Chapter Text
Sakura was utterly and royally fucked.
They had been ambushed. The path that had seemed relatively clear until then was suddenly swarming with rouge nin.
Some of the townspeople had warned Sasuke and Sakura about them earlier; bandits that lurked beneath the great trees of the Grass country and made livings off looting travellers. Any apprehension the villagers felt about their safe departure was quickly squashed when others spoke out to dispel the concerns with a dismissive hand. Sasuke and Sakura had left assured that those highwaymen were of little calibre, possessed scant chakra and fled at the first sight of a real fight.
It was becoming alarmingly evident that these were not the bandits they’d been warned about.
They were ducked behind tree trunks and perched on the branches of the surrounding trees above them. They were clad in dark cloaks and animal masks painted in red and gold. Like birds to prey, they gazed quietly, heads titled in silent curiosity. Under the setting sun and shrouded in shadows, they looked like the body of nightmares.
“What the fuck are those?” Sakura hissed quietly to her companion.
Sasuke, who had been observing them with the same razor-sharp scrutiny as she had, moved his hand to to hover over the hilt of his sword and Sakura thought it was as good a reply as any. He had reached the same conclusion she had: whatever they were, they were definitely not ordinary.
“Stay close to me.” Sasuke murmured, and Sakura shuffled closer without complaint.
If the sudden wash of blood red and regal purple in his eyes were anything to go by then Sasuke had sensed something was deeply wrong. The thrum of chakra in the air was palpable and she was sure he could feel it as plainly as she could. Like static on the surface of her skin. An incessant hum.
Sakura’s stomach lurked uneasily, a quiet discomfort that wove through her chest as the impasse continued. She felt like a caged animal, eyes peering down at her from every corner of her woodland prison. They were scouting her every move; for a moment of hesitancy or deliberation. Watching the way she drew breath. Down to the very flicker of every expression that danced across her features. It felt like they were waiting. For her.
And then suddenly, they were darting down and forwards.
Sasuke cut through the throng with his blade just as Sakura did with her fists. Their opponents were strong and relentless and it took three short seconds and a quick glance to realise they were painfully outnumbered. As Sakura struck one down that appeared in Sasuke’s blind spot, another ten materialised at the foot of the trunk.
“Why are there so many?” Sakura hissed, catching the wrist reaching for her chest and using the kunai within the digits to slice through the flesh and bone at the base of their throat. At the same time, Sasuke dismembered torso from legs in a single strike and kicked back at the onslaught. He hadn’t counted this many in his initial count so just where exactly had they come from?
It didn’t help that they were exhausted too. They had spent the last week in a nearby village, a few days travel short of Kusa. Their energies had been expended on healing and rallying outlaws that had taken over in the aftermath of the war. Splitting up here would be dangerous.
And yet, their silent promise, to stick together, was shortly abandoned when the sheer numbers forced them apart. Sakura could feel the distance between her and Sasuke widening but could not so much as look at him whilst she fought to maintain her ground. She could bring the entire terrain down but she could feel her partner’s curio in the way he moved, in his restraint. She knew what it meant. What he was telling her. Defend. Don’t attack. I’m figuring this out.
Sasuke was using the assault to gather information. There was something amiss here, something fundamental he was overlooking. As steel blade clashed against steel blade, Sasuke observed the way the nins attacked. They were remarkably fast but their movements lacked fluidity, like puppets on string. Their chakras were absent of the natural ebb and flow of a normal chakra path. They never quivered. Never pulsed.
Sasuke’s eyes immediately fell to their masks. When he’d disarmed the opponent in front of him, he made a quick hand to grab the porcelain disguise and with his fist, shattered it into a million tiny fragments.
The image was a haunting one, and Sasuke was taken aback at what he saw. Instead of human features, space for eyes, turn of nose and lips - there was nothing. Nothing but a vacant and harrowing image of smooth skin stretched across the head like a canvas. These weren’t human.
In his stupor, Sasuke stepped back in alarm. He’d never seen anything quite like it.
The quiet panic had cost him precious seconds and Sasuke felt the thunder of an explosion on his skin before he heard it. He snapped his head back to see a flash of light and a flurry of pink hair fall prey to the smoke that followed in its wake. The grey fog surrounded them and Sasuke, suddenly all alone, foraged through the murk in search.
“Sakura?” Sasuke called, trying to waft through the smoke with his katana.
“Sasuke!”
Her voice sounded years away but the suffocating haze thinned, opening up to a slither of clarity in which mismatched red and purple eyes met alarmed green ones. She was okay. She was right there.
But relief was short-lived and deceiving because when Sasuke blinked, taking a step forward towards her; she was gone.
Immediately, the smoke lifted. It begun to collapse in on itself like a ball with a resounding boom following after. When it was gone, the clearing was absent of any other living person except for Sasuke. It looked like a graveyard - littered with bodies of people in masks that had no faces. But no Sakura. No pink hair or green eyes. Gone. Just like that she was gone.
“Sakura?” Sasuke started, his disbelief and dread unmistakable. With sudden recognition, Sasuke realised that it had been their plan to separate them all along. “Where is Sakura?”
Sasuke heard the thud of landing feet behind him and spun, fury set in his clenched jaw and furrowed eyebrows. The grip on his blade was deathly, knuckles pale and quivering.
Three. The three he’d counted originally. In the same goddamn red and gold masks except their veils were flamboyant and lavish and their robes ornate and intricately woven. They looked like priests. If Sasuke didn’t know any better, they could have passed as gods.
“Uchiha Sasuke,” A woman, with a soft lilt that echoed from the hollow trees. Sasuke felt like he could hear the whisper coming from inside of his head. A sound that resounded from anywhere but the vicinity around her mouth. Anywhere. Everywhere. “You will come with us.”