Fairytales don't always have the right endings...
Paths
Sakura wandered a little further into the woods not too far from her house as she looked for the perfect focus for her kunoichi class homework. Her new friend, Ino, had explained how important it was for all floral arrangements to have a perfect centerpiece and now she was looking for just the right one. Unfortunately, no matter how many different kinds of wildflowers she found, she was unable to find one to suit her and she was becoming annoyed.
Thus, without realizing it, she meandered deeper into the woods. Grumbling a little, she moved from clump to clump (cosmos, lilies of all sorts, irises and any number of others she couldn’t easily name). None of them seemed to have all the qualities she was looking for, and the pink haired girl moved further into the forest, slowly leaving all things familiar behind her.
Finally, with a cry of triumph, she stumbled upon the perfect flower in a sheltered glade strewn with several large rocks. Happily, she plucked it – her mind already working out which sorts of flowers would best complement and support it in the arrangement she would create. Thrilled to have at last discovered something with which she could work, Sakura was more than ready to go home.
Glancing up to take stock of her surroundings for the first time, the pink haired girl realized that she had inadvertently ambled beyond her familiar territory. Carefully, she turned and took a couple of steps in the direction from which she thought she had come and paused, feeling greatly unsure of herself. With a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she realized that she was lost.
Confidence waning, she continued back to the edge of the glade directly behind her. Taking a couple deep and somewhat calming breaths, she examined the undergrowth, trying in vain to remember which trees she had passed. Unfortunately, it seemed as though the forest was against her – there were several different sections of broken underbrush along the edge of the woods where she was almost positive she had entered. But, the more she examined them, the less certain she became.
Unsure what else to do, she sat down to think in the shade of some large rocks. Somewhere at the very back of her mind, she knew that she would be missed at dinner time – people would be sent to find her and that the best thing for her to do would be to sit tight and wait. But, from what she could tell, dinner was still a couple hours off and she was not particularly content to just sit and wait for someone to come and rescue her.
The longer she sat, trying to remember just how she had come to end up in the unfamiliar glade, the more uncomfortable she became. Unbidden, stories some of the older students at the academy had been telling about the woods surfaced in her mind. Several children had recently been lost in the forest; none of them had returned. There was talk of outlandish happenings involving a strange beast or man (depending on who was doing the telling) hiding in the woods and making off with unwary children who strayed from the paths.
After some thought about her situation, she came to the decision that sitting tight and waiting for rescue was just not going to work for her. Cautiously, Sakura rose to her feet and took better stock of her surroundings. Thinking about it, she remembered that these woods lay to the east of the village – therefore, if she were to set out in a westerly direction, she should eventually come across something familiar. There were holes in her logic but, due to her mounting sense of discomfort at being alone in the woods for so long she chose to ignore them.
Just as the pink haired girl was about to set out – after carefully assessing her position in regard to the sun – a rustling in the underbrush caught her attention. Immediately, she sunk back down to the ground against two of the large rocks. Slowly, in an effort to hide, she wedged herself in a crevice between them. For the first time since realizing that she was indeed lost, Sakura began to feel a real sense of fear.
A moment later, the vegetation on the far side of the glade crackled and snapped as a large man carrying an axe emerged from the surrounding woods. She involuntarily shrank back a little further into her hiding place, frightened by the imposing man. However, by moving she had inadvertently drawn his attention to her location.
“Well now, what do we have here?” he asked in a jovial voice. Though he was obviously curious, he made no attempt to draw closer to her.
Uncertain what to do, she stayed where she was and tried to pretend that he hadn’t noticed her, although the fact that the man hadn’t made a move toward her made her feel marginally better.
Undaunted, the man held his ground and continued to speak to her. “You know, you shouldn’t be out in the woods all by yourself. This forest can be a dangerous place. There are all kinds of bad things that can happen to little girls who are alone.” He paused and eyed her again, waiting for some sort of response.
Sakura stayed where she was, unsure what to make of the apparently friendly man who was lecturing her on the safety of the woods. Her eyes remained fixated on the glinting metal of his weapon as it shone in the afternoon sunlight.
His smile didn’t miss a beat as it slowly dawned on him that she wasn’t going to respond. Instead, he shifted the axe a little – as if to try and hide it from the frightened girl. “Come now, why don’t you come out of there and let me take you home. It’s dangerous for you to be out by yourself in these parts.” He made an aborted step toward her before stopping himself, knowing that she would either flee or dig herself deeper into her little hiding space between the rocks if he tried to get closer to her and he wanted for her to do neither.
Starting to get a little irritated, he transferred his weight from one foot to the other, changing his position and stance enough for a new glimmer of silver to catch Sakura’s indecisive and frightened eye.
Disbelievingly, she blinked at the new, shiny metal the man with the axe had inadvertently revealed. It had a scratch running through it, but she could still recognize the symbol of her home village. With a little cry, she wiggled her way out of the crevice with every intention of going to the man with a damaged Konoha headband sewn into the shoulder of his shirt. He was a shinobi from her village! She was saved! Sakura paused to turn as her shirt caught in the rocks, and missed the slow predatory smile that spread across the woodsman’s face. After a moment of extra-vigorous wiggling, she managed to free herself and take a couple steps toward her savior who was smiling and obviously waiting for her to approach him.
All of a sudden, the woods around them erupted as several black and gray clad ninja with animal masks flew into the space between Sakura and the shinobi with the damaged headband. She froze, alarmed and unsure of what to do – the man she had hoped would bring her home was now separated from her by the scary masked warriors.
In the moment of her immobility, she found strong arms encircling and pulling her back to a firm chest. Panicked, she struggled and the arms tightened around her before a low voice ceased her struggles, yet also served to escalate her fear.
“Stop that. We’re the good guys.”
Cautiously, she glanced behind her and up into the face of the man holding her... and was immediately sorry that she had. He was, like the other black and gray clad warriors, wearing a white animal mask – in his case, that of a fierce canine, a wolf or a dog. Unintentionally, she tried to shrink back from the frightening visage and squeaked when his arms tightened and lifted her a little from the ground, thus banishing any hope of escape... but not stopping her renewed struggles.
Irritated with the girl’s refusal to cooperate, he sighed. “We’ll take you home once we’re finished.” As he spoke, the other black and gray clad shinobi sprang into action against the woodsman, the fighters turning into blurs of movement and flashes of metal.
She stopped struggling and looked up once again, uncertainty and suspicion written all over her face as she pondered his statement. Sakura could hear the sounds of fighting and became even less sure of what was going on and what would happen to her. Vaguely, she contemplated trying to wriggle out of the masked man's grasp and make a run for it.
Sensing her mistrust, he made another try. “I’ve already told you," he said. "We're the good guys. You’re lucky we got here before that pervert could lay his hands on you.” He looked at her, seemingly for the first time, and shook his head. “You’re just his type too…” Annoyed with her naiveté, regardless of the fact that she was certainly of an appropriate age to be naïve, he pulled her a little closer to him as he retreated to the edge of the glade and out of his teammates' way. “You’re in the academy – you should know better than to talk to strangers.”
She opened her mouth to protest that she hadn’t spoken to him, but then closed it on realizing that the man in the mask was also a stranger. Instead, she glared at him, not understanding why they had prevented her from going to the man with the axe. After all, he had had a Konoha headband – he might have been a little careless in letting it get scratched, but that didn’t automatically make him a bad man.
He watched as her expressive face turned dark and a small part of him had to admire her spirit, misplaced though it was. Suddenly, his attention was pulled back to the fight in front of them. Hastily, he moved them once again as the blurs of fighting shinobi neared their location and he cursed softly, having hoped that the fight wouldn’t take too long – a small part of him really wished that he could join in on taking down the S-class child molester.
The fight progressed and, after one of his teammates scored a direct hit wounding and slowing the pervert down, the shinobi realized that what would follow wouldn’t be appropriate for the young girl to watch. His teammates had been quite explicit in what they had planned to do to the criminal before allowing the sick man to die. Even though he knew the girl in his arms was attending the academy, and at her probable age he had already passed the chunin exam with blood on his hands, he was certain there were some things better for her not to see until she was older… and castration with a dull kunai would definitely be one of them.
As the black and gray clad warriors circled in for the final blow, he shifted his hold on the girl and freed one of his hands. Then, he roughly covered her eyes just before his teammates drew in for the kill.
Sakura struggled when the man with the wolf mask covered her eyes, too frightened to even want to draw more attention to herself by putting voice to her fears. Even so, she was only barely able to prevent herself from screaming. She could hear that the fight had wound down and the man with the axe seemed to have lost – he was now making some of the most awful sounds she had ever heard. Somewhere at the bottom of her stomach, she wanted to feel sick. She didn’t understand what was happening but, on an almost instinctive level, she knew that the shinobi with the damaged headband was dying and, by the sounds of it, very slowly and very painfully. Just when she thought she couldn’t handle hearing it any longer, the noises faded until the glade was once again silent.
In her horror of what she was hearing, she had stopped struggling and, once the sounds had ceased, she didn’t feel as though she had it in her to continue trying to win her freedom from the man with the wolf mask. Instead, she waited to see what would happen. As she listened, someone approached and when the hand removed itself from her eyes she was able to see that it was one of the other black and gray clad warriors. The man looked down at her, seemingly with little interest.
“Leave her, I’m sure she’ll be fine now that we’ve dealt with him.” As he spoke, the apparent leader gestured over his shoulder where the remaining team members were doing something with the other man’s body. “Her parents will probably be along for her and we still have to locate the pervert’s hideout and clear it… might even find a live captive. It hasn’t been too long since the last little girl went missing…”
“No," her captor replied. "She’s one of ours.”
The leader looked a little more closely at her. She squirmed a bit, not enjoying being spoken about as though she wasn’t there. “You sure?”
“Positive… I’ve been told that she’s likely to be… one of… mine…”
“Well then, you can take her back – you picked her up, she’s now your responsibility.” The leader turned to join the other black and gray clad shinobi. “Rejoin us after you’ve left her with her parents… Kunoichi or not, you would probably do well to do something about…” he paused seeming to remember that Sakura was present and listening, “what happened here. Otherwise, it might get messy later.”
“Right,” the man with the wolf mask nodded.
Sakura felt him shift his grasp on her slightly before lightly lifting her up and securing her over his shoulder. Once she was comfortably positioned, he took off through the trees. Uncertain of what was happening, and lacking the strength to struggle in the strong man’s grasp, she gave up and hoped he was indeed as he had said, one of the good guys.
Faster than she would have thought possible, she found familiar territory flying by her eyes. Once they had reached the edge of the forest, he stopped and set her down on her feet but did not let her go.
Cautiously, Sakura looked up at him askance, uncertain as to what she should expect. Desperately, she wanted to run to the safety of her home and never leave her room, but one of the shinobi’s hands lingered on her shoulder. Hastily, she glanced away from the frightening mask, sensing that he was studying her and contemplating his next move. A small part of her optimistically hoped he would just let her go and she could forget the nightmare experience she had just been through. All her thoughts of her kunoichi homework were long forgotten, along with her perfect flower which had slipped from her fingers when the man with the mask had grabbed her.
After a moment’s thought, he brought his other hand to her chin to turn her face up to look at him.
Sakura gasped in surprise, for he had shifted the wolf mask aside. Though he still wore another mask, she could now see his eyes, one a gray so dark that it was almost black and the other a funny red with three strange comma-shaped marks and a long scar running through it.
“You know how to get home from here?”
Still not wanting to speak to a stranger, she nodded. However, she was unable to look away from his strange eye.
He sighed, as though relieved. “Good. Don’t go wandering alone in the woods again. You might not be so lucky next time.”
Unsure what was going on, she nodded again, her eyes wide and still fearful. At that moment, something strange started to happen with the man’s red eye – the markings seemed to slowly rotate. Fascinated by the motion, she found herself unable to look away.
Quickly, he muddied her memory of what had happened, leaving only enough to convince the girl that it was unwise to go wandering in the woods alone, but not to remember him or any of the other shinobi. While she was momentarily disoriented, he melted back into the forest to rejoin his team and finish the mission.
~*~*~*~
“Well, you already know your team will comprise of Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha, which just leaves adding a kunoichi.” The Third Hokage eyed the elite jonin in front of him, gauging the man’s reaction. Kakashi was at the top of his game, at the highpoint of his career, and had been pulled for what would likely be a several year long babysitting gig. He had been given a couple years to acclimate himself to the idea, but the Hokage was still wary of the generally stoic man’s reaction as so far there had been none.
“Right… the last time someone mentioned this to me, there was a pool of candidates. I’m assuming it has been narrowed down since then?”
“Yes. It’s down to these.” He handed two files to the Copy Ninja. “Two girls.”
Kakashi accepted and opened the folders.
“They both have their strengths and weaknesses," said the Third, "but, either will round out your team nicely. Both girls are highly volatile and, unfortunately, head-over-heels for the Uchiha. The blonde is vain, but has the makings of a,” he coughed a little as though clearing his throat, “good kunoichi skills specialist. The pink haired girl has quite the temper, but is very intelligent and has above average chakra control.”
The Copy Ninja flipped though both files, apparently comparing statistics though he already knew he wanted the pink haired girl.
~*~*~*~
With an inward sigh, Kakashi found himself once again tuning out the young kunoichi as she prattled on and on about their dark haired teammate. Sakura had been gushing about the Uchiha non-stop since their team had split up to scout an area of woods ahead of the caravan they were escorting, and her sensei was beginning to regret his decision to pair himself with her.
Just when he thought he couldn’t take anymore, a slight sound in the underbrush alerted him to the presence of enemy shinobi. Not having the time to warn his student, he grabbed her arm and, holding her flush against him, pulled her into the thick undergrowth just before several kunai whizzed through the space she had just been occupying. Startled, she stiffened a little and glanced up at her sensei, whose hand had automatically covered her mouth to prevent her from making any noise.
He cursed softly. Judging from the trajectory of the kunai, the still-unseen shinobi were of some skill – he would have to be careful if he didn't want his student to get hurt. As he waited for their enemy to make another move, he loosened his grasp on her only slightly; he did not want her distracting him while he was assessing the situation.
Sakura gazed up at her sensei in surprise. She had expected him to let her go once they were out of sight. As she searched his inexpressive face for an answer, the pink haired girl experienced a strong sense of déjà vu and a fleeting flash of memory from the time she had once gotten lost in the woods – and it puzzled her. She had eventually found her own way out of the forest after nothing more harrowing than a couple hours lost and in a complete panic, yet... this sutuation of being held firmly against a much larger male shinobi’s chest while standing in the woods, and while something dangerous was happening, still struck a cord within her. Feeling confused, she pulled her gaze from him and did her best to focus on what was going on around them.
~*~*~*~
“I really don’t like this…” the young woman started to say, for what was probably the tenth time that day. Nervously, she adjusted the red cloak she had been given to wear and looked up at her teammates with concern clearly present in her eyes.
Her blonde comrade grinned and nudged the two men sitting next to him. “Aw, don’t worry about it Sakura! Kakashi, Sasuke and I won’t let him get you!”
Stubbornly she shook her head; she didn’t like being used as bait, especially not for an almost S-class sex offender. “I don’t know Naruto. I just have a bad feeling about it…”
“You’ll be fine Sakura.” The silver haired man reassured her with one of his signature eye creases. “We’ll be right there to stop him before anything happens.”
Feeling a little reassured with the elite jonin’s words, she nodded and finished fidgeting with her clothing. The pink haired woman was still a little nervous, but less so than before. “Do I really have to wear this?” she asked, almost plaintively, while gesturing to the red-hooded cape and childish, little dress.
Naruto laughed. “What’s wrong with it?”
She sighed with exasperation. “I look twelve!”
“So? I think you look cute!”
“Naruto, girls my age don’t want to look cute…” She blushed as she realized what she had just said.
“Cute or not it, doesn’t matter.” Sasuke interrupted before his teammates could continue to squabble. “All that does matter is what the pervert likes, and, from what we’ve learned, he likes his girls young and innocent.”
Sakura flushed, once again deciding that she really didn’t like the mission. “Alright, alright…” she straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath and nodded. “Fine, lets just get this over with…”
The younger men took off into the trees to scout further ahead, leaving her with her former sensei. He eyed her for a moment, sensing that she still wasn’t comfortable with the mission. Almost absently, he felt a vague pang of guilt for accepting it in the first place. It hadn’t occurred to him that she may react badly to the mission that so closely mirrored the first time they had met, not that she should be able to remember that event.
Carefully, he reached out to ruffle her hair a bit. “It’ll be okay ,Sakura. I’ll make sure of it.” He smiled and quickly bounded into the trees, leaving her alone on the path.
Again feeling marginally better after receiving reassurance from her former sensei, she cautiously set out down the path, hoping to lure the dangerous child molester out from hiding. There had been reports from villages in the area of little girls having gone missing, only to turn up dead and obviously abused several days or, on one occasion, a couple of weeks later.
Pushing those thoughts from her mind, she continued along the path at a leisurely pace, stopping here and there to pick flowers and making sure to wander further and further from the path each time she left it. Slowly, over the course of a couple hours, she had gathered a large bouquet. Then, dawdling longer than she should over a clump of tiger lilies ,she pondered her options. She had almost made it to the other side of the woods – either the pervert wasn’t interested in her, which was possible, or he wasn’t around, which was also possible.
With a sigh, she figured that whichever was the case, she had just wasted several hours wandering in the woods dressed like a little girl. For appearances sake, she plucked one last flower and made her way, back to the path – though, a little more determinedly than she had been previously moving, for she had every intention of making her way out of the woods and into more age appropriate clothing.
Just as Sakura was about to step back on the path, she sensed another presence. As innocently as she could, she took stock of her surroundings, feigning surprise upon finding a ranger or woodsman standing in the forest on the other side of the path.
“Oh!” she exclaimed as she let one of her hands fly to her chest in her apparent surprise. “You startled me!”
He smiled, and her skin crawled a little. He might be average in every way, but there was something about him that just wasn’t quite right and made her feel extremely uncomfortable.
“My apologies, young lady. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Oh, that’s alright.” She giggled a little. “No harm done.” Carefully, she stepped onto the path and tried to continue on in the direction she had been going, only to have him quickly sidle in front of her.
“Where are you rushing away to so quickly?” the man asked with a smile.
Hesitantly, she retuned his smile. “Um, I’m on my way to see my grandmother. She hasn’t been feeling well and I thought I’d go cheer her up.” She took a couple steps around him to continue along the path.
Without a pause, he turned and joined her. “Don’t you know these woods are dangerous? It isn’t safe for a young girl like you to be walking around alone. Aren’t you worried?”
Sakura increased her pace just a little without realizing it. “No… so long as I stay on the path I think I should be safe.”
He chuckled a little too darkly for her, and she wanted to bolt, knowing that he was gearing up for whatever it was that he did to his victims. She didn’t have to wonder how he had duped so many innocent young girls – to all outward appearances he was completely harmless to anything other than the creatures of the woods and he exuded a kind of complete competence that spoke of a thorough knowledge of the forest.
Subconsciously, she hastened her pace once again in hopes of putting a little space between herself and the creepy pervert.
“Are you trying to get away from me?” the man striding next to her asked with a smile belying his words.
With a little flush, she stopped and turned her head to look at him directly. “Oh! Um…”
As she was looking for something to say he chuckled again. “That’s okay, I understand. Pretty girls like you don’t usually want to be seen with plain men like me.” Casually, he pulled a flower from nowhere and presented it to her. “Let me give you a flower for the privilege of allowing me to walk with you.”
Without thinking, she reached out to accept the flower, missing the predatory glint in his eye.
Just as her fingers were closing around the stem, a strong arm looped itself around her waist and pulled her backward into a broad chest. The harsh jerking movement caused her to cut a finger on one of the flower’s thorns. Surprised, and feeling a bit hazy, she looked up to find her former sensei’s unsmiling face focused on the man they were now certain was the sexual predator they were after. Blinking drowsily, she turned her attention to the man on the path and was unable to prevent her body from relaxing a little in the safety of her former sensei's arms. The woodsman's face was twisted in an expression of disbelieving anger. Before he could react, Naruto and Sasuke emerged from either side and converged on him.
The fight should have been brief as the man in question wasn’t supposed to have had any kind of formal training. Unfortunately, he seemed to have at least spent a little time studying some of the dirtier tricks of close combat and was therefore able to put up a bit of a struggle. As the skirmish progressed, the criminal put up a valiant fight. Still, it was only a matter of time before he lost.
Sakura found herself unable to do anything but watch groggily while, his arm around her waist, Kakashi supported her. Then, still holding her securely against his chest, he quickly moved them out of the way as a shower of senbon peppered the area. With foggy surprise, she looked back up at him again, feeling the strangest sense of déjà vu... but not quite able to put her finger on it. While she was studying his expressionless face, Naruto or Sasuke scored a direct hit – the sounds of a dying man pulled her attention back to the fight and increased the niggling sense that she had at some time experienced something similar but couldn’t quite pin it down.
When the sounds stopped, her eyes slowly slid shut as she was unable to keep them open any longer and her body relaxed almost entirely, drooping in Kakashi’s grasp. Vaguely, she heard her teammates approach and felt herself being shifted and lifted over the silver haired man’s shoulder.
“Aw, Kakashi!" exclaimed Naruto. "If you’re going to carry her like that, give her to me! Geeze, she’s our teammate, not a sack of turnips!”
She felt the jonin sigh as he shifted her back down and around until he was cradling her to his chest instead of holding her over his shoulder.
“That’s better!” She sensed the blonde man drawing closer, though she couldn’t be bothered to open her eyes to look at him. “She is gonna be okay, right?”
“She’ll be fine once whatever it was that he used to drug her wears off. He wanted his victims alive, after all. Come on. Let’s find some where to set up…”
The rest of his words were lost as whatever the flower had been laced with finally claimed her.
Hours later, consciousness slowly returned to her. With a soft groan, she cracked her eyes open. Sakura felt as though her head was going to split in two – aftereffects from whatever it was the pervert had used to drug her, she assumed.
At her slight sound, her blonde teammate hurried over to her. “Hey Sakura! How are you feeling?”
She eyed his concerned face and swallowed her sharp retort – he had obviously been worried about her and didn’t deserve for her to snap at him. “I feel as though someone has been beating on my head with a very dull kunai.” Carefully, she shifted herself into a sitting position, as it felt a little strange talking to him while she was lying on her bedroll on the ground.
“Oh… well… at least we did as we promised! We didn’t let him lay a finger on you!”
She nodded and smiled a little at her eager friend. “No, you didn’t, thank you.” Her eyes drifted from him to her other teammates who were silently sitting by the fire. Even though they didn’t appear to be interested, or even listening, she knew that they were.
Naruto laughed happily. “Yeah, just like the woodsman came in at the last minute and saved Little Red Riding Hood from the wolf, we swooped in and rescued you from that pervert!”
Something about his words struck her as wrong and she furrowed her brow trying to remember. Her eyes drifted to her former sensei and something seemed spark in her memory just a little – enough for her to start to see the elite jonin in a slightly different light. “Actually…" she said, "I think that, sometimes, it’s the wolf that saves the little girl from the woodsman.”
