moor

"Apparitions"

 

The dark halls of the genetic research ward echoed sharply with the staccato snapping of Sakura’s heeled sandals as she hurried through the corridors towards the elevators.

No one had believed her when she warned them years ago that he couldn’t be trusted. He
was a traitor from the soles of his shoes to the tip of his fetid tongue, and she finally had
proof.
Sasuke hadn’t been ‘deep undercover’, or on a ‘solitary reconnaissance mission’ or quietly
sentenced to exile. He wasn’t avoiding her summons and dispatches to ‘protect her’ or ‘let
her down softly’. He wasn’t ‘doing what was best for Konoha by leaving’.
Damnit, who had been feeding Naruto those lies!
Whoever it was, she had to root them out, too, before this spread further.
How deep did it go?
Her gut churned sickly and she doubled her pace.
Reaching the security desk, she ran her keycard through the main terminal, hit the override
button, and began typing furiously, locking down the lab.
It beeped once in acceptance.
Then booped and reset.
Her heart dropped.
She tried again.
Beep.
Boop.
“No,” she murmured to herself, resetting the override and starting from scratch. No one but
her had access this high. No one but her was allowed in the lab after hours. She had just
personally secured every individual lab and data terminal, every office, every—
“Problem, Ssssakura-chan?”
“No, thank you. The lab is closed. You can come back tomorrow,” said Sakura, not looking
away from the screen. The storm that had been building around Konoha for the last week
had turned the air muggy and still earlier that evening and Sakura had ordered everyone
home to batten down their hatches. The power was expected to be knocked out and she
didn’t want to risk anyone being accidentally safety-locked inside the ward, she’d lied. Half of
them had come down with barometric pressure migraines, anyway, and had taken their
leave without needing to be told twice.
—As she’d planned.
Hurry, hurry, hurry—
Beep.
Boop.
Her jaw clenched.
She had to seal the genetic research ward off, now. All the evidence. All the data. All the—
Beep.
Boop.
Why wasn’t her access code working?
She swallowed tightly.
“Is your card… malfunctioning?”

He knows.

Sakura glanced up at Orochimaru. How anyone could forgive such a monster was beyond
her. She never had.
He had everyone fooled.
Everyone but her.
He smirked at her, his long, sinewy fingers folding neatly together on the raised desk
between them.
“Such a pity, the staff heading home early. I’d planned so much for this evening,” he
remarked, his bilious eyes tracking her movements. “Not that I require anyone’s
assistance…” His eyes narrowed on hers. “Or interference.”
“The lab is closed for the night,” repeated Sakura levelly. “It will reopen tomorrow.”
He loomed over the desk. “I don’t think I agree with those terms.”
“As chief of staff and operations, your agreement is irrelevant, your compliance is
mandatory,” said Sakura, unflinching. “And as such, compliance is a condition of your
perpetual parole.”
Come on, come on—
Beep.
Beep-beep-beep!—Sssssshing!
The sound of her seals activating the protective barriers relieved Sakura so much she nearly
missed Orochimaru’s hiss of fury across the desk. Nothing and no one would be able to
cross the barriers into—or out of—the lab without her say-so, no matter what they tried.
“What have you done!” demanded Orochimaru, tensing.
Triumphant, Sakura lifted her chin.
Finally, she had him.
“Where is he?” she asked him.
“You impudent bitch!” snarled Orochimaru, grabbing for her throat, but Sakura leapt to the
side and over the partition, landing in a crouch facing him calmly. Some of her hair slid loose
from its bun and curled around her cheeks, but she ignored it in favour of keeping her eyes
on the volatile creature before her.
“Where is he?”
“You think I’ll tell you!?”
“You can tell me or you can kneel in front of T&I in a puddle of your own piss and tell the rest
of the council—”
His burst of laughter tightened her throat further.
“Girl, who do you think has been funding me and turning everyone’s heads away!”
Fuck. It was exactly as she’d suspected.
“Then they’re not going to get a penny of return on their investment,” said Sakura, hands
already glowing. Her seals would hold. She’d made sure of it. Only one other person had the
ability to, and he would never bow to the council. He was the only person she’d dared
confide in.
“You think they wouldn’t get rid of you to protect me? You’re a war hero, but you’re hardly
indispensable,” chuckled Orochimaru, stepping around the desk. “You’re so limited by your
values, and your morals, and your lack of… creativity…”
Sakura refused to back away into the corner he herded her towards.
Outside, a boom of thunder shook the building and their basement ward. The linoleum floor
rumbled underfoot.
“Undo the seal and I’ll make it quick. Leave you some ‘dignity’ you’re so enamoured with,”
mocked Orochimaru, his lab coat billowing around him.

“Tell me where he is and I’ll only keep part of you in a jar on my desk, like the rest of your
‘specimens’,” countered Sakura, pulling her fist back. She smirked. “Maybe your beloved
tongue… speared on a senbon.”
Orochimaru chuckled under his breath as they circled each other, until he was closer to the
ward, now.
Sakura watched him warily.
He wanted her to strike at him—and miss. He would goad her. He wanted her to ‘break
through’ the seals with her strength.
—so she bolted for the stairs.
His scream of rage followed her as she raced up the walls and out the doors, flying towards
the Tower.
“Naruto, Naruto, Naruto,” she repeated over and over again. He had to be there. His
personal ANBU guard would be there, too. Naruto could activate the binding jutsu on
Orochimaru’s chakra, the ones that could chain the snake Sanin in place no matter the
distance or location. She just had to reach him before—
It slammed into her like a tsunami. A wave of malevolent chakra erupted behind Sakura and
followed her like a lead-weight fog of poison, surrounding her from every angle, drowning her
in their master’s fury.
She downed the first ROOT-nin with a glancing blow but the rest kept coming, employing
forbidden jutsu to slow her down and disable her. She worried less about keeping her blows
non-fatal thereafter.
“Stop her!” shrieked Orochimaru from behind her, gaining ground.
Her heart pounding, Sakura leapt across a roof before jumping between a pair of buildings
and running sideways along the walls, out of sight, before taking to the streets again.
Slapping her palms together, she threw out a dozen chakra clones to leave false trails, but it
was obvious where she was headed.
Lightning forked across the sky overhead, followed by another ground-shaking boom of
thunder, and Sakura debated making a stand and trying to gain a patrol’s attention, but she
had no idea who was loyal to Orochimaru and the council, and who would be faithful to
Naruto and Konoha.
Could Orochimaru be lying about having the council in his pocket?
Unbidden, memories of Danzou’s smug, bandaged face doubled Sakura’s resolve.
“Seize her!”
Shit!
Sakura twisted out of the grasp of a ROOT agent just in time to spot a familiar head of silver
hair racing towards her. A shot of lightning across her shoulder immobilized a pair of ROOT
ops and she grinned.
“Kakashi!” screamed Sakura. “Tell Naruto to activate Orochimaru’s seals, now—fuck!”
Sakura went down as a slimy tentacle wrapped around her ankle and yanked her down to
the alley between two brick apartment buildings. She tried to control her descent by grabbing
at a fire escape, but the afternoon’s misty rain left it too slippery to grip. Barely missing the
rusted corner edge of an overloaded dumpster, she landed on the stained pavement with a
crash hard on her side, the impact blinding her with pain for a split second.
Her arms lifted defensively as she rolled out of the way of a vicious heel stomp.
“You’ll never ssstop me!” cried Orochimaru from above her. His spittle splattered against her
cheek and she doubled down on escaping them as the skin of her face burned from his
acidic spit.

Sakura was already racing up the brick walls, climbing between the window ledges, and
leaping parkour-style from one building’s fire escape to the other to dodge the horde of
ROOT agents flowing into the gulch between the buildings.
Naruto, she just had to get to Naruto.
She let her anger flood her veins with energy and oxygen, pushing herself forward in leaps
and bounds. She was so close—what had happened to—
“Sakura!”
Her shoulders lost an ounce of their tension at the familiar voice from her right side.
“Kakashi! Naruto must seal Orochimaru! I found evidence—”
“Stop her! Seize her! Kill her!” shrieked Orochimaru wildly from her left.
Separating from Kakashi to draw the wave of ROOT nin away from him, Sakura swallowed
her snarl of frustration and tried to reorient herself toward the Tower, but ROOT had
surrounded her.
Chest heaving, she stared down Orochimaru as he floated nearby on a cloud of pure chakra.
Her stomach clenched.
No.
That wasn’t… that wasn’t possible… he needed a medium to pour the chakra into…
“You can undo the seals on the ward now, or I can reanimate your corpse to do it,” seethed
Orochimaru, facing off against her as ROOT surrounded them. “Either way, I’ll access the lab
before your pathetic Hokage bothers to get out of bed to seal me again, and by then I’ll have
everything I need to control the Village and the world.”
Behind her, Kakashi’s chakra signature rapidly sped away. Praying Kakashi had turned
toward the Tower to get Naruto, Sakura took a stand. This monster would never hurt Konoha
ever again.
Her gloved hands creaked as her hands fisted at her side. Her anger and pride ran high as
she stared him dead in his sickly yellow eyes.
“It’s over,” she said, buying Kakashi time.
Around her, three dozen ROOT operatives unleashed their weapons with a sizzling hiss of
chakra as the heavens opened upon them.
***

Another Konoha, Another dimension...
Sakura glanced up as her teacher, Iruka-sensei, paused beside her computer terminal,
plastered with Blorbosheen stickers and the occasional glittering, adhesive, plastic sequin.
She sat beneath the “Stay calm and code on!” poster featuring a lilac Blorbosheen that he
hadn’t been able to resist buying at the latest book-and-app sale their school library hosted.
“What are you working on this time?” he asked, leaning down to peek at her monitor.
“I figured out how to fix Naruto’s code! I’m debugging it and then I’m going to see if he can
run it from his computer,” she said proudly. She pointed to a highlighted line in the code.
“See? It was this part. It was a circular reference, so the binary reader kept getting confused
and repeating itself instead of moving forward.”
With a small grin, Iruka nodded. Sakura was right, she had nailed down the error, if a little
later than anticipated. But it was better than any of his other students had managed.
“Remember to read through the whole code before resubmitting it. In case any other bugs
are hiding in there,” he said lightly.
Sakura nodded before looking up at him, her brows furrowing.
“There are more in here, aren’t there?” she said with a small sigh. Her little shoulders
sagged and she shook her head. “Naruto…”

“He means well. And he appreciates your help a lot. You’re still heading out to the fair
together tomorrow night, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I just need to figure out these errors first,” said Sakura, turning back to the terminal.
She rested her eight year-old chin in her palm, balancing it as she leaned forward to inspect
the code closer. “They did the first part of the project, so I just have to do the last bit.”
“Well, remember to get outside a bit later. Recess is supposed to be play time,” reminded
Iruka, straightening. “The tremors have been nice and light recently so we finally opened up
the playground equipment again. We’re lucky the fair is here at this time instead of last
winter, when we had the stronger quakes.”
Sakura stiffened in her seat and nodded slowly. “The porcelain sculptures all fell from the
shelves, and one fell on mom. The water spilled out of the fish tank. It took a long time to
clean everything up,” she agreed quietly.
“But we didn’t lose anyone, and that’s what’s most important, right?”
“Yeah,” said Sakura. “I just wish we could figure out what triggers them and stop them. They
had to cancel the fair completely last year and that suc—uh, it was really upsetting. We’re
going to have so much fun tonight. The guys got me a ticket and Itachi agreed to take us so
our parents don’t complain the whole time.”
“That’s very generous of them.”
“Yeah. It’s going to be so much fun,” she said, grinning. A light blush crossed her cheeks and
Iruka held back his smile. Her little crush on Sasuke was no secret, and it was good to see
she wasn’t setting aside her classwork just to appeal to him.
Checking the time on her monitor, he stood and returned to the front of the class and logged
into his own terminal to load the slideshow for their next class topic.
“Well, please tell Itachi-kun hello from me. He was a very good student, too,” he said.
“I will! Thank you, sensei!”
The familiar beep-vibration of their wrist communicators went off a few minutes later, and the
rest of the class returned from their recess outside. Naruto and Sasuke, fresh from the grass
and pre-summer sun, hopped into their seats alongside Sakura and leaned in to look at her
monitor.
“Any luck?” asked Naruto hopefully.
“Yeah! I got it!”
“No way,” said Sasuke.
“Way,” grinned Sakura, pointing. “Circular reference fixed!”
“You’re a coding genius, Sakura!”
She laughed. “Nah, just managed to figure this one out. Now we’ll see if there are any more
glitches.”
“There better not be,” said Sasuke, frowning at Naruto behind Sakura’s head. “I promised
Mom we’d have this figured out or we can’t go tomorrow.”
“Relax,” said Sakura, scanning the code. “It just finished compiling. Here, I’ll send you the
updated code. Load it, run it, and let me know what happens.”
Iruka kept an ear (and eye) out on the group of close friends, relieved that they hadn’t
devolved into bickering… yet.
“Uh…” came Naruto’s voice a moment later. “... Sakura?”
Iruka ducked his head at the soft error beep from their corner of the room. He didn’t dare let
the youngsters see his grin.
From his own seat, Sasuke sighed.
Iruka could too easily imagine Sakura just shaking her head and squeezing half onto
Naruto’s seat, squinting at the screen. “Show me…Hmmm…”

***
Wind whistled and tore at Orochimaru’s clothes as he plummeted through the atmosphere,
gravity dragging him faster and faster towards the blurry earth. The air pressure popped in
his ears and he grimaced, spread-eagled to slow himself, to no avail. The bare branches
ripped through his robes and skin as he crashed through them, twigs and branches raining
down around him. Disoriented, Orochimaru landed with a sickening crunch in a wooded
park.
With a hiss of pain, he pushed himself up on his side and looked around the darkened copse
of conifers and deciduous trees, shuffling deeper into the oak tree’s roots. It was night. The
dried, crunchy leaves still rained down around him, but slower now that the ground had so
rudely stopped his fall. Anger, frustration and paranoia flooded him as he strained to hear
any hint of his attacker. Nocturnal fauna peeped and crept cautiously around him after a
moment of his silent watching, and he blended into the shadows to scan his environs.
What had happened?
The portal had opened, he’d been sucked through—
Hard emerald eyes bore into his soul and he pressed into the tree unconsciously, his eyes
narrowing as he studied his surroundings carefully.
Nothing.
No metal weapon clanging as would be expected from battle. Where were the wet thuds, or
bone-chilling yells or fierce cries or even any satisfying shouts of pain? Why was there no
fabric tearing, cracked red tiles dislodging and crashing to the village streets, no crackle of
jutsu or chakra?
It was silent of human noise, as if he’d landed in an uninhabited forest.
A distant horn sounded and he froze, his breath catching in his throat as he moulded himself
to the other side of the tree. He gripped his side, where he’d suffered a direct, chakra-laden
punch from Tsunade’s apprentice. It bled profusely all over his clothes, and he clenched his
jaw, hissing in pain. He needed access to medical facilities, and soon.
There, faintly, he could just make out the sounds of air rushing, machinery running, electricity
humming. A great deal of electricity humming, he noted the longer he listened.
Wherever he was, it wasn’t near Konoha.
Another gust of wind elicited a nasty chill through Orochimaru, stemming from his gaping,
wet wounds. As the air whistled past his ears, he took one step, then another, across the soft
dirt, alert to the slightest change in draft and sound. Orochimaru followed the undercurrent of
electricity, its crackle reacting to his chakra and leading him to a clearing. He was in a city
park with walking trails and paths and playground equipment. There wasn’t a familiar
landmark to be seen anywhere in the darkness of night and he wondered again at what
fortune had found him a new place to hide. He didn’t doubt for a second that he had been
simply exiled.
Sakura would be hunting him, and he needed to prepare himself for their next confrontation.
His jaw clenched.
The way Sakura had looked at him promised him they would meet again.
No, she would never be shaken free. Not with the conviction in her eyes, not with the force of
one who feared no god, not with the power of life and death at her fingertips.
Tsunade had raised a clone in terms of her skills, but her clone thrived on wrath like no other.
Then he remembered Sakura’s words, as they had spun together into the abyss…
His stomach curdled. She had meant every one.

Well, she hadn’t followed him here, it appeared, at least not yet. But when she did, he would
be ready for her.
A small curl to his spreading lips, Orochimaru lifted his chin. He sniffed the air. The leaves
around him had finished falling and no fresh blood or smoke tainted the air but his own.
He was alone.
Which meant he had all night to explore.
***
The next morning
Scanning the chip embedded in her wrist at the terminal by the main entrance, Sakura
checked into her school early the next morning, before even eight A.M. As she passed
through the main doors and waved to the office receptionist, she heard the familiar sounds of
the local radio broadcast sharing the same weather forecast she’d heard before she left
home. The scent of coffee wafted through the halls and Sakura wrinkled her nose as she
passed one of the auto-dispensers that dotted the hallways. Grownups loved the stuff, but it
smelled gross to her. Didn’t they like the filtered water? Her uncle hated coffee and said
water was always the best to drink. He liked tea.
Sakura’s teachers, long familiar with her routine, waved hello and Sakura grinned tiredly
back at them and bowed on her way to her homeroom.
“Good morning!”
“Earlier than usual, aren’t you this morning?” remarked her gym teacher, Gai-sensei.
“Project for Iruka-sensei,” said Sakura. She’d stayed up later than she should the night
before but she was determined to get the last quarter of the code working by lunch.
“Good luck! Remember to take a break and have some fun with your friends. It isn’t always
about getting the best grade, Sakura-chan,” coaxed Gai-sensei. “Your strength deserves
time to shine, too!”
“It will, tonight!” promised Sakura, grinning at him. “I’m going to beat both Naruto and Sasuke
at the strong-man hammer game at the fair.”
Her gym teacher laughed heartily. “Excellent, excellent, remember to get a picture!”
“I will. Bye Gai-sensei! Thank you!”
“Good luck, Sakura-chan!”
Naruto may be the most creative of their group, and Sasuke may be the most strategic, but
when it came down to strongest, she had them both beat. No one had ever been able to best
her in the obstacle course runs or the medicine ball throws. She’d even carried Naruto on
her back for a mud race against Kiba and Shino. Tonight, she would prove to them all she
was the strongest!
Tapping her wrist over the sensor on the corner of her desk, Sakura yawned and logged into
her terminal. She would have them sailing through this project by lunchtime, Shannaro!

***

Concealed by the shadow cast between two multi-level apartment buildings held together
with vegetation vines and electrical conduit cabling that crept up their sides like organic
webbing, Orochimaru watched the children exit their shuttles and press their wrists to domed
poles stationed around the school entrance. The domes would illuminate green and ding
with each successful scan, and the arrangement of the poles prevented any of the small
shuttles or other vehicles from passing onto the school ground proper. Even the vehicles that

hovered near and then landed in the FLY LOT moved at a reduced speed once they hit the
yellow safety zone around the school, mindful of the young children milling about.
Fascinated by the technologies, Orochimaru studied the comings and goings, noting how
even the parents scanned their wrists and eyes to enter the playground.
“Why so much care for the young ones,” Orochimaru murmured to himself, curious. Humans
could always make more, after all.
Then he noticed that many of the parents exited the vehicles from the rear doors, like their
children, while other individuals in suits chauffeured or guarded them.
Narrowing his eyes, Orochimaru recognized the bulge of weapons beneath the bodyguards’
wrist and side-pouch panels. These were children of the elite, possibly political or wealthy
heirs. No wonder the security was so high.
Interesting. How else were they protected, he wondered…
Perhaps he would discover it later.
When the poles began flashing a few minutes later, the students still outside all shook their
arms and groaned, then headed inside.
Squinting, Orochimaru could just make out the watches they wore. Different styles and sizes,
but they all seemed to have a summoning function. Interesting.
“Come on, Dobe!”
“I dropped my lunch, just a sec!”
His eyes widening, Orochimaru’s stomach dropped out of him.
There at the edge of the playground stood a familiar dark-haired little boy and his blond
friend.
It couldn’t be, though, thought Orochimaru. He may be in a different place, but he hadn’t
travelled through time… had he?
“Sakura will kill us if we’re late,” snapped Sasuke, grabbing the reusable containers that had
spilled from Naruto’s lunchbag.
“I’m trying,” said Naruto. “The zipper broke.”
“C’mon.”
The boys ran inside with their arms full of containers and snacks, just as the outer doors
shhhhhiiinnng-ed closed and sealed.
Orochimaru stood in the shadows, trying to catch his breath.
Where, when, on earth was he?
***
At the rumbling through the soles of her sneakers, Sakura sat up, planting her feet on the
linoleum class floor.
No, not again, she mentally pleaded.
Through the window that led outside, Sakura heard the crows cawing and saw every bird in
the trees take flight in a cacophony of sound. Her heart beating hard in her chest, she
unconsciously held her breath and began scanning the room for vibrations: water rippling in
waterbottles, the pencils rattling in their tray, the rat-a-tat-tatting of pushpins in their jar.
Beside her, Sasuke turned towards her and stilled, his own feet sliding along the ground.
“It’s just a little one,” he whispered.
Sakura nodded, biting her lip, but couldn’t relax. She glanced at her wrist comm, waiting for
the announcement, but none came.
“You okay, Sakura?” asked Naruto.
She tried to smile for him, though it was more of a grimace. “Just a little distracted. Tremors.
Ugh, why today?”

“Because the world knows it can’t stop you when you put your mind to something, but it’s still
gonna try,” said Naruto confidently. He clapped her shoulder quietly, half an eye on their
teacher. “But we all know you got this,” he whispered, winking at her.
Sakura blushed and nodded, turning back to her terminal.
Soon enough, she lost herself in her calculations and experiments.
Naruto patted her back and let go when Sasuke glared at him.
A few minutes later, as the rest of the class was completing the mathematics equations that
Sakura was supposed to be working on, Sakura excitedly gasped a whoop in her seat,
pumping her fists.
“Something wrong, Sakura-chan?” asked Iruka-sensei from the front of the class.
“Uh, no, sorry, uh, nothing. Nothing sensei,” babbled Sakura, shaking her head quickly, beet
red, eyes shining.
Beside her, Naruto and Sasuke stared at her, tense.
Keeping his suspicions to himself, Iruka-sensei nodded and turned back to the board. He
pretended to ignore the flurry of whispers between Sakura, Naruto and Sasuke a second
later as they bent their heads together while he taught from the blackboard.
Well, he was able to pretend he ignored it until Naruto let out a, “Fuck yeah, Sakura!”
And then he had to snap, “Naruto-kun! Language!” and keep the little blond upstart in class
for his lunch break to help clean the counters.
But even Iruka-sensei acknowledged the group deserved to celebrate their little coding
victory together in the moment, and allowed Naruto to head out after only half an hour of
cleaning. Their group was the first to figure out the challenging code that was normally
reserved for high school students to complete.
The only person who had ever managed it before them was Sasuke’s brother, Itachi.
Grinning, Iruka-sensei watched the trio celebrate together in the playground; Sasuke
high-fiving Sakura, Naruto hugging Sakura and swinging her around, and Sakura grinning
excitedly at them.
“We’re all going tonight! Fuck yeah!”
“Naruto-kun, language!” hollered Iruka-sensei, hanging out the window.
“Oy! You’re eavesdropping—mph!”
“Sorry, Sensei!” called Sakura, covering Naruto’s mouth and forcing him bodily to bow with
her to their teacher.
“Would you two stop moving? Itachi’s only letting me borrow his insta-cam for today for the
fair,” groused Sasuke. “Stand still, we’ll get a picture together now and then compare it to a
picture together after all the rides tonight.”
“Great idea, Sasuke!”
“Oy, make room, I want to be in the middle!”
A click-whizz sounded, and the picture popped out and the group Ooohed and Aaahed over
it, forgetting about their teacher.
Closing the window, Iruka-sensei sighed, his shoulders sagging. Mentally, he shook his
head. Would that boy ever change?
Had he turned away even a half-second later, Iruka-sensei may have noticed the pair of
sickly yellow eyes devouring the trio of young students from behind the shrubbery that outlined the school’s east perimeter.

***
That evening
“Parking is going to be a nightmare,” sighed Mebuki, a hand in her hair as they hovered in
line for the FLY LOT designated at the fair. It was several kilometres away. Unfortunately, it
looked like everyone in the city had decided to come out to the first night of the fair, in light of
it being cancelled the previous year. Far below them, throngs of fair goers dressed in
hoodies and light jackets gathered together like the clouds of bugs beneath street lights.
“Honey, how about I reach out to the Uchihas and see if we can meet them offsite?” offered
her husband, Kizashi.
“I told you, I know where to go,” sighed Sakura, glancing out the window at the fair below
them. Even with the sun still up, the glittering lights and attractions made her heart beat in
excitement. “Sasuke said they left earlier.” She checked her comm. “They’re already parked.
My comm is charged, I can go on my own.”
“Is there anyone else nearby we can ask?” asked Mebuki, ignoring her daughter’s claims.
“Wait, didn’t Oro say he was on call for the fair?”
“Uncle Oro?”
“I’ll check,” said Kizashi.
Tapping his wrist panel, a projection of a keyboard appeared in the air. Typing his message
to his brother in law, Kizashi hit SEND and the message disappeared from the air.
A split-second later, a faint beep sounded.
“He said he’s also on his way and can walk Sakura to meet her friends,” said Kizashi. “Signal
left, we’re going to meet him at the school and he’ll take Sakura in through the staff
entrance. I’m transferring him her ID signal now, so it’ll be recognized.”
The keyboard illuminated his lap as he typed the quick message and transferred the
authorization.
“So I’m going with Uncle Oro?”
“Yes, to meet the Uchihas. They said they’d take you home after,” said Kizashi as Mebuki
indicated and pulled away from the long line of hover cars.
“Listen to Uncle Oro and do everything he says,” said Mebuki, navigating the skies and
sighing as someone pulled an illegal turn across their path. “He’s working tonight, so don’t
dawdle.”
“I don’t dawdle.”
“You do when—”
“Mebuki, is this our turn coming up?” interrupted Kizashi.
“Hm,” said Mebuki, turning. She sighed as the car automatically slowed as the sensors recognized the school zone. “It’s night, why do the sensors need to slow us down when there’s no one here?”
“Just to be extra careful,” said her husband, patting her knee. “We wouldn’t want anyone speeding through once we drop off Sakura, would we?”
“Hm.”
“I see Uncle Oro’s car!” called Saukra, leaning against the window. “It’s so cool.” She waved at her uncle, who spotted her and waved back with a smile from the ground.
“Hm.”
Kizashi chuckled. “Not everyone could pull off a purple hover, but he can.”
“Uncle Oro!” shouted Sakura, undoing her seat belt harness and hopping out of the car. “You made it!”
“Hey kiddo,” said Orochimaru, Mebuki’s half-brother. “How’s my little Sprout?”
“I’m not little! I grew!”
Her uncle grinned down at her warmly and stroked her hair as she hugged his side. “I can
see that. We’ll see how tall you are at your next appointment. Think you’ll have grown
enough for a big candy?”
As he would be working that night, he wore his fitted green uniform, visor, various pouches
strapped to his sides and legs, and his hair up in a high ponytail to keep it out of his face
while he worked.
For as long as Sakura had known her uncle Orochimaru, he had always given the children
who came to his practice a sucker or toy after their appointments. As Konoha’s premier
pediatric physician, Orochimaru had a glowing reputation among the population and had
even paired with the municipal and federal governments to help produce and implement
legislation and practices to support the dwindling population. Not that Sakura knew how
much he did; she only knew him as her ‘really busy and fun uncle’. The chip in her arm and
the ‘watch’ on her wrist were his own inventions, adapted for the mass market to locate
children and provide them extra protection, monitor their vital signs, and, should it ever
unfortunately come to it, identify their bodies.
She still remembered the way her uncle had looked, hunched over with his head in his
hands in their living room, on the only afternoon he took off (supposedly to rest, but more to
reconnect with them) during the aftershocks, the year before.
“We just don’t have the capacity to identify so many individuals in the immediate future,” he
said. “With the quake happening during rush hour, nearly every individual was away from
home but not quite at work yet; this created a backlog of bodies to identify and not enough
first responders to do it. We risk losing people because they’re going to rot away under the
rubble or in a warehouse…”
Which was why he had developed the ‘chip’ and ‘watch’ thereafter and shared the patent
unrestricted, the only caveat being that any tech devised from it for children must remain
profit-free. The ID tech had spread like wildfire and been adapted throughout their region.
The first one to receive them had been Orochimaru’s beloved niece, Sakura. She enjoyed
helping him test his inventions and had made many suggestions he’d very seriously listened
to and investigated. (Which reminded her, she was still waiting for her Blorbosheen-eared
visor design; she would have to remind him again soon.)
Sakura’s watch was a special one that Orochimaru had personally designed for her. Mebuki
had said it was too much, but Orochimaru had seen the devastation wrought upon other
mothers when their children had died of pandemics, or been lost to the earthquakes that
troubled their land.
He would never wish that lack of closure on his sister.
He held out his wrist to Sakura and pointed to the button on his wrist panel that would
auto-release the hatches on his car. Sakura grinned at him and pressed it, practically
wriggling with excitement when the hatch seas released with a hiss and rotated up and out
of the way.
“Hop on in, kiddo,” said Orochimaru.
Without a look in her parents’ direction, Sakura ran to her uncle’s car and launched herself
inside, exploring all the buttons and panels.
He laughed as his half-sister sighed, shaking her head. “Her manners, Oro.”
“Have a great time, darling!” called Kizashi happily. He waved at his daughter who had
started pulling on her safety harness… and…”Did you get her a custom Blorbosheen helmet
to match your car?”
“Safety first,” said Orochimaru with a solemn nod to his brother-in-law. Kizashi laughed.

“Love you, bye Mom, bye Dad! Uncle Oro, c’mon!!” called Sakura, her helmet-muted voice
coming through loud and clear via Orochimaru’s wrist panel.
“Clearly I’m being summoned,” said Oro. He turned to his sister and she flicked his high
ponytail before shaking her head and hugging him.
“Be safe,” she said.
“Always.”
“Good man. Message us when she reaches her friends,” said Kizashi.
Orochimaru nodded. “Of course. They know I’ll be the one dropping Sakura off?”
Kizashi nodded.
“Good. I’ll see you later!”
“Uncle Oro, come on!” came Sakura’s voice over the speaker.
With a laugh the adults parted ways.
***
“Passengers, keep all hands and legs firmly inside the vehicle as we prepare for landing,”
said Orochimaru as they arrived easily through the staff entrance. “No lineup, score. Perks of
being a medical VIP.”
Sakura giggled. “I’m going to be a medical VIP, too, when I grow up.”
“You bet you are. You figured that code out without having to ask me for help; you’ll find
medicine a breeze after that.”
“But I want to do what you do, medicine and technology.”
“Are you afraid of hard work?”
“No!”
“That’s my girl. With you as my apprentice, Sprout, we’ll be busier than ever and we’ll help
even more people”
“I’m going to be the best thing to ever happen to Konoha,” touted Sakura from inside her
helmet.
“Don’t I know it,” he said, patting her helmet playfully and smiling when she giggled.
But behind his visor, Orochimaru’s usually warm expression dipped as he gazed at the
monitors that dotted the periphery of his windshield, each spouting more and more data as
the hover descended.
Increased risk of earthquakes above low: high
Increased risk of earthquakes above medium: high
Increased risk of earthquakes above high: moderate
Increased risk of earthquakes above critical/cataclysmic: low-moderate
Increased police activity in surrounding areas: very high
Increased social activity in surrounding areas: very high, wear a mask and gloves
Increased…
It went on and on and Orochimaru inhaled subtly and forced himself to calm. Increased risk
didn’t mean something bad necessarily would happen. It was just… more likely to.
As much as the general carnival air lightened his spirit, something was off that night and it
was more than just the tremors that had been threatening all week. He’d never wanted to

turn around and pull his precious niece back more than in that moment, though.

“Stay close,” said Oro as he landed his hover car neatly in his allotted spot at the front of the
staff lot.
***
“Put your visor on,” said Orochimaru.
“But I don’t need it tonight!”
“Visor on or we go home, Sprout,” said Orochimaru patiently. He held the visor out to
Sakura.
With a pout, Sakura accepted and put it on like a hairband, flipping the visor down. The
hairband section glowed with a swirl of silver and gold LEDs, giving her the appearance of a
fairy princess. The visor protected her eyes from overbright lights and would indicate which
of the people around her were on her family’s APPROVED list of associates.
He could tell it was working when a flare of green reflected off her forehead, identifying him
and authenticating him.
“And your mask.”
“Uncle Oro!”
“Mask.”
Making a production of her shoulders dropping and hands flopping, Sakura eventually fit her
mask over her nose and mouth, her visor on. Then she held out her hands for the gloves she
knew would be next.
The pandemics prone to their geographic region hadn’t seen a serious flareup in nearly three
years, but with an unprecedented turnout to the fair, Orochimaru knew it was only a matter of
time before they saw them creep back in. No doubt his office would be flooded with patients
in a fortnight.
“No one is even going to recognize me in my pictures,” she whined.
“Hey, safety first, right? If anyone seems odd, I want you to call me right away, okay?”
“You’re working tonight.”
“I’m working but I’m still your uncle. If anyone in your group doesn’t feel well, just call me,
OK? We’ll get them fixed up lickety split.”
Her nose wrinkled and he knew she was smiling beneath her mask. A trying-not-to-smile
face emoji appeared beside her face, in his visor.
“Lickety split?” she asked
“An old time-y expression. It means really fast.”
“You’re so silly, Uncle Oro.”
He smiled at her and a smiley face emoji appeared beside his face in her visor.
He held out his hand and they walked through the staff entrance towards the meeting point,
the ferris wheel.
***
At the overwhelmingly colourful, LED-barred ferris wheel with his brother Itachi, Sasuke
sighed loudly and crossed his arms.
“It’s alright, there’s no rush. We have all evening,” soothed Itachi. “They probably ran into a
delay trying to find parking.”
“They’re half an hour late,” grumbled Sasuke. “She’s never late. Ever. She even said she
was coming with her uncle so they’d be here earlier.” He debated asking Itachi if they could
take a short break to go back to the bottle ring toss game where the vendor had had coral
pink Blorbosheen stuffies hanging from the rafters.
“Maybe she went to the wrong ferris wheel,” suggested Naruto from his spot, seated on the
railing. He looked around from his height advantage, squinting at the crowds. “She always
messages when she’s even close to being late. Maybe she’s at a different place?”
Around them the fair goers laughed, called to each other, screamed in fright from roller
coasters and yelled back and forth to be heard over the barkers.
“We’ll keep waiting. I’ll message her parents in a few minutes, to see when they dropped her
off with her uncle,” said Itachi.
His older brother’s words were calm and reasonable, but Sasuke looked up at him at his last
sentence. His brother’s keen eyes had sharpened and narrowed, as they had last year when
Itachi had accompanied him on his school shuttle, the day of the quakes… Something was
wrong.
Beneath their feet, another of the recent low rumbles threatened and Naruto scrambled
down from the railing. The boys grabbed hold of Itachi when the rumbling worsened instead
of fading away, their faces paling.
“Kisame!” called Itachi.
The rest of Itachi’s friends, who’d been milling about near a popcorn vendor, were already on
their way to Itachi, some running.
“Get the boys clear of the ferris wheel,” said Itachi. “Quickly.”
Suddenly the ground bucked beneath their feet. Metal screeched against metal. Then the
first sickening crunches and collapses began, and the awful, awful screaming. The ground
turned into a series of small volcanoes with molten lava paths erupting and coursing
between them, writhing beneath their feet as they stumbled away from the swaying ferris
wheel and its screaming, crying passengers trapped inside.
Kisame grabbed Naruto and threw him onto his back. “Hold on, kid!”
Naruto, silent for once, just nodded and grabbed Kisame’s neck in a death grip.
Itachi was running with Sasuke’s hand tight in his, dashing towards a parking lot.
“Run,” Itachi shouted to his friends. “Run! Get away from the rides!”
Then the world shook apart and the earth split open, booths and swathes of concrete jutting
up all while cracks and fissures swallowed rides and guests alike.
***
They’d made it to the parking lot, almost to Itachi’s friend Kisame’s hover van, before the
ground had buckled beneath their feet. Sasuke was thrown away from his brother and the
rest of their group.
“Itachi!” coughed Sasuke, wiping his wrists across his sore eyes where the dirt had exploded
in front of him. “Itachi!”
“I’m coming, stay where you are,” shouted Itachi from across…. Something. A space.
Coughing again, Sasuke tried to open his eyes.
Beside him, a carton of popcorn had spilled across the ground. By his feet, a pair of broken,
bloody visors lay crumpled and broken, their sensors silent and likely dead.
A circus of noise surrounded young Sasuke as he tried to focus on his whereabouts. The
screaming. The crying. The wailing. The sirens. Everything combined in a maelstrom of
nonsense.
Blinking, he tried to sort through his surroundings. His visor was nothing but static and he
tugged it off his head, adjusting to the bright lights, the kaleidoscope of chaos, fire and
ongoing explosions as buried gaslines were ripped open and ignited. A little bit to his left,
Kisame held a crying Naruto, promising him everything would be OK. Behind Kisame,
Sasuke thought he saw someone’s legs bent at a funny angle on the ground. They weren’t
moving. They were soaking in a puddle of liquid that kept spreading.
Desperate for even a glimpse of normalcy, he tried to locate the ferris wheel, only to realize it
was now a twisted pile of metal wreckage; the roller-coaster beside it had toppled into a
flaming steel dragon complete with sheared spikes along its spine, trapping its passengers
inside. The horror of the melting metal and screams would haunt him forever.
His heart hitching in his throat, Sasuke gasped and turned to the right to look for his brother,
only to come face-to-face with a gaunt, bloody, inhuman face and sunken, pea-soup eyes.
Panic shot through him like a bomb going off, terror frying his brain.
“Monster!” he screamed, scooting backwards to get away from it.
“Shhhhhh—” began the monster, and it was then that Sasuke saw it was carrying something.
No, someone.
“Itachi!” shrieked Sasuke, unhinged and panic-ridden. “The monster! The monster took
Sakura! Itachi!”
“Sssasssuke—”
The monster’s eyes narrowed on him before he disappeared into the chaos of the night.
“Itachi! Itachi! Itachi! Itachi!” hiccupped Sasuke between bone-chilling screams.
Which was how his uncle Madara, a volunteer EMT with the Konoha MPD, found him in
shock half an hour later in his brother’s broken arms, sobbing about a monster that had
kidnapped his friend.
***
“Never found her…”
“And then her parents disappearing…”
“Such a tragedy…”
“And no matter how much therapy, he keeps insisting on there being a monster…”
Sasuke swallowed tightly and pretended to ignore the gossip from his older cousins. He
stood with the remaining classmates he and Naruto shared with Sakura as the
city-appointed speaker pronounced the names of all the children lost to the devastating
earthquake. It was too much time, effort, resource-demanding, to perform individual
ceremonies. There was a single ceremony, for those lost from their school.
In his side pouch, burning a hole the way his emotions burned his eyes, Sasuke kept the
last, laughing picture of himself, Naruto, and Sakura from that day on the playground.
The network that housed the school’s and city’s files still hadn’t been recovered yet, so he
had no other way to look at her.
But that picture he would never forget.
He tried to swallow over the lump in his throat and failed. Tried again.
Itachi knelt—carefully—and extended a splinted arm to his brother, wiping his tears with his
handkerchief.
No one had believed him when he’d told them about the yellow-eyed monster. His visor had
been too damaged to get a picture of him, too.
“Just the stress of the situation, can’t help it, poor child…”
But it wasn’t.
Sasuke knew someone had taken Sakura that night, before the quake. But no one would
believe him.
***
“I guess some of the backups just didn’t make it,” sighed Mikoto to her husband, Fugaku,
late one night. “You can’t blame yourself for that, darling.”
It was several years later, on Memorial Eve.
“It just feels wrong that we have no record of some people who lived and died at that time,”
said Fugaku hoarsely.
From outside the living room, Sasuke paused and listened to his parents speak. His father
rarely spoke with emotion (beyond exhaustion and frustration).
“Maybe you could look into the memory analysis,” suggested Mikoto gently. “It hurts you so
much, but you did everything you could. Maybe… Maybe you could remove some of the guilt
you still feel? The brain chips have come so far. I know it’s wrong to suggest, since you’re a
first responder, but… but maybe it’s time to put some of the stress from that night to rest.”
Sasuke froze.
Everyone in his age group received their brain implant around thirteen to fifteen. His parents
had received theirs later in life and there was an older generation that almost entirely
avoided them unless they became medically necessary.
But to use it to remove memories?
He’d heard it done for trauma survivors, but… It seemed wrong that his parents wanted to
remove their memories of that night. As if they were cutting away a part of their lives
because it was unsightly.
Unsightly things still deserved to be real.
Sasuke swallowed. If only his visor that night hadn’t malfunctioned, he would show them all
what an unsightly real thing it was, and maybe they would actually believe him and look for
the monster who took Sakura…
“I don’t know,” said Fugaku, shoulders rounded. “We’ll see, after the next update. The chip
has been helping so many deal with their loss. I don’t want to cheapen that.”
“It’s not cheapening it, it’s learning how to live with it without it hurting so much,” said Mikoto.
“Please, think about it.”
“But Itachi… He never asked to adjust his,” admitted Fugaku. “Did he?”
“They were so young, Fugaku. The young overcome; they often forget, too. And they weren’t
responsible for saving an entire city, like you were.”
Sasuke’s fists clenched angrily and he held himself back only out of respect for his father’s
position. No, it had not been a good time for their family, their father especially, after the
quake. He could still remember how, several weeks after it happened, his father had burst
into tears hugging his mother, his face buried in her stomach, sobbing at not being good
enough to stop it. Not being able to save the people they’d lost. Not being able to save the
children. Most of all, guilty that their family had made it through intact, a rarity.
Sasuke had refused the chip when his parents had initially offered it to him. Their peers had
been vying for who would get theirs first, but Sasuke had recoiled. No. Everyone around him
had spent years trying to convince him he’d made up the monster. He wasn’t taking any
chances by letting them potentially strip its lingering poison from his memory.
He had, instead, dived deep into the information available online about how it worked, how it
was coded, what it took and what it could implant, in a person’s memory.
Putting his parents' hushed murmurs behind him, Sasuke returned to his room. He could
tinker on his stat ‘watch’ and think things over.
On his desk, the insta-pic of himself, Naruto and Sakura faced him, the three of them smiling
brilliantly into the sun.
***

Several months later
“More good news!”
Sasuke sighed as the announcer on the monitor interrupted their breakfast again. He wished
they could enjoy a quiet breakfast, but his mother insisted on having the news available at all
times. The kitchen windows turned opaque and the morning news anchor smiled widely at
her audience through the semipermeable monitor.
“Another breakthrough at Otomo Corp. has proven that individuals with certain spinal
damage can learn to walk again with the assistance of Otomo Biotech! Through a series of
ongoing treatments and implants, Otomo Biotech have successfully helped a trial group of
patients regain up to ninety-nine percent of their original mobility. Otomo Biotech hopes to
expand the program to youth after several more rounds of successful clinical trials. This leap
forward comes on the heels of Biotech’s recent brain chip update, which has users raving
about finding more comfort in their emotions, and greater overall happiness. We’ll have more
on the Otomo Biotech breakthroughs after our break, but first, let’s take a look at the
weather…”
“Still not interested?” asked Mikoto, passing her younger son a glass of juice.
“Not right now,” said Sasuke.
Mikoto nodded before adding, “You know, it’s been a while. With the latest update, it may
help you with your feelings for—”
Sasuke pushed his juice away. “Thank you for breakfast.”
He stood and left.
***
A year later
This… was weird.
Sasuke stared at the screen in the school computer lab. It was separate from the rest of the
school’s terminals, where more experimentation was encouraged.
As he occasionally did, he searched the network and public library systems for news about
Sakura’s disappearance. Not that there had ever been an actual investigation, but he kept
hoping that someone would have… found her… by now.
However, that morning, it was as if she had disappeared. There was no trace of her name, or
her picture, or her accomplishments anywhere.
Where were her certificates for ‘best code-breaker’ at their school?
Where were her pictures, when she’d been in the news with her Uncle Orochimaru for
‘inspiring’ him to create child-friendly chips with engrained GPS tracking for parents? The
chips that had helped the authorities identify the thousands of bodies after…
Where were her birth certificate, her school picture, her name from the list of the missing and
lost from the quake?
They were all… gone.
Sasuke blinked.
Searched again.
Nothing.
For the first time since the quake, Sasuke wondered if he had somehow made her up. His
parents hadn’t brought Sakura up in conversation in ages, now that he thought about it. Not
since one of the brain chip updates…

On a whim, he entered the name of several of their teachers and friends who had been lost
during the quake. They all showed up. None of them were missing.
He tried Sakura again.
Nothing.
He tried it again.
Nothing.
Biting the inside of his cheek, he twisted a dial on his wrist cuff comm and hit a series of
keys on the computer that would allow him to bypass his school’s network, accessing the
wider Net outside.
He tried again and unconsciously held his breath as the cursor spun before—
Beep.
Suddenly his screen flooded blue.
ERROR: Incorrect data entry. Repeated requests for incorrect data will result in access denial.
Beep.
His monitor returned to normal. Normal, as in, his schoolnet search page; not the wider,
external Net.
Sasuke stared at the screen as his stomach slowly turned to lead.
***
Several months later
A knock on his bedroom door after school had thirteen year old Sasuke swiftly stashing the
picture into his bottom drawer before calling, “Come in.”
His guest was… unexpected.
“How was your day?” asked his mother. His father loomed just behind her, in the hallway.
“Fine,” replied Sasuke, brow furrowed. “What’s going on?”
“Well,” began his mother, stepping into the room. The black lab on the leash she held
followed her, tail wagging. “We know that you’ve wanted to take your time with the implant,
and that you’ve worked very hard.”
“Hn,” said Sasuke, looking between her and the new dog. He had refused the implant again
at his most recent birthday. His parents’ stubbornness to continue suggesting the implant
option to him was second only to his own as he swore to die on his strictly chip-less hill.
“What your mother is coming around to explain is that we got you a pet,” said his father.
“I didn’t ask for a pet.”
“No, but it’s good to have something that loves us unconditionally,” said his mother. She
gave a petite shrug with her shoulder. “And… it’s good for us to have something to pour our
hearts into, too.”
So this was his parents’ new ploy to get him to forget about Sakura.
“No thank you,” said Sasuke, turning back to his tablet. He wondered if the microphone
access settings and data transfer systems had to be disabled the same way as the monitor
in his room.
“Son, it’s not a protopet. It doesn’t have sensors, or record you, or programming. It’s a real,
live dog. Her name is Bort,” said his father. “She was meant to be part of our K-9 unit, but
was too friendly. Rather than put her down… I thought you may appreciate her.”

Sasuke’s fingers stiffened on the tablet.

They wouldn’t put down a perfectly healthy dog, would they? Live dogs cost tens of
thousands of dollars each! Yet, when he met his father’s eyes, honesty and sympathy
reflected back. His father wouldn’t have wanted to hurt another living creature if he didn’t
have to.
“What about during school hours?”
“Because of her training, Bort is technically qualified as a support animal,” said Fugaku. He
cleared his throat. “She flew through everything but the attack unit. She wouldn’t even attack
the squirrels.”
Setting his tablet down on his desk, Sasuke stood and approached the dog, whose tail had
not stopped wagging since they set eyes on each other. He knelt in front of it and reached
his hand out for Bort to sniff.
A quick lick and excited yip later, and Bort had yanked herself free of her lead and jumped
on Sasuke, peppering his face with snuffly kisses and happy snorts.
It was the first time in five years that his parents heard him laugh.
Bort joined Sasuke everywhere. Training her indoors and outdoors became one of Sasuke’s
favourite activities, though it wasn’t without its challenges.
The day Bort accidentally tore into a fist-sized Blorbosheen stuffie that she mistook for a
chewtoy was a day of reckoning for Sasuke. How Bort had found it, in the depths of his
closet, he didn’t know. He’d put it on a shelf years ago, a gift he’d intended to give to Sakura
at her next birthday until the quake had turned the world on its head. He even found the
wrapping paper and ribbon he’d used, shredded and in pieces under his bed.
But when he called Bort to heel and held out his hand, something strange happened.
“I’ll never forget you!” said Bort.
Sasuke’s eyes flew open.
“I love you!” said Bort.
No, this wasn’t happening, what the…
“Give,” he sternly commanded, holding out his hand.
Head low and whimpering, Bort placed the toy and its mangled voicebox in Sasuke’s hands.
He’d forgotten the toy had a voicebox. He squeezed it in his palm and huffed as it cheerily
garbled, “You’re the best!” back at him.
Huh.
He hadn’t been able to get the voicebox working on the toy, when he’d first found it. The
vendor had given it to him at a discount because of it, which was why he’d kept it for Sakura.
But somehow, Bort’s gnawing on it had fixed it.
He stared at the toy for a long, long time.
Then he removed the voicebox and batteries, and handed the toy back to Bort.
“Here you go, girl. Thank you,” he said.
***

A week later
“You’re feeling okay?” asked Mikoto, stroking Sasuke’s hair as he came to post-implant surgery.
“Fine, Mom. Really.”
He lifted his wrist to check his watch-panel. WIth a thought he rifled through the settings,
adjusting his hearing sensitivity, his memories—all intact, still, according to his backup—and
friends’ posts on Social Hell. (The conglomerate social media presence was called ‘Social Hall’, but everyone in Sasuke’s generation called it ‘Social Hell’.) (“I’m alive, stop taking bets on my demise, Naruto,” he posted quickly, before turning back to his mother.)
From beside him, Bort rested her paws on the side of his bed and her head in his lap while
he petted her.
When he got home and his parents left him to rest (under Bort’s supervision), Sasuke turned
out his light and blocked the light from escaping his room by stuffing a blanket under his
door.
Then he pulled out his personally encrypted visor, warmed up his terminal, and hacked into
his brain chip implant.
Beside him, Bort lay down and wagged her tail, chewing on the Blorbosheen plushie. His
faithful pup had taught him that sometimes, you needed to break things for them to work
again.
A smirk on his lips, Sasuke hacked through the domestic Net fields with ease, now that he
had a brain implant.
“Let’s see what else you’re hiding,” he murmured to himself.
So eager to investigate was Sasuke, however, that he didn’t notice the picture of himself,
Naruto and Sakura falling down behind his monitor, caught between the desk and the wall.
***
(Time Skip - 15 years)

Hurtling like a bullet through the air, the change in echo around her was Sakura’s only
warning that she had been expelled from the portal and was about to land.
Spinning in the darkness and blind from the velocity, Sakura charged her fist with chakra and
smashed through the terrain that rushed up to greet her, a crater of concrete, electrical
cabling and utility ducting exploding around her like a wave crashing on shore.
Her lab coat shredded down the side, she used its fluttering to conceal her footwork as she
spun and backflipped behind the nearest obstruction, then behind two more, her loosened
hair flowing around her like a malevolent halo.
“Orochimaru!” she shouted, her voice echoing back at her in the cavern. “Show yourself, you
snivelling coward!”
Low-level rumbling and environmental hazards surrounded her, and water covered her feet
up to her ankles. Electrical cabling hung in torn spools and tentacles from the high ceiling
above, and the flickering lights gave her only the barest bearings on the underground utility
tunnel she had landed in.
Confused, Sakura looked around.
Why wasn’t air moving around her anymore? Where was the breeze? Why did rust and
musty air tickle her nose? Was she underground?
She touched a wall panel of some sort—steel—and sent a pulse of chakra through it, but its
muffled rebound confirmed her suspicion. How had she ended up under the surface?
Chest heaving and mind struggling to understand how she’d ended up where she was,
Sakura scanned the higher levels; the cavern extended up several storeys, the dangling
cables and exhaust tubing weaving together like some kind of organic maze overhead and
up and down the walls… An industrial building then, perhaps a factory?
Footsteps approached and Sakura hid.
“Go that way,” a familiar voice said and her heart clenched. “Stay in pairs. Stay in constant
contact.”
She waited for the investigators to separate before she tailed the leader. It could only have
been a minute or so before he whirled, alone, and struck forward with a gun that she parried
effortlessly to the side.
“Sasuke!” she gasped, whispering even as her heart hammered loudly around them. “You’re
alive!”
His swallow was audible when she threw her arms around him.
“After I saw the analysis of your Sharingan, I thought—” Her voice caught as a lump rose in
her throat. She cleared her voice, shaking her head as her eyes warmed. She released him
and grabbed his arm. “Come on, we have to get out of here. Orochimaru’s—”
She looked around the echoing cavern, spotting a crack of natural light high above them.
“Are you strong enough to climb the walls or should I carry you?”
His mouth opened and he shook his head. He tapped the side of his visor before taking it off,
staring at her in wonder.
“That’s okay, I’ll get us out of here,” she whispered, and picked him up, flinging him over her
shoulder before he could argue with more than an ‘oof’ of surprise. “Sorry, I promise I’ll heal
you as soon as we get out of here.”
“No,” he finally spoke, struggling. “This way.”
She let him down and nodded, following him. Even in his visor and weird…
arm-bracket-thing? Was that a controlling device of some sort?... She knew it was Sasuke.
She could feel it. It was like her chakra grew stronger just seeing him.
He took her arm and walked briskly, navigating the labyrinthine tunnels in the dark. When he
flattened himself against the wall, she followed his lead instinctively. Guards of some sort
passed by, and they waited before Sasuke began leading her again through the winding
tunnels.
“Sasuke, there has to be a faster way out,” whispered Sakura. “And we need to get
Orochimaru!”
“Almost there,” he promised.
Their corridor opened up into a hub connecting to a series of staircases, elevators and other
tunnels and Sakura stared, overwhelmed. “What is this place?”
“This way,” he said, leading her on, until a voice made him stop in his tracks.
“Sasssuke, did you bring me a new toy?”
Her insides turning to water, Sakura looked up between Sasuke to the man standing
imperiously on the mezzanine above the hub of connecting tunnels. Even with his face
hidden by a mask and some kind of strange glasses, she recognized the oily chakra oozing
from him and down over the perforated steel staircases.
“Orochimaru,” she hissed, taking a wider stance and putting herself between Sasuke and the
monster above. Chakra flared in her palms and her leather gloves creaked from the strain of
her fisting hands.
But to her surprise, he froze, and she almost would have sworn he whispered, “No, it can’t
be…”
She leapt at him, sending a torrent of water jutsu his way to sweep him off his feet, but he
dodged at the last second.
Her brows rising, Sakura kept fighting even as she analysed Orochimaru’s movements. She
knew she’d gravely wounded him prior to the portal opening; how was he so spry, now?
That’s when she realised she couldn’t shoot chakra scalpels; her kicks blew holes in the
walls around them, but she couldn’t summon any air attacks at all. She had to be in contact
with the object to use her chakra on it, she soon realised—and unfortunately, so did Orochimaru.

It was then that Sakura realised her attacks were also gradually weakening.
“Sasuke, do something!” cried Orochimaru when she landed at the snake Sannin’s feet and
jabbed upward with her heel, scraping his chin and snapping his head back. His visor flew
off and echoed as it fell down the stairs, the metals clanging against each other as it
dropped.
—which was when the first shot seared across her shoulder.
Hissing with pain, Sakura struck with her fists, now dodging both Orochimaru’s attacks and
also the assembling guards’.
What was Sasuke doing?
She’d come to rescue him!
Her chakra reserves had taken a significant hit with the battle before the portal, and now
they dwindled rapidly in the strange environment.
She should have known that finding Sasuke alive was too good to be true.
Jaw clenched, Sakura knew she had to choose.
When another shot struck her wounded shoulder, she snarled; dammit!
However, the shot had gone through a panel in the wall and fresh air poured through it. It
was dark, but it seemed like she and Sasuke had made it above ground.
With a final glance behind her—Sasuke shot at her again but missed; the hole in the wall
widened—Sakura sent a blast of chakra to her fist and punched a crater in the wall. The
change in air pressure created a vacuum for a moment and she used it to catapult herself
through the hole, kicking the exterior as she escaped.
The effect was immediate; the steel scraping and groaning before it destabilised, cracked,
and sheared sideways, blocking off the guards who tried to follow her.
Ignoring their yells and screams, Sakura set off into the night to find a place to hide.
Meanwhile, Sasuke hurried through the rubble in Sakura’s wake and extracted his boss, the
CEO of Otomo, Orochimaru. He offered the broken visor he’d collected from the collapsed
stairs.
“Did you get a good look at her?” asked Orochimaru.
“I managed a hit on her shoulder, but she kept going, I doubt for far with that kind of blood
loss,” said Sasuke calmly. “Do you think she’s a more developed form of corporate
espionage droid?”
Sasuke didn’t know what to think and was about to ask his boss his thoughts when
something caught his eye.
“Blast,” muttered Orochimaru, sweeping his long hair from his face.
It was then, for the first time in his life, that Sasuke caught a glimpse of his mentor’s yellow
eyes.

***
Meanwhile…
“You know, we should look into those coffeemaker upgrades Mito’s always talking about. I
know I said we’d wait until our bonus came in, but if it’s half as good as what she said
Tobirama’s coffee used to be like, then I think it would be worth it,” said Hashirama.
He smiled warmly at the receptionist who cowered behind the desk, shakily pushing the ID,
badge, and keycard package toward him. “Thank you.”
He passed them to his wordless companion, whose face pinched upon clipping on his badge

again.

They made their way to the elevator at the precinct and the rest of the babbling lineup went
silent and disappeared at their appearance.
“Anyway, as I was saying, you can order these updates and once they install they do all the
bean ordering, grinding and brewing for you! It’s adaptive, so it learns your favourite brews
and just goes from there—good morning!” he said to a group of fresh recruits who froze in
their path. “Are you heading down, too?”
They shook their heads, clutching their tablets to their chests, eyes wide and pinned on his
company.
“Oh, OK. Well, I’ll see you later!” called Hashirama cheerily, as he and his friend entered the
elevator cabin.
Alone.
It was a short trip down to dispatch. Mentally, he recalled how many of their operators were
due for a meeting, they always had the best stories.
“I’m just going to grab my refill here,” said Hashirama, sidling up to the unit’s kitchenette.
“Hey, how was your weekend?” he asked a grizzled dispatch officer.
The woman initially smiled, before spotting his guest looming over his shoulder. Then she
shrank into herself and mumbled something about leaving all the ovens on at home, and
retreated to the ladies room, presumably where the ovens were.
“Huh, I guess everyone’s busy today,” remarked Hashirama, adding creamer and sugar to
his reusable travel mug which read, “#1 Department Therapist!!!!” on it. He’d had it custom
ordered for himself, to show he was a friendly and approachable guy. To put himself out
there, so people wouldn’t feel weakness or intimidation, if they needed someone to talk to.
The flutter of whispers continued behind him as he snapped the lid on his cup and led his
friend down to the Public Works area, in the sub-basement.
“Hey Ricky, how’re the wife and kids? Mind if I collect a meter kit? No, no trouble, I’ll get it
myself. I’ll be signing it out for a few days? Is that okay? Ricky? I’ll just leave the paperwork
here, you can file it when you get back. Thanks, Ricky!”
Hashirama turned to an absolutely thrumming Madara, whose bitter gaze and broad
shoulders intimidated every single member of their precinct… and who was freshly back
from his mandatory leave. Vacations truly worked wonders for the man.
“I got the meter-reader,” said Hashirama, checking the kit. “Here, I found an extra-extra large
vest for you. Oh good, this one fits your shoulders,” he remarked, as the garish, neon-yellow
safety vest with PARKING MONITOR emblazoned across the back strained at Madara’s
powerful deltoids.
Too pissed to speak, Madara accepted the meter and followed Hashirama, the precinct
therapist (and in his particular case, court-appointed escort), down to the garage to collect
the patrol car.
“This isn’t a car,” grit out Madara from between clenched teeth.
For the first time, Hashirama’s smile wavered.
“The others are still in the shop, I guess,” said Hashirama, expressive brow twitching. “But
this will be fun! It’ll be just like high school! I haven’t ridden pillion with you in—”
“You can walk.”
“Hahaha! Unfortunately, no, I’m mandated to stick with you during your reintegration with the
force,” said Hashirama as they faced the underpowered, rusty Vespa with the precinct
emblem crookedly affixed to the front, below the sagging headlight. He turned it on to ensure
it worked and cheered at the sallow glow that struggled to emanate. “See, it’s ship-shape!”
“I’m going to drive it into the bay.”
“I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Hashirama, grinning and snapping on the chin strap
for his helmet. “Though you know I never turn down a beach day. You’d look great with a tan,
too. Would you like to sit in my lap, or should I sit in yours? What was that cracking sound?”
“My molars.” Then, Madara added. “I’ll sit in your lap. I’ll never see around you.” Then he
sniffed. “How does a police scooter smell so much like Axe body spray?”
“Just another premium feature,” crowed Hashirama, taking a seat on it and handing Madara
his own helmet. Someone had helpfully scratched a penis into the front of it.
Madara’s wrist comm flashed to life with a concerned chime: blood pressure rising
quickly! Remember to take a breather :)!
Flashing his wrist beside the ignition—three times—to start the engine, the weary beast
roared to life with the fierce sputter of a dying cat, the radio immediately crooning to the
dulcet tones of corporate propaganda—
“—double and triple packs available without a doctor’s referral, for all your erectile dysfunction needs!”
With a running push from both men, they hopped aboard the labouring scooter and
put-puttered out of the precinct, much to the relief of the rest of the staff.
Hashirama wrapped his arms around Madara’s waist and yelled, “Welcome back to the
force, Detective! It’s good to have you back!”
“Fuck off and die,” muttered Madara darkly.
Gods, all he wanted was a quiet night.