I am aghast with myself...I had never noticed all the plot holes that littered my story until a friend shoved it down my throat about all of my mistakes and all the things that needed to be fixed before I could go any further with this story. *Sighs* He's such a good friend to me. Honest, blunt, and horribly critical when it comes to my writings. I owe it all to him~!

Enjoy!

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Edited as of: December 15, 2013

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"When I was younger, I dreamed of adventures."

Cold...why was it so cold? I didn't understand. I knew that I was cold, but my skin burned like it had burst into flames mere seconds ago. It was a strange combination. I couldn't decided whether I liked the sensation or not. Was it comfortable or uncomfortable? I was so confused.

I blinked when something wet landed on my face, drawing a wet trail from my forehead to my chin before falling to the ground. I looked up slowly, my lips parted. The sky was a dark gray, ominous clouds rolling in from the east. Foreboding. Frightening. Another drop landed on my cheek. Then another. What was this feeling?

It's raining, my mind supplied, though it took a while to register in my head. My thoughts were going so slow. Agonizingly slow. Like a snail. A part of me complained that it was so unnatural of me to be this slow thinking. I was a thinking ninja. A paper ninja. We shouldn't take this long to process our thoughts. And yet...why was I doing the exact opposite of what was expected?

"Adventures where I was like a heroine, where I could save people and be respected by my peers. I wanted people to know that I was dangerous. That I could be taken seriously. I wanted to be known. I wanted to be feared."

An explosion to my left had me mechanically turning my head. Flames were licking at the building that was on fire, it's orange tendrils of fire eating away at the few pieces of wooden beams that made up the building. A hunched figure emerged from the flames, a sick, twisted grin marring its face. My lips unconsciously curled in disgust. It was so crude and nasty and disfigured. An abomination.

It's entire body was a sickening white, black zigzags of what looked like stitches covering it's body. A mop of green hair covered its head and searching yellow eyes glanced around before they landed on me. The creature didn't even have time to pounce from its current position to mine before a kunai flew from my hand and pierced the area in between its eyes. It collapsed backwards, the hungry flames behind it eagerly devouring its dead corpse.

Just how many Zetsu clones are there? I wondered absently, arm still outstretched in the way that I had thrown the kunai with. I blinked. Oh. That's right. We were...in the middle of an invasion.

"Sakura."

"I realize now just how much of a mistake it was for me to have that dream. Realize how horribly it had affected me."

My back automatically straightened at the voice, arms at my sides as I turned on my heel and bowed to the waist to the Hokage. She looked worse for wear, lacerations marring her arms and legs and stomach. She had discarded her favored green haori sometime near the beginning of the battle, leaving her in her kimono-style, sleeveless blouse and torn dark blue pants. I faintly registered that she was covered from head to toe in blood before I noticed her eyes. Her once warm honey-brown eyes were now cold and calculating, yet they seemed to portray a world-weary tiredness that almost had me thinking that she was much older than what she currently was.

"Konoha has been overrun," She said simply. That simple sentence conveyed a thousand meanings to the both of us.

"Yes," I said quietly.

"Reinforcements will not make it back in time."

I looked up at her, somehow knowing that my eyes were portraying a hope that I knew was not wanted at this time. "Guy-sensei and Kakashi-sensei were the ones you sent out, Lady Tsunade."A simple statement. Supposed to be a question, but it had somehow turned into something else.

"Yes."

"You do not believe in them?"

She sighed tiredly, closing her eyes. I could make out the dark bags that had taken up residence under her eyes at that moment, could count how many stress lines there were under and around her eyes. She looked so exhausted. "Fast as those two may be, they are not quick enough to get reinforcements back to Konoha without leaving said reinforcements in their dust."

"There is no hope. It was a false feeling that had filled us with futile ideas of victory and conquest. Stupid. Idiotic. Useless."

"What should we do?" I asked, feeling that hope that I had somehow managed to harbor this far into the battle disintergrate. My body wanted nothing more than to sag to the ground in a boneless pile of flesh, but the strenuous condititioning that had made up my entire training over the past six years refused to let me just throw in the towel when all of my limbs were still functioning and I still had a decent amount of chakra still in me.

Her honey-brown eyes shone with a renewed fiery passion, lips thinning into a determined line. I could hear the cracking of her knuckles as her hands clenched into fists. "Fight for what we have left. So long as I am Hokage, I will continue to fight for my village, no matter how damaged and near-gone it is. That is my duty as the Hokage of Konohagakure." She gave me a look. "As a kunoichi of Konoha, I expect the same of you, Sakura. You haven't failed me yet, but I highly suggest that you not start now."

It was moments like these that reminded me why it was that I honestly admired this woman standing before me. Why I had appeared in her office and practically begged on my hands and knees for her to teach me after Sasuke had left. Why it was that I looked up to her as both my mentor and friend. Her chakra and soul...they burned so brightly. So boldly. How she demanded respect, but not in a dictorial fashion. She commanded people's attention with just her presence, but not because they were scared of retribution should they disrespect her. People wanted to hear what it was that she had to say. Wanted to know what she was doing and why she was doing it. All because they knew that it was for the good of the village and the people within it. She was truely an amazing person.

I nodded sharply, choppy side bangs swinging into my face with the movement. I didn't bother messing with them. They would fall back into place. "I won't fail you, Lady Tsunade."

Red lips pulled up at the corners, a hint of a smile appearing on her face. "I'm proud of you, Sakura. I hope you know that."

I momentarily forgot about the fact that we were in the middle of a war, that two of Konoha's strongest kunoichi had let their guards down and were easy targets to any of the Zetsu clones that could be prowling around. I imagined like this was just another one of those days in Tsunade's office, with Tsunade herself sitting at her desk and grumbling about the paperwork and Shizune smiling sheepishly beside her while her eyes shone happily. I would stand on Tsunade's other side, occasionally helping her with her work and encouraging her obscene consumption of the Sake that she so loved as Shizune glared daggers at the Sake bottle in her mentor's hand.

It was just another one of those days that would be sorely missed...

"It's all his fault."

"Thank you, Shishou," I said, bowing my head. A swish of fabric was heard and I looked up as she walked away, back straight and footsteps confident. She was the eptitome of what a Hokage should look like while walking. Proud, dignified, and honorable.

"Go find the brat." I didn't have to ask who it was that she was calling a brat. There was only one person that she had bestowed that nickname on and that person was the number one knucklehead in Konoha. "Help him with the Uchiha. Madara is mine."

"Yes, Shishou."

Her next sentence had me pausing in my steps and my blood running cold again. Though this time, it wasn't the still pouring rain that was making my blood cold. "Sakura, consider this a final mission request from your Hokage."

I was left baffled. Final mission request? What did she mean? Was she doubting my skills as a kuniochi even after she had just proclaimed how proud she was of the progress I had made over the past six years? Did she believe me incompetent in handling Sasuke because of my past with him? I admit that I was incredibly lovestruck and blind at that age, but it wouldn't hinder me now. It couldn't. Not after what was happening and how much of the village was truely lost. I would be failing my promise to her as her student and my pride as a kunoichi.

She apparently realized how her words must have sounded to me as she immediately began to clarify. "My battle with Madara will only have one victor. And we both know who that victor will be in the end."

While Tsunade was indeed vain about her abilities as a kunoichi and medic, she knew her limits. She wasn't immortal and she wasn't invincible. She was still human. And she was as drained as I was, seeing as how she had practically handed out her chakra like it was candy as she was trying to save the citizens and shinobi that had been dying earlier in the battle. Therein lay the problem. Her humanity.

Edo Tensei Madara was not human. He wasn't even alive, even if he was walking and moving and spitting fire from his mouth like it was water. He was a walking corpse. An immortal and invincible walking corpse. He couldn't die by normal means, like a poisoned senbon to the heart or disfiguration. He would only regenerate because his soul was drawn back to this world into a malleable body and he absolutely refused to move on until the bane of his existence was snuffed out by his hand. He could only be sealed away.

"He has to die."

And Tsunade only had just enough chakra in her to perform her most powerful sealing jutsu. But in the process...her chakra would be depleted all the way to nonexistent levels. And no chakra resulted in...

"I intend to bring that bastard down with me, Sakura. I will not go down without a fight. And I will make damn sure that that bastard is following after me before I even think of leaving this world."

I firmly assured myself that my eyes were not stinging because of tears. They were not going to fall because I knew that this would be the last time I would ever see my mentor ever again. Dust. Yes. It was all just dust in my eyes. Or smoke. It was just the fire's smoke that now clouded the air that was only now getting in my face.

Damn dust. Damn smoke.

"I will not rest until I see him dead."

"I...I understand, Shishou," I said reluctantly, blinking away the annoying tears that filled my eyes as my mentor walked away with a proud gait. She never looked back. Her Will of Fire had been passed onto me. She regretted nothing. Not anymore. She was burden-free at last.

I clenched my jaw, my teeth grinding together painfully as a sharp swell of anger clouded my normally rational mind. This war shouldn't of happened. None of this should've happened. All these people should not have to die because of a shinobi's careless mistake. It wasn't fair. It wasn't justified. It was just...so wrong in every way.

You're being childish, my mind snidely whispered.

I was being childish. Unfairingly childish for someone my age. It was unbecoming. The lowest of the low. I would've been looked down upon by everyone if they heard what I was thinking. A shinobi shouldn't portray their emotions so easily in the midst of battle. It would be the death of them. No ifs, ands, or buts. It was a simple fact. A very true fact, but simple nonetheless.

However...I couldn't help it.

It was an excuse. An excuse for me to drop the tough-girl-kunoichi persona that I always kept up and let out the screaming girl inside that was hissing up a storm at the unfairity of it all. Every shinobi had their low points. Mine just so happened to be more frequent. More common. More of a timed habit now than it was back then.

Another explosion rocked the earth and a flash of white and black had me seeing red as my eyes narrowed onto my supposed target. How conveniant. He came to me, which meant I wouldn't have to waste precious chakra just trying to locate the revenge-obsessed bastard. It certainly saved me the effort. I didn't think I would be able to stop myself from holding back entirely if I had gone out to search for him. Didn't mean that I wouldn't severely destroy him now, however. He just wouldn't die as quickly. He'd give me a challenge, and I in turn would give him a challenge he would take seriously. It was completely fair.

"His body will lay before my feet, just barely recognizable to the trained eye, his ever-so-precious Doujutsu being his downfall as he expended too much chakra trying to keep up with the escalation of our battle. And I...I shall relish in his defeat and scream to the sky before I collapse and follow after my mentor."

Blue eyes and blond hair and a bright smile filled my head unwillingly. Naruto will never forgive you, Inner Sakura said, an absence of her sarcasm being dully noted by my still slow-reacting brain.

Naruto...will just have to get over it and forgive me in the deaths to come, I whispered back mentally as I pulled out a kunai from the pouch strapped to my thigh.

Nearby, the biggest explosion I had ever felt in my entire life rocked the entire village, battle cries just barely reaching my ears and explosive amounts of chakra being released and wasted buzzed against my skin as it saturated the air. My skin crawled at the sensation, my entire body twitching from both the cold and the chakra reactions that were taking place.

It was now or never. And I chose now. I gritted my teeth and tensed my legs, releasing the suppressive chakra that I had held in for so long and almost sighing in relief as the heavy feeling that I always felt whenever I hid my chakra disappeared, making my body feel so much more lighter. The heavy intent that was my chakra bore down on my target, whom instantly felt the power that was my own, turned sharply towards me, red eyes spinning in annoyance as I launched myself at him, a raging shout escaping my lips as I lunged for him.

Kunai clashed with katana and two very different eyes met two very different goals for the first time in six years.

"Uchiha Sasuke...it's about time that you met your Fate with the devil himself. All that has happened up until this point...is entirely your fault."

Let the battle...begin.

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I'm so much more pleased with this beginning than my other one. It makes me happy just looking at it. My friend is also pleased with this new beginning. He congratulates me. It's a nice feeling.

Thank you for reading!

-KalafinaJ