The Summoning
The slight purple glow in that ringed eye of his was the only warning she got – before the spectral form was right in front of her, hand buried in her chest. It hurt. Only half of the pain was physical though. Sasuke had callously stabbed her, as though to kill her, and even if it was only a genjutsu it felt far too real. He’d already tried to kill her once before, though admittedly she had been out to kill him too. She closed her eyes soon after, heart aching as she slumped to the ground none too gently, succumbing to the effects of the vastly overpowered genjutsu cast on her.
Maybe, had she woken sooner she might have seen the white markings light up underneath her in a fashion so similar to the seals she and Naruto had poured over in the libraries upon discovering his heritage. Maybe she would have been that much more enthusiastic about finding a way back to the world which had left her so empty and broken-hearted after everything that particular dimension had thrown her way. But she hadn’t.
Instead, when she opened her eyes it was to something so vastly different than what she remembered.
There was an actual ceiling above her head. Sakura blinked, eyes flicking up to the gloriously high ceiling. It wasn’t the roof of a tent, and it didn’t leak and spill water onto her while she slept. It was solid wood, and seemingly dotted with floating balls of light to her eyes. That was the first clue something was very very wrong, because there were no buildings for miles where they had clashed with Madara and Obito.
Stiffening, she pushed herself to a seated position, verdant eyes scanning every inch of the room, from the markings carved into the large granite tiles beneath her to the people dressed in strange, unfamiliar clothing. Hoods were drawn over their heads, casting their faces in shadow as they fussed over something. The occasional glance and horrified whisper was directed her way every now and then, and Sakura frowned at their attitudes. They didn’t seem like ordinary kidnappers. In fact, they didn’t seem like people capable of kidnapping her in the first place.
Movement in the other corner of her eye had her spinning around to face the approaching figure. She was tall, horribly so, and Sakura stood on shaky legs if only to avoid a crick in the neck from staring upwards for too long – well, to lessen it, in any case.
“Welcome,” she spoke, and Sakura felt her eyes narrow as she spotted the pointed ears spiking out from underneath long brown locks. Was it a clan trait? She tilted her head, hand slipping into her pack to curl around the handle of a kunai. “Please be at ease.”
Sakura visibly relaxed but didn’t let her guard down in the slightest, gathering her chakra to her hands instead – just in case she needed to punch something and run. It seemed as though her arrival had been expected, given the calm welcoming party, though she wasn’t too sure she’d like the answers about why. “Where exactly am I?” she asked, confusion knotting at her brow as she glanced around the strange, oddly archaic-feeling room.
“You’ve been summoned, miss…?” the woman trailed off, staring at her enquiringly.
“Sakura,” she said, pushing herself to her feet, cursing herself for her almost reflexive answer. There wasn’t any malevolence in the air as far as she could tell, but that didn’t mean these strange people meant her no harm. She had been kidnapped as far as she could tell, but how, why, or where she had wound up were all a complete mystery to her.
“Ah. Sakura,” she murmured, testing the name on her tongue as though it were foreign to her. “I am Senju Kaida. A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” she continued, and Sakura blinked dumbly. Senju? That made no sense whatsoever. Tsunade was the last Senju and she had spoken with her shishou enough to be certain of that fact.
“You haven’t answered my question – where the hell am I?” she asked again, nervousness pooling in her gut as she took in the style of clothing the other woman wore. “What’s going on?” Something wasn’t right.
The woman – Kaida, her mind corrected – frowned then, glancing over at the hooded figures still fussing over something in the corner of the room. “Your guardians should have told you about the possibilities of being summoned when you agreed to have the acceptance mark placed – it’s what allowed us to summon you in the first place.”
Sakura blinked, confusion plastered very visibly over her face as she tried to get her head around that information.
“Ebizo!” Kaida called, turning away from Sakura then to face an elderly gentleman whose face was hidden under the deep blue hood of his robe. “What is the meaning of this?” She strode towards him, occasionally glanceing back at her as they spoke. “She has no idea about summoning or the acceptance mark… did you make a mistake with the summons? She’s meant to be a mage from the Fifth World!”
“Mage?” Sakura echoed dumbly, trying to get a handle on why she had been summoned as they had put it. She was a shinobi through and through, not a type of mage summons.
“Ah,” the old man mumbled. “Seems as though we have a problem here, don’t we?”
“You think?” Kaida muttered, running a hand through her hair. “She’s definitely not from the Fifth World. What of her Mana Circuits? Can you sense any?”
Ebizo shook his head. “It’s why we’ve been fussing here… something went wrong in that ceremony just now, which has wound up with our… guest here being the one to answer the call instead of the intended recipient.”
“Do you know which world she’s from?”
Ebizo shook his head. “Likely unknown, given by the amount of mana drained.”
Kaida sighed, deeper that time, hurrying back towards her. “You have… my apologies for the summoning which has taken place,” she said, gesturing to one of the doors at the other end of the hall. “Would you mind accompanying me to a quieter place? It seems we have some things we need to discuss.”
Sakura could feel the headache brewing.