Chapter 9

The tanuki is blown to bits and pieces and in the chaos, Sasuke can see feathers falling for some reason. He tilts his head back and stares up at the sky. Yep, that's really feathers falling. A whole lot of them, at that.

As he watches, the people up in the stands starts to lean back, until all of them appear to be falling asleep. While that is mildly interesting, Sasuke is much more interested in the red-haired boy that is currently waking up, when everybody else seems to be falling asleep. He can see his sensei going around the stands, waking up people and giving them directions, and he knows intellectually that this is some sort of large-scale genjutsu. The problem is, he's so unaffected by them that he can't even tell what it's supposed to do. He wonders, will these people sleep until they die from lack of nutrition if nobody helps them?

"What—?" the boys sits up, holding his head in his hands and staring with wide, innocent eyes at Saitama. "What did you do?"

Before Sasuke can respond, the boy growls at him, glaring at him as he demands, "Why can't I hear mother?!"

"I don't know."

The boy looks confused at that, but it's the absolute truth. Sasuke doesn't know what he did, because he's never punched a monster before and have it just dissolve on him, instead of raining down blood and guts. He doesn't know because this is another world, and they still have monsters here, and this one was apparently a mother. He doesn't know, because he has the oddest feeling that the boy absorbed what was left of the monster, and he's never seen that before.

He doesn't know, and some of that must be visible on his face, because the boy backs down. He breathes out a large gust of air and calms down. The boy continues to stare at him with wide green-blue eyes, a startlingly clear look in them.

As the rest of the arena descends into a much more natural silence, with all of the people sleeping, Sasuke observes the boy. He sees the blood-colored hair, the disturbingly innocent eyes surrounded by heavy black lines and the scar on his forehead that looks weirdly like a tattoo. It's a kanji, he thinks, but he's too far away to read it. Out of curiosity for what it says, he approaches the boy, stopping only a meter away from him.

He bends down until he's sitting on his heels in front of boy, staring at the tattoo-like scar. It says Love.

The boy flinches when he gets too close, as if he's scared of him.

Saitama frowns a little, unsure of how to deal with it. Not many people are actually afraid of him, because most never seem to believe that he's actually strong. They see his hero uniform and his bald head and they decide that he's harmless, so they don't fear him. Not really.

Even now, his sensei and his team, who have seen proof of his strength, don't fear him.

Maki just seems to think that he's cool, if the many whispers of that word is to be believed, the pink one is too focused on how big a gap there is between them and sensei... well, sensei is just unsettled. Sensei isn't scared of Sasuke, he's unsettled and uncomfortable around him. There's a difference, even if most people don't acknowledge it.

But the boy is scared of him. Sasuke can see it. This boy, who had a monster inside him, is scared of him.

For some reason, that makes him feel... not better, but simply okay.

(The boy should be scared of him. It's natural. You meet somebody who can kill you with a single punch, and you should fear them. All the best people in his life acknowledged what a danger he was, and chose to be friends with him regardless. That's what real bravery is.)

(Not throwing yourself into danger but staring it in the eye and saying hello.)

"I'm not going to hurt you." Sasuke says, and he means it.

The boy tries to glare at him, but the effect is ruined by the confused look on his face. "I don't believe you. Everybody hurts me."

Sasuke shrugs. "But I won't."

The boy hisses at him, bearing his teeth like it would scare Sasuke away. As it is, it just makes him look cuter, and Sasuke is tempted to keep him for this alone. He imagines the boy would do great at scaring away people that tries to bother him.

Sasuke slips his feet out from under him and sits down properly, with legs crossed on the ground in front of the other boy. The boy stares at him the entire time, his attention on Sasuke's hands, as if he could get away if Sasuke decided to punch him. Sasuke lets the silence settle around them, even as the boy starts looking increasingly worried and uneasy, his eyes starting to flicker up to the stand and the place where all those people with ridiculous hats were sitting.

The feathers are still falling when something whooshes into place around the arena.

Saitama frowns and looks up. There is a barrier in the air, all around the arena.

The red-haired boy scrambles up to his feet as if he forgot to turn off the stove before leaving home. Sasuke grabs the boy's flowing sleeves before he can leave, stopping him in his tracks. The boy turns around and glares at him. "I need to go!"

Sasuke tilts his head. "Can you go through the barrier?"

The boy stops the words about to leave his mouth and scowls at him. Sasuke sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "If you can't break the barrier, there's nowhere for you to go. Better to just stay here and wait for it to fall."

"And what am I suppose to do here?" Sasuke lets the boy rips his arm out of Sasuke's grip.

Sasuke shrugs. "Read manga with me?"

The boy scowls at him, but eventually settles down. Out of the bare bones of politeness that he has left, Saitama asks, "What's your name?"

"Gaara." the boy scowls heavier and glares at him, even as he sits still in front of him. "Yours?"

Absentmindedly, he answers, "Saitama."

He's already in the process of unsealing his manga books when he realizes that the boy is staring at him with an oddly intense look. He gives the boy a questioning glance and asks "What?"

"Your name is Saitama?" Sasuke nods in response. Gaara frowns and accuses, "I thought you're Uchiha Sasuke."

"I am."

The boy scrunches up his nose adorably. "How does that work?"

Sasuke shrugs. "I haven't really figured it out yet."

"Oh." the boy settles down on the ground, his shoulders hunching forward and his arms crossed over his chest. Sasuke unseals some more manga and leave them sitting on a pile in front of the boy on the dirt of the arena. He worries a little that the dirt will ruin them, so he made sure that he found them a nice, dry spot.

Eventually, the boy reaches over and picks up a manga. It's the first volume of Mirai's adventures and Saitama is excited to see his reaction. He likes discussing his favorite manga and novels with other people. He loves finding out their opinions of his favorite characters and getting into heated debates over their endings, their motivations and growth. It's one of his favorite things to do, and the only person he can do it with here is Tenten.

He loses track of time. It's easy and happens fairly often. He gets so into a story that he enjoys and when he looks up, hours will have passed without his notice. This time, when Sasuke looks up at the sky straight above them, it's dark with a few stars twinkling down at them.

Gaara is still sitting next to him, having moved on to volume eight of Mirai's manga. Around them, it looks like a battle of epic proportions has taken place. The ground has been torn up and there are marks all around the arena walls. Scorch marks from fire and marks from weapons hitting them. Even the marks that are the result of someone strong punching the walls directly and leaving a crater in their wake. The ground isn't much better.

Sasuke frowns a little but then he sees the red-haired boy sniffle and scrunch up his nose and his interest in the battle that he missed promptly wanes.

He scoots closer to the boy and glances over his shoulder. Ah, he's reached the part where Mirai's mother's identity is revealed. Sasuke loves this part so he shamelessly reads over the boy's shoulder.

The boy turns the page and together they read on as Mirai is forced to make a heartbreaking choice. Sasuke can't even keep from sniffling a little himself, this scene always getting to him. He lays his head down on the boy's shoulder for a better view and above them, something explodes. A scream rings out and a curse follows shortly, but Sasuke and the boy are caught in their own world.

The last page turns and the boy closes the manga with a smack.

Sasuke keeps leaning on his shoulder because he's tired and would like to sleep. He was forced to wake up much earlier than he likes this morning and it's late. He wants his sleep but the barrier is still up. And the sand that envelopes the boy is actually really soft and comfortable.

"Get off." the boy's voice is low and gravelly.

Sasuke mumbles, "I'm tired..."

Gaara shrugs his shoulder to get him off but the joke's on him. The sand moves with him and Saitama still has a really nice pillow.

"Mm." Sasuke's eyes slip closed and he yawns. "Comfy..." he mutters into the warm shoulder.

Soon, he's off into dreamland.

He wakes to someone carrying him. It takes him a moment to realize that the reason everything is distorted is because he's hanging upside down in someone's grip. Sasuke waves his legs a little as a try and it accomplishes absolutely nothing. But he's not hurt or anything so he doesn't really see the problem. Isn't this just free transportation?

"You've disappointed me, Orochimaru. To think that you would even resort to using children as hostages." a crunchy voice complains.

Sasuke looks up when he's abruptly set down on the floor. The Hokage is standing with blood still flowing from a million little wounds in front of him. The man doesn't even do him the courtesy of looking in his direction as he complains about... Orochimaru? Is that right?

Who's Orochimaru?

Sasuke cranes his head back and stares at the pale man standing there, with slitted golden eyes and a sneer curling his lips. The man leers at him and Sasuke can see the amusement in his eyes.

Embarrassment fills him and he jerks away from the strange man's grip on him. When he looks up he can see a white-haired man standing where he just was, not a hair out of place. The man's face is cracked and his eyes are pitch black. Sasuke's eyes slide away to another man with a cracked face and he feels like he just won the lottery.

Zombies!

They're actual zombies!

"Could I get your autograph?" he whips out pen and paper from a seal and holds them out to the white-haired man eagerly.

The man's black eyes slide from Sasuke to the paper and back to Sasuke again as if he can't believe what he's seeing. Sasuke frowns and walks over to the dead man, grabbing the hand not holding a weapon and putting a pen in it. Then he hods up his paper and says, "Write."

Behind them, on another area of the balcony, the snake guy says, "You've lost, Sensei."

Something moves in his peripheral vision and Sasuke can vaguely make out something happening behind him but he's more interested in the zombie who's signing his name on his paper. Sasuke feels his mouth pull into something that's probably a grin and it cracks his face a little. He's not used to using those muscles, but it's a zombie! A zombie! It deserves to be said twice.

There's a gurgle behind them and then something hits the ground.

When Saitama looks back, the Hokage is lying on the floor of the balcony, a pool of blood surrounding him.

He tilts his head. "Is he dead?"

"He will be." snake guy answers.

Sasuke turns back to his autographed paper and looks at it with delight. Then he turns to the other zombie man and holds out his pen. "Please." he says unconvincingly.

The man smiles at him and reaches over to write his name too and Sasuke feels like this is the best day of this life.

Then snake guy orders, "Retreat." and they all disappear. Sasuke is left behind staring at where they disappeared and alone. He sighs and seals away his autographs before they're destroyed in the apparent chaos. Then he jumps down into the arena where Gaara is still reading.

"The snake guy retreated." he states.

The red-haired boy twitches to attention and as they watch, the barrier surrounding the arena goes down. Gaara growls and rises to his feet, dropping the manga as he moves. Sasuke winces as he watches the manga hit the ground and walks over to pick them up and seal them away. There are about thirty different volumes littering the ground and he doesn't want whoever is responsible for cleaning this mess up to steal them.

Or worse, destroy them.

He shudders at the mere thought of it and hurries to pick them all up.

It doesn't take him long to make sure that all of his manga are safe and when he looks up again, Gaara is gone. Sasuke furrows his eyebrows and looks around. Most of the people are still sleeping so he decides to take this opportunity to go home.

The way there is dangerous. There are all sorts of shinobi fighting in the streets and people are dying whichever way that he looks. Sasuke strolls through the streets, utterly unconcerned. As he walks, he can hear explosions going off in the distance and the sound of screams rising like a cacophony all around him. Shinobi are rushing back and forth, yelling orders at each other while in motion.

Sasuke doesn't pay them much attention.

Above them, the moon is full.

He breathes out, a lull in the fighting making him stand still. The Uchiha Compound is right in front of him, a dead shinobi laying by the closed gates. As he gets closer, he can see the same symbol as Gaara's on the man's forehead ribbon.

Saitama bends down to take a closer look. A senbon is sticking out of their neck, white froth at their mouth and dry blood on their cheeks. Sasuke steps around them and enters the empty compound, the gates falling shut behind him.

He almost feels like crying.