Someday You Will be Loved

A/N: Oh, I am so late in getting this to you guys, and I do apologize. There has been one issue after another, including hurricanes and a messy half-divorce-half-not in my family and then an issue with one of the sites I upload to. And graduation, and trying to find a job, and getting everything ready for grad school. It's been a nightmare in real life. And then every time I would open this file to work, I just went blank. Too many things going on, too many other worries in my life. I’ve had no real inspiration to write from the manga or the anime, either. It has all converged on me and made everything really complicated, so real life took precedence for me. But now I’m back and ready to finish this monster, in the way it needs to be done. Some things have been added to the original, and I hope you like it.

I had some issues with this chapter, trying to get it to flow and feel right. I ended up writing myself into a corner at one point, trying to fix a plot hole…I can’t even explain the crap I went through trying to fix it and get the story back on track. It took quite a bit out of me over the last month or two, so I really hope you like it!

And thank you very much to purvy sage, who seems to have consented to be my beta! She’s been looking through my stories, giving me pointers, and helping me when I hit a snag. Without her input, this chapter probably would have taken quite a bit longer than it did.

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“Someday You Will be Loved: Chapter 7; Part II”

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"Feel the distance pull between us..."

Sasuke, Sai, Naruto, and Kakashi were rushing through the desert of Kaze, hoping to make the best time possible. It was at least four days over to Niigata from Konoha, and that was with them going as fast as possible and only taking three breaks a day. It was dizzying to say the least, and not very good on them in the long run. They needed to arrive in the city ready to fight if necessary, and Kakashi didn’t see how that would be possible. After three days of this breakneck pace, he was sure that they were running on pure adrenaline, more on their worry for Sakura than on their chakra.

He was no different, though. His mind let the barren landscape of Suna’s desert disappear, bringing up images of his lone female student, the one he had treated so horribly, if only in his own mind. He had cursed her, refused to even speak her name to any of her friends, only mourning her when he was alone in the morning in front of the KIA Monument. She was his total failure, the one that had watched a member of the team betray them and then done the same thing, even knowing what hurt it brought.

When he had found out it was all a ruse, just a way to get her out of the city, he was almost in a rage. He knew there were other shinobi that had done the same, pretended to be nukenin from Konoha to do their Hokage’s dirtiest jobs, but never had he pictured sweet, innocent Sakura being one of the many forgotten ones. She wasn’t fit for that life.

He was supposed to protect her, and he failed. It was all he seemed to think about lately, ever since he saw her picture with that man and knew her uncle was behind every bit of it. He had allowed her, however indirectly, to do exactly what her mother was so afraid of. And he knew that if they were too late, it would mean she was lost to them forever. He knew quite a good deal of information about the Kazedama family due to Sakura, and none of it left him with a fuzzy feeling.

He could see it in their eyes, too. Sai, ever emotionless, had a hard glint to his usually cold obsidian eyes, and he wasn’t even joking with Naruto, trying to rile the blond up. Sai had taken it hard, even though he had been there to see Sakura leave. Kakashi knew he feared that he would one day be sent on a mission just like this to retrieve Sakura, and he suspected that even now Sai wondered if at some point his ANBU training would be requested. The idea of killing one of the first people to ever call you friend scared him in a way he would most likely never admit.

He also knew that Sai felt he owed Sakura and Naruto more than he could ever repay. He treated them with a very Sai-like sort of care that nobody else ever received. Only they were special enough to him to merit any consideration. Not that the rest of the group wasn’t important, but Naruto and Sakura were special to him. Very special.

And Naruto, who should be in the village waiting on his child’s entrance into the world, was right beside him. Hinata had accepted it so easily, even pushing him out of the door when she heard where he was going. She understood his fierce need to go after Sakura in a way only she could, accepting that his love of his teammates didn’t lessen the love he felt for her.

His face was pure determination, fierce and savage. His eyes, normally so clear and blue, had turned red and become angular over a day ago and refused to turn back. He let out these strange noises every once in a while, almost like a growling grumble of nonsensical words Kakashi couldn’t make out. He was dangerously close to losing it. He protested every stop, every rest, every meal. The idea that Sakura was out there, fighting for her life without his help, was killing him inside.

And Sasuke, the newest, yet one of the oldest, members of their little nakama. Kakashi couldn’t really read him, other than to see that he obviously cared about Sakura enough to push himself as hard as the rest of them. He wasn’t sure what Sasuke felt for Sakura, especially since it had been some 8 years since they had last seen each other.

Yet he stayed with them, using his kekkai genkai to scan the rocky outcroppings that popped up every once in a while, checking for rogues. Nothing showed on his face except the tiniest amount of tension visible in the crease of his brow, the furrowed eyebrows making fine wrinkles above his nose.

His mouth formed a thin line, and his eyesight was focused off to the left presently. Most likely he had felt some rogue nin out there, not close enough to worry about but not far enough to ignore. They were in a dangerous area; a desert that was referred to as part of Kaze no Kuni but really was a rogue nation, the border being constantly disputed. They had run around it, entering from the south through Kaze instead of from the North through Hi no Kuni. It was too much ground to cover without any government system if they had come in that way and it added at least a day to their travel. Niigata was perched just on the coast, right between the rogue nation and Kaze. It was a lawless, dangerous area.

He shuddered to think of Sakura there.

The desert was slowly gaining some greens and browns, small plants cropping up as they got closer to the coastal rivers and plains. He could see that there was grass and some small trees ahead of them, even if quite a ways to the northeast. He would be thankful to be back in his comfort zone, in an area he could hide in.

He had just zoomed past another small bush, the poor plant shaking in his wake, when he felt Sasuke stop. Naruto and Sai, behind him, had already slowed down, coming to a stop. He turned in mid-air, skidding on the dry ground and coming to a stop facing his three teammates, focusing mainly on the one in the back.

“Sasuke?”

Sasuke was silent, his eyes focusing on the area to the left of them as his head cocked a little to the side, listening for noise he would never be able to hear.

“How close are they, teme?”

Sasuke shot Naruto a dirty look, but kept his focus on the supposed intruders.

“Four, I think. About a mile to the northwest. They don’t feel dangerous, and they are not moving in our direction. I would…say they are moving away from our intended direction, not toward it.”

“I would say that is a good thing, hm?” Sai quirked a corner of his lips up, delighting in his own wit.

“It is. But now that we have stopped, perhaps some food is in order? A small rest?”

He plopped down, setting on the hard dirt and reclining on an elbow. His left hand moved purposefully toward his pack, retrieving his little orange book and flicking it open in front of his face.

“Kakashi! We can’t just sit here! We’re so close!” Naruto spluttered, nonplussed.

“Shut up, dobe. We could use a rest. A few minutes won’t make any difference.” Sasuke sat his pack down, digging to find some type of food inside. His hand came out with a good amount of power bars, not very tasty but certainly good enough to keep them going.

He tossed one to Sai, who had made himself comfortable by a small boulder and was drawing in his sketch pad. The bar was caught swiftly, placed in his lap, and soon forgotten. Kakashi caught his as well, not even looking up from his book to grab it out of the air.

Naruto’s bar hit him in the head, as he was still too busy staring at both Kakashi and Sasuke to care about catching his food. If it could be called food.

“This is stupid,” the blonde mumbled, grabbing his power bar from the ground in front of him and ripping into it. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“No, Naruto, it’s not. But would you like to know what would be?” Kakashi grinned a little, looking almost eerie and evil with his lilting, carefree tone and the cheerfully sadistic look on his face.

“Not really.”

Kakashi’s face fell, and he pouted just a bit before snapping back into his usual laid back stance.

“I don’t need to, baka! This is stupid! We’re just sitting here, acting like nothing’s wrong and we’re on some stupid normal mission and we’re not, because it’s Sakura-chan who we’re running to this time, and that makes it totally different, you know? So we shouldn’t treat this like it’s normal, because she wouldn’t do that because she would run and run and run if it was one of us and never think about stopping or eating or resting or—”

“Dobe. Shut. The. Hell. Up.”

The blonde, properly scolded, stopped his rant with a dirty look at his teammate. Sasuke huffed, merely casting Naruto a look before turning to stare off into the distance, yet again scanning the area for any other travelers.

“Naruto, we will find her. You know that.” The blonde stared at his other asshole teammate, surprised and a little scared at the grave seriousness in Sai’s voice. Because it wasn’t Sai, at all. It was one thing for the artist to be serious, as he never really had been one for laughing and fun or anything that interested Naruto. But for him to be so straight about it…well, it just showed that the mission wasn’t just getting to him. It was getting to all of them, because the consequences of failure were just too large this time. This was no scroll, no unknown person they had to rescue, no escort mission for someone they had never met before and never would see again, it was Sakura. And that made all the difference.

“Yeah,” Naruto muttered, casting his gaze down to the dirty, barren ground beneath him.

Not ten minutes later, they were gone, the spot where they had rested looking as if they had never been there.

"Faster, faster, he we go bleeding stars, faling slow..."


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Yamato didn’t know what to do. He had never expected this to happen while he was there, especially while he was alone. They had been so sure that it would be easy, just him waiting around, lounging in the forest, until he had the chance to sneak in and get her.

How wrong they all were.

He had watched them struggle, watched as she was literally knocked out from the force of the man’s head hitting her own. He watched the larger man grab the little family, dragging them out of the room and out of his sight. He watched as the thinner, lankier man approached Sakura, cursing and rubbing his jaw, and kicked her now motionless body.

The horror he had seen in that room would be inescapable for the rest of his life. It wasn’t just that Sakura was a teammate, someone he had looked after and watched grow for so many years. His care for her and the feeling in the pit of his stomach as he watched her fall onto the bed under her uncle was something he expected. He had felt that feeling before, watching as she was hurt by Naruto when Kyuubi broke free, when she was injured during training from a badly miscalculated throw of Sai’s jutsu—even when he himself had landed a particularly nasty hit on her by accident on a mission to take down some rogue ninja in Fir Country.

But it wasn’t that care for a friend that would make what he had seen so tortuous to his mind. There was no human compassion in that room. A man who would brutalize his wife, who would go so far as to suggest using his own children as shields, who would use his own niece to buy his own freedom…it was ghastly. Never had he, scary ANBU Yamato, the murderer and ninja and all-around violent man to his enemies, ever been so heartless. He couldn’t fathom ever treating one of his comrades like that. He couldn’t understand treating a family member like that.

Humans could be so cruel sometimes. He had seen it himself, as an experiment of Orochimaru, as a ninja trained to kill and rend others apart, as a man who had watched life take so much fromt hose he now called his friends. Death was something humans thought nothing about, at least until it hit them. But still, he had never been cruel to someone he loved, someone he was supposed to care for and protect.

He could so clearly remember their young faces looking up at him one day on one of the many training fields in Konoha, trees waving in the gentle breeze and the sun shining down on their smiling faces as they announced that he was now part of their “nakama.” He was Team 7, Team Kakashi, and Naruto and Sakura had taken in another lost soul so easily, changing him and making him feel welcome, wanted for more than a jutsu, for the first time in his life. They had said it so nonchalantly, as if they were saying the sky was blue or that leaves were green. And he felt a feeling of heat in his heart, acceptance for the first time. They had taken him in without question, without care, automatically deciding they would protect him if they could since he was now one of them. This little group of orphans had given him something he never though he would have.

They had lost so much. Kakashi lost everyone he cared about, Naruto and Sakura lost their families and their third member, their completion, really, and Sai had lost the only person he ever cared for. While he had never lost anything, because he had never had it to begin with. But they gave him family, they have him something to lose, and now he felt it, watching her lay there, as badly as he had felt the loss the first time he had been told that Sakura had left the village. It was crushing in its intensity, but liberating at the same time.

Still.

He had to sit in his tree, covered and protected by foliage and countless years of ninja training, as one of his little “nakama” lay there, hurt and unprotected. It went sorely against the grain, no matter how long Sakura had been gone from his life.

“North side clear.”

And he couldn’t interfere.

There were too many guards, too many people around. His interference now would only cause more problems. He would have to stick it out and wait, hoping that his chance would come. It hurt him to do so, but it was more important to plan his movements, not let his emotions take over.

“East clear, except, ahh, some movement of the guards by the garage.”

He sat there for what felt like hours, although it certainly was not that long. Time flew by at the speed of nothingness, and he just watched her body. Her chest rose and fell, she shifted once. A hand fluttered, a nostril flared. A thousand tiny little movements that meant nothing, but assured him she was still alive. A rustle of her nightgown, a softly exhaled breath. He couldn’t hear them, but he could imagine the reassuring sounds.

“South clear. Ahh, the guard here has fallen asleep. Hmm.”

He was more than grateful.

The lanky man entered the room again, cursing and staring at her body the entire time. After a few minutes of pacing along the end of the bed, watching Sakura as she did nothing, he left. The sun rose, becoming a soft ball of orange instead of a pale light along the trees, and still she slept.

“West?”

Maybe he should move? Risk it now, while she was unconscious and couldn’t protest? There was a lot going on in the house right now. Surely no one would notice if he snuck in, grabbed her, and moved away quickly. He could be outside of Niigata and in Kaze before they knew he had been there, in safe territory and on his way to Suna.

“West? Come in, One.”

No. It was still too risky, especially without back-up. If something went wrong, there was no telling what the consequences would be. He had sat through watching them hurting before, and he could do it again. He could plan this, he could do this right. The rest of them would arrive and it could be carried out safely. They would be here soon enough and something could be planned.

“West? If there is no confirmation, then—”

“I’m here. Nothing.”

He turned his earpiece on low, trying to escape the chatter of his clones. They were altogether too talkative today, no doubt reflecting his own anxiety in this situation. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to have his inhibitions, just like Naruto’s own kage bunshin. They were a pain to work with sometimes, but they were also helpful, especially in a situation like this.

It didn’t matter, he repeated in his head. He had to be calm, had to think things through. He pushed the regret, the worry, all his emotion down deep so that he could feel it hum at the back of his mind like a fog trying to engulf him. He let his brain take over, calculating risk and time constraints, how best to enter the house and the best escape route when he left. He had to think, to plan, and worry later, after the whole situation was over and he had the only female member of their little group safe and secure.

And he settled in his tree, uncomfortably waiting for his moment.


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Not everyone on the Kazedama Estate was as calm and rational as Yamato at the moment. Jin was hurrying around the second floor rooms, packing his own belongings in the suite of rooms allotted to him while also looking in on the unconscious form of his prey every chance he got, or every time he felt that she could have possibly woken up. All the time, he was cursing about the pain in his jaw and the kunoichi who did it, who was still not tied up and restrained like she should be. One more punch like that and he was done. He knew it.

It was imperative that he get on the road today. If Konoha had foiled Danzou’s little coup, then they would be coming for their little spy, and she was much too important to let slip through his fingers. She would buy the freedom of his empire, his life, his future. At one point, when Matsu had approached him with the scheme, he had felt a tinge of remorse for what he would do to her. She had been so young and naïve, so much like the powerful lady that had sent her to him. But she was worth more to him than Tsunade now, and he would rather let an old friendship turn to dust than lose his freedom. His country wasn’t as accepting as the busty gambler’s; Cloud didn’t take to letting their shinobi wander like Konoha did.

So Jin moved about hurriedly, from one elegant and rich room to the next, packing and planning. He would leave as soon as possible, get to the main city of Cloud and make the exchange. Then Sakura’s freedom was no longer in their hands, and they would no longer be the ones Konoha focused on. It would be left to diplomacy, and he would be glad to be done with this entire stupid plot.

The children were huddled in Akira’s room, quietly sobbing and hiding in the window seat behind a dark blue curtain. They could hear the screaming still, see the bruises and the fighting and the violence in their minds. But they could do nothing, so they sat there, hushed and scared, hoping that their cousin could do what she had promised and get them out of this horrible house.

They had always known that something in their lives was different from everyone else’s experience, that their family was starkly at the end of some unseen spectrum. But they had pushed it aside, Misaki focusing on her music and Akira focusing on whatever let him not think about his father’s evil. How were they to know that the best thing that had happened to them in years, their pretty nee-chan Rika, was going to be the catalyst that broke the fragile peace in their lives?

They curled closer together, lost in their thoughts. The window was cold against their legs, but the light of the rising sun was warming and blinding, pushing everything out of the room and taking the creatures of the night away. There weren’t the Kazedama heirs here in this little window seat; there were only two scared children looking toward the day and hoping that light would erase the terror of the night.

And Matsu was screaming at his wife in their rooms, Nanao clutching her face and crying. She could feel his anger, his hate, rolling over her as he spit his words at her. Her heart was heavy with despair because she knew there was no way for her to get out of this situation. Her hope was gone, floating away as daytime approached and her dreams were shattered by reality. She had been so stupid, hoping that she could finally escape the gilded cage she had called life for so many years.

She knew that the only way of escape was now closed, and she had risked so much only for it to backfire on her and the children. Sakura was down, hurt, and had obviously grossly underestimated her uncle. What was worse was the fact that Nanao knew this man so well, knew what he would want even before he asked, and she had never even contemplated what would happen if she was found out, if it failed. But here it was, so clear in front of her. They had failed, and now her dearest friend’s daughter would be sacrificed to preserve the horrible life she and her children lived.

But it was life, and that was what mattered. She couldn’t help Sakura, she couldn’t help herself, but she could help her children. So she listened, silently agreeing whenever needed, and hoping that she would get out of this alive.

When he told her to grab the children and get downstairs, she moved in all haste to do so. She was not stupid, and she knew better than to go against anything he said when he was in one of these moods. She backed out of the room, head lowered and her body all but prostrate to her husband, turning and running down the hall to the children’s rooms when the door was finally shut and her husband’s image no longer freezing her in fear.

They would face what was to come together, and hope for the best.

She hoped her niece made it out of this alive. She hoped she did, too.

And two poor nukenin, hired by Matsu as bodyguards, grumbled and protested as they drug the deflated body of Hisadachi out of Matsu’s office. The body was leaving a trail of blood along the carpets, and they knew there would be trouble for it. But they could only do so much when someone was killed in such a way, and it was beyond their capabilities, stopping someone from bleeding.

His body was drug out the garage and then the east end of the estate, which had few obstacles. The forest was thin here, sparse and small compared to most of the woods around the house. The blood mixed with the dirt, leaving a reddish-brown trail down through the woods, over the sloping ground to the shore less than a mile from the house. The sand was soft and white, opposite the hard rocks that blocked the little shoreline from the rest of the beach. They grunted as they shuffled through the thin bits of sand, pulling the body down to the waves lapping at the white shore.

“How—”

The first nukenin grunted, stepping into the shallow water and pulling the body behind him, watching to make sure the blood stayed away from his shoes. It was already floating throughout the water, turning the sand and the foam of the waves a sickly pink color. He pushed a little harder and the crest of a wave returning to the sea finally caught the body, carrying it away from the shore.

Hisadachi floated on the seawater, bobbing with the waves as he drifted out to sea.

“Good riddance.”

“Eh. Back to the house.”

They turned and made their way back to the house, never thinking about what the day might bring. It had already been an eventful morning, after all. What else could possibly go wrong?

They would soon find out.

In a room of the house not even a half a mile from them, Sakura was slowly being hefted off of the bed by Jin and another nukenin, Matsu standing near the fireplace and watching as they took his niece. Her head rolled toward him, and he almost smiled at the fact that everything was going according to his own plans.

He turned to the mirror above the fireplace, looking at his reflection. He could see Jin and Hiro folding Sakura’s arms up onto her stomach, trying to find an easy way to carry her. A lock of hair, tinted pink due to the ineffectiveness of the hair dye she had used, fell in front of her face, and he suppressed the urge to reach over and push it back. She was not his sister. She was not his niece. She was not Kazedama. She was just another pawn in his games, and he couldn’t let himself think, for one minute, that she was anything like his sweet little sister had been.

This girl had never wanted what he could have offered. Everything was about her village, her nindo, her shinobi lifestyle. She was Haruno through and through, part of that despicable honor-loving clan of ninja that never understood the real way of the world. The only part of her that could even pretend to be from the Kazedama line—her looks—were far out shadowed by the Haruno in her. But still, sometimes…

He could almost see Rika in her, see the laughing and innocent eyes of his sister looking up at him. No matter what, he wished she had never been so stupid, never tried to escape. He would have given her a good life here, protected her and loved her. Those eyes, the eyes he could imagine were in the face of his niece, narrowed in his mind, objecting to his thoughts about her.

Oh, Rika, always a dreamer.

He shut his eyes, clearing her face from his mind. It was so long ago, ancient for him. She was gone, and nothing would bring the little sister he remembered back to him. He opened his eyes, looking at his niece again. Rika’s eyes were still there, implanted in his memory and in his vision, and his hand moved to rub it out of his own eyes but he stopped his body from moving.

He denied the urge to step back, the fear that coursed over his body. His Rika had never looked at him like that, even after he told her that he was responsible for the death of her Haruno husband. Bile fought to come up his esophagus, and long-denied shinobi instincts warned him that this person was dangerous, that he needed to get as far away as possible as soon as he could.

But he was a Kazedama, and they never ran from anything. He pushed his fear down, clamping a lid on it tightly. He swiveled around, small flecks of breakfast pastry flying from his expensive pants, the hairs on his arms standing at attention. His brow furrowed, and he moved to warn the other men in the room, but he stayed silent, his voice bound by something otherworldly. He was sure they had just signed their death warrants. The green eyes across from him lost their coy slant, their fake anger. All he saw was anger, rage coursing so deep he would never be able to find the bottom of it.

Those weren’t Rika’s eyes, not anymore.

She flashed upward so quickly, her entire body almost levitating up from the position she had been in. There were some startled grunts from the men nearest her as the chakra she expelled flashed and sizzled against their skin, the raw power singing tiny hairs and warning them to step back, now.

Jin, who had been right above her when she started moving, was shoved back by a massive punch, his second that day. But this one was different, as if the process had been shifted so radically just by her anger that the force had grown exponentially. The older man slammed hard into a wall, crunching bone and ripping through muscles, before the entire wall shattered outward, caving into an explosion of wood and debris once it could no longer handle the pressure it was subjected to.

The older man fell through as well, landing unconscious in the hallway.

The other nin, Hiro, stepped forward with his kunai poised in his hands and his body already in a defensive position, but it was not enough to stop him from being annihilated. A deceptively gentle kick to his stomach as she twisted in the air, trying to get her legs under her so that the fall would be graceful and planned, and Hiro was flying to the outer wall of her room. The stone didn’t give as easily as the wooden inner wall, but as the poor nukenin crumbled to the floor in a heap of lethargic limbs, Matsu could see the large crack marking the point of impact.

He had underestimated her. Badly.

Sakura landed on the soft floor with a concussive force that blew him away, literally. He watched as the ground underneath them liquefied and split, spilling both of them, as well as all of the room’s furnishings, into the lower level living area.

Matsu landed heavily on a couch that had been in his family for three generations, now destroyed as the dust from the ruins of his niece’s room fell onto the fabric, staining upholstery he couldn’t buy anymore. Antique tables, priceless artifacts, beautiful paintings…all were destroyed by the falling pieces of wood, the furniture, even the large chandelier that had once illuminated this room.

He watched, almost in slow motion, as she appeared before him across the room, dripping dirt and sweat all over a one of a kind, hand woven rug he had received from his mother when he was married. But the chaos didn’t sway her, didn’t even interrupt her train of thought. She silently slipped on a pair of black gloves he had never seen before—never took the time to notice—each finger promising a pain he never thought she would be able to understand.

“Have you any idea what you bring on yourself, niece?”

Already he could hear the other nin in the house rushing to the scene of her outburst, gasping and shouting out orders to get the situation under control. But she just stared at him, one hand held in front of her as if she was pointing at him, calmer than was possible. She was a mixture of oddities, a kunoichi with fighting gloves standing in a pair of pyjamas, surrounded by rubble.

“Sakura, stop this now, and perhaps we can negotiate. Surely, you realize you will never make it out of this house alive.”

Her lips quirked upward, her smile devious and innocent all at the same time. Still, she didn’t move from her place in front of him. She was still and silent, merely standing there and waiting for the inevitable breakdown he would have, the breakdown he was dangerous close to.

“You are a fool. An indescribable fool if you think you’ll live through fighting me. I am not Jin.”

Her face darkened, her grin slipping away. She stepped forward, only a few inches really, still too far to hit him without moving first. Her eyes narrowed, her body tensing and snapping to attention.

“I am Kazedama. And if you even try to escape, you will feel the wrath that makes that name cursed.”

And suddenly her grin was back, as malicious as ever. She flickered out of his sight, moving fast to the right in a wide-swing that brought her next to him. Matsu’s arm snapped upwards, blocking the hit she tried to land on his shoulder, most likely hoping to incapacitate his dominant arm. He sneered at her, suddenly so close instead of looming in the distance like a bad dream waiting to surface. She was small, vulnerable, not nearly up to his standards, no matter how strong she was.

He felt the pressure on his arm increase tenfold, and he cringed in response. He could feel the bone trying to snap in two, wanting to fold to the force she was exerting.

Suddenly, she leaned in, close enough that he could see the tiny flecks of rage in her green eyes. He could feel the heat thrumming off of her body in waves, the chakra under the surface just waiting to be released. He watched as her lips parted, a sigh escaping right before a demeaning, rough chuckle.

“Matsu-sama. Don’t forget, I am Kazedama, too.”

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That's the second part of Chapter 7! Next, we see the end of the Kazedama family saga, and finally get to deal with the aftermath. I'm pretty much done with it as well, just going back and making sure that everything fits with the direction I veered off into. Because this is NOT how it was supposed to go, but stories have a tendency to take over and do what they want.