Imposter

"Umm…" the blonde woman mumbled in a timid voice, fiddling with her purse.

"Is something wrong?" Sasuke asked the woman who had accidentally bumped into him.

She lingered in front of him with her gaze angled downward as if she had something important to say. He stared at her with a hardened eye, dismissing the notion of her communicating anything significant to him. She was probably another one of his many admirers vying for his attention.

"My apologies," she said quickly and hurried towards the end of the crepe stand line.

For a split second, he thought he heard a trace of Sakura within the woman's voice. She spoke with an accent he couldn't identify the origins of, thus he presumed she was likely a foreigner. For whatever reason, her voice had triggered a sudden queasiness to ripple through him. It was entirely possible he was hearing his wife's voice in strangers as a subconscious way of reminding himself to hurry home.

He wondered of his wife's current health status and how much time remained before she would succumb to her terminal illness. Furthermore, he was concerned about how Sarada was faring emotionally in the face of her mother's imminent demise. Was Naruto there to lend her support through this tragedy? How would he comfort his grieving daughter while he was struggling with his own buried grief?

Death was unfairly depriving him of his beloved family once again.

Sasuke had taken a brief respite from his journey home. He stopped at a small village along the way to replenish his depleted chakra reserves with food and rest his fatigued eyes. Unfortunately, his timing couldn't have been worse. With the onset of dusk, the village sprung to life after the midday lull. He bought a stick of grilled corn to snack on while he waited for the long lines of the other food vendors to subside. Once a party of people left a yakisoba stand all at once, he took the opportunity to visit the stand before another line formed.

A middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed beard took his order and alerted the male and female cooks to a customer. The man informed him of the price in a monotonous voice, which Sasuke was already aware of since it was written above the stand. Sasuke turned his attention to the purple bag over his shoulder and fished for the wad of cash he had stashed at the bottom. Just as he was about to draw the bills from his bag, he felt the splatter of blood hit his face and wet the collar of his cape. He raised his gaze to the gruesome sight of blood spewing from the vendor's headless body. The decapitated body teetered for a few seconds before collapsing.

The two cooks screamed as the vendor's severed head rolled to a stop at their feet.

"Taro!" one of the cooks shrieked at the top of her lungs.

Her coworker pointed to the bloodied Sasuke and cried out, "You! You killed Taro!"

"What…?" Sasuke widened his eyes, aghast.

His right hand was instinctively at the hilt of his sword, mismatched eyes darting back and forth for any sign of an assailant. The panicked cries of the two cooks drew a curious and unwelcome crowd to the scene. Sasuke continued scanning the premises for any abnormal or distinctly powerful chakras, but he didn't detect anything out of the ordinary. Most of the people around him were civilians with feeble chakra signatures, save for the three mediocre chakras he felt close by. Three off-duty guards were seated on a park bench across from the food vendors, each with a fried octopus leg in hand. The cooks' screams immediately attracted the attention of the guards, who rose from their spot and wandered over toward the commotion.

"What's going on over here?" the tallest shinobi asked, eyeing the sword in Sasuke's hand.

"Murderer! Murderer!" the male cook continued aiming his finger and shouting at Sasuke.

As Sasuke turned to face the three shinobi who confronted him, he felt something yank his hand and thrust his sword into solid flesh. His sword had somehow entrenched itself into the gut of the tallest shinobi, killing him instantly. His comrades gasped in alarm and slid into a defensive stance as Sasuke wrenched his sword out of the slain man.

"You're Uchiha Sasuke!" a blonde shinobi stammered fearfully, knowing he and his remaining comrade were no match for the infamous Uchiha. He took a cautious few steps backward and stumbled, landing on his rear.

Sasuke began explaining himself, "You don't understand. Something is controlling my—"

Before he knew it, an unseen force cleaved the bodies of the people around him like a blade. The bisected bodies of the civilians hit the ground all around him, saturating him in more blood. Apparently, the blonde shinobi was the sole survivor of the mysterious attack. He was on the ground in a crablike position, wearing a dumbfounded expression on his face. Without wasting another second, he scrambled to his feet and immediately bolted. A cry rang out and suddenly, all pandemonium broke loose. His jarring screams incited panic among the civilians, causing a stampede on the busy street.

Sasuke's right eye bled red upon activating his Sharingan. He skimmed the streets for any suspicious chakras that would reveal the source of the attacks. Turning down a vacant alleyway, he noticed four young women huddled behind a dumpster for safety. With the aid of his ocular powers, he quickly performed a chakra scan of all four women. However, his suspicions settled on the blonde woman who had previously bumped into him at the food district.

While the other women had the negligible chakra reserves characteristic of average citizens, this woman had no chakra or chakra pathways within her body at all. Though chakra-less people were rare, they were not completely unheard of. Civilizations on tiny, remote islands did not possess chakra unlike the rest of the human population living in the mainland. Not only that, her aberrant accent confirmed that she was a foreign visitor.

The fact that this woman had no chakra quashed all suspicions he may have had. There was zero possibility of her being responsible for the attacks.

These attacks must've been orchestrated by highly trained shinobi in order to avoid his detection so expertly. Either he was the target of an enemy with lousy aim or someone was deliberately slaughtering the villagers in order to frame him. What troubled him most was that he couldn't even sense the attacks, nonetheless stop them. He raced down the streets, continuing his search for any fast moving chakras or weapons. Wherever he went, he encountered unfathomable carnage. Civilians instantly fell dead at his feet, their bodies bisected or decapitated. Someone must've been following him or tracking him from a higher location.

After carefully contemplating his subsequent plan of action, he leapt onto the rooftop of a bank. From his position atop the roof, he could determine the location of the assailant from any further assault or ferret out a spy. He diligently monitored the activity on the streets, where horrorstricken villagers scattered in all different directions. His eyes cut across the street, managing to catch a glimpse of a shadowy figure that broke away from three other women and disappeared behind the corner of a building. Though the figure was largely obscured by the building, the glint of a metal object caught his eye from below. Since the glint remained stationary, someone must've been watching him from behind the building. The assailant either wore or carried something metal that was reflecting light from the setting sun.

Concentrating chakra to the soles of his feet, Sasuke launched himself from the rooftop and pursued the mysterious figure prowling in the shadows. He spotted a full head of blonde hair attempting to outrun him on high heels. The woman wore a set of bracelets around her wrists, which were the likely source of the glimmer he noticed from the rooftop. Sasuke placed the hilt of his sword in his mouth and reached for a set of kunai stowed within his bag. He drew five kunai and hurled them in her direction. She briefly glimpsed over her shoulder, but made no effort to dodge his weapons.

"How…?" Sasuke muttered to himself as the kunai hit some kind of wall and clattered to the ground. The woman didn't deflect them with any weapons of her own nor did she form any hand signs to shield herself with a jutsu.

Was she using some form of advanced technology he was unaware of?

Even though she had a full head start, he quickly closed in on her. She was barely capable of outrunning him on foot indicating that she had no formal ninja training. Resigning her efforts of escape, the woman skid to a halt and pivoted on her heels to face him. Although he had formerly put his suspicions to rest, it came as no surprise that his stalker was the woman who had bumped into him earlier. Sasuke retrieved his sword from in between his teeth and brandished it before her face.

"Who are you?" he demanded, giving her no choice but to comply.

There was no answer, only a haughty smirk.

She merely stood still as Sasuke vaulted forward, his sword coming down on her. The blade struck something solid, the force of the blow sending a buzzing numbness down his arm. Gritting back the pain, he repeatedly attempted to slash his opponent, but to no avail. Apparently, his assault was rendered futile by an invisible force field shielding her from any harm.

Sasuke felt something grasp his ankle, uprooting him from where he stood. He was catapulted backward like a slingshot and sent airborne. The blonde haired woman casually took a few steps away from a bicycle parked on the sidewalk behind her and trained her eyes on it. Sasuke flashed in front of her, lunging at her with his sword. His blade stopped a few inches short of her abdomen. Though his blade came uncomfortably close to penetrating her vital organs, she remained stone-faced. A few seconds later, she heard the sound of the bicycle crashing down onto the street behind her precisely as she predicted.

"Do you think I don't know your techniques?" the woman uttered indifferently, looking unimpressed. "You've used that one on me many times before."

Many times before?

Sasuke wracked his brain for any vague memory of this woman, but his search came up empty. When had he ever battled this woman? As far as he could recall, he never once used the Amenotejikara on unsuspecting civilians. Besides his enemies, he generally used the jutsu to swap places with objects and allies in battle. There was only one person he'd used it on multiple times and that was his wife. He employed the time-space jutsu in coordinated attacks with her during their travels and, most recently, against Shin.

Clearly, this woman was lying about any prior confrontation with him. He would've easily remembered fighting an opponent who lacked chakra.

"Who are you?" Sasuke demanded again as her nonresponse wore his patience thin.

He struggled to wrench his armed hand free from something firmly holding it in place. Whatever restrained his hand exerted force on it, hyperextending it until there was a loud snap of bone followed by an agonized bellow. His sword dropped to the pavement with a dull clang as his hand fell limp.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, her voice deceptively inquisitive. "I'll make sure the pain lasts."

Despite the coldness in her tone, something about her voice made him feel like he had a longstanding, personal connection to this woman.

He found himself surrounded by a myriad of random objects from the street hovering above him. The objects were pulled into the center toward him like a vacuum, barrelling down on him from various directions. A fiery skeletal chakra construct materialized around him, protecting him from the attack. The purple skeletal being wrapped its fingers around the woman's petite frame and raised her off the ground. Her sunglasses slid down the bridge of her nose and plunged to the ground.

Now that he was within the safety of Susanoo, he brought the woman closer to him and resumed his interrogation. "I'm not going to ask you again. Who are you and what are your motives?"

Although she claimed familiarity with his techniques, the woman foolishly locked eyes with his now activated Mangekyou Sharingan and the six revolving tomoe that returned to his Rinnegan. He couldn't help but become completely entranced by fierce green eyes that pierced his heart and stirred unwelcome feelings within him. The familiarity of her eyes, the sound of her voice, and that strikingly similar aura disturbed him beyond reason. It opposed every fiber of his being to project his intimate feelings towards his wife onto some random enemy who happened to remind him of her. Yet, he couldn't dispel the phantom images of his wife that his mind superimposed on his opponent's features.

His immense grief was not only afflicting his combat prowess but his sanity as well.

Upon studying her more closely, he noticed the bright pink hue of her eyebrows and lashes.

Strange. Was she wearing a wig or did she forget to dye her eyebrows to match her hair color? Either way, one thing was for sure—she had naturally pink hair.

This bizarre finding now had him intractably suspicious. Most adversaries sought honor in battling him and gladly gave him their name, even if he never asked for it. But, this woman wasn't refusing to answer him out of fear of revealing her identity. No, it seemed more like responding to him was something beneath her dignity. She had to be a foreign agent spying on him on behalf of an island nation isolated from the shinobi world. Based on her lack of ninja training, it was unlikely she was deployed by any respectable shinobi organization who knew anything about his formidable power. The only advantageous strategy to enlisting someone who lacked chakra was that she could easily slip beneath his notice.

It was the only reasonable explanation he could come up with. And, he was determined to get to the bottom of it.

If she wasn't going to provide him with the answers he wanted, he would force them out of her. He widened his mismatched eyes, focusing his chakra on the captured assailant. Despite engaging in direct eye contact with him, she appeared to be completely unaffected by his hypnotic ocular power.

"Your ninja mind tricks won't work on me." A look of apathy dulled those green eyes that bothered him so. "I don't have any chakra to manipulate."

Though he loathed to admit it, she was entirely right. Genjutsu operated on altering the chakra system in order to manipulate one's senses. He never fathomed that a chakra-less enemy could prove to be so problematic.

Irritated with her apathy, his Susanoo clenched its fingers around the woman's body. He squeezed her tight enough to wring answers out of her, but took caution as to avoid killing her. She let out a heart-wrenching cry as the humanoid chakra monster crushed her tiny form. It was a cry that assaulted him with unbearable guilt. A cry that hit him with the memories of a past he longed to forget like a hard slap to the face.

Beset with sudden regret, he slacked the grip on her. An array of ghostlike hands emerged from her back and phased through the nearly impenetrable shell of his Susanoo.

"Hands?" Sasuke gasped, unable to evade the many outstretched fingers looming toward him.

One of the hands seized him by the throat and forcibly ripped him out of the safety of Susanoo. He hit the ground with great force, the impact stealing the breath from his lungs. A barrage of the spectral fists mercilessly pummeled him into oblivion. The repeated blows to the head and chest left him feeling both lightheaded and nauseous. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could endure before finally losing consciousness.

There was a loud cry and the pummeling came to an abrupt end. "Please, stop!"

Miraculously, he received a break from the ruthless attack, which left him on the brink of incapacitation. He wasn't sure whether it was real or imagined, but he heard her once more.

He heard Sakura's voice.

Rivulets of blood dribbled from his nostrils and descended the sides of his face. His left eye was swollen to the point of closure, rendering his Rinnegan unusable. He blinked to better view the blurry profile of the woman burying her face into the palm of her hand as if suffering a migraine headache.

Who and what was this woman? What was this strange power she harnessed? How was she so familiar with his attack patterns and repertoire of jutsu? Her knowledge spanned far beyond anything that could be gathered through intelligence, suggesting that she had witnessed his fighting style firsthand—and for a prolonged period of time.

The woman laughed softly to herself and shrugged off whatever had briefly distracted her. Her bangs cast a shadow over her face, leaving only an upturned set of lips and a flash of teeth visible. She towered over him, grinding her high heels into his throat. Her laughter intensified as she increased the pressure, stifling his cries and desperate gasps for air. Sasuke focused his intact eye on the crown of her head, setting her blonde hair afire. She let out a crisp yelp when the searing heat of the black flames reached her scalp and wasted no time shedding the blonde wig.

Long, vibrant pink hair cascaded down her back. She had a peculiar set of horns on her head that reminded him of cat ears. Instead of the purple rhombus his wife had worked for years to attain, a crescent moon-shaped mark adorned her brow.

The revelation dealt a blow far worse than the relentless beat-down he had just received. Not since Itachi had he experienced the crushing pain of betrayal that had once set him on a self-destructive path. Despite the slight differences in appearance, he had no doubt in his mind.

It was her.

"Sakura…?" he rasped out.

A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing!