Sendicard
patreon
Chapter 17
🕑 Added 2024-03-10 16:58:05 +0000 UTCFinally finished the dungeon, and found myself a bit whimsical. I like where this chapter went, but Chapter 18 is gonna be a bit of a mystery. I have the outline, sure, but there's a lot of different directions I could go from here even within Wave, and I have to decide now.
Anyway, enjoy the chapter.
I had fun.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For Sasuke, this whole fight has been nonsense. People die when they are killed, things burn when they are burnt, and there is no such thing as an infinite swarm of henchmen willing to run directly into the grinding meat hooks of Naruto’s clones.
But here he is, standing just a little bit away from the fight, staring at a muscled giant of a man that poofed into existence from thin air and a tiny old guy. Even as he flexes, Sasuke can tell there’s hate in the man’s eyes, and that hate is directed towards him.
He breaths heavily, unable to keep up with the pace of what’s been going on around him. Sakura, for all her earlier fangirl habits and all nighters playing games, doesn’t seem to have lost ground at all despite his harsh training. He spent night after night pushing himself throughout the entire academy until his sweat turned to blood and only enthusiastic nurses could stop him from training more. He was never willing to rest on his laurels as the last Uchiha, he had goals, and those goals would require more tears than he could shed in a life-time. There wasn’t time to slack off, because he didn’t have enough time even if he didn’t slack off. Itachi is incredible, Itachi was the pride of his clan while he, Sasuke, was worthless to everyone in comparison.
The girl on his team has more stamina than he does despite what she thinks. She’s stronger too, depending on the situation. The only leg up he has on her is that his ranged abilities and Shuriken play is leagues above her, so of course she managed to get a hold of some magical crossbow that can shoot fireballs. That’s fair, nothing weird about that at all!
It’s not a bad thing for her to grow strong, especially when she’s agreed to help him fight Itachi, but when her gains come out of nowhere it’s enough to make him a little jealous. The last two weeks not withstanding - poor girl - she’s spent her whole life playing games and treating training like a fun side activity.
Yet here she is, standing there, looking like she’s ready for round two despite being in the same fight he’s been in, she’s enviable. She’s a genius, and that terrifies him as much as he wants it. It won’t be like that for long though, he’ll just have to try harder until they’re on equal footing.
He won’t be pushed back. A lesser person might call it unfair, he calls it motivation.
It seems like Gato agrees he needs harsher training, because instead of rushing for Sakura or Naruto, the older man with the muscles to rival a body builder jumps into action in a dead sprint for him. He lifts his kunai, ready to deflect the cane, and finds it’s a fist launching right towards his face instead. He barely sees it, he’s too slow and it’s too fast. He’s sent flipping back, only landing properly because of years of training. Tears reflexively build up in his eyes, and he wipes them away without a second thought because he doesn’t have a second to lose focus.
His vision clears just in time to dodge another stroke, and even dodging it, it still grazes his cheek enough to send him back a step, and the follow up blow is just as fast.
One after another, each strike stinging his body from near misses he doesn’t have time to react to. It’s intense, like sparring with Sakura when she’s angry or a dozen Naruto clones, but unlike with them losing isn’t acceptable.
Losing is death.
He hears lightning, Sakura’s coming to save him, they don’t trust him to handle this on his own and he’s not sure he can blame them.
His stomach takes a hit strong enough to send him up in the air, and another strike hits his face hard enough to send him rolling back across the stone flooring before he has time to feel pain. It shatters like glass underneath him, shards littering his now bloody body. “Figured out, what the glowing floor does.” He manages to grunt, as if he’s not quickly losing control of his limbs. Twitches run through his body, and Gato arrives before he can fully look up, with a kick that’s, oddly slow.
He watches it rush towards his face at a snail’s pace. An oxymoron of combat mocking him. He tries to chide the man, prove that he doesn’t need pity, but all he gets out is the slowest single sound imaginable. His words aren’t coming, and the sound of Sakura’s electricity has slowed too. His body isn’t moving very fast, but he knows what he’s reacting to with plenty of warning, and just barely manages to roll out of the way.
Getting to his feet is another story, but he doesn’t need to do that yet. Sakura’s jumped onto Gato’s back, wrapped her legs around his waist, and started stabbing. Her blade has thrummed to life even as she sparks potent lightning chakra, she stabs down into him again, and again, and again, harshly bleeding power into their foe like she has nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Gushes of life flow from the man, body mass cutting away without even the slightest dramatic flair. It’s brutal, it’s rabid, it’s like what he’s seen her do to a training dummy but a hundred times worse in every way. Her body twitches uncontrollably from misfired electricity, telling him she came before she had it fully prepped. Her sword glows with bloody hatred, and her eyes are so red he feels like he’s staring into an old family member. There’s an odd bit of nostalgia there, a consequence of losing so much blood he’s sure, but what’s important is that for all her brutality, for all the reckless inhuman malice she throws at the man, she’s beautiful.
She’s sacrificing what little she has left in her to give him time to get to his feet, and it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. She gets about eight massive stab and rips in before it happen. Like a light switch, he watches her eyes go dull, hears the electricity stop, and sees his teammate fall over.
The sword still in their foe, Gato doesn’t hesitate to spin just enough for the back of his hand to strike Sakura’s chin.
He’s glad it’s only a back hand, because in all his time with Sakura, he’s never once seen her go flying like that. She probably did with Zabuza, but he sure as hell didn’t see it, and Kakashi informed them just a little while later that she might have died.
It didn’t make a lot of sense at the time, but now that her life is this nonsensical, maybe she really is immortal. He hopes so, because the crack that her neck makes upon hitting the floor face first fills his heart with fear. He watches every moment of it in slow motion, burns her dull, lifeless face into his memory, and feels his hatred erupt. Naruto’s clones move to protect their downed teammate like they’re not in danger, and that’s the last thought Sasuke has before he’s lifted himself up on one hand. His other hand is a little dangly, but that’s fine. His kunai missing is a little more of a problem, but that’s fine too. He reaches down to grab a shattered, sharp rock from his leg.
His eyes burn, and Gato looks back at him with a malicious grin.
That’s okay though. “He’s bleeding a lot.” Sasuke announces to Naruto. “We just have to keep him still until he falls. Can you do it with clones?”
“You know it!” The world is bathed in orange.
-----------------------------------------------------
“Damn-it,” Sakura groans, “I got taken out again.” She wriggles a little, before opening her eyes to find the oddly pleasant feeling on her forehead is Naruto’s hand. “Kakashi’s gonna scold me.”
“I dunno, Sakura, Kakashi-sensei seems pretty happy when we act as a team.” Naruto says. “He might let this one go.”
“We just won’t tell him.” Sasuke scoffs. Her eyes dart towards him, apprehension growing in her chest despite knowing he’s okay. She needs to be sure, and sure enough, the boy’s standing just a little away with his hands in his pockets. He’s trying to remain aloof, even now, but she can see how stressful that all was for him. He cleaned up the blood, he got a bandage for his cheek, but her eyes see something so much more indicative.
“Congrats.” She mumbles.
“For what?” He asks.
“Your eyes look like mine when using my sword.” She explains, smiling ever so gently. “You’re finally a true Uchiha, Sasuke.”
She can’t read his expression, she never can, and no amount of mood chart is going to help her with that one. But, he’s happy, she knows that much. He’s not surprised though, just happy, he already knows. Doujutsu use a lot of Chakra, so he probably kept it on just for her. “I think it’s more that your eyes look like mine, Sakura.”
“Hehe, maybe,” She snickers to herself, “now you get to cheat even harder than me, haah, between the three of us, you with the Sharingan, Naruto with infinite stamina, and me with all of this, we’re gonna be a legendary team.”
“Maybe.” Sasuke says, as he lifts something into view for her. “His body melted, and this was all that was left. Any idea what it could go to?” A golden object, narrow and thin, with little ridges along one side. A key, just for them.
“Yeah. I think I have a pretty good idea.”
-----------------------------------------------------
Opening the way forward is a bit of a harrowing experience, if only because it lets loose the flood of it all into her brain. After that last room, they have so many questions and not a lot of answers. Was that actually Gato? Did her dungeon pull in someone from the real world and change them to act like a boss? Why was Gato even here, technically there are potential reasons but there’s also plenty of reasons for him to not be here. What if he had decided to go on a trip after the dungeon was introduced but before she did it? There wasn’t a time limit introduced on the dungeon, could she even fail or or make it disappear or was Gato always going to suddenly be here when she went through?
Thoughts like that swirl through her as they open the door forward, and find a small office. A nicely lit desk with a lamp, an organizer for tons of paperwork labeled by country and location, and a safe in the back with five holes. “Huh.” It’s Naruto that slots the key they got from Gato’s corpse into one of the holes, and turns it. With a loud click, the key explodes, and the lock disappears, leaving four holes in the safe.
“That was magic,” Sakura says, “that was just straight up magic, there’s no denying it.”
“Right, because this wasn’t entirely magic up to this point.” Sasuke snorts.
“Do you think I can pick it?” Naruto asks, and before Sakura can say anything he’s pulling out a torque wrench and a classic lockpick, a little rusty but clearly well cared for. It’s just old, not much you can do about that. “Let me just…”
“Naruto, I somehow doubt the magic safe has a-” Sakura begins, before the object inserted into the safe glows brightly. Naruto doesn’t even have time to react before it explodes into a million tiny pieces. The hole is still there, ominously teasing them.
“That was expensive…” Naruto groans, looking mournfully upon the chest.
Sakura’s hand lands on his shoulder, soothingly rubbing it and giving him a gentle squeeze.
“It’s alright, Naruto, have another one.” He was probably expecting a lot of things, but Sakura holding out a prim and shiny pick for him likely wasn’t in that list. Watching him brighten up at the new tool gifted to him by one of his favorite people, that was absolutely in her list of expected outcomes. “I got it from some goblins.”
“Right, hehe, goblins.” Naruto laughs, reaching up to rub one of his eyes for some reason, and taking the pick. “I think I’ll hold off on trying that again.”
“We probably get a key from the boss every time. The quest did say to clear it five times.” That does raise serious questions as to what’s gonna be here next time though.
Will it be Gato again? That’d at least prove that it’s not really him, as her power certainly isn’t resurrecting people, or, at least it hasn’t shown the capacity to do that for anyone but maybe her, yet. Even then, it used someone to save her as a convenient excuse, if she really did die and Haku didn’t actually save her.
It’s all very confusing, and she really doesn’t want to think about it. It’s crazy, it’s odd, and the power is going to work how it’s going to work whether she understands it or not. “Let’s get out of here,” Sasuke speaks up, and she finds she agrees with him completely.
-----------------------------------------------------
The boys are practically skipping with excitement as they pass through a more normal route on the way home. The walk up to this point has been somewhat nervous and awkward, everyone expecting some dungeon trap or spawn to show up out of nowhere and reveal to them that it’s not actually over and the dread is just beginning. The cosmic nature of what just happened doesn’t seem to bother them, and maybe that’s something she should mimic. She’s too nervous these days, jittery to a fault she’d call it. Ino will surely notice if she doesn’t manage to calm herself before she gets back home, and her mother will interrogate everything out of her the instant she arrives if she doesn’t center herself. She needs a hug, and some gaming, the interrogation needs to wait a few days.
Dying changed things, but what really changed things was all the training. A few days or a week of pushing herself shouldn’t have that huge an effect but for her, it made everything so much more real. She’s never suffered before, not like that. She’s never pushed herself through something so difficult it made her want to cry and never stop crying, and then when she couldn’t push herself anymore, someone else picked up the slack and pushed her more. She’s always known being a ninja was going to be difficult, but that really put things into a new perspective for her.
Seeing all that pain and perseverance - even if assisted - pay off in that dungeon run is so much more powerful than reading some numbers in a flat screen floating above her head or in front of her face. Her only regret is that she didn’t know any earth jutsu that would have actually been useful. Even the ability to make an earth pickaxe would have been amazing.
“Oh.” Her eyes catch something fairly new as they walk through their training grounds, well, not new in the chronological sense so much as the unexpected sense. Haku’s been here before, it’s not strange to see him here, but it’s still a surprise. She figured the boy would be half-way outside the country by now, not standing around waiting for her with his beautiful black hair rustling in the wind.
“You two go ahead.” She says to her boys, “Kakashi probably wants to know what just happened and I kinda like talking to Haku.”
“You don’t want us to stick by your side this time?” Sasuke asks.
“No, I really believe what I said, Haku won’t hurt me.” The uncertain look they share before taking off tells her many things. Things like, Naruto’s probably sending shadowclones back to watch her, and Kakashi’s hearing about this. Nothing she won’t be self reporting in a few minutes. It feels nice to know her team is that worried about her, even if a part of her wonders if it’s because she’s a girl.
Probably not, she is engaging the enemy alone. It’s difficult to avoid intrusive thoughts like that though, because sometimes it’s true.
“You really did it.” Haku’s words catch her by surprise. Mostly, it’s the excitement in his tone, that girly twinge to his voice that’s just innocent enough to make him sound a little more pretty than her. Her own girliness, or lack of, isn’t something she likes to do a lot of thinking about. She tries, a little, but it’s never been a priority of hers and now she’s not sure who to ask for advice. Maybe Haku can help, but, probably not. He’s the type to be naturally cute and pretty. He’s probably never played a game in his life, which is just another charm to that streaming idea! They can make a whole series about him learning basic concepts and then explaining his process!
“I did.” She agrees, standing just a few feet away from him and looking out at the sea she’s spent so long walking on. “Gato should be dead, assuming that I didn’t kill a clone.”
“He’s dead,” Haku confirms, “he was found collapsed in his quarters without a wound, no one’s sure what happened, except you.”
“Oh, I don’t like that, I don’t like that at all.” Sakura grimaces, as a flood of questions comes running through her all over again. That says so much, but also so little. So he really died when they killed that demented version of him, that’s an answer, but does that mean anyone could theoretically just die like that? Is that why people die for ‘no reason at all’ sometimes? She’s read about that, that’s a real thing. Were they butchered in a dungeon by some girl who didn’t know what she was doing?
Probably not, as far as she can tell she’s the only one with this power, but…
“Regardless, he is dead,” Haku says, “and I am in your care.”
“You’re in my, I’m sorry, what?” Sakura asks, staring directly into the boy’s tilted face, and those crooked, heavily amused eyes. “Could you roll that back for me?”
“A scourge of the planet has been removed from it, do not overthink it.” Haku says as softly as the wind.
“N-no, I got that, um, the part after that.”
“Care?” Haku asks.
“Including that but before.” Sakura winces.
“Your care?” Haku teases.
“That’s part of it.” She gulps.
“In your care?” His eyes are filled with so much mirth, she wasn’t even aware the boy had it in him.
“Most of it.”
“I am in your care.” He seems so pleased with himself as he says it, like a preening bird. He takes a step in towards her to send her off her balance, and this time it works.
“That, that part, yeah… Could you uh, explain that?” She asks, twitching at this point.
“My master decided he didn’t need me anymore,” Haku explains, “he said he was sure Gato’s death was my doing, and he had no use for a broken tool.”
It’s those words which have Sakura moving on her own. It’s not a step, or even two, it’s her arms wide and wrapping around him before she even realizes what she’s doing. She holds him tight to her, squeezing him, and barely takes notice of the heated red tint that overtakes his cheeks and covers his nose. It spreads down his face, takes over his neck, and highlights his ears. He’s not used to touch, and in a way neither is she.
“A person can’t be a broken tool,” She mumbles in his ear, chin resting on his shoulder, “you have to be something to be a broken version of it.”
“I-” His hand lands on her back, as he hesitantly accepts his new position and gives back what he can manage one second and one shaky breath at a time.
“It just sounds to me like you grew up, and he needed a child.” She whispers softly. The decision is made before she’s even let him go.
“Go get your things while I talk to Kakashi,” Sakura says, scowling a little but trying to hide it by looking away from the soon to be streamer - if she has her way - she’s practically kidnapped from his master. It’s dumb that it went this way, even she can admit it. The whole thing feels too clean. Go into a magic dungeon, free a village from an evil dictator via magically enforced murder, skip the bigger boss fight and get the secret character all in one?
No game does stuff like that, well, no good game. Something’s on the horizon, she can tell, this isn’t over and she has her doubts things will just work out all wrapped in a convenient bow. If this Zabuza guy knows, then he probably knew all along, which means he’s had a lot of time to think things over. She’ll have to tell Kakashi of her suspicions, but chances are he already knows too. The man told them to look underneath the underneath once, and while that was a really stupid line as underneath is an adjective not a noun, it fits this situation perfectly.
Haku takes her order seriously, disappearing like a sad puppy to go get his things. She can’t help but say her thoughts outloud the moment his back is all she can see in the distance. “I hope Zabuza at least waits until we’re outside Wave to do whatever he’s planning.” Enough people have gotten hurt here because of Gato and his mess, waiting until bystanders are no longer a worry is better for everyone. She finds herself staring off into the gorgeous sky, happy to see it once again after that short but intense dungeon.
This time she’ll actually get down when Kakashi says to.
Comments
Dopplerdee
I like seeing things from Sasuke's prospective. It really frames things.
