"It's the dead of night. What are you doing out here?"
Sakura had been sitting on the bench at the edge of the village for hours. She stood when she heard him.
"This road is the only way out of the village," she said. "So I have been keeping watch."
"Go to bed." Sasuke walked past her.
Tears were already falling.
"Why won't you ever tell me anything? Why do you have to be so silent about everything? Why can't you just let me in?" She turned to follow him with her eyes.
"Like I said. My business is none of yours. Leave me alone."
"You always act like I'm bothering you. But remember. The day they announced our three-man cell. It was right here, on this road. You and me, alone, the first time. Remember how you blew up at me?"
"No. I don't remember that."
"Heh... Of course not… It was a long time ago."
He said nothing.
"But that's when it started, Sasuke. You and me. Naruto and Kakashi-sensei. The four of us, all those missions. It was hard sometimes. There's no way anyone could call it easy. But when you get down to it." She paused on the truth of it. "It was fun. Sasuke, I know about your clan. What happened to it. But revenge for its own sake, that won't make anyone happy. Not you. And not me either."
"I knew it." He sounded disgusted. "I'm not like the rest of you. I'm walking a different path. We worked together for a while, sure. Sometimes I even told myself our roads led to the same place. Maybe we were a team once. But I've made my choice. Revenge is all I have ever lived for. I can never be like you. Or like Naruto."
"So that's it. You're choosing the lonely road." Her voice cracked. "You're the one who taught me what loneliness even is. Remember? And now I understand it completely. I have a family. I have friends. But Sasuke, if I lose you, I, I will be so lonely I can't stand it..."
"We're each setting out on a new path now. Haven't you been getting close to that green freak? Our paths are just different. That's all."
"I love you so much I can't bear it!" The words tore out of her before she even understood what she was saying. "Sasuke! Stay with me, and I swear you'll never regret it! We'll have fun every single day! I'll make you happy, I'll do anything, anything you want! So please. Please don't go!" She was hiccuping through the sobs. "I'll even help you with your revenge. I'll figure out a way somehow, so, so please, stay with me. And if you can't, then, then take me with you,"
"You really never change." Sasuke smirked in mockery, and turned to keep walking out of the village.
"Don't you dare leave me here!" He kept walking. "One more step and I'll scream!"
He vanished.
He was behind her in an instant, close, his voice low at her ear. "Sakura. Thank you."
His hand came toward the back of her neck.
She was not there when it arrived.
Sakura ducked under the strike and pivoted on the ball of her foot and brought her fist around in a single motion, and every hour she had spent training with Lee came up through her hips and her shoulder and into her knuckles at the exact instant they met his chest.
The chakra released on contact.
Sasuke's eyes went wide, white-rimmed in the dark. He had not expected the speed. He had expected the power even less. The blow took him off his feet and threw him the length of the road, and he hit the dirt and tumbled and came to a stop with blood spilling from his mouth and an audible crack still echoing in his own chest where two ribs had given way.
He could not breathe right. Every inhale stabbed.
"BOSS!"
Four voices, from the dark beyond him. Four figures dropping out of the treeline.
Sakura wiped her tearful face with the back of her wrist, her fist still raised. "Who are you? Who the heck are you people?!"
"You're lucky we don't have the time to deal with you, girl." One of them had already scooped Sasuke up. Another shot her a look that promised they would have, if the schedule allowed. Then they were gone, four shapes and a fifth slung between them, melting north into the trees.
Sakura ran after them.
She ran until her lungs burned and her legs failed her, and it was not enough, it was never going to be enough, and somewhere in the dark ahead of her the last sight of Sasuke disappeared between the trunks and did not come back.
She stood alone on the road with her hands shaking.
Then she turned and ran the other way, toward the village, toward the tower, because there was one thing left she could still do, and it was to make sure she was not the only one chasing him.
"Late last night, Sasuke Uchiha left the village. We believe he is making for the Village Hidden in the Sound."
Guy sat behind his desk with the dawn barely up, the Hokage's robe still sitting strangely across his shoulders. Kakashi stood by the window with a stack of paper he was not reading. Shikamaru stood in front of the desk, the chunin vest still new on his shoulders.
"He left?! Why would he?"
"We believe it's because Orochimaru promised him power." None of Guy's usual brightness was in it. "And according to Kakashi, power is all he ever wanted."
"Hang on, wait. Why would Sasuke be drawn to someone like that? Someone that-"
"I'm not quite sure." He straightened a page on the desk. "Shikamaru. I stamped that vest onto you yesterday. I had hoped your first mission as a chunin would be something a bit easier than this." A pause. "But your first mission is to bring Sasuke Uchiha back to the village."
Shikamaru rubbed the back of his neck and yawned. "Retrieve one runaway. If nobody gets in the way, that shouldn't be much trouble."
"The odds of there being trouble is very high." Guy was saddened to add.
The yawn died. "What?"
"Sakura got a look at his escort. Four of Orochimaru's people. They called him their boss. And according to what she told me about them, these are not simple shinobi."
"If that's the case… then this calls for a small strike team. Four members, jonin and chunin only," Shikamaru said slowly, the gears already turning.
"I'm so sorry. I can't give you that." Guy looked apologetic.
"Why?" Shikamaru's eyes moved to Kakashi by the window.
"That is a shadow clone." Guy did not need to follow the look. "The real one took a mission before first light and left it behind to assist with me and my paperwork. A clone at half of Kakashi's reserves is of no real use to you." His chair creaked as he leaned back. "And the rest, Asuma, your own father, nearly every jonin and chunin worth the name, are out sending a message that Konoha still has everlasting youth. What I have left inside these walls is all we got." He let that sink in to the young man. "So here is the mission. Within the next thirty minutes, you will assemble as many genin as you judge necessary, and you will leave through the front gate."
Shikamaru exhaled. "What a drag…"
He left to gather his team.
What he wanted was a Hyuga.
It was the first thought he had on the walk down. This was a pursuit. A tracking job through forest, against an enemy who knew they were being followed and would lay traps and ambushes the whole way. There was exactly one thing in the world built for this, and it was a pair of eyes that could see through the trees, around the corners, several degrees into the dark, and count the enemy before the enemy ever saw you.
He ran the names he had.
Neji Hyuga was sadly dead.
Hinata. Cleared for active duty, technically. But not all the way healed. He was not going to put her in front of four of Orochimaru's men. That was not a mission you handed to someone who was still healing. He would sooner go a man short.
So no eyes. Fine.
He would build the formation with different people instead. He would make it work.
"YAAH!" Naruto stood at the gate with his fist in the air. "Follow me, men!"
Nobody moved.
"Naruto. I'm the squad leader. I know it's a drag, but…"
Naruto squinted at him. "You sure you can handle this? I've got my doubts, honestly."
"And you playing boss is supposed to help?" Kiba smirked, Akamaru yipping on his head. "Although, taking orders from Shikamaru, when his heart's obviously not in it, that doesn't sit right either." Akamaru barked in agreement.
"Listen." Choji planted himself between them. "Shikamaru's a chunin now. You have to respect his authority. If the higher-ups decided he can lead, then it's not our place to argue."
"Choji's right." Tenten stepped up beside him, scrolls already at her hips. "So what's the plan, Captain? Way I heard it, we're walking into enemy shinobi."
Shikamaru looked at the four of them. A loudmouth, a tracker, his best friend, and the only kunoichi here who was teammates with the Leaf's newest and scariest chunin. Not the team he would have drawn up but it was the team he had.
"Since this is a rescue, we're the pursuers. That means we're the predictable ones. The enemy gets to choose where to set their feet, and we have to react to whatever they leave behind." He started walking, and they fell in. "So we move single file, in an order that can answer an attack from any direction the instant it comes. If any of you decides to freelance, to break formation and do your own thing, we will all die. I mean that literally. Understood?"
Kiba clicked his tongue, but he nodded.
"Kiba, you're our vanguard. Front of the line. You spent the last year roaming the Land of Fire with Akamaru, so nobody here knows this terrain like you, and that nose of yours tracks Sasuke by scent and sniffs out a trap by where the enemy's hands have been. A single-file line is weakest to a hit straight up the front, and you and Akamaru together are worth two bodies covering it. That's why you lead."
Kiba grinned despite himself. Akamaru barked, pleased.
Shikamaru laid out the rest as they moved, slotting each of them where their strengths sealed a gap, and he saved the back of the line for the weapons mistress.
"Tenten. Rear guard." He glanced over his shoulder at her. "On a chase, the danger that kills you is the one that comes from behind, the ambush that lets the front of the line pass and then closes on the tail. I need that blind spot covered, and you're the only one who can saturate every angle behind us without moving from your position. Anything comes up our back, you deal with it before it reaches the rest of us. Can you hold the rear alone?"
"Yep, I got the rear." Tenten said.
"Good." It was not a Byakugan. But a girl who could fill the air behind them with metal was the next best thing to eyes that saw in every direction, and Shikamaru felt the formation settle into something that might actually live through the mission.
"One more thing, and it's the most important thing." He stopped at the gate and turned to face all of them. "Sasuke isn't my best friend. I don't even really like the guy, if I'm honest. But he's a shinobi of the Hidden Leaf. He is our comrade. And that means I will put my life on the line to drag him home, because that is the Konoha way." He looked at each of them in turn. "You've all just handed your lives to me by walking out this gate under my command. I won't waste them. That's a promise. Now let's move."
They got to moving.
Half a country away, a different squad was finishing a different fight.
"LEAF HURRICANE!"
Lee's shin came around in a flat arc and the wind came with it, a gust hard enough that the three Iwa shinobi caught in its path were flung off their feet and into the trees with shattered bones.
"Team! How are we holding up?!"
"Surviving, Captain!" Makaro Akimichi drove the end of his bo staff into an enemy's gut, doubling the man over and sending him sprawling.
"Keeping up as best we can, Lee-san!" Hayase ripped through a string of hand signs and spat a bullet of water that punched clean through his opponent's chest.
"Behind you, Captain!" Shimon Hijiri shouted, locked kunai-to-kunai with a man of his own.
"Hm?" Lee did not turn around. His nunchaku flicked back over his shoulder on instinct and the weighted end met the skull of the shinobi rushing his blind side. The body dropped before it finished falling.
"Never mind…" Shimon broke his own clash, flickered behind his opponent, and opened the man's throat.
The last of the Iwa probing force broke and ran and Lee's squad stood among the bodies of the ones who hadn't.
A messenger hawk dropped out of the brightening sky and folded its wings on Lee's shoulder.
He read the slip tied to its leg, and the squad watched the smile leave his face. For a moment the good vibes that followed Rock Lee everywhere were simply gone, replaced by something actually serious, and then chakra erupted off his skin in a visible haze and the air around him bent with the heat of it.
The Eight Inner Gates.
"Change of plans, squad." He sounded apologetic. "We're finishing this mission ahead of schedule. My next assignment has already been decided, and my friends may be walking into something they cannot walk back out of."
"Yes, Captain!"
"Get the report home and log the merits." He turned away from them, the red already climbing his arms, his weight shifting onto the balls of his feet like a sprinter at the line. "Try to keep up on the way back."
He glanced back once, and the warmth flickered through the focus just long enough for one last instruction.
"But do not exhaust yourselves. I absolutely won't leave you behind."
Then the gates carried him forward and he was gone, a green streak tearing north through the trees faster than any of them could track, toward a road where five of his comrades were chasing four of Orochimaru's elite into the dark.
"...He's so nice." Hayase said, to no one in particular.
"I have never had such an easy A-rank in my life…" Makaro added.
Shimon watched the trees where the streak had vanished, the leaves still settling in its wake.
"Can that kid always be our captain from now on?"