Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

Flamethrower	By : LostinThought8 Category: Naruto AU/AR > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1349 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I make no money off of writing this fanfiction.

Chapter List
- 7
- 8
Author’s Note: And we’re back! Now that my midterms are over and I’ve had a nice, long week off from school, I’m throwing adult responsibilities to the wind in order to bring you another chapter of Flamethrower! :D

This story is still being cross-posted to my FF account, Light Within Darkness. The link is in my profile.

As promised, this is the end of Sakura’s story, and some aspects of Naruto’s backstory have become clearer with its’ telling. The next chapter will be focusing on the boys again, and Sakura will be playing a more minor role in the rest of the fic.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t own Naruto, and I am not in any way affiliated with the people who do. I make no money off of writing this fic; it is purely for my enjoyment (and hopefully yours too.)

WARNINGS: Language, blood, rampant human rights abuses, use of guns and other weapons, body horror, torture, imprisonment, and very unethical scientific experiments.

And now, onto the story!

    The first place I was taken to was a communal bath, a huge room where a group of people – workers, maybe, or prisoners like myself – were washing themselves in a large pool of water that took up almost the whole large room. I was given a rough little shove in the direction of the water. “Clean yourself, you smell like shit,” one of the guards barked out at me. I was fully aware that I was dirty, since there aren’t too many opportunities for a bath when you’ve been traveling through the wilderness for weeks. Even though everyone else was naked, I was embarrassed about taking my clothes off under the sharp, prying eyes of the guards around the entrance, all of whom were male. So I washed and dried myself as best I could with my clothes on, as silly as that may seem. I tried to talk to some of the others in the bath, and ask them just what the fuck was going on in this horrible place. Some of them shushed me with quick, nervous glances towards the guards. Others just ignored me completely, mechanically going through the task of washing themselves. Their faces and eyes seemed expressionless and empty of all feeling. It was as if their bodies were still alive, but everything inside had withered away long ago. These people scared me. I didn’t want to think about what sorts of things could turn a person into something so dull and lifeless.

   After I’d gotten out of the bath, the guards marched me to a large storage room where I was given a clean shirt, pants, and a new pair of shoes. Although I was loath to admit it, I was grateful for the new clothes. My old ones had been patched and mended and washed so many times by now that they were becoming threadbare and gray.

I was then taken to a room filled with long wooden tables and benches, where I was told to wait in line for someone to ladle a thin, unappetizing gruel into a bowl for me. It was awful, but I ate it anyway. You learned not to be picky about food after living during a famine. Groups of guards patrolled around the room as I ate, their harsh gazes effectively silencing any possible conversation. The air around me was thick with feelings of fear and anxiety. I couldn’t help feeling relieved after I finished eating and a pair of guards appeared to take me somewhere else.

   Then the work began, and the purpose of this place was made clear to me.

    Even hell had a routine, and mine was quickly laid out during the next few weeks. Every morning, I was woken up and marched off by guards, along with a group of other workers, to the bath and the eating room, which one of the guards called a cafeteria. None of us so much as met eyes as we went. Most people, including me, looked down at our feet the whole time.

   After eating, the guards took me and around ten others down several flights of stairs to the compound’s lowest levels, where Kabuto kept his human test subjects locked up. I still have no idea exactly what Kabuto and the people who worked with him were studying exactly. Only that it involved taking people and changing them, somehow twisting their bodies and minds into something strange and terrifyingly unnatural.

   It was my job to give each of Kabuto’s human guinea pigs in the part of the prison I’d been assigned to a daily “checkup,” for lack of a better word. I was supposed to measure each prisoner’s height with a tape measure, and take their temperatures with a small glass thermometer. I also had to prick them with a needle, and deposit a small sample of their blood into a neatly labeled glass vial. All of this, along with my observations on the person’s bodily health and behavior, was to be written down and brought to Kabuto’s office at the end of the day, along with the blood samples. Everything I needed to do this was given to me in a cloth satchel beforehand, and taken away again at the end of the day.

   All of the people Kabuto experimented on were kept in underground, in a place filled with the same narrow, twisting pathways as the main complex aboveground. But where the aboveground area was filled with old technology from Before, this subterranean prison had no special amenities. The whole place seemed to have been carved out of rough, lumpy stone, and so I always had to walk carefully, making sure not to trip and break my ankle. The air was always ice cold, biting right through my thin clothing, and sending shivers up my spine. Small glass lanterns were hung along intervals in the walls, casting an eerie, flickering play of light and shadows across the walls.

   The prisoners themselves were kept in tiny cells with thick, sturdy metal bars. Each cell was bare save for a rough pile of blankets on the floor for sleeping, a foul-smelling hole in the corner for…personal business, and a stone basin filled with water. Food was given once or twice a day, and prisoners ranged from leaving their meals virtually untouched, to practically gnawing their bowls in half in an attempt to get more sustenance.

   The prisoners themselves varied. Some of them spent their time slumped lethargically in a corner of their cell, their eyes glazed over, and didn’t so much as make a peep or raise a hand in protest as I checked them over. Others ranted and raved wildly and I would have to spend several minutes calming them down so that I could start my examinations. Still others were violent and lashed out at me. Some of the worst ones seemed to be barely more than animals with mad looks in their eyes, biting and clawing at me the second I appeared at their cell doors, spittle dripping from their snarling mouths. Sometimes I would have to call for the guards, who would come in and hold the person down for me. There were plenty of cases where either the guards or, more often, the prisoner got hurt during these exams. Somehow, I always managed to get out unscathed, even if I had to knock the prisoner out to do so.

   That wasn’t the worst part, though. The worst part was seeing what Kabuto had done to them. I saw people with all kinds of oozing lacerations and burn marks, or covered all over in lumps of thick, pinkish scar tissue. Some had their bodies or faces burned or disfigured in horrible ways, with their facial features and limbs shriveled to tiny wrinkled nubs or swollen to grotesque proportions. Some seemed to be missing various body parts, or worse, had somehow sprouted extra body parts. I once saw a man with what seemed to be five arms sticking out of him, curled up on the floor of his cell and moaning with pain. Others appeared to have been turned inside out, with their guts sprouting from their backs and abdomens.

I never asked anyone what Kabuto had done to these people. I didn’t want to know. In a place like that, you learned to keep your head down and not ask questions if you wanted to stay sane.

   Even worse than tending to Kabuto’s collection of captive, broken human beings was being forced to assist at one of his surgeries. I was one of the lucky ones, in that he only asked for my assistance twice. My job was to monitor the vital signs of whatever poor bastard he was cutting open, and to hand over surgical instruments when Kabuto asked for them. He showed no empathy whatsoever for the people he was torturing. He seldom used any kind of medicine to induce unconsciousness or dull the pain. The bastard cut deeply into his victims, moving and poking their innards around, or pouring strangely colored and bubbling concoctions into them. He seemed to enjoy it when his captives screamed and cursed at him. I guess he must have liked having power over them, the sick bastard.

   Sometimes the poor man or woman would simply die on the operating table. In such cases Kabuto would get annoyed, and call for the guards to carry the body out while he washed up. I would be left to stand there, staring at the bloodstains left behind in horror, until someone came to take me to my room.

   The faces of his victims, contorted with agony as they strained and struggled against their bonds, haunted me for weeks after an operation. But the screaming was the worst part. I doubt that any demon in Hell could cause a person to scream with as much agony as Kabuto caused to those poor people. The sound of it haunted my dreams at night, often causing me to wake up screaming myself. I still have nightmares about it, sometimes…

   The only thing that kept me going was my determination to escape. I didn’t want to die in a place like this, where nobody would ever find out what happened to me. If I kept my wits about me and didn’t bring attention to myself, I knew –or fervently hoped, anyway - that I’d find a way to escape.

   I found that escape in the form of Uzumaki Naruto.

    After a few months, I was reassigned to a different part of the building, where Kabuto kept his important experiments. These were people who had managed to weather his torture, and showed some sort of physical or emotional change Kabuto wished to study further. They were the test subjects who showed the most promise, and so weren’t as expendable as the prisoners I had previously been examining. As such, they had better living conditions. They were still kept in cells with heavy iron bars, but the cells were larger and much cleaner, with the same smooth, shiny floors as the upper stories did. The food was of better quality and came more frequently, and the water was given in clean washbasins. There were separate areas for the toilet, too, which didn’t stink as badly.

   The prisoners formed a more stable group, as well. I was less likely to walk into a cell and find a completely new person in there, which was something that happened on practically a weekly basis with the others. They weren’t violent, either. Almost all of the people I examined were the quiet, dead-eyed kind that most people who had been here a long time seemed to become. It was terribly unnerving, but it made my job easier, at least.

   Naruto was one of the prisoners on that floor.

   I knew he was different from the moment I saw him. Except for the weird spiral tattoo on his stomach and the whisker-shaped scars on his cheeks, Naruto looked like a normal person. He was the only one on that floor who did – even the prisoners who didn’t have an obvious physical change were like dead people who just hadn’t stopped breathing yet. The first time I came into his cell, he looked up at me with those big blue eyes of his and I stopped dead in the entrance. Those eyes were unlike any I’d ever seen, not in here or in the world beyond. They were filled with so much life and energy and fierce emotion, it felt as if they cut right through me.

   After a moment, he smiled slightly. ‘Hi,” he said. “I’m Uzumaki Naruto.”

   I just stared at him. This was the first time in months someone besides a guard had actually spoken to me. And when the guards spoke, it was only to bark out orders.

   “Well, come on then,” Naruto said. He leaned back slightly on the bench he was sitting on and folded his arms up behind his head. “You have to give me a checkup, right? All the other nurses do.”

   I checked Naruto over mechanically, not daring to believe that anyone in here could possibly have kept sane, nevertheless had the ability to speak and act like a normal person. The entire time I was there, Naruto kept up an endless stream of chatter, telling me about what he’d eaten that day, and what he’d thought about. He asked me all sorts of questions as well, like what my name was, and how long I’d been here for, and where I’d learned my medical skills. I probably would have found this annoying under normal circumstances, but here I welcomed the sound of a friendly voice.

   “Sakura,” I said, as I stood up to leave Naruto’s cell. “My name is Haruno Sakura.”

   An ear-splitting grin appeared on Naruto’s face when I told him my name. “It’s good to meet you, Sakura-chan. I’m really glad someone like you is here.”

   “Why is that?” I asked. “Haven’t you talked to any of the other nurses here?”

   Naruto shook his head. His smile shrank and turned sad. “No. You’re the only one I’ve met who’s still alive on the inside and wants to stay that way. No one else here gives a damn.”

   “I could say the same thing about you,” I said. Looking into his eyes, I could tell right away that Naruto had been alone for a very long time. My heart ached for him. More than that, though, I felt a strange kinship with this boy. Like me, he was a prisoner here, with no way of getting out in the foreseeable future. Yet he still refused to let this place break him.

   Before I’d even fully thought through what I was doing, I was sitting next to Naruto on the bench and gently taking one of his hands in both of mine. He looked up at me, confused and more than a little wary. I smiled reassuringly at him. “What do you say we be friends?”

   The confusion in Naruto’s eyes was replaced once more with that huge smile. His entire face seemed to light up, in fact. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Friends.”

    By this time, I had been a prisoner for long enough that the guards didn’t bother following me around from cell to cell anymore to make sure that I was doing my job. Having realized that I wasn’t going to make trouble for them – or rather, had realized the futility of making trouble in this place – they simply waited at the end of the main corridor, near one of Kabuto’s operating rooms, for me to hand in my written reports and blood samples. Unless I explicitly called for help with a difficult prisoner, I was left alone to do my work. This ended up working to my advantage, as I wouldn’t have been able to talk with Naruto at all if guards had been breathing down my back. As it was, I didn’t allow myself any more than half an hour for conversation. The guards would come to check on me for sure if I took too long on my rounds, after all.

Naruto quickly became the one bright spot I had in that miserable, dark place. I always made a point of coming to him last, so that I had something to look forward to after caring for everyone else. He saved me from becoming an emotionless husk like everyone else in Kabuto’s prison. I came to enjoy the way he visibly brightened up when I came through his cell, and how he could always make me laugh with stories of his family and childhood. Naruto’s smile, though, was the thing I liked most about him. Seeing it felt like a bright sunbeam on my face after a cold, hard night. I carried the feeling of it with me all the way back to my room at night, and thinking of it helped keep my nightmares at bay.

   One day, when Naruto joked that he’d do just about anything for a packet of ramen, I told him about the food I was served twice a day in the cafeteria. “It’s always the same, lumpy gray porridge in the morning and watery soup in the evening. There’s no point in trying to figure what’s in it; it tastes awful either way. I just gulp it down as fast as I can so I don’t have to think about how bad it is.”

   Naruto frowned slightly. “Wow, that sucks Sakura-chan. Kabuto should really feed his workers better. You are doing something for him, after all, even if you don’t want to.”

   He bent down close to my face then, his eyes quickly flitting from left to right as he checked for any prying eyes nearby. “You know,” he whispered, “there’s a supply closet about halfway down the hall, near the cell with the girl who has claws for feet. The last time they took me outside the door was opened a crack, and I saw shelves of food inside. If you wanted to, I bet you could sneak in there and steal something good.” He straightened up and winked at me. “Go check it out.”

I could only wonder at this strange boy, who had been a prisoner here for much longer than I’d been, but was still doing his best to help me. After leaving Naruto, I looked for the closet. Sure enough, there was a large, thick wooden door next to the cell Naruto had told me about. The lock on it was flimsy, and it broke easily after I applied some firm pressure to it. The room inside was larger than I’d thought, and a single lightbulb dangling from a string on the ceiling illuminated a veritable treasure trove.

There were floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked full of all kinds of preserved meat and vegetables, including the little paper packets of easily cooked spiced noodles called ramen that Naruto had professed a liking for. Boxes on the floor held clothes and various medical supplies. Dried medicinal herbs hung all along the walls. A room like this had enough supplies in it for a large group of people to travel comfortably for several months, at least. And it was all just sitting here, in a dusty old closet with a flimsy lock on the door.

The gears in my head started turning so fast, I could practically hear them whirring. The biggest obstacle standing between myself and freedom was that all of my traveling gear and food had been taken from me when I was taken prisoner. All I had were literally the clothes on my back. But this supply closet was so big that if I just took a few things from it a time, for a few weeks, and found a place to hide the stuff, I could get enough together to last at least until I was able to get out of Sound Country.

However, all the supplies in the world wouldn’t help me if I didn’t know how to get out. I’d been trapped here for at least several months, maybe even a year. (It was hard to tell, when I hadn’t been outside since I’d arrived). The facility seemed to be made entirely of twisting, labyrinthine corridors, both above and below ground. Each hallway looked identical to the next. I didn’t have the faintest idea where a door leading outside would be.

But maybe Naruto did. He’d been trapped here for longer than I had, surely he knew more about the place’s layout. It would take a little longer, but I could manage to steal enough for the both of us. Besides, I really had to come to think of him as a friend. Despite his own limited power, Naruto had done his best to cheer me up and help me survive. I couldn’t just leave him to rot in his cell.

   I made up my mind - Naruto and I were definitely getting the hell out of here, and soon.

    The next day, I sneaked into the supply closet before visiting Naruto, and went into his cell with a determined mind and a satchel full of food and water. “Naruto,” I said. “You and I are escaping.”

   He stared at me with his mouth half-open, uncomprehending. “What?” Was the first thing he said. “Right now? What are you talking about, Sakura-chan?”

   I rolled my eyes. Sometimes Naruto could be annoyingly slow on the uptake. “Not right now. I need to get supplies first, and I have to do it slowly or else I’ll get caught. When I have enough, I’m leaving this place and you’re coming with me.”

   “I – I can’t.” Naruto’s eyes lowered.

   “You…what?” I hadn’t expected to hear that. I’d thought Naruto would be ecstatic at the thought of getting out. I certainly hadn’t imagined him as he was now, shoulders hunched together and studying a spot on the floor with great interest. “Why not?”

   “I’m a monster, Sakura-chan. As long as I stay locked up in here…” He looked up at me again, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “…Then I won’t be able to hurt anyone.”

   “That’s bullshit,” I said. Now Naruto was the one who looked surprised. “Naruto, I must have checked you over a hundred times by now. There is nothing wrong with you.”

   “You don’t understand - ”

   “No buts.” I gave him my harshest look, the one that left no room for objections or arguments, only softening my voice when I knew I had his attention. “Look, I know that you must have been through some awful shit here. You’ve spent half of your life in this hellhole. But none of that matters, because you’re my friend, Naruto. I don’t let my friends sit in prison cells to rot. You’re coming with me, even if I have to drag you out of here myself.”

   The next moment, Naruto had leapt up and was gripping me in a tight hug. I was a bit shocked, but gently returned the embrace all the same. “Thank you, Sakura-chan. You don’t know what this means to me,” he said softly.

   “Hey now, don’t think you’re getting a free ride here,” I said as I gently extricated myself from the hug. “You still need to help me plan. Whatever happens next, we’re in this together, as a team.” We’d have to be, or else we were both dead.

   And plan we did, for the next several weeks. Naruto told me that he was let outside once a week for fresh air and exercise. These excursions were strictly limited to the facility’s yard and were closely monitored by heavily-armed guards, but that didn’t stop Naruto from figuring out that he was taken in and out through a small door at the back of the operating room on this floor. The very place where I dropped off my reports, in fact.

   “Well, Kabuto’s never in there when I go to drop off my reports for the day,” I said. “But there’s always guards outside, and I don’t know how we’re going to get past them. I don’t think I could even take down one of those big guys, let alone a whole group.”

   “Not a problem.” Naruto’s eyes shone brightly with determination. Nowadays, he seemed even more eager than I was to escape. “How many are there?”

   “Um…I’d say about three or four. And aren’t you being a little too relaxed about this? They have guns, you know.”

   “Just let me take care of it, Sakura-chan. Don’t worry.” He clapped me on the shoulder in what was meant to be a casual, reassuring gesture, but I could feel a tension in him all the same.

   Our conversations were full of planning now, as we discussed and fine-tuned our escape over and over again. I found myself lying awake at night well after the candle in my room had sputtered out, going over every possible thing that could go wrong and how we’d get out of it. The two of us took inventory time and time again, making absolutely sure that we had enough stuff to last until we were out of Sound Country. By the time we were ready to leave, I had stolen everything from knapsacks to a fresh set of clothes for us both, hiding it all under a loose floor tile in Naruto’s cell.

   On the day we escaped, I was tense as a wire with nerves. Either Naruto and I would get out alive today, or we’d be killed. Anyone Kabuto saw as making trouble was dragged away kicking and screaming by the guards, never to be seen again. Images of the two of us being gunned down as we fled haunted my mind as I was marched down to my section of the prison.

   I went immediately to Naruto’s cell. He was waiting and ready for me, dressed in the clothes I had stolen for him, our two knapsacks already packed and on the floor at his feet.

   “Couldn’t wait to get out of here, huh?” I grinned at him as I slung my knapsack over my shoulders, relishing the familiar weight of traveling supplies once more.

“You have no idea. All I want is to get far, far away from this place.”

   “Ditto.”

   The two of us walked quickly and quietly to the end of the corridor, our bodies tensed and ready for trouble, and all of our senses on high alert. Just around the corner was a small group of guards, talking amongst themselves as they drank homemade liquor that smelled like piss. Naruto leaned in and whispered softly, “Wait here, Sakura-chan. Don’t look or do anything that might attract attention. I’ll signal you when it’s clear.”

   I nodded and pressed my back against the wall as Naruto darted out. There were some muffled choking noises, and part of a surprised shout that was quickly cut off. After a few minutes, I heard a quiet voice say, “You can come out now, it’s safe.”

   I rounded the corner and gasped at the sight of all four guards, all of whom burly men a good foot or two taller than Naruto, lying in an unconscious heap in the middle of the floor. Naruto tossed me one of their pistols and some ammo, while he pocketed a handgun. “Naruto…how…?”

   “Come on, we don’t have a lot of time before someone finds these guys.” He grabbed my hand, and we raced through the door of Kabuto’s office. The door leading outside was only a few feet in front of us. Once we got through it, according to Naruto, we only had to run across a short strip of lawn and wriggle out under the fence, and we’d be free. For the first time, I dared to hope that it would really be that simple, that Naruto and I could really get out of here with no one noticing until we were already beyond their reach -

   “Going somewhere?” One of the chairs near the door swiveled around. Seated in it was Kabuto, wearing a tiny little smirk like a cat who’d just caught a little bird. Or two birds, in this case. He was holding a gun which he pointed at our heads. “Take one more step and I’ll blow both of your brains out.”

   We stopped, obviously. Naruto’s back stiffened, and he put his body between Kabuto and me. “You’ll have to kill me to get to her,” he hissed. His voice was deep and trembled with rage.

   Kabuto threw his head back and laughed, as if Naruto had just told an amusing joke. The lights overhead reflected off of his glasses, turning his eyes into bright, inhuman discs. “Oh Naruto-kun,” he said, “you make it sound like it’s her I’m after.”

   “What – ”

   Kabuto moved faster than I’d thought him capable of. Before I could even blink, he’d risen from his chair and landed a solid punch right in Naruto’s stomach. Naruto gave a short cry of pain and fell to his knees, letting go of my hand in order to wrap his arms around his middle.

   I reached out in panic and grabbed the first thing I could lay my hands on, which luckily happened to be one of the knives Kabuto used to cut people open during his “operations.” It made for a flimsy weapon, but hopefully I could land a hit that would distract the bastard long enough for me to grab Naruto and make a run for it. “Don’t come any closer!” I yelled, holding the surgical knife out in front of me.

   Kabuto chuckled again, and I swung out. He caught my wrist and squeezed so hard I felt the bones grind together. I cried out and dropped the knife, which clattered to the floor at my feet. I tried to punch him with my free hand, but he sidestepped and gave me a hard shove, causing me to stumble back a step and fall right on my ass.

   The smile on Kabuto’s face was terrible as he rested the muzzle of his gun against my head. Naruto was back on his feet now, but didn’t dare move for fear of causing Kabuto to shoot. I couldn’t breathe. It felt like the whole world had stopped around us. All I could focus on was the cold metal of the gun pressed to my temple, and the terrible look of raw fury in Naruto’s eyes.

   “Naruto-kun, you’ve been a bad boy lately. Did you think I’d stopped paying attention to you? That I wouldn’t notice you were getting too chatty with one of the nurses?” Kabuto reached out with his free hand and grabbed a handful of my long pink hair, gripping it tightly and using it to pull me into a kneeling position. I cried out as pain seared through my scalp. “Well, I was planning on killing your trouble-making little friend today, anyway. That you are here to witness it as well is an added bonus for me.”

   I couldn’t think from the pain searing through my scalp. Reflexively, my hands scrabbled against the floor, and by chance brushed up against cool metal. It was the surgical knife Kabuto had made me drop. My fingers closed around it and I brought it up towards Kabuto’s hand.

   “Exactly what do you think you’re going to do with that little toy, my dear? Even if you do manage to stab me, it won’t prevent you from dying, you know.” Kabuto’s voice was syrupy and patronizing, as if he was speaking to a very small child who didn’t know any better.

   “Sakura dear, you really should cut your hair. It’s impractical for you and Ino to wear it out long like this.” My mother’s voice echoed through my head as I brought the knife forward. I knew what I had to do.

   “I wasn’t…aiming for you…you son of a bitch!” I choked out through the pain, as I brought the knife sweeping through my hair in one clean stroke. Strands of pink fell around me like flower petals in the springtime, high up in the mountains of Earth Country. Kabuto snarled in anger at suddenly finding himself with a useless handful of my hair.

   As I rolled away from him, Naruto charged forward with an angry roar, and…

    “And?” Tsunade prompted. Sakura had fallen silent and refused to meet the Hokage’s eyes, staring down at her own lap instead. By the way she was nervously biting her lip, Tsunade could tell that Sakura had stopped herself from saying something important. But what was it?

   Sakura blinked, slightly startled at hearing another voice after only hearing her own for over an hour. “And…that’s it, Tsunade-sama. I’d distracted Kabuto enough so that Naruto was able to knock him out, and then we ran for it. We weren’t able to rest easy until we were safely out of Sound Country.”

   “Are you sure that’s all?” Tsunade said gently. There had to be more to the story than Sakura was telling, but she didn’t wish to force it out of the girl. Sakura had already talked herself hoarse, trusting Tsunade with something she clearly had not divulged to anyone else. The Hokage knew that it would be wrong to betray that trust. Better to focus now on finding Naruto and Sasuke, and getting what information she could out of them.

   “Alright,” Tsunade said gently. She reached out and gently laid a hand on Sakura’s shoulder, causing the girl to look up at her. “Thank you, Sakura, for trusting me with something as important as this. I promise, neither I nor anyone else in Konohagakure will use what you have told me against you or Naruto.” The Hokage smiled reassuringly, then turned her sharp amber gaze to the back of the room, where Shizune, Neji, and Hinata had been standing quietly.

   “Neji, Hinata!” The two cousins, who had been listening quietly with Shizune at the back of the room, snapped to attention “Take Sakura to the room at the end of the hall where Ino and Shikamaru are waiting. Get her a cup of tea, if we have it.”

   “Yes, ma’am.” The two chorused as they led Sakura out of the room.

   Shizune took up her usual position beside Tsunade’s desk. “Tsunade-sama,” she said quietly, “it took a lot of digging, but I was able to find a file concerning the Uchiha family that wasn’t part of the official report on the Uchiha Massacre. The Sandaime himself wrote it.”

   Tsunade didn’t say anything to this, only leaned forward and crossed her arms over her desk. Her brow was furrowed in what Shizune knew was intense concern.

   “It does concern Uchiha Sasuke in particular,” she added, and with that she had Tsunade’s complete attention.

   “Why didn’t you say so in the first place, Shizune! Bring it here.” The Hokage rested her head in her hands. “I hope Lee is able to find Naruto and Sasuke soon…and I hope somebody in this place manages to find some good alcohol soon, too! Damn, is questioning people hard work.”

Author’s Note: This is the last part of Sakura’s story. I could have broken it up into two smaller chapters, admittedly, but this had already dragged on longer than I wanted it to. This is also the most focus Sakura will be getting for the rest of the story. In the next chapter we return to the boys, and start getting more relationship development too. :)
REVIEWER RESPONSES:

Miki-chan: Aww, thank you very much! *blushes* I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the story so far!
Let's hope that there aren't two months between updates this time, hm? I'll work harder at getting these out at a more reasonable time. Thank you for your patience, everyone. :)
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