Sasuke looked around his teams third makeshift base of the day. As he doible and triple checked all of the traps he had set to ward off any potential threats that could stumble upon their base. 'We need to do a better job of picking out locations to make bases.' He thought to himself as he made his way back to the center of their camp, which was a giant hollowed out tree, that was large enough for all three members of Team 7 to easily fit into. Ducking into tree Sasuke was welcomed by the sight of Sakura watching over their teammate, worry clearly etched all over her face. "How is he doing?" Sasuke asked as he squatted down next to Sakura. "I dont know honestly. He still has a bad fever, and he keeps shaking and grunting in pain." She said as she replaced the wet cloth on the blonde's head.
Quickly taking a calming breathe, he turned his attention to Sakura. Who probably looked to be in even worse shape than Naruto. It was obvious to Sasuke that she was running on pure adrenaline at this point, and she looked close to passing out from exhaustion. 'She has to be nearly out of chakra at this point as well. Those last two fights really took a toll on her.' Sasuke thought to himself, as he slowly put a hand on her shoulder. Which had the intended effect of getting her attention. "Sakura why dont you go ahead and take a break and get some rest, I'll watch over Naruto for awhile." He said in what he hoped was a warm and caring tone. "No, I'm fine. I can still go on for awhile." She said while shaking her head. This did nothing to appease the Uchiha though, as she felt the hand on her shoulder tighten slightly. "Sakura it's no use lying to an Uchiha." Sakura heard Sasuke say as she turned and stared into his sharingan. "I can see exactly how exhausted you are, you're almost to the point of collapse. You need to rest. You'll end up doing more harm than good, if you keep this up." Sasuke said as he slowly deactivated his sharingan, as he looked into Sakura's emerald orbs, with his charcoal ones. Hearing this was all Sakura needed, as she immediately passed out. Luckily she fell toward Sasuke who quickly grabbed her, and set her on the ground next to their blonde teammate. 'Damn stubborn woman.' Sasuke thought to himself with a small smile on his face, as he reached down and gently pushed aside the hair that had been stuck to the side of Sakura's face. Before he went back to the enteance of the tree to keep watch.
A couple of hours had gone by in silence as Sasuke was once again checking the traps to make sure that nothing had disturbed them. As he approached the last one he saw that there was a squirrel caught in it. Moving quickly he freed the squirrel and sent it on it's back to its tree. But not before the squirrel gave him an acorn as a thank you. With the squirrel now gone, he went to work on resetting the trap. Just when he was about to finish, he got blown back into the giant tree with great force, by what he could only assume was a giant gust of wind. Taking a few seconds to regain his bearings, his saw that there were three people standing in the spot where is trap would have been had he finished setting it.
Looking at the three, he saw that one of them had a sort of gauntlet on his right arm, and bandages wrapped around his face. While the one to his right was male and had medium length spiky hair, where as the last one was a female with long hair that went down below her knees and was tied with a purple ribbon. All three of them were wearing a matching dark gray and black camouflage attire. And all three had on headbands that had a musical note on them. "Who are you, and what do you want?" Sasuke asked as he got into a battle ready stance and activated his sharingan.
"Who we are is of no concern to you, but if you must know, my name is Dosu." Said the the one in the middle with the bandaged face. "And this is Zaku." he continued as he motioned toward the other male of the group. "And this is Kin." He finished with the female of the group. And as to why we're here, well we've come for the Jinchuriki. So step aside and you won't get hurt." Dosu finished with a threat as the three also entered into a fighting stance. Sasuke's only answer was to throw a volley of shuriken at the newcomers.
Which were quickly blown away with a simple blast of one of Zaku's air cannons. But the shuriken were a mere distraction, as the next thing they saw coming at them was a giant ball of fire. Which was quickly taken out by another one of Zaku's blasts. Which created a miniature inferno that forced everyone to shield their eyes from the heat. Taking advantage of the situation Sasuke quickly snuck up behind the three and was prepared to take out the one called Dosu, but was surprised when he managed to block the kunai with some type of metal gauntlet on his arm. Knowing he was now in danger, Sasuke quickly tried to get away. Only instead of jumping away like he intended he instead fell to the ground on his knees. 'What?! I cant move that well, my balance is off, and everything is blurry and distorted, even with my sharingan.' Sasuke thought to himself, as he tried to collect himself. "You should have known that we would be highly knowledgeable about sound, and be very good at using it, we are from the hidden sound village after all." Dosu said as he smugly walked up and kneeled down in front of Sasuke. "The thing about sound is, our ears are very sensitive when it comes to hearing them. The simple sound of metal scraping against metal at just the right octave could paralyze a person for minutes at a time. Lucky for us we've trained for years to condition our ears to be able to hear sounds better, and to be more durable to ones that would put us in the same situation that you're in right now. We've trained to use sound itself as a weapon, as you've already found out." He lectured Sasuke as he stood back up and began to walk toward the tree that Sakura and Naruto were resting in.
He didn't get too far though, after a couple of steps Sasuke disappeared with a poof, and was replaced by a cloud of smoke. "A shadow clone?!?!" Dosu exclaimed in surprise as he and his teammates desperately tried to find where the real Sasuke was. They didn't have to wait long as they heard him say something that terrified them to the core. Sasuke had used a combination of his fireball jutsu and Naruto's great breakthrough. And just like Orochimaru the sound trio were now faced with a giant inferno. Not having many options or much time, there wasn't much that could be done. "Zankūkyokuha" was all everyone heard as a huge blast of air and sound waves tore through the inferno as well as the surrounding area as well. As trees were toppled over and the earth itself was becoming upheaved.
When the attack had finally died down, and all the dirt, dust and debris, and settled. Everyone noticed a giant wall of earth had been erected in front of Sasuke, and not just him but it was large enough to complete shield the tree that Team 7 was currently using as a base. Looking back into the base Sasuke saw that the wall had been created by Sakura, who looked even worse than before. And was definately on the verge of collapse. She had exerted way too much of her chakra to create the wall, and there was no way she had fully recovered from their earlier fights. "Sakura you need to stop and rest, you're pushing your limits as is. If you keep this up and use that jutsu even one more time, you'll completely use up all of your chakra!" Sauske worryingly called out to Sakura. Whose only response was a nod before she fell over from exhaustion. 'This is bad I have to hurry up and beat these guys, but I'm running low on weapons, low on chakra, and low on time.' Sasuke thought to himself as he tried to come up with a plan.
When Sasuke heard Zaku was about to launch another attack, to no doubt destroy the wall he was hiding behind , he knew exactly what he had to do. He just hoped that it would work. Digging into his weapons pouch he took out his last kunai as well as the gift from the squirrel earlier. Waiting for the right moment he lept out from behind the wall right as it exploded from Zaku's attack. Using the low visibility that resulted from that, Sasuke set his plan into motion. He threw his kunai right at Dosu, which as he predicted blocked it with his sound gauntlet. Which Sasuke couldn't hear over the sound of the wall exploding. Sasuke then substituted himself with the kunai that he had just thrown to get right into Dosu's face, which he took great pleasure in kicking. As he sent him flying right into kin, as the two of them tumbled a few feet away. Turning his attention to Zaku, he saw that he was about to launch another shockwave from the tubes in his arms. Taking the acorn on his hand, Sasuke quickly took the cap off of the acorn and threw the two pieces with pinpoint accuracy into the tubes in Zaku's hands. Blocking any attacks from coming out. Not wasting another second he turned his attention back to the other two who were still lying in heap on the ground, Sasuke went through the hand seals for a jutsu. After completing them, he yelled out "Raiton: Raijū Hashiri no Jutsu." As the lightening wolf made a beeline straight for the sound duo, before connecting and shocking the two for a good three seconds before Sauke was forced to release the Jutsu to dodge a kunai that had been thrown at him by Zaku.
'How did I dodge that? I wasnt even looking at him but yet I still someone how knew he was going to throw that. No...I could see him throw it. But how?! I wasnt even looking at him.' Sasuke thought to himself on shock and disbelief. Deciding to think about that later, he turned toward his last opponent. 'Just one more' Sasuke thought to himself, as he took off toward Zaku. Who met him in the middle in an intense Taijutsu spar. Zaku was good at blocking, really good, Sasuke came to find out in their spar. 'Everytime I think I can get a decisive hit in he just blocks it with his arms. Those tubes in his arms are more versatile than I thought.' Sasuke thought as he lept away from the fight to try and figure out a different way to beat his current opponent.
But as soon as he disengaged, he immediately ducked down as a pair of senbon went flying over his head. 'I did it again?! But I still dont know how, it's almost like I have eyes in the back of my head.' Sasuke thought to himself as he tried to turn and see who threw the senbon but was shocked when his body refused to moved. 'Why cant I move, I didn't hear any sound this time? Unless this is a genjutsu. But how? Sasuke questioned himself as he tried to figure it out. 'Those senbon! I thought that they had a weird sound to them when they went flying by. They must have hidden the genjutsu in the sound of the kunai. So that when I heard it, I'd be placed inside of the genjutsu.' Sasuke surmised as he flared his chakra to break the genjutsu. Once he was out of the genjutsu, the first thing he saw was an enormous amount of kunai, senbon, and shuriken headed towards him, with nowhere for him to go. So doing the only thing he could he closed his eyes and braced himself for what was to come.
Only it never did. When he opened his eyes, he wished he never did. The reason he never got hit by any of the weapons was because of who was standing in front of him acting like a shield, Sakura. Sasuke didn't need his sharingan on to be able to see just how bad it was. Sakura looked like a mix of a porcupine and a pincushion. Her body was covered in kunai, senbon, and shuriken. But her face was one of nothing but bold and intense determination. But that determination started to crumble once she realized that Sasuke was okay, and in one piece. As the adrenaline wore off, and the exhaustion caught back up with her, she lost the strength to stand. As she fell forward she was caught but an extremely worried and terrified Sasuke. Who was speechless up until now. "Sakura....why?" Was all he could bring himself to say. "I don't know. I guess I just wanted to prove to you that I was strong. That I wasn't useless. That I wasn't like every other girl that was swooning over you. That I was willing to do anything for you. But no matter how hard I tried it just seemed like it wasn't good enough. No matter what I did, it didnt get me noticed. All I ever wanted was for you to notice me Sasuke. Because for as long as I've known you, ever since we met, I knew one thing. And that was that I loved you." Sakura spoke from the heart as she confessed everything to Sasuke. And as soon as she was finished Sasuke saw the life and the color start to fade away in her eyes. Her brilliantly perfect emerald orbs, that Sasuke had come to enjoy gazing into started to lose their luster. And soon enough the life in her eyes slipped away. As Sakura laid in Sasuke's arms completely lifeless. Then Sasuke started to cry, then sob, then wail in anguish and grief. As another person that he had come to love had been taken from him. As once again he wasnt strong enough to save someone that he loved.
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Zankūkyokuha - Extreme decapitating airwaves
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Author's note: I apologize for the extremely long wait. I ment to get this chapter out sooner. But life happens. I hope this longer chapter can make up for the long wait. I also want to take this time to again thank everyone for reading and supporting this story up til now. I wouldnt continue to do this if not for you guys. I started this with a simple idea, and you guys have helped me make into an actual story. So thank you to all. And as I've said I dont plan on abandoning this story, but also please be patient with me. I have other things in life that take up time and are more important than this story. I will still write and update, but it probably wont be very consistent. And as always I appreciate your feedback, and your comments, I read all of them, and they always make my day. I love watching the fanbase for this story grow everyday. Until next time Dattebayo.