Chapter FIVE

The next time Sakura woke up, it was to the sound of Suigetsu and Karin fighting. She stretched, her head pounding. She looked around, noting that she was in some fort of huge glass tank full of water. Her brother was hovering by the glass, glaring at Karin.

She frowned at her brother and reached out with her feet. Suigetsu gasped in surprise, unaware that she had been awake, and Sakura took the chance to tighten her legs around her brother's stomach.

"Shut up, Sui-nii." She scowled. "I'm trying to sleep here, you know."

Suigetsu let out another gasp. "Nice to see you awake, sis." His body melted into water and he slipped out of her grasp, reforming a little further off. "Anyways, Sasuke." The Uchiha did not look up, but Suigetsu continued anyways. "Are you still going to use the Biju's power?" Suigetsu breathed out bubbles and Sakura slapped a hand over his face.

"Maybe, maybe not." Sasuke reached for his cup. "Whatever happens, I no longer need it."

"Huh?"

Sakura swam over to Suigetsu and did a flip. "He can make fire." She said.

Suigetsu blinked blankly at her. "Sorry...What?"

"Black fire." Sakura waved her arms. "The Amaterasu." She turned to Sasuke. "There is a price that comes with it, you know?" She said. "I've seen it."

Sasuke knocked over his cup. His fingers tensed and he slowly brought his hand up to his head.

"Is something wrong?" Karin called.

"No...Nothing." Sasuke took a deep breath.

Suddenly, the redhead tensed.

Jugo noticed first. "What is it?"

"I sense a chakra signature outside." Karin said. "We've been followed."

Sakura prodded at her own chakra and quickly located the closest source of water outside, which happened to the the huge lake their hideout was located on.

She appeared right in front of the Kumo shinobi and waved in front of his face, just for fun, before she confirmed his location. She watched him begin a set of hand seals and recognized them.

She cut her connection and her mind was thrown back into her body. Suigetsu turned to her and she grasped his arm. "Karin's right." She said. "Dude from Kumogakure. Baled, kinda tanned, with sun glasses." She wriggled her fingers. "He was summoning something."

Sasuke was on his feet in an instant. "Jugo, come with me." The orange head nodded.

The next few days were spent recovering. Sasuke forbid any of them from leaving until they were fully healed and Suigetsu complained about how that didn't affect Sakura because she seemed to spend most of her time in her water body.

However, Sakura was not doing all this just to make Suigetsu jealous. There was suspicious movement near Konohagakure and she was wondering if she was supposed to report this to Sasuke.

Then a group of dudes with orange hair clad in Akatsuki cloaks launched an attack on Konohagakure. She instinctively collapsed into the puddle she had been spying from when one of the piercing-faces leveled out the land with a single attack and she decided she did not want to keep this to herself. She cut her connect and found herself back in the tank located at their base.

While the two Hozuki had recovered enough to leave the water take, Sakura spent most of her time in there so that her water body was not too far away. She kicked off the bottom of the container and launched herself up. With a splash she broke the surface and did a flip, landing outside the tank.

Suigetsu looked up from the couch he had been sitting on and his eyes widened. "Kura!" He stripped himself of his shirt and tossed it at her. "Cover yourself!"

Sakura grabbed the shirt that had landed on her head then looked down at herself. While in water, she had been partially goo, but the moment she stepped out, she once again had a physical body. She slipped her arms through the sleeves and Suigetsu came up to her with his obi. He randomly tied it to hold the front together. "You should'a told me." He grumbled.

"Sorry, Sui-nii." She said, not sounding apologetic at all. "No time." She whipped around to look at Sasuke, who had been sitting at the table, and waved her arms. "Attack on Konoha." She exclaimed, then quickly lowered the volume of her voice. "It was a group of seven people wearing Akatsuki robes. One guy just went 'boom!', and he flattened the whole area."

"Guy?" Sasuke looked up, eyes dark and narrowed.

Sakura blinked and rapidly nodded. "Yup. One of the guys with orange hair and a face full of piercings." She tapped at her chin. "Actually, apart from this blue haired woman, who I think is called Konan, everyone else has orange hair and a face full of piercings."

"Who is this orange head?"

"I think I once saw someone call him 'Pein', but I've never seen the other five."

"When was this?" Sasuke asked.

"They gathered yesterday." Sakura said. "The attack is going on right now."

"And Naruto?"

"I don't think he's there. Judging from his character, he probably wouldn't lay low, and he hasn't appeared yet."

For a brief moment, his eyes flashed with some distant memory before he closed his eyes and sighed. "Keep an eye on them." He ordered. "Tell me which side wins." He turned back to whatever he had been doing.

"Aye sir~" Sakura mock saluted him. She then stripped out of the shirt Suigetsu had just managed to tie together and waved when her brother let out a sound of protest before she jumped back into the tank. She gathered her conscious and imagined the puddle she had been observing from. From there, she would jump deeper into the village.

For a second, she hesitated, a thought that had been nagging her for a while rearing it's head once again. Sakura could clearly remember the way Jugo had sensed her. Maybe skills related to chakra sensing could detect her. Maybe someone with the Byakugan would be able to see her.

However, she managed to chase this thought away as quickly as it had come. Sakura was water. Even if someone did see her, it wasn't like they could do anything about it.

With that thought in mind, she took a deep breath and threw her conscious.

Sakura flew around through Konoha, watching shinobi be cut down by one orange head or another. She caught sight of Hatake Kakashi and some other guy fighting one of them while a few Chunin like shinobi ran around trying to evacuate the civilians and the injured.

Everyone, including Sakura, sensed it when a huge chakra signature suddenly appeared in Konoha. Sakura felt her form ripple from the huge pressure that suddenly loomed down on her and she had to pull away to a river to gather herself.

When she finally managed to make her way back to the battle site, she saw a yellow glowing Naruto fighting the Pein she had always seen.

She watched the fight escalate and watched Naruto fall, unsure if this counted as the conclusion of the battle or if Naruto would create another miracle, like she had watched him do so many times.

And he did, kind of. She watched Hyuuga Hinata, the heiress of the clan, if she remembered correctly, rush over to help Naruto, only for Pein to knock her out.

There was a pause before Sakura felt the bubbling of hot angry chakra coming from Naruto. She felt it tugging at her form and she dug her feet into the ground, trying to stay where she was.

She had always felt it when chakra was being used. When Pein had used one of his gravity attacks, she had felt the pressure because it had directly affected her water form.

Water could not be cut or broken, but it could be compressed.

Sakura suddenly felt like she was going to hurl. She felt invisible flames licking at her from all directions and she could feel the water source drying up. She sent her senses flying, locating the next closest body of water. Panicking, she threw her conscious to this source.

Once a little distance away, Sakura could breath normally. She saw tails sprouting from Naruto's back and was reminded of the Hachibi's jinchuriki transformation.

There was something wrong with this one, though.

Sakura was about to turn and look over the rest of the village when she realized that her limbs felt heavy. A sudden smell of iron his her nose and she slowly glanced down.

Her reflection in a pool of crimson stared back at her and she stumbled back in shock, only to be yanked back harshly before she could step out of the puddle of blood.

She had never been able to channel herself through blood and it had never happened before. Her legs were slowly changing color and she suddenly felt sick again.

She tore her form away from the sticky heavy liquid to another source further away, battle temporarily forgotten. A handful of shinobi ran right through her and while she had never liked the feeling, she couldn't bring herself to care. She coughed roughly and she felt something forcing itself out of her throat. She choked up a ball of transparent blood, which shimmered and soon vanished as though evaporated.

"No-no-" Sakura clenched her fists, trying to stop herself from shaking. It didn't help, really, because her water form could not feel pain like her real body did. Or it wasn't supposed to, anyways. She didn't know anymore. "No-I don't-I never-" She had no idea what was going on, and the body she had found refuge in, her only form of freedom while she had been caged in that horrible snake pit, did not feel as free as she had once thought it was.

She felt an abrupt, unnatural ripple, starting at her feet, and a second later, she felt her connection be cut and she was forcefully pulled away.

Karin was the first to notice. With her sensory abilities, it nothing chakra could hide from her. Not with this distance anyways.

Her head shot up and she turned towards the tank the younger Hozuki was occupying and narrowed her eyes. Just for a second, she had felt an angry amount of chakra bubbling around the girl. She shook her head a little and was about to turn back to watching Suigetsu having a one sided argument with Sasuke when she felt it again.

If she had to describe it, she would say that Sakura's chakra was boiling.

She had no idea how this was possible, but given the fact that Sakura could turn her body into water, perhaps it was possible to boil her chakra like water.

What she did know was that this was not healthy, especially with the way the chakra traced outline of Sakura's body within her gooey form was beginning to steam.

"Hey, Suigetsu, isn't that bad?"

The Hozuki looked up, annoyance written all over his face, but he paused when it looked like for once, Karin wasn't picking a fight with him.

He froze for a second before he was suddenly halfway to the tank. He flipped himself over the edge of the glass, still fully clothed, only to let out a gasp and skid to a halt, balanced precariously on the edge. "What the-"

Suigetsu carefully reached out and dipped a hand into the water, only to pull back with a wince. "Oh crap." He leaped off and extended his arm towards where the Kubikiribocho was lying against the wall and without hesitation, cut through the glass. With a loud shattering sound, the tank fell apart, the water gushing out.

Karin let out a sound of protest and quickly evacuated onto the couch. Jugo stepped back to avoid the growing puddle. Sasuke narrowed his eyes and fixed Suigetsu with a glare the Hozuki did not seem to notice.

Instantly, Sakura's gooey form appeared, lying limply in the puddle. Suigetsu stuck his hand into the puddle and pulled the rest of the water away from his sister, and once the last of the water had been pulled away, Sakura was forcefully pulled out of her water form.

Sakura awakened with a gasp and she shot up into a sitting position. Suigetsu, who had been prepared this time, wrapped the kimono he had stripped out of around his sister's shoulders. "You okay?" He asked. "What happened? You just-"

"I don't know-It's never happened-I mean-" Sakura curled in on herself and Suigetsu wrapped his clothes tighter around her.

"What happened?" He repeated, with a little more force.

"There was a fox and chakra and it burned and that never happened before and I channeled through blood and that's never happened either and it was so heavy and I could feel it staining me and I-"

At some point during Sakura's break down, Sasuke got to his feet. He crouched down beside Suigetsu, who didn't seem to care and behind Sakura, who didn't notice that he was there.

Suigetsu did react, though, when he reached out and promptly knocked out the girl. Sakura's form crumpled and once again turned into a pile of goo.

There was a flare of angry chakra and Suigetsu had the Uchiha's wrist in a tight grasp, eyes blazing. "What the hell was that for?" He snarled. "Kura was-"

"A panic attacks are draining." Sasuke said curtly. "From the amount of chakra she has left, it probably isn't too healthy." He paused. "And she wasn't making any sense." He yanked his grip out of Suigetsu's loosening grip and stood up. "Annoying."

Suigetsu opened his mouth but Sasuke beat him to it.

"I'll listen to her report once she's calm and rested."

We're very sorry for the horrendously late update...yeah...

Darque: Life ate me up and swallowed me whole then decided I tasted too disgusting and spat me back out.

Raven: I see, what the was the insides of Life like?

Darque: It was dark and gooey and slimy and utterly gross. And you could see this light coming from its throat but it's too high up to reach it and all you can do it reach hopelessly for it.

Raven: Nice.

Darque: No, it was not nice. What are you doing anyways?

Raven: I have English homework, something on creative writing, and since I lived in America for a few years before I moved back to Japan I know I'll ace this, especially since my classmates suck, but your depressing speech is probably going to get me top marks. It certainly is pretty creative.

Darque: Is it creative? And don't leech off my brilliance.

Raven: I'll accept this as payment for the time I did your English analysis.

Darque:...Fine, deal.

Raven: Ah, our friendship is as beautiful as that taunting outside light just about visible through the throat of Life.

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