Part 1

Naruto wasn’t necessarily surprised when he woke up chained to a wall in a dingy cell. He didn’t remember how he’d gotten there, but that didn’t really matter, did it? Sasuke, Sakura, and Kakashi were there too, but none of them were awake. The fact that they were there with him made him far more scared than if he was alone. He would gladly take whatever came his way if it meant that his team was safe. 

He stared at the bars at the front of the cell. The room was barely big enough to fit them all in, he was chained to the wall by his ankle but he could still probably stick his arm through those bars. 

As he stared a feeling of dread began to creep into his mind. Then something deep inside him cracked his fear into pieces. He gasped and surging up to fill the new void of sensation was something much worse. An emotion Naruto had spent his entire short life avoiding and beating back. 

Fury had always burned a little too bright in him. It felt too eager as it simmered and roiled in his stomach every day. He didn’t like the way it made his thoughts go all hazy and hard to hold on to. He’d always fought that pit of negativity with smiles and jokes that never landed. He would push it all down and away, desperate to keep it from becoming too much. Because he knew it would be, when it did finally bubble over. 

There was no fighting it this time. It was too strong and so fast that Naruto was simply too slow and stunned to stop it. The fury rose up with a painful burn from his stomach up through his chest. It boiled and forced itself up into the back of his throat where he could feel his flesh bubbling in the heat. And it didn’t stop, never let up for a second, he couldn’t breathe. No pauses or glimpses of possible escapes. It just kept rising further and burning as it went until Naruto opened his mouth and screamed in a vain attempt to alleviate the pressure and pain. 

As he screamed he could hear something else. A growl deeper and darker than his own voice with an intensity that made his bones quake. It was monstrous and loud and more importantly familiar in a way he couldn’t describe. The shock of that allowed Naruto to swallow with a bloody throat and push the burning down once again. 

With a shaking hand and blurred vision he pulled at the edge of his shirt and jacket. The seal on his stomach was visible with neat black lines, but the individual characters themselves were subtly turning and moving, like they were trying to curl in on themselves and crawl away. The feeling of blood draining down his throat was hardly a big enough distraction for the next though to not hit him square in the chest. Something had happened on the bridge with Haku before they’d stopped the fight. Something had been unlocked and he wasn’t looking forward to finding out what it was. 

In a crushing wave, the fury came crashing back and Naruto coughed as he tried to hang on and not drown in it. Somewhere in his mind, despite the flames curling around his bones or maybe built from them, came only one succinct thought that Naruto could follow. 

Another prison to hold me? 

Naruto didn’t know much about prisons, or at least not ones with bars and locks, but he knew pain and there was plenty of it clogging up his head, most of it not his own. How he could differentiate the two sources was beyond him, though it could have something to do with how his own pain and confusion were starting to go numb as he was overwhelmed. The flames burned hotter, brighter, faster. 

He slapped his palm to the seal and wasn’t surprised to find it burning as well. He coughed up some blood and whispered to the air, “I’m sorry.” 

His eyes slipped closed and he watched flames flicker behind his eyelids. Orange and dangerous with two spots of red at the center looking out at him. Naruto, too weak to speak anymore, pushed his regrets into the fire. I didn’t mean to, he tried to convey. I’m sorry. 

Two red blotches blinked at him as Naruto gave in and faded into darkness. 

When Kakashi woke up he found his three genin surrounding him and whispering to each other. He sat up and took stock. They’d been stripped down to basics. Jackets and overshirts had been taken, sandals stripped from their feet, hitai-ates missing as well. Sakura’s hair was cut close to her scalp and Naruto’s entire orange tracksuit was gone, leaving him in black boxers and a t-shirt. Even Kakashi’s mask was absent. There were shackles around their ankles. 

For the first three days they were ignored entirely. Kakashi wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one. He spent a large portion of that time whispering to his students and teaching them of how to live through torture. How to hide information while giving enough away to keep them alive. The mental exercises to shut down pain and focus on something else. 

“There are always two goals, when it comes to situations like these,” Kakashi whispered at the end of his most recent lecture. All three genin’s eyes locked on him, leaning forward in the small space in order to hear him properly. It was an abrupt change from anything he’d witnessed in their training before. “The first is to keep the village safe, the second is to survive.” 

“But what about escaping, sensei?” Sakura asked. Her eyes were red from crying but her mouth was set with a sort of mulish determination that only the young truly had. It made his stomach twist painfully. 

“It’s unlikely. A majority of ‘escapes’ from places like this aren’t done from the inside.” 

“So the outside?” Naruto asked, a tad louder than everyone else, struggling to whisper but at least not yelling. 

“Leaf nin don’t let leaf nin go missing without a fight. Konoha will be looking for us,” Kakashi said with conviction. He was the only one who remembered how they’d gotten in their current predicament, and sharing the details now wouldn’t help anyone. Though he kept replaying his decision in his head over and over again. He couldn’t help but feel like he’d mistepped. But what other choice was there? 

Kakashi, renown s-rank leaf ninja, should have seen it coming. And in some ways he had. He knew something was off the moment they left the bridge and its now free town behind. The edges of his hard-earned and trusted instincts were rising up and baring their teeth. But there was no point in turning back.

They were alone, no one they left behind could help them, and they were a week out from Konoha. He moved his hitai-ate up to reveal his sharingan as he scanned the area around them. The move didn’t go unnoticed and the three genin under his care snapped into defensive mode. It was almost refreshing to see. 

Kakashi knew it was coming and yet no matter how strong a ninja is they could always be taken down with the right situation or the right pressures. Or even just rotten luck. When a dozen hunter nin fell from the trees to surround their group, he knew it wasn’t going to end well. 

Sasuke was the first genin to draw blood and also the first to go down. He hit the ground with a shocked expression and his hand still clenched around a bloody kunai. Sakura, distracted by Sasuke’s quick defeat, was knocked out with a precise blow to her head. Naruto lasted the longest through sheer determination and stamina. But he went down after a few strikes and Kakashi was left standing over his genin group with his sharingan spinning. 

They hadn’t killed any of the three which meant that it was a retrieval mission. 

He took in the details of the scene and calculated risks, sorted through options. They were completely surrounded but he could get away. He could even fight and probably win, though at great physical injury to himself no doubt. But Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura would be abandoned or killed either way. 

He may be trash but he wasn’t scum. 

Kakashi let his shoulders fall and closed his sharingan eye. His fate had been sealed the moment Sasuke had gone down. “Who sent you?” he asked. Naruto twitched and groaned at his feet and Kakashi had to force himself not to move. 

One of the masked hunter nin laughed and pulled a kunai from his pouch. Kakashi clocked the threat immediately but also noted the weapon itself. The handle was wrapped very carefully with a dark leather strip, the end of which was folded back on itself and weaved into the wrapping counterclockwise. Something only very expensive kunai had, custom made, and that style was something he’d only ever seen in one very specific location. A run-down shinobi market store in Konoha. 

His sharingan eye snapped open at the new information and his muscles tensed up. He took a deep breath and forced himself to focus and keep his posture relaxed but ready. No matter where the enemy came from the numbers hadn’t changed. Kakashi was still in an impossible situation. He growled and ground his teeth together hard enough to make his jaw ache. 

Six senbon were flung expertly at his neck and he effortlessly deflected them without a thought. It was a weak attack that didn’t match with the obvious skill of the attacker. It made sense when a moment later a kunai struck the dirt an inch away from Sasuke’s face. 

Three more of the hunter nin drew senbon, slowly and very visibly. 

He tensed up again. He made a decision, eyes on Naruto, then Sakura, then Sasuke. 

When the hunter nin threw their next volley Kakashi didn’t move beyond the reflexive twitch of his hand that he brutally suppressed. The pain of the needles hitting him was short and the drug on them was fast acting. His muscles locked up immediately and he fell to the ground to join his students. 

“Kakashi Hatake,” a voice spoke as several of the masked faces looked down at him. Kakashi couldn’t keep his eyes open long enough to take in any details. They closed to blackness and he could feel the rest of his body shutting down as well, dragging him down into unconsciousness. “The great copy nin, the Lightning Blade, the White Wolf, taken down by a few senbon, who would have thought?” 

It didn’t matter if a different choice would have led to a different outcome. He’d already made his and it ended with them all locked up. So he didn’t voice his doubts over any of it, these kids didn’t need all hope destroyed from the beginning. And besides, Kakashi had good friends. There was always hope when a leaf ninja’s friends were in danger. 

A couple hours after that conversation the door to their cell swung open. Two masked hunter nin stood before them looking in. “What kind of ninja are you?” Naruto asked. 

“Hunter nin,” Sakura said with a grimace. 

Kakashi leaned forward from where he was sat next to Sakura and let his sharingan eye open just slightly. Just enough for his vision to focus into crystal-like clarity. There was a smudge of something on the side of the masks. A small symbol painted onto the curve of the jaw. In the gloom it took him a moment to read it. His blood went cold. 

“You’re Root,” he said. 

“Root?” Sakura echoed. 

“Good eyes, Hatake,” one of the hunters said. “Or should I say good eye?”

Kakashi slammed his right eye shut and glared for all he was worth. Which, as the infamously deadly copy ninja, was quite a lot. The Root ninja laughed and waved the killing intent aside like it was a joke. Then they pulled out a tag and threw it into the cell. Kakashi didn’t have time to shout a warning to the other three, not that they could have done anything if he had. The tag burst into thick billowing smoke and together they coughed and choked on the clouds surrounding them. 

When Kakashi woke up again his body felt like it was trapped under tar and his right eye was wide open. His sharingan whirled sickeningly quickly in his socket but he couldn’t close his eye. All he could manage was a blink before it snapped back open again. 

Sakura was sitting on his legs and staring at him. “They’ve put something around your eye, Kakashi-sensei,” she said. 

Kakashi could feel her small body shaking violently, though her voice didn’t betray her. He reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder. The gesture was entirely unfamiliar to him and made his skin prickle with discomfort. “Report,” he said gruffly. 

“Sasuke and Naruto are gone, sensei. And there’s a seal around your eye.” 

“Where did they take them?”

She winced and fresh tears fell from her eyes to land on his shirt. “I can hear them, sensei.” 

A moment later a scream tore through the air and echoed around their stone cell. It was deafening. Sakura just hung her head and looked at Kakashi with wide scared green eyes. The screaming tapered off into a growl that faded to silence. “They’ve moved back to Naruto,” she said. 

She curled up tighter and leaned into his chest as she began to sob. He rubbed at his eye and found nothing that he could physically touch. He forced his eyelid down with his fingers but the pain was enough to nearly throw him back into unconsciousness. His hand fell away from his face as Naruto began screaming again. Naruto, the always grinning and ever so sad child of his sensei. His knuckleheaded student. 

Kakashi tried to sit up straighter but his body wouldn’t react properly and Sakura’s weight had him pinned down. The soreness of too much chakra use was familiar to him and very dangerous. “How long was I out, Sakura?” 

“Two days,” she said. 

He tried once more to close his eye through sheer will power but ended up gasping and coughing in pain. His eye and head throbbed with each cough and when he was done they began throbbing along with his heartbeat. 

Sakura’s hand came up to Kakashi’s face and she cupped her small hand gently over his eye. The darkness instantly helped soothe the ache. “Thank you, Sakura.” He moved his arms around her and held her close to his chest. Another scream made his head throb and his heart fall into his stomach. 

He’d been wary of getting a genin team but he’d admit he’d never allowed himself to really look at the ones he was given. And now he might be too late to even try. His arms tightened around the one child he could reach. 

“Have the boys come back at all?” he asked once the screams had died down again. 

She shook her head and his hopes burned away to ash. “What do we do?” she asked. 

Yet again there were no good options for him. Though this time there were no decisions to be made at all. “I don’t know, Sakura. But what did I say was the most important?” 

“Protecting the village.” 

“And?”

“Surviving.” 

“So that’s what we’ll do.” 

The next scream to echo around them was Sasuke’s. Kakashi shifted Sakura into a more comfortable position pressed to his chest and he settled his gaze on the cell door. 

Sasuke was not someone to change his mind easily or withhold his judgment. When he made a decision about someone, that was how it stayed. 

He watched Naruto scream and thrash on the metal tabletop a few meters away. He closed his eyes and admitted to himself, for the first time in the couple weeks they’d been stuck in this hell, that he’d been so very wrong. 

It had been Sasuke they’d started with at the beginning. They taunted him about his sharingan and his family. They’d threatened to break his bones and slice out his eyes. But they never did. Instead they turned to fire. Long metal pipes heated up in blue flames were laid across his skin. He screamed and they exchanged notes and ideas for patterns to melt into him. They started at his collarbone and worked down the side of his body and across his ribs. Then they moved to his shoulder and down to his wrist. Then his hip down his leg to his ankle. Until his entire right side was a complicated pattern of burnt stripes, all of them weeping fluid and tearing painfully at his sanity. 

He found it ironic actually. Naruto had spoken of the burning of his chakra, and there Sasuke was actually being burned. By the element of his clan no less. He’d once tried to use a katon jutsu on the masked bastards but his chakra was already so depleted and desperately trying to heal his extensive wounds that he’d produced nothing but a couple of ashes that fell down to add grain-sized burns alongside the rest. 

They’d laughed at him then and Naruto, the boy he’d mocked for years and labeled unworthy of his time, had snapped his teeth at them and growled. Not like a human growled, but like how a beast did. Though it had become obvious fairly early on that Naruto wasn’t entirely human. Naruto shouted and thrashed and insulted to tear the attention away from Sasuke. Over and over again, day after day, he’d kick up a ruckus until the hunters took the blond to the table instead of Sasuke. Eventually Naruto would go dull and unresponsive to the beatings, but the moment that they began to turn their interest back to Sasuke, Naruto would snap back to himself and howl until the torture resumed. 

Sasuke watched with horror and a growing warmth that burned his heart. Why did everything burn? Why did Naruto’s eyes burn when they looked at Sasuke? Would Sasuke burn away to nothing if Naruto wasn’t there?
And the question he always kept coming back around to: Why? Why did Naruto throw himself into protecting Sasuke so unequivocally? 

Naruto healed, yes. Faster than any human should, which meant he could take more of the torture without permanent effects, but it’s not like the pain was any less. In fact, the pain would be much worse for Naruto as the hunters didn’t have to hold back. 

They burned Sasuke, but they beat Naruto. Broke bones and bruised organs. Sometimes they’d slash with knives at the seal on his stomach, but mostly they stayed with causing as much blunt damage as they could and watched him heal from it. The sounds alone were horrifying. And the longer they hurt him the faster he healed. So the more they hurt him. The cycle was only gaining momentum as Sasuke was forced to watch and listen.

Naruto had once told him that he could fall back into his head to escape it. He’d mumbled about sewers and foxes in an unintelligible rant. The name Kurama kept coming back again and again. It took a while before Sasuke started to actually understand what Naruto was telling him. And by then, he’d already accepted that Naruto was something beyond comprehension. 

Naruto talked to keep himself awake and Sasuke listened and occasionally asked questions. He learned a lot about Kurama and Naruto. He’d been wrong about the guy. Naruto wasn’t an idiot he was lonely. He wasn’t pathetic, he was forgiving. He was more passionate about more things than Sasuke and most likely anyone else Sasuke would ever meet. 

But also he was an idiot and Sasuke had actually smiled more in their weeks of captivity than the months before it. He was losing his mind and Naruto was spending more and more time asleep. 

The hunter nin stopped coming for a couple of days and Sasuke was left to stew in the silence of Naruto’s slumber and wonder if anyone was ever coming back. Starvation would be a rather anticlimactic way to die after all the bullshit they lived through. 

When their captors did come back it was to grab them and drag them through the hallways to toss them into a different cell. Naruto hadn’t woken when they’d dragged him, not even when they’d smashed his head into the wall when they rounded a corner. Sasuke’s burns scraped against the floor and added a new layer of agony atop the old ones. He cringed to think of all the dirt and detritus that was getting packed into the wounds. 

Sasuke didn’t have the energy for hope, but when they stopped outside a cell where Kakashi and Sakura were curled up together inside, something flared to life in his chest. 

Sakura startled awake when the door opened. Her eyes instantly snapped open and caught on Sasuke’s. He was thrown into the cell and he managed to twist in the air and land on his left side instead of the crispy one but the air was still knocked out of him. They threw Naruto next and Sasuke tried to move to catch him but he wasn’t fast enough. Naruto slammed into the far wall and slid down to the ground with a thump. Sasuke snarled at the door and then scrambled over to Naruto’s side. 

He slipped a hand over Naruto’s and slotted their fingers together, like they’d been doing for weeks as a reminder that they weren’t alone. He positioned his body between the door and Naruto and waited. Cruel laughter was his only response and then the barred door slammed shut. 

He waited another long moment before he turned his attention back to Naruto. A quick visual sweep of the other boy revealed no new injuries. He shook the other in an attempt to wake him but got no response. 

“S-Sasuke?”

He’d nearly forgotten the other two were there as well. He slowly turned to Sakura and took his time looking her over. Her hair was gray with dirt and shorn nearly to her scalp. There were scratches along her face and bare arms but she looked mostly unbloodied. Her body looked tiny from where she was curled up on top of Kakashi’s chest. “Are you okay?” he asked. 

“We’re okay,” she replied with a nod and a broken smile. “They don’t hurt us like they do you two.” 

She shifted as if to move closer to him but her hand snapped back to where it had been covering Kakashi’s eye and she froze in place looking torn. Sasuke sighed but moved the two feet closer to bring him to her side, though he was careful of his burns. Her free hand instantly moved to his hair and then cupped the side of his face. Her fingers brushed over the deep scratches surrounding his right eye. 

“And Naruto?” Her eyes flickered over to Naruto’s slumped body. 

Sasuke closed his eyes and shook his head,” He’s alive, that’s all I really know.” 

Sakura couldn’t tear her gaze away from the two boys. They were in bad condition, Sasuke more than Naruto, though it was the blond that was covered in blood. But Naruto showed no real injuries and Sasuke’s pale skin was a canvas of red and black and a sickly gray color that some of the edges of his blisters were turning. It was sickening to even look at and when he moved closer she could smell it. The fetid scent of infection lingered under the burnt flesh. 

She wiped near her mouth where some blood stains stubbornly remained on her own skin. 

“What happened?” Sasuke asked with a lifted brow and a look at her fingers. 

She bared her teeth and gave no answer. She didn’t want to remember the taste of blood in her mouth. Didn’t want to admit to what she’d done. “They did something to Kakashi-sensei. His eye, the sharingan one…” 

She carefully lifted her hand just enough for Sasuke to see it. Kakashi shifted in his sleep and the sharingan continued to spin slowly and arthymically. The skin around the eye was surrounded by very small precise characters, arranged in a perfect circular pattern. 

“A seal,” Sasuke said as he turned to look at Naruto. Sakura’s heart jolted when she saw Naruto’s eyes flutter open. He scrubbed at them and pushed himself up into a sitting position. 

“Naruto!” Sakura exclaimed, though still barely above a whisper. 

His eyes widened and he immediately started scrambling to get closer to them. His eyes were red and he looked dangerous. Even with his clumsy movements he was putting off an aura that she’d never felt before. Well, that wasn’t quite right, was it? It was familiar, just a little bit. It felt like the bridge. 

Naruto made it to Sasuke’s side and the two leaned into each other without hesitation. Sasuke’s burnt side was kept carefully turned away and he was leaned into Naruto in a fashion that lifted as much of the wounds from the floor as possible. Naruto’s arm supported Sasuke’s back and his other arm held himself up. They looked as content as one could be in such a terrible situation. 

Sasuke showed no sign of fear or discomfort with Naruto’s darker appearance and intensity. So Sakura didn’t either. She reached out to brush her hand through his dirty hair and he gave her a wide smile that showed off enlarged canine teeth. She smiled back and admired the view of her two teammates side by side and within arms reach. “Team 7 back together again,” she said. Her eyes prickled with the feeling of oncoming tears but she forced them back, she couldn’t really afford to lose any water. They barely fed them enough to keep them alive as it was. 

“But why though?” Naruto asked. “Why put us all in the same place again after all this time?” 

“How long have we been here?” Sasuke asked. “I’ve lost track.” 

“Five weeks,” she said. “There’s a shift change twice a day.” 

“How can you tell?” Sasuke asked. 

“I can hear them talking. They’re somewhere further down the hall, the opposite direction of wherever you were.” She thought back to all the arguments she’d heard. For weeks she’d been laying in a cell and counting Kakashi’s breaths. The only thing she had to focus on was the boys’ screams and the pain in her arm from staying in one position for so long. And the conversations from down the hallway. 

Conversations that were starting to make a terrifying sort of sense. She was beginning to recognize the names used and putting the details together to form a story she didn’t like. One she could barely believe. Sensei and her had talked about it a few times in his more lucid moments. 

“No one from Konoha is going to find us,” Sakura said. Kakashi gave a low groan and his other eye opened. She quickly helped support and adjust his head so he could see Naruto and Sasuke. She could feel his heart speeding up and she hid a smile in his chest. 

Kakashi’s hand twitched toward them but didn’t make it far. He sighed and gave them a small but genuine smile that he didn’t have to exaggerate with his eyes for them to see. His canines actually looked a lot like Naruto’s she realized. 

“She’s right,” Kakashi said. “We’re on our own.” 

She looked up in time to see Naruto’s shoulders drop. His head came down on Sasuke’s shoulder and she kind of wanted to coo at them. “So we get out on our own,” Sasuke said. She admired how matter of fact he was despite the obvious hopelessness surrounding them. 

She noted that Kakashi had barely taken his eye off of Naruto since he’d woken. The blond’s eyes were starting to slip closed as he leaned further into Sasuke. “Naruto,” Kakashi said. Naruto’s eyes slowly drifted over to their sensei. “Show me your seal.” 

She blinked in confusion and opened her mouth to ask but stopped when Naruto didn’t hesitate to lift up his tattered shirt to show his abdomen. She’d never seen a seal move the way that one was. It looked broken and lost and the black lines were bordered with red painful looking skin. 

“Does that hurt?” Kakashi asked. Sakura just wanted to know what it was. 

“Yeah,” Naruto nodded and yawned. 

Kakashi didn’t speak again for a while but she could feel him thinking so she kept her mouth shut. Sometimes he needed time to get his words together. She knew that the chakra drain from his eye made his head really muddled. She had to tell him things several times before he’d remember them. They were lucky he was so lucid at the moment. 

“I have an idea,” he said eventually. “But it’s going to hurt even more, Naruto.” 

Naruto shrugged and finally lost the battle to sleep. Sasuke angled his shoulder so Naruto’s head wouldn’t fall to the side. Sakura watched Sasuke and Kakashi succumb to it as well. She let them sleep, they’d need energy for what was to come. 

She settled her head back down on Kakashi’s chest, ear just over his heart. She synced her breathing to the rhythm of his heart and allowed it to pull her into a meditative state. Then she loosened her chakra around her and listened to the voices down the hall. 

Their captors were getting lazy. Not censoring their words and forgetting to feed them. Putting them in a cell together again, whatever the reason, she vowed it would be their last mistake. 

The shifts were lightest a few hours from now. She’d wake the boys then. 

“How are you going to write the seals?” Sakura demanded with narrowed eyes as she stared Kakashi down. 

Naruto had his shirt off and was sitting at attention with Sasuke at his back helping to hold him up. “I can use blood instead of ink,” Kakashi said. “It won’t be a great conductor, but it’s better than nothing.” 

“That’s not what I meant!” she hissed. “You have no chakra to use!” 

The ache in his body wouldn’t let him forget it. Or the throbbing of his eye and head. He’d never let chakra exhaustion stop him before, and he’d gladly kill himself doing this if it gave the kids a chance. 

Sakura’s eyes went stormy with rage and he tried giving her a smile but he’s pretty sure it failed. “No,” she said. Her whole body was wired with tension but her hand on his eye remained soft and gentle. It made his determination to see the plan through solidify into something harder than diamond. “You’ll show me what to do. I have the most chakra of the three of us.” 

“You know nothing of sealing,” he protested. 

“I do,” Naruto said. 

Kakashi looked over in confusion. “Since when do you know anything about seals, Naruto?” Sakura asked. 

“Kurama’s been teaching me about our seal.” 

“Kurama?” she repeated. 

Sasuke grunted and curled his arm around Naruto to point at the seal on his stomach, “Kurama.” 

Kakashi sighed and sent a nasty mental ‘told you so’ to Sarutobi. “Well, does Kurama have anything to say about the plan then?” 

Naruto gave a toothy grin that Kakashi couldn’t picture a Naruto from six months even knowing how to make. Kakashi held back another sigh and sluggishly brought his wrist up to his mouth. Sakura’s free hand snapped out and shoved his arm back down to the floor. 

“What are you doing?” she snapped. 

“We need blood to write the seal, Sakura,” He replied with irritation. The worst part was that he couldn’t even lift his arm with her holding on to it. She was exponentially stronger than him at the moment. 

Naruto moved his own wrist up and took a huge bloody bite out of it, spitting the wad of flesh off to the side. His expression remained tired and drawn but showed no pain or even awareness of the wound at all. He held his arm out, the blood pouring out at an alarming rate. “There. Get as much as you need, but be quick, it’s going to heal soon.” Kakashi was stuck staring wide eyed at Naruto’s bloody teeth. 

Very faint orange chakra began to steam from the wound. Sasuke grunted again and it snapped Sakura out of her shock and into action. She smeared Naruto’s blood over her fingers and caught some in her palm. Then she turned to Kakashi and he tore his eyes away from Naruto with some effort. He began to quietly talk her through what she needed to do. And with a steady hand she got to work. 

Naruto didn’t know what he’d expected to happen when the seal was finished. Kakashi said it would temporarily loosen the seal so more of Kurama’s chakra could get through. 

And it did. 

And it hurt. 

He’d had nearly every bone in his body broken by now. He’d been stabbed, cut, and beaten black and blue. But the agony that suffused his body the instant that Sakura finished the last character of the seal eclipsed it all. 

Now, alongside the always present burn of Kurama’s presence inside him, there was an unbearable pressure building up. It pushed at his organs and the inside of his skin like it was trying to burrow out of his body. Bones were snapped apart and healed in seconds and he could feel things rupturing and then being immediately sewn back together. His head was a whirling tornado of Kurama’s thoughts smashing into his own and a pain that made everything hyper clear and thick like static at the same time. 

Underneath that he felt something else though. It swelled up and left him feeling like a giant. He felt strong and unstoppable and… A dark chuckle curled like smoke in his mind and Naruto bared his teeth in response. A band of burning power wrapped around his stomach and Naruto growled. He struggled to his feet, his muscles didn’t react properly but orange energy swirled through and around each limb and forced them to move to his will. Or Kurama’s. He wasn’t sure what was him and what was the fox anymore. But they shared the same goal.

He turned to the barred door. Just like that first day the sight of them made his stomach curdle in fury and he lashed out at it. The metal crumpled and went flying into the wall opposite. Naruto breathed through the anger and tried to keep some sort of awareness. 

The first three ninja that flew around the corner were killed instantaneously. Naruto having sprang forward and with newly acquired claws slashed through their throats in one movement. It was Naruto’s first kill and he looked down at the bodies and felt nothing but the burning. Two more hunters followed and Naruto slammed their bodies into the floor and shattered their spines. A few more came and Naruto slashed and hacked through them like they were paper. It was weird to be covered in blood that wasn’t his own. He wondered if any of these people at his feet were the ones that experimented on him. 

No more fodder came, but an alarm began going off somewhere above his head. He couldn’t hear it very well over the pulsing of his heart and Kurama’s growling. 

He staggered forward, unsure which way to go, and on instinct followed the path down to he and Sasuke’s cell. Each step was ungraceful and hobbling as bones and muscles ruptured and healed. He’d take one step and his ankle would buckle unnaturally causing him to stumble forward with the other leg. While the ankle reformed his femur would fall to dust and he’d catch himself on a wall with an arm that cracked in half. 

He couldn’t hear the alarm at all now. Was it still there? Were his friends trying to talk to him? The crunch and disintegrating of his body distracted him once again. He grit his teeth and yowled along with Kurama as the pain made his vision go white. He felt his teeth crumble away at the pressure and he screamed in horror and agony. 

He fell forward, still blinded, and felt something slice through his stomach as he did. He blinked and his vision swam back to him in a dizzying whirl. He was left staring at a few bone fragments on the dusty ground. The wound on his stomach began to heal and the power that had been flowing through him cut off. There was a moment where there was nothing. No feeling, no sound, no sight, just blankness. Everything stalled for a second as he breathed and looked at the bones in blank realization. Some bone, likely a rib, had exploded out and torn through the seal disrupting the connection between him and the Kyubi. 

The burn of his body roared back to life and his injuries closed up with the familiar pulling and pushing sensation. His stomach rebelled and he began to gag but he had nothing in his stomach to vomit up. The pain of the movement pulling at his healing stomach made him scream again, thankfully cutting off the dry heaving as he did. 

He curled in toward his chest and saw the seal on his stomach writhing in place. He watched the holes heal up and tried to catch his breath. 

Something cold pressed into his fingers and he blinked tiredly as he moved his head to look. Sakura was crouched next to him, eyes wide and teary, and she was pushing a kunai into his hand. His hearing began flooding back and the sound of metal hitting metal made him flinch. His eyes found the form of Sasuke, kunai in hand, fighting. His right burned arm was curled into his chest and he was fighting one handed against two of the masked ninjas that were trying to reach their group through the small hallway. Kakashi was collapsed at Sasue’s feet and kicking at the attackers’ knees with surprising strength considering the guy couldn’t even walk. 

Sakura grabbed Naruto under the arms, hands digging into his armpits as she pulled. He staggered and swayed but she didn’t let go. He clung to her and the kunai in his hand with everything he had left. Sasuke cried out after being pushed into the wall, his injured side scraping against the rough stone. Naruto’s strength began to return like a waterfall pouring into a pool. His precious people were in danger. 

He snarled like Kurama taught him and he flung himself into the fight head first. There was no finesse to the movement, but it was fast and it was unexpected. He slammed into the two attackers and all three of them hit the ground. Naruto rolled back toward Sasuke, too uncoordinated to use his legs just yet. Sasuke grabbed his arm and pulled him up. Sakura had somehow lifted Kakashi up and over her back. She was yelling at the two of them and though Naruto could hear her, he couldn’t understand her. Sasuke pulled him forward so he went with him. 

They moved through the halls as the alarm continued blaring. Each corner he expected more Root ninjas to jump out at them, but they found no one. Then the alarm cut off and they all froze in the eerie silence. His and Sasuke’s cell was just a few feet in front of them. 

“How do we get out?” Sakura shouted into the silence. 

A small manicured hand appeared between the bars of the cell Naruto was glaring at. It waved at them and then pointed down the hallway they were in, away from the cell. Away from his cell. Who was in his cell? 

Sasuke must have had the same thought because he dragged Naruto over to the door. A familiar face peered out at them with a sweet smile and Naruto laughed. The action pulled at his recovering muscles but he couldn’t have stopped if he wanted to and it was so much better than the heaving. 

Inside the cell Haku chuckled along with him. Behind Haku stood an unamused Zabuza. His arms were crossed and he glared out at them and it just made Naruto laugh harder. 

“What are you two doing here?” Sasuke asked with his own glare. 

“Apparently we garnered some attention during our fight with you,” Zabuza said. “These idiots sent a full squadron after us.” 

“They liked my ice mirrors,” Haku added. Zabuza’s entire demeanor hardened at the words. 

“We don’t have time for this,” Sakura snapped as she heaved herself and Kakashi into view. Zabuza raised a brow at the sight of them but Kakashi just weakly gestured for Naruto and Sasuke to keep moving. Sakura pushed past them and barked out, “Hurry up.” 

Sasuke kicked at the locked door and Naruto joined him in glaring at the large old fashioned lock. “Do you see a key?” Sasuke asked. He huffed and didn’t wait for a response before he spun on his heel and stomped toward the corner that Sakura had disappeared around. 

Naruto glanced the other direction when he belatedly heard what the others had already noticed. Loud running footsteps coming their way. 

“Come on, dobe!” Sasuke hissed. 

Naruto couldn't move. He looked down both sides of the hall and then back at Haku, who just gave him a small smile and motioned for him to leave. The image of Haku on that damn metal table covered in blood flashed through Naruto’s mind. His fists clenched and his right hand curled tight around the kunai he’d forgotten he was holding. He spun the knife in his fingers and blew out a breath as he slammed it down on the lock. It tinged against the heavy metal with no effect. Naruto swung again, this time aiming for the key hole. He made a small dent but no real progress. 

Sasuke was coming back to pull Naruto away. “They can figure it out themselves, Naruto. We need to go!” 

Naruto glanced at Haku again. He pulled his arm from Sasuke and braced himself properly. The shadows or approaching Root nin were playing across the wall to their right but he focused on the lock in front of him. 

He swung the kunai. Once, twice, and then with one final burst of energy a third time. The kunai slammed into the keyhole and went straight through the weak spot of the lock. It was purely accidental or lucky, but when he pulled the kunai back it fell to the ground in a twisted mess and the cell door creaked open. 

Naruto gave Haku a thumbs up, but the other boy wasn’t there anymore. A few cries of pain and surprise and Naruto jerked around to look to the right. Haku was spinning around and through six of the masked ninja and fighting with his typical grace. Sasuke pulled at Naruto again and this time he allowed himself to be moved. Zabuza passed them by, strolling as if he didn’t have a care in the world, and over to Haku. “Any idea where they keep our stuff?” the man asked. “I have a sword to collect.” 

Sasuke had pulled Naruto around the corner before he could even attempt to say he didn’t know. They hurried through the halls together to catch up to Sakura, who was moving fast for someone her size carrying an adult man. She still wasn’t moving fast though and they quickly found her. 

Naruto’s eyelids were drooping even as he pushed himself to keep moving with the group. Kurama growled and pushed more painful chakra into his system and Naruto’s red eyes blinked open a bit wider. 

Sakura was the first to see the door and she cried out in wordless victory. When they pushed through it the first thing she noticed was the forest. Then she and the boys stopped at the threshold as the view caught up to them. There were dozens of masks staring at them. They were out of the building but they weren’t through all the obstacles, not by a long shot. 

Beyond the clearing, just outside of the enemy, was the line of the forest. 

“Damn,” Sasuke muttered. His hands curled up into fists and she noted he’d lost his kunai at some point. None of them had managed to hold onto a weapon. Kakashi-sensei, the one person who could fight this many people at once, was thrown over her back and mumbling about how they should run. 

Six kunai came hurtling toward them. Sasuke caught one an inch away from her face and Naruto spun around in front of her and blocked them with his back. Her scream came out as little more than a choked gasp and she reached out for her teammate. Sasuke caught her hand and then pushed her forward and all the way out of the door. She agreed. They weren't going back. They’d never get another chance like this, even if the odds were overwhelming. 

Naruto turned to face the enemy and gave her a perfect view of his bloody back. She reached out for him again but then the five kunai popped from his skin to the ground. Steam billowed up and she watched the nearly fatal wounds heal shut in little more than a moment.
“Move, Sakura,” Sasuke said and shoved her forward. She very nearly tripped but got her feet underneath her just in time. Naruto moved to her side and she looked out at the enemy. 

“Leave me here, Sakura. Please,” Kakashi whispered in her ear. 

“No,” she bit out. She took a few experimental steps forward and the masked ninjas didn’t move to stop her, but several of them pulled out senbon. 

“Drugged,” Kakashi grunted. 

She dropped below the first wave, Sasuke right beside her. Sasuke spun in place and slid across the dirt to deflect the next wave aimed at them with the kunai he’d caught. 

Naruto fell to the ground with a thump and a gasp. He was covered in more kunai wounds and breathing heavily as he held himself up from fully collapsing with shaking arms. It would seem the senbon treatment wasn’t used for the resident jinchuriki. Sasuke and she waved away the steam coming off him that blocked their vision. 

She shuddered and cursed. The only reason they weren’t all dead was because they were being fought with non-fatal attacks. But as soon as one of their team went down it’d be over. 

“What do we do?” Naruto asked. 

“What do you think we do, dobe?” Sasuke snapped. “We fight.” 

Naruto gave a tired nod and an, “Okay.” He raised his arms and crossed his fingers together in the sign for his shadow clone jutsu. Before she could question it he’d already let his hands drop. “Alright, no clones for us.” He sighed and looked at her and Sasuke. “You guys ready?”

She eyed Sasuke’s burns and the way he held his right arm to his chest. She looked at Naruto’s listing body and raised a brow. “Are you ready?” 

His eyes flashed an even deeper red and he said, “Believe it!” 

Then he charged forward like an idiot. Sasuke cursed and followed after him, deflecting several attacks aimed at the idiot’s back. Any weapons that did hit the blond just made him twitch. 

She shook her head and took a step forward. She dropped Kakashi to the ground and picked up one of the kunai that was still covered in Naruto’s blood. It was slick and sticky and she hated how unbothered she was by it. Blood was old news at this point. She kept one hand around Kakashi’s wrist and used the other to hold the kunai up near her eyes. 

She made it two steps before she had to deflect several dozen senbon to the ground. She took another step, Kakashi dragging in the dirt behind her, and ducked under the next assault. Naruto and Sasuke were fighting off the right, distracting more than half the ninja, so she only really had to watch her left side. “Sakura,” Kakashi said at a nearly normal volume. 

“I don’t leave my friends behind, Kakashi-sensei,” she said as she dropped his wrist to spin in place and deflect several different angles of attack. She smoothly picked his arm back up and took a large stride forward. “You taught us that, right?” 

He made a low pained noise that she was reasonably sure wasn’t from a physical attack. If it was then she didn’t have the time to check on it. Three kunai thudded into the ground at her feet and she looked over just in time to see Sasuke turn back to Naruto. 

She grinned and with a small amount of chakra picked them up with the sole of her foot and flipped them straight up. She dropped Kakashi’s arm to pluck the three blades out of the air, pushed her foot back in the dirt, and spun in place as she let them slip expertly through her fingers. Two of them hit the meaty flesh of someone’s thigh and they fell to their knees. The last one sliced clearly through another’s throat. She smirked as they fell to the ground dead and ignored the phantom taste of blood in her mouth from a past shredded throat. She grabbed Kakashi again and made it forward a meter before she had to stop and slide underneath several thrown senbon and kunai. 

She glanced back at the boys to find them fighting back to back. Sasuke’s arm was still held to his chest and he was fighting with a single kunai. He was also barely keeping up. Naruto was a mess of motion and flying blood and she couldn’t tell if he was winning or losing. But the powerful feel of his chakra was flagging. 

She crouched down next to Kakashi and said, “We’re not getting out of here.” 

“You’re fast, you might,” he replied. 

A blur of movement to her side made her turn in a panic, the kunai in her hand coming up to defend. The weapon was smacked from her hand as she found herself face to face with a white mask. She dodged under a jab for her throat and slid under the attacking ninja’s legs to get behind him. She kicked out but her foot cut through nothing but air. She dropped to her knees and rolled to avoid the senbon coming at her, only to come up into a heavy punch across the jaw. Her head flew back and she smashed into the ground. 

She coughed and rolled to the side to avoid the next attack she couldn’t see but knew would be coming. She pulled herself into a crouch, shifted her weight to one leg and spun her other leg out in a low roundhouse kick. She successfully hit one shin only to find two more pairs of legs next to it. The owner of the shin stumbled away but the other two surged toward her. She jumped straight up, above their heads and kicked down as she returned to the ground. Her kick landed on the nearest shoulder but it didn’t hold any strength behind it. 

As soon as her feet touched dirt she backed up, stationing herself between the three close range combatants and Kakashi’s body. A small disturbance of air was her only warning of the next long range attack. She bent backwards and allowed gravity to pull her toward the ground in order to avoid the needles coming for her neck. 

Her arm swung out behind her to steady her balance and she used her backward momentum to flip in place and back onto her feet. An open palmed strike hit her shoulder and she narrowly avoided a kick to her knee. With things the way they were she barely had time to react nonetheless attack. Her body just couldn’t keep up. Her mind had always moved faster than her muscles but even her brain was flicking through scenarios and coming up empty. 

She had no weapons and no options. 

She didn’t have Sasuke’s reflexes and speed. She wasn’t strong like Naruto. 

She’d just watched her idiot blond teammate punch a metal door into oblivion. The orange chakra that had gathered around him had stolen all the moisture in the surrounding air and she’d felt its weight pushing her down. 

She took a deep breath and pulled on her own pitiable chakra reserve. She grimaced. But maybe… she didn’t need to obliterate metal, she only needed to break bone. 

She hardened her stance like Kakashi had taught her and swung a punch toward the guy on the left. She pushed her chakra to her hand and pulled it tight around her fingers. She sunk some into the muscle of her arm and imagined it had the same weight that Naruto had been radiating. She pushed her fist forward with all the strength she could force out of her malnourished and exhausted body. 

The impact of her hand with a masked face had two results. The first was the crunching of the mask and bone and the grotesque popping of an eyeball. The second was lancing pain up her arm. The ninja she hit slumped to the ground dead and her other two attackers paused as they looked down at their comrade. She shook her hand out and each twitch of muscle felt like a slice of a knife in her wrist. Her attackers recovered from their momentary shock. She formed another fist and aimed for the chest. 

The sound of ribs shattering was surprisingly similar to a cheekbone cracking. The pain spasmed up her arm but she kicked out and hit the chest again sending the body flying. Which left her with one body near enough to attack. 

The remaining ninja immediately backed away and pulled out a couple kunai. Sakura clocked distant movement on her left and she charged toward the guy in front of her. She dodged the slash of his kunai and slammed her shoulder into his gut. Pushing him to the left as she moved to fall with him, making sure to keep his body between her and the incoming senbon. 

Her human shield worked and when they hit the ground she rolled away and he was left in the dirt like a sack of potatoes. She gasped for breath and retreated to Kakashi’s side. She grabbed his hand and ran for the boys, making it nearly halfway there before another Root ninja blocked her way. This one didn’t bother with melee or senbon. They struck out with a kunai for her chest and she fell over backwards to dodge. She tripped over Kakashi’s body and hit the ground. All air left her body and she was stunned for just a second as she wheezed. It was enough for her enemy to lunge forward, kunai coming down at her heart faster than she could follow. 

She gasped and brought her arms up to block. The kunai sliced across her forearm and broke through her defense. Something slammed into her chest but it wasn’t sharp. She looked down in confusion. There was a hand resting on her chest, a kunai stabbed clean through the palm. She recognized the hand easily and realized Kakashi had caught the kunai through his palm and twisted at the last second so the kunai was parallel with her chest instead of impaling her. The impact still stung something fierce and she itched to look over to her sensei, but instead she kicked up to make the ninja retreat and grabbed the kunai stabbed through Kakashi’s hand. She pulled it free and rolled out from under his arm to her feet. 

The kunai handle was so soaked in blood that the next three attacks she blocked threatened to send it flying away. “Sakura!” shouted Naruto, and she didn’t think she just dropped to the dirt. A kunai aimed for her back sliced through the tip of her ear but it barely bled. She kicked out a knee cap behind her, smirking as she heard something crunch. She fell to one knee and tried to catch her breath. More ninja kept showing up and closing in on her. How many of them were there? 

A cry of pain made her head whip around to watch in horror as Sasuke fell at Naruto’s feet, and Naruto stumbled to his knees next to him. They were surrounded. Sakura, in her moment of distraction, was hit harshly between the shoulder blades by what felt like an elbow. She fell face first next to Kakashi. She flipped onto her back immediately but she was already completely hemmed in.

Her hand grasped for Kakashi’s wrist, and he whispered to her, “You did good, Sakura.” 

She smiled as tears slipped down her cheeks. A hand reached down for her and she tried to roll out of the way but she was kicked back into place by someone else. The hand gripped her by the throat and pulled her to her feet. She was forced to stand on her tiptoes as she clawed at the fingers wrapped around her neck. 

“You two!” the man strangling her shouted with a gesture at Naruto and Sasuke, “Stop! Or I’ll snap her neck.” 

Naruto looked at her wide red eyes and Sasuke was looking anywhere but her. Naruto was covered in blood as he struggled to get back to his feet. His chest was dripping red and his pants were shredded and soaked with it. She didn’t understand how he still had any left, because she was nearly positive that most of that blood was his own. 

Sasuke’s burns were scraped raw and bleeding and she wanted to scream at the pain he refused to show on his face. Her boys were bleeding and in pain and her sensei was helpless at her feet. 

“They look pretty done in, boss,” one of the ninja behind Sasuke said. Naruto, with terrible timing, fell fully from his kneeling position to the ground. Sasuke moved closer to him without having to look. 

“You’re right.” Her vision was going a little hazy around the edges as she only managed to drag in very shallow breaths. “This one,” she was shaken roughly, “has been far more of a pain than a help. She doesn’t even have any kekkei genkai anyway.” 

She heard the sound of a kunai being drawn and she renewed her struggles, but she had next to no actual strength left. “So let’s get rid of her.” 

“Sakura!” Sasuke shouted at the same time as her captor stabbed a kunai directly for her eye. Something gripped her ankle and pulled, it felt like little more than when weeds would catch in her sandals during the summer. She could feel the blood on Kakashi’s injured hand dripping down her foot. 

Blood splattered across her face and she fell to the ground. The man that had been holding her fell with her. She blinked as her vision came into focus. There was a kunai stuck hilt-deep in his throat. She reached forward and ripped the weapon out, puzzled to find the weapon twisted up and bent out of shape. 

Another body fell next to her and she startled as she looked over to it. There was no kunai this time, but rather the largest sword she’d ever seen had cut the body clean in half. She recognized that sword. 

Zabuza said, “Good news. We found Kubikiribocho.” 

“You found what?” she asked. Looking up at her savior she shrunk down a little at the size of both the man and the weapon. 

“The sword,” Haku explained. She looked toward the voice to find Haku standing just behind Naruto and Sasuke, ice mirrors already forming. “Now go.” The mirror dome closed around both him and her two teammates. 

“What?” she stuttered. The earth shook beneath her as that terrifying sword slammed into the ground just behind her. What must have been a hundred senbon slammed into the metal with little ‘tink’ sounds. “Move, little on. Take your useless sensei and get out of here.” 

“But why?” she asked, looking up once again at the giant man. 

He grunted and heaved the sword up to rest on his shoulder. “Consider us even now.” 

He turned away and stomped toward the now scrambling Root ninjas. She looked to the ice mirror cage in time to see Sasuke and Naruto stumble out from one like it was nothing but water. The sound of screams from inside the dome was muffled but still loud. 

All three of them looked at each other with wide eyes. “Let’s go!” Sasuke said after a couple beats of shocked silence. She nodded and turned to Kakashi, grabbing his arm and slinging it over her shoulder. She stood with a grunt and began plodding toward the tree line. Naruto appeared on Kakashi’s other side as Sasuke hovered behind them deflecting the occasional attack. 

Sasuke was the only one to see the bloody field that Zabuza and Haku left behind. The other three were looking at the trees.