A/N: Ahh, this summer weather really makes it hard to write such serious stuff. I'd rather immerse myself in humorous romance fics, Ouran goodness or...Fairy Tail. Haha, it's becoming an anime this fall and I am super excited!

Now onwards, ye cavaliers!

Six: Vendetta

The cup of tea with the silver-haired veteran did not happen. The promised bowl of ramen was never treated.

Four days after Sakura came home in tears, Sasuke had vanished without a trace.

"That bastard!" Naruto cursed loudly as he darted through the trees, the filtered sunlight danced in spots over his jounin jacket as he sped on, his eye occasionally looking about for signs of the Uchiha.

"How could he leave Sakura-chan like this?" The blond grit his teeth in anger as he recalled his beloved friend's face that morning.

Five hours earlier…

"Naruto." The pink-haired ninja called out his name softly in response after he had burst into the house, yelling for someone to answer him. Rushing into the bedroom, Naruto found Sakura sitting on the neatly made bed and looking out the window. "Please, don't look so angry."

Naruto froze. Sakura hardly ever pleaded with him unless it was of the greatest importance. He'd always sworn to do whatever he could for her. Whether it was to bring Sasuke back or save the village in a crisis, he would try ten times harder just for her.

But this time, it was hard not to suppress the rage. Sasuke had abandoned her again leaving her to cry by herself. Was it his job to go chasing after him once more after all of these years?

Sakura smiled in earnest as she took his hand. "Please help me look for him, Naruto. Remember, he's losing his memory. He can't be blamed for this."

Naruto swore under his breath but agreed anyway.

Her sandals crunched conspicuously on the leaves and twigs of the forest but she didn't care. Her mind kept wandering back to early yesterday morning when he left...

The warm covers over her body tempted her to keep on sleeping but as she reached over and felt him not there, the emptiness made her wide awake.

"Sasuke?" Sakura glanced at the clock on the bedside table: 4:11am. As if in reply to her question, the closing of the front door resounded in the house. Sakura threw aside the covers, grabbed her nightrobe and was out the door after him.

Outside, the cold strong wind whipped through the streets making it hard to see or walk. Sakura drew the robe around her as best as she could and gathered chakra in her feet.

"Sasuke!" Her cry was lost among the whistling of the wind but she was determined. Keeping her eyes open and steady, Sakura ran down the streets, her slippers barely coping with the speed. Finally, she spotted his retreating figure on the bridge over the river, heading into the heart of the village. She picked up speed running hard and as she neared the bridge, leapt and overshot him. Cartwheeling, she landed roughly before him causing the wooden boards to creak beneath the impact.

The knotted sash around her waist had come undone so that her robe billowed about her. Although the wind slashed at her through her thin pajamas, she couldn't care less. All she saw was her husband's shadowed expressionless face partly illuminated by a nearby streetlamp.

"What are you doing? It's barely four in the morning." Sakura started cautiously. "You should be asleep-"

"I have a mission today." The tone was void of emotion; it was simple, almost mechanical, like how he used to be. Sakura flinched and hesitated before speaking again.

"You don't have a mission. You're currently on sick leave because you just left the hospital a couple of days ago." She tentatively reached out but he avoided her touch and walked past her.

Sakura stood still with her arm still outstretched. She didn't have the courage to turn around to face the old Sasuke, the one who had hurt her with his indifference and coldness.

"You think you know my mission assignments better than me?" His footsteps had stopped momentarily. "I have to secure my checkpoint. You go back." With that, he disappeared in a cloud of smoke to an unknown destination so that Sakura could not follow.

The tears came again and this time, there was no hope of holding them back. Choking on gasps of the cold air, Sakura felt her chest constrict with grief. "No, not yet! It's happening so fast…he was fine just a couple of days ago!" She raised a hand to fiercely wipe away the tears that kept coming and dashed home.

Sakura pounded up the stairs, stripped off her pajamas and into her ninja attire. Shrugging on her jounin jacket and pulling on her shoes, Sakura hastily grabbed a holster of kunais and her pack of shuriken.

If her words failed her, she would still have to stop him regardless of what it took.

The hours passed by as if they were seconds as Sakura scoured the city and the edges of the forest. Every minute that passed made her heart ache with worry. Tsunade's prognosis of Sasuke's condition echoed in her mind.

He was clearly reverting back to how he used to be. The effects of the Sharingan were unraveling his memories and subsequently changing his personality. There was no way to predict when it will stop but the probability that the damage was permanent was high.

Sakura had desperately asked her mentor how to stop the reversal but there was no answer, there was no antidote. All she could do was be by his side.

The young ninja suppressed a shiver as she ran through the deserted streets of the early morning, dreading to find her husband a mirror of what he used to be: a heartless avenger, forsaking his friends for the one goal of achieving revenge and death.

After another hour of searching, the village began to stir and signs of life signaled the beginning of a new day. In one last desperate attempt, Sakura scaled the tallest building in the village and swept her eyes down below.

Nothing, not one trace of him remained.

That was when she decided to call for help. Her friend would always be by her side when she needed it.

Sakura made her way toward the river in the forest. She had been searching for hours with no luck. Deciding to rest, Sakura sat down on a boulder and looked into the river; her reflection looked pitiful: her hair was disheveled, dark circles marked lack of sleep and the sad look in her eyes made the depression in her mind slowly change into frustration.

As she continued to stare at her reflection in the water, she suddenly noticed a stream of red run down the river. Puzzled, Sakura followed the trail of red up the river where its crimson color had spread to a wider area.

Her green eyes widened with shock as the pools of red turned darker. Something slowly floated downstream towards her and as it neared, Sakura's brows furrowed with the innate sense that a brutal battle had taken place a little ways from there just hours ago. It was a dismembered arm that had flowed down the river and lodged against the reeds by the bank.

Sakura retrieved a kunai from the holster on her thigh and stealthily made her way upstream, carefully hiding in the shadows of the trees. Her assumptions had been correct; as she went further up, more and more dismembered body parts littered the water. There was no sign if these belonged to Konoha shinobi or enemies. Taking out a locater, Sakura checked her coordinates: she was near the checkpoint of where the Cloud ninjas had supposedly marked as their territory. When she had fought them a couple of weeks back, she was somewhere in near the vicinity as well.

Praying that more Konoha shinobi did not fall to their traps, Sakura continued to follow the river when she suddenly froze. A pile of bodies lay stacked on the riverbed. Checking to make sure it was clear, Sakura darted forward to examine the corpses.

A fallen headband of a Cloud ninja from Kumogakure laid at her feet.

From this distance, Sakura gathered that they had been only recently killed. From the looks of their ranks, there were five jounin and around eight chuunins, not an easy handful to handle.

Noticing the expression of one ninja, Sakura knelt down to inspect him further. A trail of drool dripped from his mouth, his eyes lolled back into his head with the whites around his irises bloodshot.

"Genjutsu…and," Sakura trailed off and noted the precision of the fatal wound across the victim's neck: fine, clean and expertly delivered. "The use of a katana."