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ActionsEntire Work ← Previous Chapter Next Chapter → Chapter Index Comments Share DownloadWork HeaderRating:ExplicitArchive Warning:UnderageCategories:F/FF/MOtherFandom:NarutoRelationship:Haruno Sakura/Yamanaka InoCharacters:Uzumaki NarutoUchiha SasukeYamanaka InoHaruno SakuraHatake KakashiNara ShikamaruAkimichi ChoujiAburame ShinoHaruno KizashiHaruno MebukiHyuuga HinataInuzuka KibaYuuhi KurenaiSarutobi AsumaMaito Gai | Might GuyAdditional Tags:Oral SexVaginal SexUseless LesbiansLesbiansBest FriendsBestest Friendsthe best of friends reallyGals being palsNihilismNihilism Can Be CoolBasically marriedFingeringSuperpowered Perversion PotentialSelf InsertSakura deserves betterThey all deserve betterAged-Up Character(s)Lesbian SexLanguage:EnglishCollections:Favourite SI and Reincarnated OC Fics, SakurAlpha's Fic Rec of Pure how did you create this you amazing bean, Stalker's Amongst Stalker's, A collection to keep my faves I'm following, Ashes' Library, THE 🎵 UBIQ 🦋 ☠ THE 🎭 UNIQUE 🌹, SelfinsertFF, Top Shelf Fic, on temporal travel and transmigration, my heart is hereStats:Published:2021-03-04Updated:2024-03-19Words:107,289Chapters:29/?Comments:494Kudos:2,697Bookmarks:826Hits:106,231Bench Warmer (A Naruto SI)BlackmarchChapter 16Chapter Text

"SAKURA!"

Kakashi didn't curse. He didn't tense or flinch at the sheer grief he heard in Naruto's voice, his wrist twisting to widen the wound he'd just put into yet another water clone's kidney.

He resigned himself to yet another name on the memorial stone. Yet another promising ninja dead because of him. Him, and his overconfidence, his belief that he could handle anything that came their way.

That his backup would appear if he just held out long enough.

A swipe behind him tore out the throat of another clone, a thrown kunai between his feet and into the water planting itself between a false Zabuza's eyes; there'd been enough of them killed so far, Kakashi wouldn't have been surprised to hear Zabuza was looking down the barrel of chakra exhaustion himself.

It had been enough to keep Kakashi occupied, even if each separate clone could have been taken down by a moderately talented genin. And that wasn't cheap. Or something that any ninja of their level would have done without very good reason.

Kakashi supposed he knew what that reason was now. Relieving the pressure on his partner in an attempt to get help dealing with Kakashi.

…Even if he didn't need it. Which he didn't. Kakashi didn't want to admit that, he would never admit it at any point of his life to anyone, but Zabuza hadn't needed it.

Kakashi wasn't what he'd used to be. He'd been burning chakra like mad just to keep Obito's eye going…and just to keep up, years of slacking on his training having caught up to him; his injured arm would have been less of a problem if it had been missing. Sparks of pain running up it and into his neck, spasms, issues with doing jutsu.

His team's situation couldn't have been much worse.

If not for Sakura's unexpected gambit having pulled Zabuza's accomplice into the open, causing Zabuza to lose his sword, this would have been over already.

Like it was over for one of them already.

He'd known he wasn't cut out for this. He'd been saying it for years. And he'd been proven right in the worst way-

HATE.

Kakashi viciously gutted the last of Zabuza's clones as his heart tried to beat its way out of his chest; if it didn't move, if it didn't fight, it would stop. Or so it felt. Killing intent, inhumanly pure.

It reminded him of one of the three worst days in his life.

"The seal," Kakashi breathed as the mist lit up with a hellish orange glow. "Did it break?" He kicked out at the last clone, the tip of his foot catching its chin; it was looking at its own back when Kakashi ran towards that glow, any sense of self-preservation nonexistent. "Damn it!"

After everything that had happened today, that would be just the thing to make him fall on his father's sword.

Kakashi cut through the mist, leaping from the lake to the land in a single bound…

To catch Naruto leaping at a very alarmed Zabuza, his claws shearing a chunk of metal from the Kubikiribōchō as if it had been made of paper; trailing chakra so toxic that it killed the grass around it in his passing as he roared, the echo beneath and the way the air shook making Kakashi break out into a cold sweat.

Sixteen years wasn't nearly long enough.

"BASTARD! FUCKER!" Naruto wailed, slit eyes bloodshot all the way through as he spun and twisted through Zabuza's panicked attempts to cut him down while the blond's sheer proximity ate at flesh and clothing; there was a bleeding strip missing already, a line of chakra lashing at his shoulder all that was needed. "I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!"

Sakura's body, her top half laying facedown in a puddle of reddening water while her lower half knelt on its knees nearby, explained everything that had led to this moment to Kakashi at a glance.

As did it explain the missing client, now the farthest thing from his consideration.

Worse than he'd hoped for, better than he'd feared; Sasuke, still alive and well with the telltale glare of the sharingan in his eyes, brutally kicked Zabuza's accomplice away before he could intervene in the fight, a snarl on his lips; the torn clothes, the broken nose, the multiple cuts, and the absolute ruin of a hand of Sasuke's opponent told a story of someone that was barely holding on. Or together.

Sasuke could handle it.

And he had a jonin to kill.

The cold analysis of a battle in progress ended as he entered the fray himself, a blood-spattered Kiri mask shattering underfoot. A tide of pink hair carefully, respectfully avoided as best as he was able while Zabuza repeatedly attempted to disengage from an enraged Naruto, the Kubikiribōchō beginning to show cracks and divots at near misses and wild swings from air pressure.

One of those swings transitioned into Naruto crossing his fingers without a beat missed, and Kakashi found himself aborting his charge and backing away as fast as he possibly could.

Just in time as where he'd been, and everywhere else in that space, turned orange. Orange jumpsuits. Orange chakra filling the air like a miasma, pushing and melting away the mist until there was none left.

Then it was just Zabuza.

And a hundred clones.

A hardened killer of hundreds, a peer of Kakashi's in terms of skill, inhaled. "SHI-"

And that was when the clones began to swarm.

And that was when Kakashi took that moment to catch his breath, fingers flexing and right wrist cracking as he forced it to loosen, eyes turning towards Sasuke's fight once more; puffs of beast-laced chakra began to fly near immediately, making an already hazardous fight more so. That the clones got in each other's way more than they did Zabuza's did little to make it less so.

And Kakashi knew when he wasn't needed.

They just needed to hold out a little longer if they didn't win outright. Minutes at the longest. Not even that if the Fox's chakra and killing intent had been as far-reaching as Kakashi thought it might have been.

He entered a new fray.

The false hunter-nin made space with shocking quickness as Kakashi's hand, crackling with electricity, put his hair on end; a grimace on a haggard, beautiful face was his response. A needle of ice catching the folds of his pants, through the bandages at his left thigh in an off the cuff maneuver meant to cripple him that failed.

An act of desperation as Sasuke kicked the man's legs out from under him with a sweep, sending him rolling through the mud... There was a snap. An extra smear of red on the ground as he forced himself back up without regard to his injuries, just in time to avoid Sasuke attempting to stave his head in with an axe kick; a crooked finger, more exposed bone than flesh was what came of it.

…He had to say, that was pretty gruesome. Even for him.

"You're a tough one, aren't you?" Kakashi flexed his hand meaningfully as Sasuke went to flank, tomoe in his eyes spinning in a blur. The fake hunter's face twisted, his stance that of a trapped animal. "That must be excruciating."

"...It must be," he agreed calmly.

Too calmly for someone in his situation.

His working hand flicking through several hand signs wasn't what Kakashi had expected, if only due to how implausible it was. That and it actually working instead of sputtering out, Obito's eye catching a bloodline jutsu at work just before every puddle in twenty feet flew into the air, becoming shards of ice.

The fragmentation, turning them into shrapnel as they explosively fell apart, could have been seen from a mile away.

Kakashi was exhausted. One of his arms didn't work like it should. He was low on chakra and running lower and one of his students was dead, now lying facedown on dry earth instead of in a puddle as a small mercy.

But he was still one of the best goddamn ninja in the world and there was no way that would work.

Splinters were dodged. Smaller pieces were smacked away with all the care that Zabuza had given his students, his fist crashing into the once pretty cheek of Zabuza's own. The man spun under the blow with a gasp, the harsh nudge of a foot at the back of his leg forcing him to kneel as Sasuke, bloodied and furious, came forward with a kunai aimed at an open chest.

DEATH.

The End.

It was Kakashi's turn to gasp, the light sweat he'd worked up under the foul chakra filling the field drenching his clothing between breaths.

His heart struggled to keep moving under something that wasn't even directed at him, him being caught on the edges of something wrong.

Sasuke, eyes more whites than the red of the sharingan, stumbled and gagged as he slid to a rough stop, hands resting on his knees as foam slipped from his mouth in a stream. That he didn't end up stabbing himself by accident or, in the worst case, on purpose was only because he had dropped his kunai.

And the false hunter forced himself up onto his feet once more, air whistling from between his lips in a choked scream that didn't stop as he looked at something that wasn't there. Something that drained the blood from his face, giving him the look of a corpse before he moved.

Fled.

That hadn't been the look of someone that still wanted to fight.

And that hadn't been the look of someone that Kakashi was going to spare, his body turning to follow and his good hand lighting up with a fully charged Chidori that would see this man dead before he could take another step.

And then he forgot what he was going to do. Obito's eye went wide and unblinking as a change in battlefield conditions instantly became apparent to him.

Sakura had shifted. Or, not shifted.

She'd been pulled along and out of place, the trailing hair saying as much.

Kakashi continued to turn and he was able to see, just in time for it to happen, a very much alive and very much unhappy Sakura with her fingers buried up to the knuckle inside of a reeling, burned, and already heavily bleeding Zabuza's calf.

And Zabuza ground to a stop, surprise and shock evident before it was replaced with nothing.

Less than nothing.

Kakashi then got to see in real-time as every muscle in that man's body locked up in paralysis. As every tendon and vein stood out on his skin, turning a furious shade of scarlet; the blood vessels in his eyes began to pop, filling them with blood as cracking sounds started up behind his mask.

And chakra, chakra that wasn't Zabuza's own invading his body like a virus. Eating away at it. Attacking and burning whatever it could reach, doing things that Kakashi had no words for but leaving a clear trail of devastation behind to Obito's eye.

The man was dying, was Kakashi's almost hysterical observation. Dying, and surrounded by less than a dozen Naruto's, all of them nearly as still as he was as they processed what they were seeing without Kakashi's advantages.

And then his compatriot was there to tear him away, taking advantage of Kakashi's sheer shock and disbelief (and some measure of irrational relief) to do so.

...And Kakashi found it hard to care if he was honest, even as their chakra signatures left his short-range senses with a sort of speed he'd have a hard time mustering at his current best.

They wouldn't be back today. They wouldn't be back in a week if they wanted to be a convincing threat.

And he just wanted to sleep.

… What was left of his team was safe.

And that was going to have to be good enough.

The ground coming up at him was the fastest thing he'd seen that day.

==========

Pain.

Pain was what I woke up to.

Pain was what I gave.

Pain was what I was as I forced myself to lay still. To gather myself and take stock of my resources.

My head didn't clear as I'd hoped it would. Not quickly enough. Not at all even as it ran me through a checklist: shock. That explained it. That and the lack of movement below my waist.

I chuckled, adding delirium to the list.

What 'below the waist'?

That was gone.

All gone. Or, just not here.

That difference didn't do much to assuage my entirely reasonable concerns and worries, if anything, but it was a difference. I had to move immediately to remedy my situation; I should have been dead. But, somehow, I wasn't.

I wasn't complaining. I had a chance now. Seeing my parents and Ino again wasn't just another pipe dream, like peace and a good cake… That chuckle had been deserved, considering. But I was baffled. And not just because of the lack of blood.

Maybe my experiments and forays into biological mastery, the advancement of the Ningen form, had been a greater success than I'd have ever imagined?

The Akimichi were clearly onto something bigger than even they knew. When I got back, I was going to… That wasn't important. Taking stock. One. Two. Three. Four.

All alive. The one that had just hit the ground, Kakashi-sensei, only barely. But alive.

Wonderful.

I slowly turned my head towards the person who was closest to me, that being Naruto.

Naruto. Who was staring at me. Gawping, really. And who looked like he'd gone through a wood chipper several times, his hair covered in wood chips (see?) and with a vicious gash in his chest that was visibly closing.

Again though, not important.

"Get my legs," I said tersely, sharp and straight to the point as I dropped a handful of meat and cow print leggings.

Zabuza would be missing that, I was sure.

The better part of his soleus. Not the… The leggings weren't that great.

Yes.

Naruto continued to gawp.

"My legs?" I repeated myself, pointing at said legs several yards out of my reach.

Had I imagined that I'd said something? I couldn't say that wasn't possible at the moment. And repetition in a situation like this wasn't-

Naruto started to cry…and the corners of my lips twitched upwards against my will as the last of his chakra cloak evaporated into the air.

While awkward, somehow, that made me feel better.

"YOU'RE ALIVE!"

I blinked…and didn't like how hard it was to open them again. "My legs?"

"What the hell is wrong with you, you moron!?" Sasuke, my unexpected savior, started dragging my other half closer... Literally. While Naruto started to sob like a baby. "Help me! This is heavy, damn it!"

…Rude.

"S-shut up!" Naruto ran over to grab my other leg. "Read the fucking mood, asshole!"

Sasuke sucked in a breath. Rapidly blinked and...he had something in his eyes surely? Besides tomoe, I mean. "How do you want them, Sakura?"

Naruto looked at him askance, sniffling, then back at me.

"Like if I still had them attached, please." I pointed for emphasis as my hair began to draw back in; Naruto, for some reason, began crying harder. "It would make it easier for me. Also, before I forget…" I pointed at the largest rock I could see, just at the edge of the clearing. "Tazuna is under there."

"...Thanks, Sakura." Sasuke nodded, his eyes closed as he shuffled the rest of me closer, my hips finally meeting my waist. "We'll get him out. Don't worry about it."

Was that even a question?

"I wasn't. I knew you guys had it handled." I sighed as my strings began to form, glowing a fluorescent blue… This wasn't going to be fun. "You should probably look away."

"...Why?" Naruto asked while Sasuke followed my strings with his new eyes, fascinated.

All twenty strings went to their places. "Surgery."

"Surger-"

I'd told them to look away.

"DYNAMIC ENTRY!" An aggressively green man with an even more aggressive bowl cut…just barely avoided taking Naruto's head off with a flying kick.

…This was awkward. I hadn't wanted an audience for this.

All twenty strings plunged down.

Ah well. Needs must.

"DEAR GODS!"

"Sakura, what the FUCK!?"

"Hi, Tenten."