6

1

A sharingan drug. They were going to make a drug from Sasuke’s eyes.

Sakura’s face twisted up hearing their disgusting plan. And she was furious that they had included her in it. But her fury didn’t last long. It was quickly followed by a wave of self-hatred.

What am I doing?

Feelings of self-recrimination welled up from a seemingly bottomless fountain and robbed Sakura of her willpower. Just when she was finally feeling like she was doing something for Sasuke, this failure. So that now, instead of doing anything for him, she was a pawn in the scheme against him.

I’ll see you soon, he had said.

She had been waiting for that “soon.”

But now, because of her failure, Sasuke was being backed into a terrible corner. This was the worst. Seeing him again like this was the worst possible outcome.

Sai! Ino! she cried out in her heart. Have you already realized that they’ve got me? Hurry and help—

She gasped suddenly. She felt like she had managed to catch herself just on the verge of falling into a dark ravine.

What am I saying? Hurry and help me?

No, she avowed to herself firmly. No, no, no.

She remembered the time when she, Sasuke, and Naruto first came together on Team Seven. Remembered the self who was so weak then.

Naruto and Sasuke would protect me. I was always protected. And I hated myself for that. So I got stronger. I didn’t want to always be looking at their backs. I wanted to be their equal. Which is why…

Me right now, she thought, I’m just being the weak me from back then, aren’t I? Feeling hopeless, waiting for friends to save me. I can’t face Sasuke like this.

It started with “You’re annoying” and got to “I’ll see you soon. Thank you.”

It’s come this far, my relationship with Sasuke.

Sakura didn’t want to go back to that old annoying self. She didn’t want to go back to being weak.

Do it, do what you can right now…

“Sasuke—” Sakura said, looking up at Kido. “You really think Sasuke’s going to be caught that easily by the likes of you?”

“I do,” Kido said icily, the smile disappearing. His attitude, so filled with certainty, made Sakura shudder. “I wouldn’t presume to try and lure him to the village when I had no chance of success. It’s true that he is strong. I acknowledge that. However, we also have no little amount of skill.”

The word “skill” made Sakura remember. The men who attacked Sai were cloaked in Tailed Beast chakra.

“So you’re going to use the Tailed Beast chakra?” Sakura said.

“Did Sai tell you? Yes, exactly. Although strictly speaking, it’s not Tailed Beast, it’s pseudo-Tailed Beast. Even so, you can get a reasonable bit of fight from it.”

“A reasonable bit of fight? You don’t talk like you have a chance of beating him.”

“It’s sufficient. We don’t have to defeat or kill him. All we need to do is restrain him and take his eyes.”

The way Kido kept his cool made her angry. But this was a good turn of events. She couldn’t let him stop talking to her.

“So you really want Sasuke’s eyes that badly, huh?”

“We have made all these preparations to that end, after all.”

“You collected Sasuke’s hair and blood in the Final Valley, extracted his chakra, and created the fake. Isn’t that right?”

“Just like a medical ninja to figure it out. Sharp insight. However, doesn’t it all work out this way? You got to see Sasuke, even if he is a fake.” Kido chuckled.

Sakura glared at him. “Why would I be glad to see a fake? And you all probably don’t know this, but the real Sasuke’s slimmer, his eyes are cooler, his voice is just a little bit lower, and the bridge of his nose is straighter. This fake you made is not the best quality. Definitely a quality issue.”

“Coming from you, that’s not very convincing, given that you were taken in by that very fake.”

“Shut up. I’m telling you it doesn’t look like him, it doesn’t—”

“This is the man who has been playing the part of Sasuke,” Kido said, interrupting her. One of the masked men behind him stepped forward. “He was acting as the Sasuke copy when we took you.”

“So? What’s your point?”

“Take off your mask,” Kido ordered, and the man did as he was told.

The mask was removed, revealing the face of a man who did not bear the slightest resemblance to Sasuke.

“And this,” Kido said, taking a white capsule from the pocket of his coat. “This is a capsule containing Sasuke’s chakra. If you take it, you will be cloaked in a chakra of the same color and lineage as Sasuke. Here.” Kido handed the capsule to the man who had removed his mask.

“Let her meet Sasuke,” Kido ordered him, watching Sakura out of the corner of his eye.

“Stop it.”

“Understood,” the man replied.

“I said, stop it!”

Heedless of Sakura’s cries, the man swallowed the capsule. He wove a sign with both hands.

Poof! A puff of smoke rose up, and when it cleared, Sasuke was standing there. Sasuke’s face. And the chakra was Sasuke’s as well.

“Ngh!”

Sakura quickly averted her eyes. She was ashamed of herself for the way her heart pounded for a moment, albeit unconsciously.

“What do you think? Take another look and tell me about the poor quality.”

As if I’ll look.

Sakura closed her eyes and turned her face away from Kido and the man. As if she would ever look.

Soon, she heard footsteps. They were coming toward her. Whoever it was stopped close to her.

She opened her eyes a crack and gasped. The fake Sasuke was crouching down and peering at her.

Get away from me!

Sakura tried to turn her face away again.

Then.

“I love you, Sakura,” said the fake Sasuke, stroking her hair.

“Ngh!” A chill so severe she wanted to cry out raced through her entire body, and she glared at the fake Sasuke.

His mouth stretched out into a thin, vulgar smile, the sort of expression that would never cross the face of the real Sasuke.

No words came out. Her entire being was filled with rage. Sakura glared very nearly hard enough to set the fake Sasuke on fire as he returned to Kido’s side.

The fake Sasuke released the transformation and put his mask back on. Right up until the mask hid it, the man wore that same thin smile.

“Congratulations on being reunited,” Kido said. A certain satisfaction at having put Sakura in her place bled into the bottom of his voice.

Sakura let out her breath. She inhaled, exhaled again. She felt the violent storm in her heart recede bit by bit. Finally, she said, “Totally different.”

Kido looked puzzled.

“I was right. The real thing and the fake are totally different. But fine. Thanks to your creepy little show, I’ve stored up plenty inside me. Anger…and chakra,” Sakura said, and sent all the chakra she had been secretly kneading while talking with Kido racing to all points in her body.

Because of the effect of the drug, she had needed time to knead her chakra, something she could normally do in a short time—which was why she had been trying to drag out the conversation. She kept challenging Kido to make him keep talking.

Having finished the One Hundred Healings jutsu, Sakura had no trouble building up chakra while talking, and keeping her opponent from realizing it to boot.

She had built up a nice stock of chakra. Spiced with her rage at being forced to witness that tasteless display, an unparalleled superhuman strength surged through Sakura’s limbs.

“Magire, get another inject—”

“Too late!”

Sakura put all her strength into her arms and legs, and the cuffs around wrists and ankles went flying.

2

Together with Sai, Ino went out to where scrap materials were stored on the outskirts of town. They hid behind a metal drum and began their watch over the two-story wooden building diagonally across the road from them.

“That’s one of the Kido faction safe houses,” Sai told her. “I think they use it for secret talks or hiding people or locking people up.”

Sai had noted that during the course of his observation of Kido, the man had come to this safe house several times. The building itself was encircled by hedges, with one person near the gate wearing the mask and coat of the Anbu keeping watch over the surroundings.

“Ino, check and see if you can sense Sakura’s chakra in there.”

“Got it.” Ino went into detection mode. She could sense the chakra of three people inside. But none of them were Sakura’s. “She’s not there. Sakura’s chakra isn’t there.”

“It’s not?” Sai was disappointed.

“Hey, are we going to go check out all the places Kido goes to one by one like this?” Ino asked, curious.

“As if.” Sai shook his head. “That would take way too long. And if Kido has safe houses I don’t know about, it’d be game over.”

“So then what are we going to do?”

Before coming here, Sai had said they would use a bit of an “aggressive way” of doing things.

He pointed at the gate guard. “Fortunately, there’s only one person on watch. We’re taking him down.”

“Take him down? You mean, a battle? Now?”

“We’ll do it with a fast attack. Use your Mind Transmission and get inside him. And then all you have to do is get out right before my attack lands.”

It was a basic combo attack, one Ino-Shika-Cho often did. She had never done it with Sai before, but there was only one enemy and she had faith in Sai’s skill.

“Got it,” she replied, without hesitating. She wove the signs and focused her mental energy. “Okay, here I go.” She had no sooner spoken the words to Sai than she was flying out from behind the drum. At the same time, she sent her mental energy shooting out toward the shinobi at the gate.

Mind Transmission Jutsu!

Her jutsu a success, Ino made the guard stand stock-still.

Sai closed in on the guard, hands clenched into fists, and launched a single blow. Immediately before it landed, Ino shouted “Release!” and escaped from the guard’s mind.

Once again in control of himself, the first thing the guard saw was Sai charging toward him.

Sai’s fist landed in the other man’s side, and the guard doubled up. Sai then dropped a sharp strike onto the back of his exposed neck with a stiff hand.

The guard hit the ground without a cry. Sai tossed him over his shoulder before quickly returning to where Ino stood.

“Let’s ask this guy. Everything,” Sai said, and started walking, still carrying the guard.

Once they were inside the scrap material shed, Sai rolled the guard onto the ground. All around them were heaps of scrap materials, a piece of which made for a very nice blindfold.

Sai took out some rope and tied the guard’s hands behind his back before lashing his ankles together. He then sat the still-unconscious guard up and leaned him against a pile of materials before waking him up.

“Sai! You—!”

“Quiet,” Sai said, his voice calm, and took the guard’s mask off.

The man was around thirty years old. He glared at Sai and Ino in turn with angry eyes.

“I didn’t want to have to do something so rough as this to a senior ninja, but we don’t have time to fool around. You’ll answer our questions for us.”

The man stayed silent and shifted his eyes away from Sai.

“You kidnapped someone yesterday, yes?” Sai said. “Where are you hiding her?”

Face still turned away, the man kept his mouth firmly clamped shut.

“I know that you’re a member of Tsumiki Kido’s faction. Where have you stashed Haruno Sakura?”

The man remained silent. He apparently intended to stay that way.

“If you continue to say nothing, we will use methods that I would really rather not.”

“Torture?” the man asked. His mouth twisted up into a challenging sneer.

Sai nodded easily. “Yes. I’m also a former Anbu member, after all. I know any number of ways to get a person to talk.”

“That’s fine then, isn’t it?” the man said. “I’m also Anbu. I know ways of enduring torture.”

“Do you think those will be useful?” Sai asked, pulling out a kunai. Then, without hesitation, he sliced the man’s clothes open, leaving him essentially naked from the waist up. But this man was not the sort to lose his composure at something like that.

Ino started to get nervous. She had been witness to interrogations on missions. At these, she had heard angry roars and threats any number of times, but none of them had ever turned to torture.

She braced herself for whatever bloody scene she was about to face.

Sai readied the brush he used for his Art of Cartoon Beast Mimicry. “Ino, you’d better not watch this.”

What was he going to do? What was he going to draw? Would he make a tiger attack? Or maybe an enormous snake would squeeze the man’s body? Or maybe…

One gruesome image after another flashed through her mind, and without thinking, she said, “Hey, Sai, don’t do anything—”

Too awful, she went to finish, but Sai was already moving his brush.

Coooochy coo, coochy coochy coo…

“Pftah! Ha ha ha!” The man began laughing out loud.

“That’s your torture?!” Ino yelped.

“When you don’t have any time, this works best,” Sai said, with a straight face.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I read it in a book.” During this entire exchange, Sai continued to tickle the man with his brush.

The man twisted his body as he laughed, wriggling and writhing, until finally saliva started to dribble out of the corners of his mouth.

After what Sai deemed sufficient time, he stopped moving his hand and asked, “Now will you tell us?”

“…Yes.” The man’s face and voice were despondent; no hint of the fearsome Anbu remained in him.

∞

On the northeastern edge of the village, there was a brick storehouse, the Anbu man told them. Sakura should be there.

Sai quickly drew a bird with his Art of Cartoon Beast Mimicry, and he and Ino jumped on and headed for the storehouse.

It wasn’t the first time she had ridden on one of Sai’s birds, but it had been a while, so Ino started to lose her balance at one point.

“If you’re scared, hang on to me,” Sai said, still facing forward.

Ino felt a sweet sensation burst into bloom in her heart, but she quickly shook it off. “I’m okay.”

The bird was moving fairly quickly. The streets of the town below turned into the green of forests and fields before her eyes. They passed wild black kites and hawks.

“I see it!” Sai shouted, pointing at their two o’clock.

On the other side of a grove of trees was a parcel of open land with a brick building in one corner. The bird steadily approached it.

Just as the bird began to slow down, several people in Anbu masks came flying out of the storehouse.

They had probably cloaked the area in a field invisible to the naked eye to let them know of intruders. And the bird had tripped it.

The Anbu who came out of the storehouse let their kunai fly all at once. Sai deftly steered the bird to avoid the countless blades shooting up at them.

The bird made a large circle in the sky before approaching the storehouse once more.

“Sakuraaaaa!” Ino yelled. “We’re here to save you!”

In that moment, something suddenly broke through the roof of the storehouse and came shooting out into the sky above.

A human figure with fist thrust into the air—what came shooting out was Sakura, her entire body colored with chakra.

“Sakura?” Ino cried out wildly from the back of the bird.

Sai blinked hard. “Weird. We’re supposed to be here to save her.”

3

“Too late!”

As she cried out, Sakura clenched her hands into fists and looked up at the ceiling. She dropped her hips, stiffened her knees, and—I’m smashing through and getting out!

She didn’t care whether this room was underground or however many floors aboveground. She was going up and out. That was her sole thought.

“Hold her down!” Kido roared, but Sakura moved faster.

Cherry Blossom Crash!

“Oh yeeeah!!”

Sakura leapt toward the ceiling. Her right fist, glittering with chakra, pulverized the concrete ceiling. Beyond the ceiling, there was simply a space like an enormous storehouse.

So I was locked up underground.

Her recognition of this was fleeting. The force of the Cherry Blossom Crash still with her, Sakura smashed through the ceiling of the storehouse as well.

Abruptly the sky opened up before her eyes, and a sense of liberation filled her heart. And then she heard, “Sakura?!”

Turning her gaze to the right, she saw Sai’s bird. On its back were Sai and Ino.

Sakura killed her upward momentum, landing right next to the storehouse before leaping off to put some distance between herself and the building.

Sai and Ino slid off the bird and hit the ground very close to Sakura.

“Are you okay?” Ino asked.

“Yeah, basically. But how did you guys know I was here?”

“We strung up one of Kido’s subordinates. Although seeing how things have turned out, I guess you were okay by yourself.” Sai grinned wryly.

“No way,” Sakura replied with a severe look. “I’m glad you’re here. Kido and Magire are in there. Don’t let your guard down.”

Kido and Magire then came flying out of the hole Sakura had torn in the roof. They were followed by several members of the Anbu.

Sakura and her friends stood and glared at the ten or so members of Kido’s faction.

“A woman of superhuman strength, just as word had it,” Kido said, as if to provoke her. “But I’m not letting you get away. You really must stay and refine those eyes of Sasuke’s for us.”

“As if I’d do a thing like that!”

“Sakura, what’s he talking about?” Ino asked. “Refining Sasuke’s eyes?”

“These guys are planning to take Sasuke’s eyes and make a drug out of them.”

“A drug?”

“A sharingan drug. They say it’ll give anyone who takes it the power to use sharingan. They think that if they kill me in front of Sasuke, it’ll be too much of a shock for him, and that shock will increase the powers of his eyes.”

Ino was speechless.

Sakura continued. “They made the fake Sasuke with a drug too. They give this capsule with Sasuke’s chakra to someone who uses transformation jutsu to look like Sasuke.”

“Since you’re here, why don’t the two of you die in front of Sasuke as well?” Kido said, with a broad grin.

“Three of his friends die at once before his eyes.” Magire picked up where his leader left off. “We can expect an equivalent increase in his visual power. That is all.”

“You wouldn’t!” Ino narrowed her eyes.

“A drug, huh?” Sai’s voice was cool. “So the Tailed Beast chakra that the guys who attacked me were cloaked in. That’s the effect of a drug too?”

“It is,” Kido said. “A Tailed Beast drug.”

“So in the Final Valley, you didn’t just collect Sasuke’s hair and blood,” Sakura said. “You also got Naruto’s and extracted his chakra?”

“You’re half-correct. The remaining half…let’s just say that’s a trade secret.” Kido’s grin grew broader.

“What do you mean, trade secret? Talking like you’re a company!” Ino laughed.

“We are,” was Kido’s immediate response.

“What?”

“I’m leaving the village and starting a military company. Of global scale.”

“A military…company?” Sakura’s face was skeptical.

“Oh, is that it?” Sai said. “You’re going to sell the drugs in conflict regions?”

“That is precisely it,” Kido replied. “Take this drug and be cloaked in Tailed Beast chakra. Take this one and use the sharingan. If such drugs exist, organizations wishing to increase their fighting power will most certainly desire them. And that’s not all. I can even manufacture the conflicts themselves. This time, I made a fake Sasuke, but theoretically I could make a copy of a key person in a certain country and have the fake take actions to instigate a conflict. The result being that we could sell our drugs in the region once the conflict breaks out. Or there’s the route of selling mercenaries enhanced with drugs. At any rate, massive profits will come rolling in. And I will obtain money, enough money to burn, should I so wish.” As Kido spoke, an almost ecstatic expression rose up onto his face.

“The drugs are a sham. I don’t believe everyone is just going to line up for something like that,” Ino said.

Kido shook his head, chastising. “I’d appreciate it if you’d refer to them as a rational choice, rather than a sham. And there absolutely are people who want them. They’ll be able to use the powerful chakra of the Tailed Beasts and the sharingan, after all.”

“You’re deluded if you think a drug can make you stronger,” Sakura said. “People get stronger by making it through tough times. They move up one step at a time, aiming for the sky.”

“That is truly infantile thinking,” Kido snorted. “The humble opinion that time simply makes good. You made this children’s therapy center or whatever it’s called, hmm? If I had to say, that sort of thing is the very soul of inefficient and uneconomical. Care for the minds of children? The only thing spending time and money on that is going to do is produce more weak children. Children whose spirits can be broken are simply weak in the end.” He spat this last part out.

“Excuse me?! Sakura and I—” Ino started, but Sakura cut her off.

“It’s okay, Ino. Let him talk. This guy could never understand the human heart. He doesn’t understand, and that’s why he failed at luring Sasuke out, right?” Sakura said, and laughed boldly. “He set a fake to work, and Sasuke still didn’t come back to the village. He totally misread Sasuke.”

A flash of annoyance raced across Kido’s face. “He will come back. If we use you three as bait, that is. You there!” Kido called to his masked subordinates on standby behind him. “Take the Tailed Beast drug. And then secure them. If you have to use force and you end up killing them, that’s fine as well.”

At Kido’s order, the subordinates began to move all at once. They removed their Anbu coats and tossed them aside before taking off their masks. Once they were in just their uniforms for easier movement, they brought capsules to their mouths.

“Now you can get a taste of the immensity of this ‘sham’ power, as you call it,” Kido said.

Sakura and her companions spread out, leaving a good distance between them so they could spring into action.

And then, one after another, the chakra of Kido’s subordinates grew until all were cloaked in a pale purple chakra with tails growing out of it. The number of tails varied. Some of the ninja only had one, others had two. The lengths of the tails also differed from person to person.

“They have different numbers of tails,” Ino noted.

“Two seems like it’d be stronger than one, going from the strength of the chakra,” Sakura replied, sizing up their enemy.

“The number of tails is proportional to the amount of chakra the person has,” Kido remarked, lightly. “If you’re interested, perhaps you’d care to try the drug?”

“Careful,” Sai said. “Even the ones with a single tail are fairly strong.”

“Got it.” Sakura nodded.

Kido thrust his chin out. “Get them.”

Enemies cloaked in Tailed Beast chakra charged them.