twenty-eight
Naruto dragged his feet behind the Sannin, glaring out at the scenery as it slowly passed by. He’d grabbed his stuff and immediately been forced out the Capital, Jiraiya stating that they needed to stay on the move. Naruto didn’t necessarily disagree with him but he couldn’t help the instinct to do exactly the opposite of whatever the old man told him to do. Naruto did not like people who thought they had any unearned authority over him and he liked it even less when they tried to order him around.
The Kyūbi hadn’t been a card he thought of playing before. Normally, he liked to spend his time imagining the Tailed Beast did not exist. He’d heard rumblings at the back of his mind but he had become very good at ignoring them. It had not been until the very real risk of Jiraiya dragging him back to Konoha did Naruto realise how far he was willing to go. He didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to unleash something like that on the very few people he actually liked in the village. His time away from Konoha had impacted him more than he’d expected it to and the threats had spilled out.
They’d been through several villages and Naruto was starting to get an idea of the man. He was stubborn, childish and enjoyed riling people up. He acted dumber and weaker than he was and always chose which ever option was the most over-the-top or dramatic. If Naruto hadn’t seen for himself how strong the man was, he wouldn’t have been able to take him seriously. The more he saw the man interact with other people though the more Naruto saw that was the goal of the behaviour.
One thing about him that was definitely not an act was that Jiraiya was a massive pervert. He’d caught the man sneaking off to one of the women’s bathhouses after ordering Naruto to stay at the inn and he’d taken the opportunity to get the hell out of there. Jiraiya had caught him on the outskirts and it was the most genuinely annoyed he’d seen the man so far. The Sannin had proceeded to go on a rant about ‘research’ and ‘not appreciating beauty’ and ‘having much to learn’. Naruto didn’t get it. He’d never had any interest in people like that.
It did mean that while Naruto was stuck with the Sannin, every escape attempt thwarted and having to finally accept he was not going anywhere, he had an avenue for revenge. If Jiraiya insisted on ordering Naruto around and dragging him places against his will, he was going to make it as inconvenient as humanly possible for the man; maybe if he annoyed him enough, he would just abandon Naruto to his fate…or take him back to Konoha but Naruto was beyond caring. He’d already lost the freedom he’d had, even if he was still outside of the village. Jiraiya loomed over him like a fucking buzzkill and every time Naruto wanted to go explore or go to a particular village the man overruled him, even if he wasn’t trying to escape or be difficult.
Jiraiya hadn’t managed to get near a bathhouse since that first village and Naruto was feeling pretty proud of himself. The tactics Jiraiya used to keep him in one place long enough for him to peek at the bathhouses had been getting more and more extreme and Naruto was honestly enjoying the chance to practice escaping the bonds. It felt like the first proper training since he’d left the Land of Waves although he was sure it wasn’t Jiraiya’s intention.
“Hurry it up, brat.”
Naruto slowed his footsteps even further.
“Seriously?”
Naruto sneered at the man. Jiraiya’s annoyed expression had become very familiar by this point and Naruto wondered how much more the man could stand. He had already lasted longer than anyone else who had experienced Naruto’s particular brand of rebellion.
“What is the point of this?” Jiraiya threw his hands up in frustration, stopping in the middle of the dirt road and whirling around to face Naruto. “I’m doing you a favour, you damned brat. I haven’t taken you back to Konoha and I’ve stopped you from being snatched up by the Akatsuki. You could learn to be a little more grateful and lot less of a little shit.”
Naruto stopped, scowling. This, this was the problem. Jiraiya kept telling him how grateful he should be and how great he was for taking Naruto on as a student and he was sick of it. He didn’t choose any of this. If he was going to choose anyone to be stuck with it would be Gai-sensei or Sasuke; even Kakashi or gods forbid Neji would be better than this guy, at least he could kick Neji’s ass when he annoyed him.
He’d tried to ask Naruto a bunch of questions about his life back in Konoha and what led to his defection. It had taken about a week for him to finally get the message that Naruto wasn’t going to tell him shit. He hadn’t earned a single thing from Naruto and the combination of silent treatment and insults had finally managed to make their way through the man’s thick skull enough for him to stop with the interrogation. He didn’t know why he thought that Naruto owed him anything but he was not having it.
“Whatever, Ero Sennin,” he snapped, the nickname expressing how little Naruto respected or cared about his damn opinion.
“I told you to stop calling me that!”
“Boo hoo.”
Jiraiya’s face twisted unpleasantly.
“How the fuck a demon like you came from Minato and Kushina I’ll never fucking know,” the Sannin said to himself, but Naruto heard. Jiraiya spoke a bit louder. “What happened back in Konoha, huh? Why are you like this?”
Naruto threw the bastard a middle finger, stuck on the ‘demon’ comment. The village had used it a lot in reference to the Kyūbi but it had become a way to describe him, as if he and the Tailed Beast were one and the same. Naruto knew Jiraiya used it in reference to his attitude towards the man but it brought up old anger and hurt he’d wanted to leave back in Konoha.
“What a shame they got themselves killed so we can’t ask them,” Naruto’s words dripped with poison, the insincerity palpable. “They were too busy being pathetic to save themselves.”
Jiraiya’s face clouded over and Naruto knew he’d hit the man’s weak spot. For some reason, the man was attached to the idea of the Yondaime and his wife, reacting badly whenever Naruto badmouthed them or even suggested anything vaguely negative about them. He saved it for the times that his usual tactics fell through, as a last resort. It never failed to land.
“Do not talk about them.”
Naruto shoved his hands in his pockets, staring down the man’s furious gaze.
“Why do you even care?” Naruto asked, not really looking for an answer. “They’re dead. They don’t care.”
“Have some damn respect for the dead,” Jiraiya snapped, turning around to stomp down the dirt road, Naruto slowly starting to follow. “You owe them everything.”
“I owe them alright,” Naruto growled.
He owed them for the shit he put up with from the village and the unfair treatment from the Hokage and the misery he felt every second he spent within the village walls.
“We’ll reach the next town by nightfall,” Jiraiya’s voice was clipped.
Naruto didn’t answer.
Jiraiya sat the bar and downed the sake placed in front of him. He felt like he’d aged a decade in the past few weeks. His godson was a nightmare given flesh and he was no closer to figuring out why.
Naruto was vicious, vindictive, petty, disrespectful and had awful temper. Any attempt Jiraiya made to try to get to know him, to figure out how they got there, was met with unyielding resistance. The brat would sooner bite off his own tongue than give Jiraiya even a scrap of personal information.
The brat was mean. He took any and all opportunities to annoy Jiraiya and it was really starting to grate on him now. He hadn’t been able to do any research since picking the brat up and it was itching at him and that was just the tip of the iceberg. The stupid nickname, the futile escape attempts, the insults, the open disrespect, the comments on Minato and Kushina; it was a lot. Jiraiya was a seasoned shinobi and it would take more than some mean-spirited words to truly affect him enough for it to change anything, but it was frustrating. Naruto had made it his personal mission to make Jiraiya as miserable as he was and he hated to admit it, but it was working.
What had gone so wrong with his godson? What happened while he wasn’t there?
He had sent a toad to Sarutobi-sensei for answers but there had been no reply yet. He knew his teacher would be busy with the Chunin Exams right now so the delay was to be expected.
He downed the next cup of sake, checking on Naruto’s chakra signature. He was still in the room and there were no clones that he could detect around the village; that had been a fun way to discover his godson’s proficiency with Kage Bunshin. He hadn’t been able to get an accurate gauge of Naruto’s abilities since they hadn’t had a proper training session yet; maybe that would calm the brat down and get him to see that Jiraiya was on his side. He had been able to see glimpses of it. He was reluctantly impressed that the brat kept wiggling out of every restraint he could put on him when he tried to take a precious moment for his research. He still wasn’t sure how the brat had gotten out of the last seal but if wasn’t as if he could ask him. Naruto would just insult him and his sealing.
He had to remember Naruto was just a child. He was an adult in shinobi terms but he was only twelve. He was lashing out and while Jiraiya didn’t know why, it was in line with the immaturity and short-sightedness he could remember from his own youth. The brat would come around…if Jiraiya didn’t kill him first.
He held up a hand, ordering another sake. He had to figure something out before they headed out tomorrow morning. Things could not keep going like this. Jiraiya did want to help his godson becoming stronger but they couldn’t do anything while they were at odds like this. He had to figure out a way to break through to the kid. He could teach him the Rasengan? Surely the kid wouldn’t be able to turn down learning a super powerful jutsu.
His thoughts were interrupted by the puff of smoke appearing on the counter of the bar. Jiraiya grinned at the toad, taking the scroll in her hands and thanking her. It was about time Sarutobi-sensei replied; maybe this would have something to help him with the brat. He unrolled the scroll and scanned the document…
…Sarutobi-sensei?…
…the parchment crinkled under his white knuckled grip. He dumped money for sake on the counter and turned towards their inn, intent on finding the kid and getting the hell out of there.
It couldn’t be true. Sarutobi-sensei was fine and Konoha was fine and everything would be fine. They had to get back to Konoha. He didn’t care what the brat had to say about it; Jiraiya was no longer humouring him. He didn’t care if he had to knock the little shit out. Sarutobi-sensei and Konoha needed them. The scroll had mentioned they hadn’t been able to reach Tsunade-hime; there was a lot of wounded and they needed her. Dammit, he might need to drag her back himself at some point.
He just hoped that the attack wasn’t as bad as they made it sound. Konoha was strong. Not even a Tailed Beast could keep them down. Oto and Suna may have caught them off guard, but Konoha was strong. They had to be fine.
Sakura shoved her hair back from where it had escaped her ponytail. She knew she was adding more dirt but it would hardly make a difference; she’d been covered in a layer of dirt and grime long before she’d started helping with the recovery efforts.
It had all happened so fast. She hadn’t been at the stadium, the epicentre of the main attack. She hadn’t been able to stomach watching Ino and the rest of her academy classmates’ jump so far ahead of her while her own career fell apart so she had gone to a quiet training ground on her own.
Naruto left and then Kakashi-sensei tells her that she’s being transferred to another team and then she finds out Sasuke also left the village; that had been a kick in the gut. Both her teammates had abandoned the village and she hadn’t known, hadn’t been able to even pick up a hint about their plans to do so. Another reason she’d found herself alone in the training ground was to escape the gossip about the Uchiha, all the whispers that Naruto had corrupted him and tempted him away. She hated the staring from everyone else; most of the time she couldn’t tell if it was pity or accusing or if they thought she was next.
She had tried so hard, trained so hard, after joining Team Seven and she was proud of the progress she’d made, even if no one else had been. She felt strong for the first time in her life and it hurt that the people she wanted to see it the most were the people who looked right through her.
Naruto had always been very up-front on his feelings so Sakura couldn’t hold it against him but she had so wanted him to acknowledge her. The rose-coloured lenses she had for Sasuke had been shattered a long time ago. She couldn’t believe her younger self now; she couldn’t blame Sasuke for not liking her back. Sakura couldn’t say she liked herself in hindsight. Kakashi-sensei…his heart had never been in it. Their team hadn’t fit together from the start and now they were in the aftermath, it was pretty clear how they’d gotten to this point. Still, they had been her team. They would always be her genin team, no matter what other team she landed in.
She had been broken from her daily spiral on the state of her team by explosions and by the time she looked in the direction of the village, the smoke was already rising. She’d run back as fast as she could but everything had already started by then.
She’d had to be told about the events in and around the stadium later since she’d never gotten close and it had sounded like a nightmare. Suna had unleashed a massive sand beast that was responsible for most of the property damage Konoha had suffered. She’d seen the sandy blob in the distance at some points but she’d been too busy fighting for her life at the time to think more on it.
She’d first arrived at the village to see the bodies.
She hadn’t seen dead bodies before.
She’d always thought that they would look like they were sleeping but they really didn’t. They were too still and their cheeks too hollow and their skin too pale. She’d seen the chunin around Konoha, usually talking to the body lying close by. The blood still dripped from his slashed throat and his brown eyes stared back at Sakura, glassy and empty and they didn’t even flinch when a fly landed right on the eyeball. Sakura hadn’t been able to keep her stomach contents, heaving for several minutes as she saw the man behind her closed eyelids. Looking back, she’d been lucky not to be attacked at that moment; she would have died quickly.
She’d run out of bile and pulled herself together slowly, looking out at the increasing amount of smoke that covered the village. She could hear the clash of kunai and the yelling and the crunching and splashing that she was absolutely not going to think about right now and her feet moved before she could think, running to the closest sound. She’d come to a fight between Konoha and a shinobi from another village. They had a musical note on their hitai-ate and Sakura had recalled the mention of a relatively new village, Oto, who had participated in the Chunin Exams.
Why were they attacking Konoha?
The pair noticed her and it was long enough for the Konoha nin to take the advantage. Sakura watched with wide eyes as the chunin stuck a kunai deep into the Oto nin’s eye, the enemy falling to the ground with a wet thump.
“You a genin?”
Sakura’s voice caught in her throat but she managed a nod. The chunin was covered in dirt and blood and other stains she couldn’t identify right now and she knew that this is what happened as a kunoichi but holy shit.
“You weren’t at the stadium with the rest of them,” the chunin said mostly to herself, the red triangles on her cheeks marking her as an Inuzuka. She couldn’t see the dogs that would normally accompany the clan member. “Look, the enemy is Suna and Oto. It’s kill on sight for any of them. You understanding me?”
Sakura quickly nodded.
“Stick with me,” the chunin ordered. “I can’t send you off on your own as a genin but I need you to pull your weight, okay? I say jump, you jump, got it?”
“Yes,” Sakura finally found her voice. “I…okay.”
“What’s your name?”
“Sakura.”
“I’m Hana. The academy has been covered but we need to go bolster the defences around the hospital. If you see any injured, let me know so we can take them with us. You know basic first aid?”
Sakura nodded again, following after Hana as she set off.
She didn’t know how long she had Hana had fought together in the end. It all became a blur and if anyone had asked Sakura to recall any details she would have had nothing to say. It was fight after fight and she knew that she never would have survived if she hadn’t been training as hard as she had. The faces of the villagers she felt no pulse for didn’t sink in and the ones who were still breathing they didn’t stick around to remember, just handing them to the closest medic nin.
She took her first life that day. It was a teen not much older than her, an awful sneer on his face. Three Oto nin had gotten the jump on her and Hana. The chunin was managing two of them, leaving Sakura with this guy. She was pretty sure he had underestimated her, whether it was her age, her rank, her gender, she would never know. She could only be grateful he did when she finally managed to sink her kunai into his chest, the blade becoming stuck and dragging her to the ground with him. The breath had been knocked from her lungs and it had taken another two attempts to yank the kunai from his chest, the wet sound sickening. She had learned not to lose any kunai if she could help it. She’d turned to see Hana looking approvingly back at her, the other two Oto nin dead on the ground. Her cheek had throbbed and Sakura was pretty sure half her body was a massive bruise but she couldn’t stop.
She took more lives that day but it didn’t affect her like the first. She’d seen too many bodies to ever be bothered by something like that again.
She didn’t know how many hours had passed when the fighting became far and few between. She and Hana were able to spend more time digging shinobi and civilians from the rubble, Hana’s dogs appearing to guard them. Hana had said after that they’d been sent to guard over a preschool group nearby and when an Inuzuka jounin had finally found them, he’d let the Haimaru brothers go back to Hana. It certainly sped up the search.
Sakura couldn’t say at what point the attack was deemed as over. She was pretty sure it still wasn’t. She hadn’t seen a living Oto or Suna nin in hours by this point and she’d fully moved on to recovery efforts now.
Hana had forced her to have a quick check-up and meal at the hospital before they’d headed back out. It had been long enough to find out that Kiba, who turned out to be Hana’s little brother, hadn’t survived the stadium attack. Shino, his teammate, had passed as well and she’d managed to find out Ino did survive but was admitted to hospital with grave injuries. Hana had left to find her clan members in the wake of the news about her brother and Sakura had been picked up by another chunin organising the recovery efforts. She’d been paired with Shikamaru, the Nara injured but well enough to help dig people out of the rubble. She didn’t know what to say to him. They had never spoken back when they’d been classmates and she didn’t know what to say to him now.
Konoha was devastated. Half the buildings in the village were in ruins, most of the civilian casualties a result of the building collapses. Sakura didn’t think things would ever be normal again. She dreaded the final body count.
All her worries and anger about her team seemed so small in comparison. Naruto and Sasuke had abandoned the village but she hadn’t. She still loved Konoha and she was a proud member of this village. She hated that this had happened and she hated even more that there was nothing she could have done to help more, not at her current skill level.
It was a quiet moment with Shikamaru that helped her realise her path forward.
“I’m sorry about Ino,” she’d told him as they shared a water bottle, sitting on a pile of rocks that used to be a café. “I hope she pulls through. Chouji too.”
“I know you’re friends with Ino,” Shikamaru had answered quietly, all traces of the usual nonchalance and laziness she remembered from the academy gone. “She missed you at the stadium but I guess that was for the best.”
Sakura looked back out to the shinobi guiding limping civilians away from what used to the market.
“I hate this,” she whispered. “I hate I couldn’t stop them.”
“We’re just genin,” Shikamaru shrugged, taking another swig of water. “How much could we have done?”
“We could do more,” she answered, knowing it in her heart to be true. “We could do so much more but we need to get stronger.”
Shikamaru was silent for a moment.
“I’m sorry about your team.”
“That’s different,” she scoffed. “They abandoned Konoha. They weren’t here to help.”
“They left you,” Shikamaru continued. “It can’t be easy being the one left behind.”
“Well, I’m just going to have to become the strongest in the entire damn village and beat their asses when I see them next,” Sakura vowed. “I’ll become strong enough that something like this can’t ever happen again. People should be safe and I don’t ever want to drag bodies out of their own homes again.”
She wasn’t sure where the declaration came from but she felt it settle in her heart. She meant it. She would become strong and no one would ever look down on her again and she would be able to protect the village.
“I’ve been slacking.”
She looked over to Shikamaru.
“I’ve been doing the bare minimum,” the confession felt raw, Shikamaru’s face twisted in an expression Sakura had never seen from him before. “I just wanted to skate by, be an ordinary chunin, live an ordinary life where I didn’t have to try or work hard or go out of my way. I beat the genjutsu at the stadium but then lay there doing nothing, hoping it would all fix itself without me…and now I have probably lost my teammates. I don’t even know if my parents are okay and I don’t know how many of my clan are dead.”
Sakura hadn’t had the time or space to wonder about her own parents. They were civilians so they couldn’t defend themselves. She also knew, from being around the fighting and the hospital, that she probably wouldn’t be able to track them down herself. She would have to go look at the lists when they finished the search. She hated that she couldn’t even bring herself to be upset; she was just empty.
“Then do something about it,” she told him, his dark eyes looking over at her. “I was the weakest on my team and Naruto let me know it. I’ve been trying to change that and I am nowhere close but one thing I learned from him is that moping around and self-pity isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
She would always be grateful to him for that, as much as she was angry too.
“So we get stronger,” Shikamaru nodded, something settling in his eyes. “We build a future where something like this never happens again; a future where people have time to just watch the clouds without worry.”
“A future where we can fight anyone who tries to hurt the village,” Sakura agreed. “A future where everyone feels safe and happy and no one has a reason to leave.”
The promise settled between the pair of them and Sakura didn’t know how they would do it, but they would. She hoped Ino and Chouji recovered and the rest of her classmates unaccounted for turned up safe, so they could all work together towards this future. She could do it on her own, but she was tired of fighting by herself. As horrifying as this battle had been, it had shown her what it was like to really work with people and be part of a real team. It made her experience as part of Team Seven even more pathetic.
Sakura looked over the ruins of her village.
She would never let this happen again.