An Uchiha At Heart || SasuSaku

16. Refuge

The man trembled as he struggled to stand up right. His back was still facing Sasuke, and when he turned around it was clear that he was yet another member of the Kurookami, as Sasuke recognized his now broken mask.

"Impressive," he began, his true face beginning to show. "None of my previous subjects have ever been able to break out of my Akumu Jutsu before."

"Akumu?" Sasuke asked skeptically.

"The Nightmare Jutsu, yes." The man's voice sounded familiar, and Sasuke eventually remembered it belonged to the masked leader of the Kurookami he'd seen at the office earlier. The Uchiha noted to himself that this must be the "Masahiro-sama" Sasuke's dead opponent had mentioned, since he damn near had Sasuke on a death platter.

Masahiro started casually walking towards the raven-haired man who still stood there with his good hand trying to stop the bleeding. "It's a special genjutsu I've developed," he continued to explain while--stretching? "The caster gets inside his opponent's head, grasps on to his worst fear or nightmare, and emits a chakra that maximizes the chemicals and hormones of the enemy as the fears begin to materialize into a genjutsu."

Clever, Sasuke thought. No wonder he suddenly felt an exaggerated desire for suicide when he saw Itachi.

As the Black Wolves' leader got closer and closer, Sasuke noticed his fingers' movement but made no outward remark on it. He closed his eyes, took a ragged breath considering his bodily condition at the moment, and ignored the blabbering going on in the background. He needed to get to Sakura already, and this man was being a nuisance.

As his eyelids began to part, he spotted Masahiro slowly raising his right hand weaved into a tiger sign. Sasuke had a feeling the strange finger motions were probably his own unique hand signs, but he wasn't going to let him live long enough so that he'd find out.

"Amaterasu!"

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It wasn't hard to find Sakura considering the loud screams of agony that seemed to fill the entire desert. When he finally reached the source of the sound, his heart very nearly stopped. Sasuke had just witnessed Sakura be fully emerged, from head to toe, in the pool of acid. Acid. His eyes widened as the last tip of her head disappeared, his heart and mind racing erratically, almost as though they were competing to see which one of them will give out first. "Sakura!" he screeched, the desperation so evident in his voice. He was getting dizzy; whether it was from the blood loss or from seeing his old comrade practically burn to death, he wasn't sure.

He fell to his knees, looking so helpless and feeling as worthless as ever. The whole scene was bizarre, at least in Akio's eyes, which caused him to break out into obnoxious laughter. Who knew he would get the chance to see such a famous, legendary man at his weakest point, and for what? Some girl? It was all far too amusing for him.

Suddenly, Sasuke's physical pain seemed to slowly dissipate as it was starting to be overcome by a mixture of intense fury, guilt, and the need to senselessly beat the living hell out of the man in front of him.

He got to his feet and was about to make a run for it and just break every bone in the Kurookami's body, when a rippling sound came from the direction of the oasis.

There was a body climbing out of the liquid, the skin nothing but shades of red and black. What used to be clothes was now completely melted and stuck to the skin horridly, and what was once beautiful, pink locks of hair was now dry strings of ashes on the verge of falling into pieces.

"S-sakura...." Sasuke whispered almost inaudibly, and Akio was just as astonished.

The kinoichi was standing on the acid the way she would on water. She was looking down, her burned hair hiding her eyes in their shadows. But in the middle of her forehead shone the bright, purple light in the shape of a diamond; her Byakugou Seal. Their thick stripes extended across her body, and as Sasuke and Akio watched in striking awe, their eyes glimmering and their jaws dropped, Sakura's body was emitting even more smoke as her skin and hair began to regenerate. She looked like a phoenix; literally rising from the pit of fire and ashes, being reborn anew, stronger and fiercer than ever before.

Akio had known about this seal, and remembered all the failed attempts of the Kurookami trying to recreate it in their labs, and manually injecting it into their subjects getting nothing but awful results, usually in the form of children undergoing insanity—or eating each other alive.

Watching the real thing sent a chill down his spine, and his instincts told him to immediately back off. But unfortunately for him, Sakura had raised her head and directed her gaze towards him. But it wasn't so much a "gaze" as it was a death stare, one he had no doubt was going to end him.

Shit.

Sasuke smirked when he saw the look in Sakura's eyes, and thought it best to get out of her way.

Before Akio could even finish the thought of maybe using his Settoku again, Sakura was already right in front him, her fist directly aimed at his right eye. Soon after, he lost his left eye as well in the worst, possible way, and he already felt his insides drowning in blood that was soon to end him. As Sakura kicked him in the air, he blindly wove signs for one of his water jutsus, hoping to give him a lighter land rather than falling onto the hard ground.

But to his misfortune, he was right above the damned acid pool. Sakura smirked, and immediately placed herself above the now blind man, and kicked him right in the torso, sending him straight into the core of the oasis. She quickly used Substitution to get out of that vicinity, and appeared right beside Sasuke. "Sasuke-kun, get us out of here quickly!"

As she placed Sasuke's arm around her shoulders and waited for him to open a portal with his Rinnegan, she murmured to herself with a smile, "water on acid equals..."

Boom. 

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Woohoooooo this arc is finally over! LOL. What did you guys think of this chapter? I honestly wasn't sure about it because I felt it was "too violent," but then again, this is Naruto so Idk.....What do you guys think, especially of the original villains thing? It was SO hard trying to come up with "original" stuff because Naruto basically covered everything since it has 710 chapters LMAO. 

P.S. I promise starting from next chapter they'll be more romantic moments! Thank you guys for everything so far <3