The Quest
Morning came quietly, the eerie silence of everything around her making things seem different to the day before. Sunlight shone in through the white curtains, reminding her that she ought to have drawn the darker red curtains as well. Why did they have two sets of curtains when one would do the job? Sakura laughed at the random thought. It was so much less crazy than the others which continued to swirl around in her head. How many days had it been since she had been summoned to that crazy, unfamiliar world? She had lost track, buried in her research and mourning as it was. She missed her home, the familiarity which had once surrounded her like a safety blanket – that same safety blanket which had been ripped away from her then and there.
She felt so terribly lost, like she was a freshwater fish which had been suddenly dumped into the sea, and it felt uncannily like the situation was survive or die. Or stay in that tiny room and block out the strange world in a way which seemed worse than simply dying. At least if she died she might reclaim some familiarity. But that was a rather big if.
A knock at the door startled her out of her stupor, and she called, “Coming!” Hesitantly, she hurried over to the door, peering through the eye hole to see who was on the other side. It was a nifty little thing which rather soothed some of her shinobi ways – what with the ability to see who was outside before opening the door. A must have, Sakura decided, for when one was snatched away from their very world itself and didn’t quite know who to trust.
Kaida smiled at her as she opened the door, and Sakura tore her gaze away from those pointed ears, focusing instead on her face. She didn’t want any more reminders she had fallen – or perhaps, more aptly, been dragged – into a world of myth and legend. “Good morning,” she said pleasantly, and Sakura nodded in response, because she wasn’t too sure what the lady wanted with her. She knew by then where she had to venture whenever she wanted food, and everything else she could find in her room, what with its ensuite.
“How can I help you?” Sakura asked, not stepping even an inch out of her room as she stared at the woman warily. Kaida seemed to take no offence, not that she really could, given it was a fault on her people’s side which had led to her being dragged into that foreign world.
“The preparations for this quarter’s Quest are beginning,” she said smoothly, face perfectly blank, expression unreadable in a way which wasn’t quite human. It unnerved Sakura and set her on edge. That was just part of the reason why she wasn’t particularly keen to interact with her or any of the others she had seen from afar. There had been someone with a lizard-like head, and another covered in scales. Often, she had resulted to consulting her books about the many strange and fantastical things she had seen since coming there. Part of her still couldn’t quite believe it – it was as though she had her head stuck in the clouds, caught in some sort of fantastical dream. Yet she wanted to go home to that suddenly rather grey and plain village. Because familiarity was better than fantastical strangeness.
“The Quest?” Sakura echoed, a frown marring her brow as she stood there, restless in front of everything strange and unnatural to her.
“Ah, that’s right, you wouldn’t know,” she murmured, and irritation curled in Sakura’s belly like a fire dragon’s flaming breath. “The Quest is something all… newcomers to this world undergo, though it would be entirely optional to you – whether you wish to spend the rest of your natural life here in this room, in these halls, or whether you would wish to venture out and find yourself a place in this world,” Kaida explained, and Sakura’s eyes narrowed, suspicion and fear curling in her gut. She didn’t particularly like the sound of any of that. “It is the reason many are summoned here once ever twenty-five years.”
“So you didn’t randomly decide to summon a bunch of people to this world… there’s a reason?” she spoke, mocking scepticism lining her every word, the unspoken question there of why? Why had they chosen to summon people from other worlds? Why had they created the technique which had been the reason for her coming there, ripped away from everything she had loved and cared for. They had been the ones to come up with the creation of otherworldly summoning, but there had never been any information in any of the books she had read as to why. Part of her half expected to be called a hero and made to fight some force of evil. That was how those stories written by civilians usually went. She resisted the overwhelming urge to laugh. What point in her life had she gotten to so that she was comparing her situation to that of a fictional book’s?
“Of course,” Kaida said, either not offended by her tone, or so practiced in schooling her expression that Sakura couldn’t tell. Given how elves were essentially unaging, according to her big book of information, Sakura would bet on the latter. “We summon you, because otherwise we would die out… After years of figuring everything out, all clans came to an agreement to summon fresh blood to integrate into the clans, since otherwise our numbers would fall perilously low and we would die out.”
Sakura blinked, taking a moment for that information to soak in, before something fierce and hot curled in her belly. “You summoned us here to make us… have children?” she mumbled, voice barely above a whisper as it shook.
Kaida sighed. “No,” she said, closing her eyes then. “We just needed to introduce fresh bloodlines within clans – there are other ways to make you more akin to the clan you join,” she explained as if that made things a whole lot damned better. It didn’t. “Though, I would like to remind you, that ordinarily everything about this would have been explained before there was an acceptance mark placed. We don’t usually bring anyone here against their will.”
“Except me,” Sakura snorted, something akin to a sob welling up in her chest. “So, you’re telling me, my choices are either to rot away in this room until I die, or to become part of one of these clans and help repopulate them? What kind of options are those?”
“That is… not the way I would have phrased it, but essentially yes – though rest assured no one will force you to do anything against your own will,” Kaida said, looking annoyingly calm despite the panic racing around inside Sakura because what in the Pure Lands was up with those options for her future?
“And of course that makes things so much better,” Sakura muttered bitterly, because she was lost, alone, and confused in a strange world whose rules she had yet to figure out. And the only way she would likely figure out those rules would be to ‘become part’ of one of the many, terrifying clans there were out there.
“If you have any questions, or if you would like to inform me of your decision, then please—”
Sakura huffed. “I’ll join one of your clans,” she said, because really there was no other option. She had already made up her mind to get out of that room, and from the sounds of things she might have slightly more freedom if she did as such. Besides, she could use her chakra to escape things if things went south from what she had planned. Sakura nodded. That was as best of a plan she could come up with. She only prayed it would work, and that things would go smoothly.
Kaida blinked. “I see,” she intoned, and Sakura felt a bitter jealousness rise up once more at the sight of that calm, blank face. She wished she felt half as calm as the Senju looked. “I will deliver more information to you about the upcoming Quest, given you are sorely lacking in that. You will have two weeks to make preparations and make requests for the supplies you will need to survive.”
“Survive?” Sakura’s head snapped around, heart in her throat.
“This Quest is not for the faint-hearted, and as weak as you are, particularly with no mana to your name, you may not survive it so,” she said, and Sakura felt her eyebrow twitch at the sheer condescension in the elf’s tone. What she wouldn’t give to punch the other woman in the nose and sent her flying a good few metres… “If you change your mind about entering this—”
“I will not change my mind,” Sakura hissed through clenched teeth, a scowl curling at her lips. She didn’t need that pathetic mana. She had chakra, and that would do enough of a job for her. Truly, Kaida had no idea of who or what she had been before she had been thrown into that world.
Haruno Sakura was a shinobi through and through.
War, death, and survival were their trade.