Flamethrower
Sakura Part One
Author’s Note: So this is long overdue, huh? Applying for grad school, writing papers, and studying for tests takes up a lot of time. Also, I was really lazy about finishing this up. Once I get going I write a lot, but I often have a lot of time getting started, if that makes any sense. -.-
We’re finally getting to some background information in this chapter! Hooray! The second half of this chapter is written in Sakura’s POV, hence the change from third-person to first-person. There are also several points in this story where Sakura is in awe over what seem to be rather everyday things. The reason for this is that there aren’t very many things around anymore that are from before the apocalypse. Being from a small village, Sakura has never seen anything that could really be described as “modern” before.
As always, this chapter is being cross-posted to my FF account, Light Within Darkness. The link can be found in my profile.
WARNINGS: Language, very brief mentions of torture and unethical human experimentation.
And now, without further ado…
Ino’s home was a tiny, one-room wooden shack off of the town’s main road. There was only enough room inside of it for three sleeping pallets on the floor, with three small wooden chests nearby. A pit for cooking fires had been dug out of the packed dirt floor, with a small hole in the roof above it to let out the smoke.
To Sakura, it was heaven. Having a real place to sleep that was more than a worn blanket over hard ground was a luxury Sakura had only dreamed of during the past several weeks. The pallets were made simply, of animal skins roughly sewn together and stuffed with dried grass. Still, Sakura couldn’t help running her hands along the pallet she was currently sitting on, relishing the feel of the soft skins beneath her fingertips. To lie on soft bedding during the cold Fire Country nights, all wrapped up in warm skins, would be something like heaven in Sakura’s opinion.
“Like it, huh?” Ino said with not a small amount of pride, noticing the way Sakura had been stroking the sleeping pallet as if it were something luxurious, like a real bed. The blonde girl was currently kneeling behind her friend, carefully evening out the ends of Sakura’s short pink hair with a knife. “I made those pallets myself, you know.”
Sakura grinned at that and tried to hold in her snort of laughter. She should have known the stitching was Ino’s work, since it looked like a goat had tried to take up a needle in its hooves and sew the skins together.
“Hey, don’t think I can’t hear you laughing!” Sakura could practically hear her blonde friend pouting behind her. “It took me weeks to finish sewing those, I’ll have you know. Weeks of working by firelight, with absolutely no help from Shikamaru because ‘sewing is too troublesome.’ And Chouji usually takes the nighttime patrols, so -.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Sakura interrupted, laughing. “If it weren’t for Ino and her brilliant sewing skills, everyone would be sleeping naked in the dirt. We should all be grateful that she toils away for us, day after day, with no thought to her own comfort.”
“Oh, be quiet, you,” Ino replied, but lightly enough that Sakura knew she wasn’t mad. “Anyway, you must have been traveling a long time to think that a pile of skins and grass is anything special. Where have you been?”
Sakura bit her lip nervously, wracking her brains for a story that Ino would believe. There was no way she could tell her friend the truth: “I rescued this boy from a secret Research Facility in the middle of Sound Country, where he was being used as a lab experiment. Now we’re on the run from the Sound Country authorities that are out to kill us. Oh yeah, and we’re also heading towards the Land of Waves because Naruto’s been having crazy dreams.” It sounded unbelievable even to Sakura’s ears. There was no way in hell anyone else would buy it.
“And that guy you’ve been traveling with – Naruto, right?” Ino was still talking, oblivious to Sakura’s unease. “Isn’t he a sight for sore eyes! Where’d you find a guy like that, Billboard Brow?”
“Um…”
“Are the two of you…involved? Come on, you can tell me! ‘Cause if you’re not, I’m definitely taking him.”
Sakura blushed furiously at that. “Me and Naruto -!”
“Ino.”
Both Ino and Sakura whirled around at the sudden voice behind them, Ino bringing the knife up before her in anticipation of an attack. She visibly relaxed, however, at the sight of the man lounging against the doorway. Tall and lanky, with dark hair tied up into a short, spiky ponytail atop his head, he looked supremely bored. The man was currently frowning at Ino as if it was her fault he was currently standing there at all, and he would quite rather be somewhere, anywhere, else, thank you very much.
“Shikamaru!” Ino cried, lowering the knife. “Knock or something, why don’t you! I nearly stabbed your eyes out!”
“Mmm. That would have been troublesome,” Shikamaru replied. His voice sounded incredibly bored, as if having a knife brandished at him was a common, everyday occurrence. Still, Sakura didn’t miss the way his brown eyes glanced quickly over at her. Although Shikamaru had only looked her way for a moment, Sakura couldn’t shake the feeling of being analyzed. The pink-haired girl’s body tensed, looking at Shikamaru with no small amount of suspicion.
“Well, you’re just in time to meet my friend, anyway,” Ino continued. “Sakura, this is Shikamaru -.”
“You need to come with me, Ino. Hokage-sama wants to see you.”
“Um…OK? This is awfully sudden…Did she say what about?”
Shikamaru shrugged. “She didn’t say. But she wants your friend Sakura to come, too.”
Sakura got to her feet at this. “Why? I only just got here, I haven’t done anything.”
“She’s been with me this whole time, Shikamaru,” Ino added, giving the man a suspicious look of her own.
“You’re not in trouble…at least, I don’t think you are,” Shikamaru said. “The Hokage wants to talk to both of you, though. So come on already, this is all very bothersome.”
Sakura felt a feeling of dread wash over her. There was no way that anything good could come of the leader of Fire Country wanting to speak to her.
Ino sighed, irritated. “Come on Sakura,” she said, taking Sakura’s hand just before the pink-haired girl could try to make a run for it. “The sooner we meet with the Hokage, the sooner we can relax.”
Sakura wished for the thousandth time since they left the house that Ino and Shikamaru weren’t walking so close to her. Ino was still holding her hand, in fact, probably as a way of reassuring her pink-haired friend, who was currently tense as a coiled spring. Still, Sakura would probably have a better chance of escaping the two town guards, finding Naruto, and getting the hell out of Konohagakure if Ino and Shikamaru were a few feet away from her. If the pink-haired girl were to try and get away now, she would have to fight one or both of them. That would definitely call the attention of more guards, and then Sakura would be carted up to the Hokage Tower in pieces.
Worst-case scenarios ran through the pink-haired girl’s head as if on a loop. The Konohagakure guards had somehow found Naruto out and wanted to interrogate her before capturing him. Sasuke and Naruto had gotten into a fight and destroyed some part of the town. The Sound Country military was here, demanding that Naruto and Sakura be released to them. Or maybe Naruto’s gone…feral again, like he did with Sasuke yesterday…
“We’re here,” Ino announced, as the two of them walked Sakura into the large wooden and metal structure that was Hokage Tower. Although she had no idea what was going to happen to her, Sakura couldn’t help but marvel at the row of large glass windows near the top of the Tower. The pink-haired girl never thought that she’d ever see real glass windows in her life, when the only windows she’d ever known were holes cut into the wall and covered with a bit of ragged cloth.
They went up three flights of stairs – Sakura had never been in a building so tall before, either – and stopped before a wooden door at the top floor. Shikamaru reached out and knocked smartly.
“Who’s there?” Came a young, feminine voice from within.
“Nara Shikamaru, with Yamanaka Ino and Sakura,” was Shikamaru’s bored-sounding answer. Sakura’s eyes widened at that. No one ever gave out family names freely anymore. Not during a time when there was no way of knowing who to trust, when there were people who were willing to track you down and then slit your throat because they wanted something that you had. And for Shikamaru to say his name so freely, in such a casual manner…he had to be quite confident of his position in Konohagakure, and the protection it would afford him.
“Enter,” said the woman, and Shikamaru opened the door. Ino and Sakura walked in behind him, and Sakura had to stifle a small gasp of surprise at the room. She’d never seen a room with such finery in it before.
The entire room was bathed in warm, yellow late afternoon light that streamed in through the large windows, from which Sakura could see the entire town laid out before her eyes. And the floor actually had a carpet on it! It was ragged at the edges and bleached almost white by the sun, but it was still an actual carpet. There was a desk as well, battered and scarred by what must have been many years of use. Two chairs that looked newly carved were situated before it. All of these things spoke to Sakura about the great love and respect the people of Konohagakure must have for their Hokage, if none of these things had been taken away by now and remade into clothing, or beds, or weapons.
“I take it that you are Sakura?” The woman’s voice was not unkind, but it carried an unmistakable tone of strength and authority. Sakura’s eyes immediately went to the woman seated behind the desk. She looked awfully young to be a Hokage, was Sakura’s first thought. The woman’s hair was long and blonde, tied neatly back into two ponytails. She wore simple but clean clothes – a pair of loose pants and a shirt, with a long green coat draped over her shoulders. Her mouth and cheeks appeared to be highlighted, somehow, with some sort of paint Sakura had never seen before. The pink-haired girl’s eyes were caught and held by this Hokage’s. She openly studied Sakura, fixing the girl in place as if she were a fly caught in those bright pools of amber.
“Shizune,” the Hokage said. A dark-haired and –eyed woman, who had been standing quietly by the Hokage’s side up until now, snapped to attention. “Get Neji and Hinata for me.”
“Yes, Hokage-sama,” the woman said quietly as she exited the room.
“Thank you for being so prompt, Shikamaru,” the woman continued. “You and Ino may wait outside in the hallway.”
Shikamaru and Ino both nodded and left the room, leaving Sakura alone with the leader of Fire Country.
The Hokage stood up and turned to face the large windows, looking out over the town with an unreadable expression on her face. Several seconds of tense silence passed before the blonde woman finally spoke. “My name is Tsunade, and I am the Godaime Hokage here. Please, sit.” She nodded towards one of the wooden chairs.
“Where’s Naruto?” Sakura spoke sharply. Her hands unconsciously curled into fists at her sides.
“I don’t know,” the Hokage answered, completely unruffled by Sakura’s outburst. “Hopefully, he is with your friend Sasuke. I want to speak with both of them as well; I’ve sent a member of my guard to retrieve the two of them.”
“You can’t do this to us!” Sakura knew it was a bad idea to be yelling at a woman who had an entire country’s military under her command, but she just couldn’t bring herself to care at the moment. “We only wanted to fill our canteens and leave! We haven’t done anything to you. And Naruto and I barely even know Sasuke; he’s just some dehydrated guy we found on the side of the road. We only planned to travel with him until we got here. So if he’s done anything, it isn’t Naruto’s fault or mine -”
Tsunade turned to Sakura for the first time since everyone else had left the room, pinning her once more with sharp amber eyes. All of Sakura’s arguments died in her throat under the weight of the Hokage’s gaze.
“You aren’t in trouble, Sakura,” she said gently. “Actually, I brought you here in order to help you.”
At that moment, the door to the Hokage’s office opened again, and the woman with the short black hair – Shizune – entered. Behind her two other people filed in, a man and a woman, the likes of which Sakura had never seen before. They obviously came from a wealthy family, as both wore clean clothing that was markedly less ragged than what Sakura had on. They looked to be related as well, as both the man and the woman had long, sleek dark hair, fine features, and pale skin. Both of them also wore the wooden badge of a Konohagakure town guard.
However, nothing about the pair caught Sakura’s attention as much as their eyes did. There was no sign of pupil or iris in both pairs of eyes, only a flat, milky white, as if they had taken clouds for eyes. Sakura would have thought them blind, but both the man and the woman were staring right at her. Sakura felt as if those strange eyes were piercing right through her, much worse than any look the Hokage had thrown her.
“Sakura, this is Neji and Hinata. They’re cousins, from the Hyuuga family,” Tsunade said as she sat behind her desk once more. Again, Sakura was surprised that the Hokage would give out information like this to her, a stranger, yet Neji and Hinata didn’t seem to be bothered by it. On the contrary, the woman, Hinata, was smiling gently at her.
“What…what’s wrong with…” Sakura whispered. She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
“It’s our eyes, isn’t it,” Hinata said softly. “Seeing them for the first time is shocking, I know.”
Sakura could only nod, unable to look away from those too-white eyes.
“Our eyes weren’t always like this,” Hinata continued. “Neji and I both used to have normal eyes. But when we were little…”
“We were taken,” Neji cut in, his voice direct and quite a bit harsher than his cousin’s. “Kidnapped from Konohagakure by bandits and sold as slaves to Sound Country. Then we were brought to a laboratory, and our eyes were taken out and replaced by the ones we have now.” He turned his head aside, his brow furrowing in anger.
Sakura could only stare, unable to believe what she was hearing. Could these people truly be former human test subjects, like Naruto? If that was the case, why were they here now? The Sound Research Facility wasn’t known for being merciful with their experiments, in Sakura’s experience.
“We managed to escape after several years, and make our way back to Konohagakure,” Neji said. “These eyes we have now are called the Byakugan. They allow us to see over long distances, as well as sense the different kinds of natural energies that run through people.”
“Your friend’s energy was unlike anything we’ve seen before,” Hinata broke in. “I’ve never seen energy so violent and unstable before. We knew right away that he must be like us. Energy like his just isn’t found naturally in humans.”
Sakura stared at the Hyuuga cousins as if they were ghosts visiting her in the night. She had never once thought that there might be others like Naruto out in the world, people who had managed to escape the Research Facility. It had been hard enough for her and Naruto to get out. And yet, the physical evidence of torturous years of experiments was plain in their unnatural eyes, and in the sorrow and anger on their faces. “Even if you are…like Naruto,” the pink-haired girl said, “I’m not just going to tell you about what happened to him. I don’t even know a lot of it myself. I was never experimented on at the Research Facility; I was just one of the people they forced to work there…” Sakura trailed off, unwilling to divulge more information. She’d said too much as it was.
“I don’t want to hear about what you think Naruto’s experience was, Sakura,” Tsunade said. “I want to hear about what you went through, what your experience was like in that…place.” The blonde woman spat out the last word as if it were something disgusting on her tongue.
“Why?” Sakura looked at the Hokage, Shizune, and the Hyuuga cousins with no small amount of suspicion. “Why do you give a damn about what we’ve been through? I don’t even know any of you!”
“Because what’s going on in Sound Country isn’t right,” Tsunade replied. Her eyes seemed to glow with a strange intensity as she spoke. “I do not like to see people suffer. Even in these harsh times, no human being should have their bodies and minds tampered with in such a way. Such an act is a violation, and it has happened to two of my own countrymen, no less.” The Hokage nodded at Neji and Hinata. “I want to find a way to stop this madness, if I can.
“Also,” Tsunade’s voice dipped so low that Sakura wouldn’t have heard her at all if she hadn’t been standing right next to the woman’s desk. “I feel partly responsible for all of this.”
Sakura bit her lip, still unsure as to whether or not she should tell the Hokage what she wanted to know. The door was unblocked…if she moved fast enough, she might be able to get out of here, lose herself in the town, find Naruto…
“Please, Sakura-chan,” Hinata’s soft voice caught the pink-haired girl’s attention. “Tsunade-sama has always been very kind to us. When we got back to Konohagakure, many of the townspeople wanted to kill us. They thought we’d been possessed by evil spirits because of our eyes. But she protected us, gave us positions as guards. We’ve been able to regain our standings here because of her.”
Next to Hinata, Neji nodded in agreement. “Unless you tell the Hokage-sama what she needs to know, she can’t help you or your friend.”
Sakura looked over at Shizune, who smiled and nodded at her, then back to Tsunade. Strangely enough, Sakura felt safe here, for the first time in what seemed like forever. Although any of these people could have taken her by force and made her tell them what she knew of the Research Facility, they were asking for her assistance like an equal. Maybe…just maybe, the Hokage really could help her and Naruto.
Sakura was so very, very tired of running away. If these people could really do something that would help her to live her life in peace, she had to take that chance.
Sakura sat down in one of the chairs across from Tsunade’s desk, took a deep breath, and began her story.
I grew up in a little village on the outskirts of Earth Country. It was basically a loose circle of stone huts around a small well, with some plots of farmland here and there. We got a fairly steady stream of people coming in from the main town, Iwagakure, though. You see, my parents knew quite a bit about medicine. Together with the Yamanaka, who had knowledge of medicinal herbs and plants, they set up a small hospital in our village. It was a slightly larger stone and mud hut that was right next to our house, with a few pallets on the floor for patients who were too sick or too injured to return home after treatment.
My parents started teaching me about healing the human body as soon as I was old enough to walk. Growing up in a place where people regularly came through with all sorts of sicknesses and injuries, I learned quickly. Mom and Dad were so proud of me – they said I was a natural at medicine, and that someday I would become better at it than they were.
Ino was my best friend in the village. She was the only other girl around my age there, so I guess it was only natural that we became close. We shared all of our closest thoughts and secrets, and spent as much time as we could in each other’s company. Oh, we fought as well – Ino said my forehead was large and called me Billboard Brow, I called her Ino-pig. She thought I was a scaredy-cat, and I thought she was vain and stuck-up. But that didn’t change the fact that we were as close as sisters. Some of my best memories growing up are when Ino and I went into the mountains to pick herbs. Having the entire day to ourselves, away from the cares and responsibilities of the village, was like heaven.
Our families practically lived together as well. The Yamanka sold medical herbs and plants in their home across from us. They were with us almost every day, using their knowledge of medicinal plants to treat illnesses and relieve the pain from injuries or operations. We shared all of our knowledge of the human body and various illnesses and injuries with them in return. I remember sitting around the Yamanakas’ table in the evenings, helping to dry and sort herbs with Ino while our parents discussed the various ailments of their patients.
By the time I was eight years old, I was bandaging wounds and helping set broken bones. By the time I was twelve, I was assisting my parents during surgeries, and treating minor illnesses on my own. At fifteen, I was able to examine and treat patients, with only a little help from my parents. I was able to identify hundreds of different kinds of herbs and their effects on the human body. Mom and Dad introduced me as a nurse to anyone who came into the hospital, and said that I only needed a few more years of practice before I’d be a full-fledged doctor like they were. Helping people heal was very fulfilling for me. I felt like I’d finally found a purpose in life, and knew without a doubt that I wanted to work in medicine for the rest of my life.
Then I had to leave.
It was always difficult to grow anything in Earth Country. The ground there is hard, dry, and full of stones. We were surrounded by mountains on all sides, so it was difficult to get supplies from elsewhere. The weather was unpredictable as well – it could go months without raining and people would have to lug water in buckets for a mile from the nearest river in order to water their crops. Or it would rain for weeks on end and the river would run over, making the ground too wet for crops. What did grow was tough, dry, and hardy, like the soil it came from. Despite all of that though, we usually had enough food to eat. My family was too busy with our hospital to grow any crops of our own, but we were almost always paid with food from the people we treated. We never had an abundance of food, but we didn’t go hungry either.
In the summer after my eighteenth birthday, though, things got bad. The worst drought in anyone’s memory hit Earth Country. Word was that people were dying on the streets in Iwagakure from hunger. Our own crops suffered badly. The river was barely a trickle, and there was just no water for growing anything. My family’s patients started giving us less and less food as payment, if they even bothered to pay at all. One old woman I treated for a bad cough could only give me a small handful of dried berries, which I ate in a few bites and was still hungry afterwards. I remember nights where the only food in the house was a small bowl of rice, and my parents would give me most of it. They always gave me the largest portion of whatever food we had. “You’re still young, Sakura. You need the food more than we do,” Mom and Dad told me. “We can go a few days without eating, but you need the right nutrition in order to keep yourself healthy.”
What little food the Yamanaka had went to Ino’s mother. She had grown ill during these hard times, and was confined to her bed. Ino worried about her constantly, and our days together had been mostly reduced to tense, anxious silence.
One day Mom fainted from hunger in the hospital, right in the middle of bandaging someone’s sprained ankle. She was all right, but that was when I knew that I couldn’t stay. I felt awful watching my parents give me food, and even more terrible about eating it anyway. It seemed that I was always hungry back then. Before I could even think about refusing any extra food, it was already in my stomach. So I decided then and there that I was going to go out and find my own way in the world. Plenty of people my age and younger left their homes to make their own living in the world, and so as not to be a burden on their families. It was past time that I went, too.
I never told my parents in person that I was leaving. It was cowardly, I know, but I couldn’t bear to tell Mom and Dad that their only child was leaving home because there wasn’t enough food. The looks on their faces would have been too much. Dad would probably try and convince me not to go, and that he needed me in the hospital. Mom would probably break down and start crying. I would never be able to go if that happened. So I packed a bag of supplies, left my parents a note, and told Ino to meet me by the riverbank that night. I could leave without speaking to my parents, but I couldn’t leave without telling Ino.
“You’re leaving, aren’t you,” she said as soon as I showed up with a cloth bag dangling from my shoulders. There was a full moon that night, coloring everything in a silvery glow. What was left of the river sparkled like a million stars. Ino’s and my hair looked practically white.
“Yeah,” I said. There was no point sugar-coating it by now.
“Damn it, Billboard Brow,” Ino muttered, turning away and kicking a rock into the riverbed. “I want to go with you. I don’t wanna spend the rest of my life here in the middle of nowhere.”
“You need to stay here and help take care of your mother,” I reminded her. “And my parents are going to need someone to help in the hospital too.”
“Why the hell are you going?!” Ino whirled around to glare at me. I’d never seen her look so angry before. “We need you here. You’re the best at what you do, I’ve never seen anyone so good at healing before.” Then, so quietly that I almost didn’t hear it, “I need you here.”
I reached out and hugged the girl I thought of as a sister, pressing her tightly against me. Ino hugged me back just as tight, and I could feel wetness on her cheeks. “There’s no food,” I whispered, my own voice catching in my throat as I spoke. “I can’t stay here and watch my parents starve.”
“Will I ever see you again?”
I didn’t answer. There was no way of knowing for sure, and we both knew that it was foolish to promise when I didn’t know if I could keep it.
Ino pulled back slightly and gave me a trembling smile. “Take care of yourself, Sakura. If I hear you’ve died, I’ll drag you back from the grave myself and kick your ass.”
I smiled back, tears threatening to spill over any second now. “Thanks, Ino-pig. I love you. Take care of yourself, OK?”
“I will. Love you too, Billboard Brow.”
And with the light of a full moon above me, I left my little village, the only home I had ever known, behind me.
Author’s Note: I wanted to tell Sakura’s story entirely in this chapter, but I was already at ten pages in Word and I felt like this was a good stopping point. I decided to split it up into two parts.
I know, there was a terrible lack of Sasuke and Naruto in this chapter. ^^;; We’ll be getting back to them shortly, don’t worry!
Also, the reason the forehead protectors in this story are made out of wood instead of metal is because there’s a shortage of metal in the world of “Flamethrower.” I didn’t think it would be feasible to have the people of Fire Country waste a precious resource on forehead protectors. ^^
Remember to feed your author and review! :D It helps motivate me to write faster, honest!
REVIEW RESPONSES:
FromAfar: You bring up a good point about Naruto not wanting to come back to Fire Country. That’s going to come up a bit later on, so I don’t want to say too much about it now. ;) Let me just say that fear plays a big factor in Naruto’s unwillingness to return home. Sasuke doesn’t like Naruto’s prying or do-gooder attitude right now either, lol. You’ll notice as a darker side to Naruto as the story progresses. Naruto’s relationship with Kakashi will be made clear soon, too. Thanks for reviewing, and I’m glad you’re liking the story so far!