the top of that four-poster bedframe and pulling herself up to peer over the top of its dusty surface. She let go, having spied nothing on the top of the wardrobe the other side of the bed. Fingers pulled back the blue duvet, a quick search of the pillows revealing nothing at all, and Sakura barely resisted the urge to scream as she crouched down and peered under the bed. She blinked then, heart beating that much faster as she spotted a white scroll perched innocuously beneath that large four-poster bed. “Under the bed,” she muttered, mentally rebuking herself for not checking one of the most obvious hiding places there was.

She leant further down, having to crawl under the bed somewhat just so her fingertips could brush against that scroll. Fingers closed around it, the shadow that suddenly stretched out beneath the bed blocking her view somewhat.

Sakura blinked. Shadow?

Two feet stood in the range of her vision on the other side to her bed, and she felt a shiver roll down her spine. “Ichiro?” she tried, knowing for a fact that it wasn’t Ren standing opposite her. Fingers curled around the bottom of the bedframe, an all too familiar face coming into view. Sakura froze.

Itsuki smiled at her, dark blonde hair nearly touching the floor as he stood there, body seemingly distorted in a way which couldn’t be comfortable, his eyes neither blue nor wholly white. Two completely inky, pitch-black eyes looked at her, black veins around them stark against pale skin as the demon possessing Itsuki looked at her with her brother’s face. A smile curled at those lips, teeth baring in a mockery of a grin as it stared at her. “Oh sister,” a garbled version of her brother’s voice came, sounding far too sickly sweet. “What are you doing down there?” it asked, and Sakura only tightened her grasp on the scroll and wacked her head against the underside of the bedframe in her frantic struggle to get out of there and run.

Something cold slid around her ankles, and Sakura yelped as she found herself hauled back out from under the bed. Familiar gelatinous slime dripped from Itsuki’s arm, surging down the tendrils which had grabbed her ankles, forming a longer, larger limb which grabbed a hold of her middle with dripping finger-like digits. Her back slammed into the wall, a huff of air escaping her as she found herself pinned against the wall. The thing wearing her brother’s form strode towards her then, even as her one free hand pawed at that slimy limb, watching as whatever she tore away was swiftly repaired and replenished.

Mentally, she swore, remembering how ineffective her strikes were against that substance. Yet not everything was that gelatinous substance that time around, part of her whispered as she stared at the situation unfolding in front of her, feeling awfully detached as she watched Itsuki’s body step into striking distance. Did it have something up its sleeve, or was it underestimating her that much? Thoughts whirred behind her skull, and Sakura swallowed thickly, shifting the scroll as far away from its reach as possible. “Itsuki…” she mumbled.

“What’s the matter, sister?” Not-Itsuki asked, smiling at her still, that saccharine mocking tone still layered on thick.

“I’m really sorry about this,” she said, chakra thrumming through her leg as she looked her possessed brother dead in his pitch-black eyes.

“Come now, do you really think you can reach your brother’s conscious—”

Her leg slammed into her brother’s gut, heel digging into the mercifully solid target, shoving her brother and the demon away from her and straight into the window. Spiderwebs of fractures formed in the glass in an instant, and Sakura could only watch half-terrified that she might have just accidently killed her brother as he tumbled out of the shattered window. She stepped forwards, stopping herself a split second later as she spun on her heel and ran for the door.

Inky black slime surged up, blockading the doorway with that substance which always absorbed her blows, and Sakura felt her teeth grit together.

“Why can’t you just stop fighting and die quietly?” Itsuki’s voice came, and Sakura glanced back at the broken window, watching as spindly gunk-covered fingers pulled her brother’s injured, possessed form back onto the window ledge.

Some semblance of relief surged through her at the sight of her brother there alive, if unhealthily possessed. Then she panicked, because the demon was back and more murderous than ever. It was time she got out of there, she decided, charging towards the door, ignoring the mocking chuckle behind her. Her feet dug into the rug by the door, shifting her course at the very last minute to the unguarded stretch of wall she had been slammed into only minutes before.

Brickwork, plaster, panelling, and wallpaper gave way beneath the impact, chakra surging to the first points of impact as she dived through the wall and into the corridor in a shower of brick dust and wood chippings. Her fist was still curled around the white scroll, part of her praying that her brother was there because she had yet to master the art of moving mana in the midst of a fight – and mana was needed to send out their call for help.

Sakura wondered then what god was listening to her as she heard a familiar voice calling her name. “Sakura!” Ichiro called, eyes wide as he sprinted towards her.

Movement caught the corner of her eye, instinct making her move, even as a thin tendril of that surprisingly powerful gelatinous body slammed through the space she had occupied only moments before. It missed her by inches, stabbing into the wall opposite. Sakura swallowed, watching with wide-eyes as Ichiro hurdled over it, grabbing her and pulling her behind him.

“Ichiro?” Ren’s voice came from behind them, and Ichiro glanced behind her quickly to spy their last brother staring at them and the scene of carnage unfolding in front of them. “What’s—”

Ichiro threw the sword he was holding, grabbing the white scroll from her with his recently-freed hand, and Sakura blinked at the white light which flashed all of a sudden. It blinded her, white spots filling her vision even as she blinked rapidly to try and see once more. “Twenty minutes,” Ichiro muttered, dropping the used scroll then, drawing the sword on his belt free. “Ren. Get Sakura to safety,” he ordered, even as a familiar figure strode out of the hole she had made in the wall. Fingers dug into the wall, black eyes staring at them all like a hungry beast, and Sakura swallowed thickly.

“Sister,” Ren hissed, grabbing a hold of her shoulder and pulling her back.

“I don’t know what House you hail from,” Ichiro spoke, and Sakura found her eyes glued to her eldest brother, even as Ren started pulling her away.

“Sakura – we need to get out of—”

“But you’ll regret stealing my brother’s body,” Ichiro stated, cold as ice.

“Sister!” Ren hissed right next to her ear, and she startled at that, breaking into a run as Ren grabbed her wrist and ran towards the front of the house.

“Will Ichiro be okay?” she asked, no longer able to hear anything that was going on behind them as they ran through the corridors of their home. It was freezing, she realised numbly, breath misting in the air as the temperature rapidly dropped into something undoubtedly in the negatives. She glanced back, spying the frost spreading over the windows, eyes widening as she spotted that inky black liquid. It seeped down from the ceiling, painting the walls black, and spreading far too quickly across the floor.

Ren clicked his tongue as it all but lapped at their heels, muttering swearwords under his breath, as he pulled her around the corner, reaching the main foyer only to stop dead at the top of the stairs. “Shit,” he muttered, looking to their left and spying that same dark, gelatinous slime. It waited at the bottom of the stairs too, the foyer looking as though it were being swallowed by that darkness inch by inch.

Not for the first time, Sakura wondered just how large that demon’s body could become, even as she looked at the few surfaces still untouched – namely the foyer walls which spanned two storeys and the high ceiling above. Her eyes zeroed in on the large floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the main door below.

“Get close,” Ren barked, pulling a few slips of paper from his pockets, the ink scrawled on them beginning to glow. “I’ll make a barrier!”

Sakura shook her head, chakra rushing to all four of her limbs. “Better idea,” she said, charging into her brother and lifting him with a grunt into a princess carry. If she had been at full strength she wouldn’t have needed chakra in her arms, yet she wasn’t and she had to make do with everything she could manage right there and then. All she could do was grit her teeth and ignore the protests of her body as she leapt onto the wall, wincing as the plaster cracked beneath her footsteps, gravity trying to pull her down into the veritable sea of that black gelatinous substance which seemed to vibrate in anger.

Black liquid surged, racing up the walls in a thin coating. Chakra thrummed to her feet, a wordless yell escaping her as she jumped for the window, Ren screeching in surprise even as they ploughed through the window in a flurry of glass shards. Warmer air hit her face as they emerged outside, gravity dragging them down to the grassy ground.

They rolled as they hit the ground, mercifully avoiding the worst of the glass shards which had come along for the ride as they came to a stop in a tangle of limbs.

“Sakura,” Ren mumbled, looking at her then with wide green eyes. “What the fuck?”

“Told you,” she muttered, wincing as she untangled herself from her brother and sat back, glancing warily at the building they had just barely made it out of. “We have a demon problem, brother.”

His shoulders slumped as he pulled himself into a seated position. “I gathered that.”