Chapter 142 - Arc 10 - The Game: Waking up To The Sun's Warm Grace

This is a little later than I wanted but it was for good reason. I used some of the free time gained by not doing two chapters to give this an extra long look over. Except while I was doing that suddenly everyone in my life needed my attention all at once. It's good to be loved, I guess...

I'll admit I was worried the quality difference wouldn't make up for the loss in content even with the extra words, but I can say with certainty that it's a huge difference. The biggest thing more time to go over everything did was actually let me go "no, I don't like that" and cut stuff that would normally have made it in. I have the ability to choose content now instead of being forced to just publish what I write. This means Patreon is going to just get a higher quality.

Add that into that this is the first chapter that reintroduces a lot of our cast, and I'm very happy with this. Please enjoy!

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Ultimately, she agreed to sign several agreements. The agreements themselves didn’t really matter, Sakura needed to secure favor with the woman holding Naruto’s soul so there wasn’t much she wouldn’t agree to. Saruka assured her that her brother would be cared for either way and she wouldn’t be spiteful, but coming from a ninja village where even the Hokage’s reaction to learning about her ability was to start thinking of her use politically… Sakura just can’t believe it. The cost for her good nature being a lie is too high to even begin to consider not appeasing her.

If Orochimaru had wanted something from her instead of just being a crazy madman she would have likely gladly given it and it’s the same here. When it comes down to her priorities, they’re to her family, then her to her team, then to her village, and only then to herself. Pride, numbers, skills, smiles? They’re all to be thrown away if it means her family, team, or village gets to be happy. That’s how she was taught, and it’s how a book she was given at a young age explained the world. Okay, it specified village, then team, then family, but reversing it is her own choice and she’s willing to make it. Kakashi seemed to think that was a good call as well, so her priorities lie where they lie and that’s that.

Those priorities are why she made that choice to blow everything up. Her village would be safe, her family would be safer, and all it would cost is her and maybe Sasuke. Naruto activating the explosive tags wasn’t planned, but, maybe it’s for the best since she can still save everyone that matters anyway and Orochimaru is likely very dead.

All that to say that when Saruka set a bunch of agreements in front of her, she read them twice to make sure they didn’t say something really weird like ‘I will hand over villagers as human sacrifices’, and signed on the dotted line without much care for what she was actually agreeing to.

They were simple enough as far as she can tell. In return for allowing Saruka to set up a portal next to Sakura Country she’d be allowed to travel freely. This would mean that during the three months working with Samael she’ll at least be able to head back for short periods to manage her country, check on things, and after all is said and done she can use the portals to get to her country and back to Konoha very quickly since apparently this world is smaller so distance traveled here is further. She’s not sure how that works, but it reminds her of Minecraft so she chose to play that in her head instead of trying to figure out cross dimensional physics. Mission travel might be faster if she can set up a network here, which would be awesome.

In return for allowing Saruka to set up a village of monsters near Sakura Country, she’ll be made into a landed noble here and given control of some small village here and the one constructed next to Sakura country. The village here will be directly through the portal placed there, so the villages can largely be considered the same place but with a big gate in the middle. Sakura wasn’t really sure what Saruka actually gains from the deal since it didn’t specify anything in particular. As far as she could tell, it just gave her land for no reason. She’s sure there’s some trick, probably responsibilities or some other nonsense she’s not ready for, what’s new?

Lastly, she signed an agreement to set reasonable trades and allow villagers to move between areas easily. She believes her studies on city building called this a migration treaty? Sakura has no intentions of restricting anyone’s right to travel and the reality is that Saruka could probably just take what she wants for free so it really only aids her if there’s an agreement.

There was talk of more later, but in return for signing all three right now Saruka agreed to make sure Samael didn’t ask anything too great of them once they were contracted to her and that seemed like a fair trade given all their souls have been sold to the crazy dragon slayer with the flaming sword for three entire months.

So with her head spinning she stands in a room side by side with Samael and Rosalia. It’s time to duel-wait, no, wrong game. It’s time to play a random MOBA by the looks of it. “What happens if I get paired against one of you?” Rosalia asks, “it’s random, isn’t it?”

“I let you win,” Sakura answers quickly and tonelessly, looking at her roster, “or you let Samael win.” Six of her members are the remaining and not dealt with KSH members from her quest - she’s unsure if that was rigged somehow or just happened, she didn’t tell anyone about the quest - and the remaining four are from Sound. What this means is that she doesn’t care about them, at all. This is about Samael and Rosalia through and through. In front of them are tables with electronic displays which show the main areas their groups should be interacting with for now. There’s a mountain all the way on the end of the display, which Sakura’s certain is supposed to be crossed at some point. The display will probably change once they’ve crossed it, and she imagines that’s enemy territory.

The objective is to kill the enemy team, it’s that simple, which is good because unless she faces the King she’ll be actively ignoring her team in favor of supporting Samael and Rosalia with all of her brain power. With her priorities set, she does have her nose in the instructional book they were given while she contemplates advanced strategy for them.

She excels in exactly one area, everything else is simply luck or enough effort it looks natural.
She has always been able to apply her brain to any situation, and she’ll be doing that here. She imagines she’ll be spending most of this game’s decision making phases while in meditation to slow the world down.

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Darkness surrounds her like a tight veil, a cold grip holds her heart and the silence is worse than even the strange place she has to walk through after performing the mind transfer jutsu. Ino, like many, did always wonder what would happen when she died. The Shinigami is a real being, it devours souls or helps them pass over or, well the specifics are a little off for her. Knowing weird stuff like that is more Sakura’s thing, but she’s always known that there is something after death, even if that something is immediate reincarnation or eternity inside the belly of a giant space monster.

It’s obvious what happened, whatever Sakura was doing caused an explosion. If she’d followed the system’s advice and stayed as far away as possible maybe she could have outran it, but she ignored it and just like everyone else she was engulfed in the biggest booming inferno the world has ever seen. Her black surroundings go on forever, taunting her with an endless abyss that she can’t help but feel is wrong. Did Sakura collect her soul somehow? Is this what it’s like inside one of her gemstones?

Those poor goblins… The system won’t respond to her, not that she figured it would. She just hopes whatever’s holding up this whole dying process finishes soon and that this isn’t in fact her eternity.

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The light that suddenly hits her eyes burns, but Ino holds her gaze to it regardless. It’s a good pain because previously she didn’t even have pain, and she would have traded everything just to see the sun one more time. “You’re gonna hurt your eyes.” She feels her head forcefully turned away from the beaming light above by soft hands, and despite the voice being so very different she finds herself looking at the spitting image of Sakura. Shiny red eyes, red hair so bright it looks dyed, a similar facial structure-

It doesn’t matter, she knows it’s not her because this is the afterlife and Sakura wouldn’t just die like that. She blinks, and feels a hidden tension deep inside disappear when she sees glasses. A skintight black jumpsuit covers this look-alike’s body, and a look down reveals it’s the same for her. “Where are we?” She finds her voice comes out perfectly fine despite how raspy she expects it to be. Her body is in exactly the state it was before death, even if her outfit is different. It’s a shame, she liked that outfit and by the look on Sakura’s face when she saw it, so did she.

“How should I know? I just woke up a minute ago.” The girl in front of her points around, showing Ino a lot of other people in a similar situation sprawled out in the sand. They’re all very familiar.

“The rookie nine and you,” Ino rubs her eyes, “well, no, Sakura’s not here, nor is Naruto. In their place is that clingy guy’s family.”

“See? You know more than I do.” The redhead says, plopping down next to her and displacing a puff of sand with her tush.

“Yeah…” Ino can’t help but rationalize. She’s not as smart as Sakura, but she doesn’t have to be, one thing is obvious. “This is Sakura’s doing, for sure.”

“Sakura? I read that name in a note a little before uh, infinite blackness?” The red eyed girl connects a mental dot with a bit of a smile to her tone. “Not sure whether to hug her or punch her for what she did to me.”

“That feeling is very common, you get used to it.” Ino finds herself giggling, then giggling more at the sound of her own giggles. She’s alive again, how often does that happen? Before too long she finds the world erupts in an entirely new way, this time from the sky. The sound makes her look around for another explosion coming to take them all away, but all she sees is a giant box floating high above them. “Oh wow…”

The noise seems to rouse everyone, but she doesn’t care about that. The words above are important if she’s ever getting back home.

[Hello dead people! Welcome to Hero Clash. Twenty people have been chosen to receive a Hero Fragment, and have been placed on two different teams. Each member is responsible for their own power, so level up and support your team!

Every fragment that falls will empower the others, so try not to get backstabbed!

You’ll have one week to level up, get equipment, empower your team and take down the enemy, it’s that simple.]

“Ah.” Is all Ino says to herself.

“You’re more knowledgeable about this kind of thing.” It’s Shikamaru’s voice that causes her to look over and see Chouji looking mighty hungry while patting his gut. Looking a little up from Chouji shows her the spiky ponytail of her childhood friend and teammate and his scowling face looking down at her from where he stands right beside her. They look good in black, the jumpsuits really work for them. For her, not so much, she just knows her hair is clashing and it’s awkward. “Care for a monologue?”

“No can do, I never watched when Sakura played player versus player stuff, she got angry and it wasn’t fun,” Ino admits with an apologetic grimace, “but it says to level up and get equipment, so I bet I can help with that. I always liked when she played casual RPGs.”

“That’s good, I never had time to play games. I’m already confused,” The redhead still seated within breathing distance of her says, “I’m Karin, I’ll be in your care.”

“Ino, this is Shikamaru, and the big boned boy is Chouji.” Ino neatly evades an issue by having tact, Sakura should learn it, “you said Sakura did something to you?”

“She held me prisoner with a horde of undead monsters to protect me from normal monsters.” Karin explains, reaching up to adjust her glasses while looking into the distance, there is a brightly lit up mountain with a snowy top. “She never thought to tell me that was what was going on so I only found out they weren’t going to eat me at any moment from a note like an hour before everything went black.”

“Ah… Yeah, punch her then hug her.” Ino advises, “she had to have a reason for doing that though, she doesn’t normally care about random people. Do you have anything defining about you besides the eyes and cute face?” Ino smiles in satisfaction at the way the Karin’s cheeks glow up at that, it’s nice.

That’s one bonus of Sakura being more wibbly wobbly than a time machine, she can still flirt without it feeling weird. She’d rather just have a girlfriend though. “I’m part of a long lost clan? If she’d care about that.”

“She would if that clan goes by the name Uzumaki.” Shikamaru manages a slightly leading tone, looking her over with knowledge Ino’s clearly missing. The sheepish tilt downwards of the redhead’s whole face says a lot.

“Karin Uzumaki… It’s a shame Naruto’s not here.” Ino looks around again, just to be sure. The system said teams of ten so she really hopes Naruto’s not on the other team. Even ignoring the fact that he’s her friend, that guy can regenerate. “He’s an Uzumaki too, and Sakura’s adopted brother.”

“He’s what-” Karin’s head shoots right up before a horn sounds and everyone’s attention is brought back to the sky. The box has turned into a screen, one that shows some very scantily clad lady in leather standing right beside the love of Ino’s life, dressed in a cloak like some kind of edgy game protagonist. It fits her, though she’s not sure how comfortable she is with some shameless hussy standing that close to Sakura. Then again, she had to ignore Anko getting close to her so she can ignore this pretty easily.

“Hello!” The sky shouts in Sakura’s voice, “sorry I killed you all! Er, wait, can we start over or-”

“It’s live.” She hears the other woman say.

“Oh! Um, disregard that, totally didn’t, errr-”

Sakura is pushed out of frame, while the woman coughs into her fist and overlooks them with bright animalistic eyes. As her fist is removed from in front of her Ino can make out fangs, and the woman’s expression changes from playful to one of noble elegance. “You are all here because you’re important to Sakura in some way, she has asked that I take over your team because I am the most likely player capable of getting you through this alive. I’ll keep this simple because we don’t have much time to talk. In one hour you will be allowed out of this area, you should immediately disregard gaining experience and find shelter. There are dozens of cabins, find a few. You’ll split up into two groups of three and one of four and stick with that group permanently. You will ignore the system mockingly hinting that you should kill each-other, killing anyone that isn’t on the enemy team will result in my immediately abandoning you to die.”

“Hey!” Sakura scolds from beside the screen, “stick to what I wrote!”

“Right, sorry.” The woman clears her throat again, before continuing what is evidently Sakura’s script, “after finding shelter you are to eliminate as many small creatures as you can. It would be best if everyone is level two by tomorrow, at least one person on each team should be level three. You are to figure out who that should be yourself and make sure they get the extra experience for finishing enemies. Tomorrow, the system allowing us to interact with you will unlock, for now all I can say is that you need to collect every coin, drink plenty of water, get shelter, and level up. Got it?”

It takes her a moment to settle with what she said, before she grabs and puts Sakura back on screen and timidly steps out of frame. Whether the woman can hear Kiba shouting ‘got it’ into the sky isn’t answered.

“Everyone who is still alive at the end of this will be immediately resurrected.” Sakura says, unable to fully look at the camera but standing with her hands held together behind her back. Her expression is twisted nervously, her lips a little wobbly. She manages to look even more timid than that woman, but evidently she’s supposed to say this part and is hating every moment of it. “After we save you all, you’ll be working with me to pay off a sort of debt accrued for this revival, but don’t worry it’s only for a few months… Um, afterwards we can all return home and probably get interrogated until our ears bleed. Oh, except for Karin, you’re not going home, you're going to come live in my house. Believe it! I’m saying that for Naruto. He hasn’t really said that in a long time but I think he’d want to say that here-” The screen goes black out of nowhere, evidently their time is up. It’s too bad, Ino was enjoying watching Sakura squirm like that.

Sometimes her crush on the pinkette can be a little sadistic, at least when it’s adorable. She wishes her hair was back to pink for this, it looks so nice on a screen.

“Wow.” Karin stares at the sky even with the black screen, speechlessly holding her mouth half open.

“Pretty cute, right?” Ino nudges her, “that’s my girlfriend. Kind of. It’s complicated.”

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Setting up the curtains on the cabin they commandeered, Kankuro can’t help but ask the question that’s been on his mind ever since this morning. “Do you think the plan’s still on?”

“The plan’s been off since Gaara started obsessing over that crazy treehugger,” Temari growls under her breath, “he was never going to go through with it, not with her there.”

“The Invasion?” The voice behind them causes Temari to jump in place, but she’s getting used to it, “what? It was obvious. Should I still be pretending I don’t know?” Sasuke’s teammates are not here and they’ve worked together before so who Sasuke would go with was obvious. That doesn’t stop the fact that he is entirely silent one hundred percent of the time and it’s extremely disconcerting for her. She’s used to sound, sand makes a lot of it when people walk around. He’s used to an environment where stealthy movements are actually plausible, so here he is, styling on them constantly with training he actually got. The only silent person they know is Gaara and no one fails to notice Gaara, the scent of blood is intense..

“How was it obvious?” She can’t help but ask the raven haired boy, there’s no point in denying it if he’s going to be that forward.

“Sakura was warned twice to not piss your brother off.” Sasuke explains, just out of sight, no doubt leaning on a couch like the suavest guy around. She has to admit it’s attractive, if he was just a few years older… no point in thinking like that though, they’re dead. His teammate admitted to killing them but it was kind of clear what actually happened. They got a message saying to go save her and suddenly that direction exploded with enough force her skin ripped off before she got sent flying, “that meant they expected her system to act up around him. After that, figuring out he was a Jinchuriki made it obvious something was up, then you tried to assassinate Sakura to stop him from being swayed by her…”

“I was hit by a Genjutsu.” Temari bristles, and she can hear the boys shrug. He doesn’t believe her at all.

Okay, so he figured out there was probably something going on from wrong data that happened to connect to the right area, great. “Did you inform the Hokage of this?”

“Yes.” So even if Gaara had gone through with it they’d have probably been immediately executed by some double layered plan. Well, she can be happy that’s not happening then. “But Kakashi already reported it so they told me to act normal.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s relevant.” Temari finishes up with the curtain and slides around Sasuke to head into the kitchen and start dinner. Sakura and that woman said ‘cabins’ but it’s more like a small home. The curtains are necessary because there’s shadow creatures out there that react to light and uh, they’re keeping the lights on because there are shadow creatures. “We died, you died, everyone died but the person who killed us.”

“No, she died,” Sasuke says with a shrug, “I was there, we were blown to shreds. The only difference is her traits made her strong enough to stand in front of us a second longer. I bet she felt every fractional second… I need to set her up with my guy.”

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“Go Chouji, go!” Jumping up and down and throwing a hand in the air as she cheers, Ino’s happy to watch the rolling form of her teammate crush and splatter kobolds of all things. These ones have a lot of feathers and have sharp teeth and none of that matters when it’s going all over the place. Choosing Chouji to be their level three was a no brainer, but it’s going way too well. In fact-

“Oh, I leveled up again from proximity.” That’s Karin, remarking on her third level.
They skipped finding shelter right away despite the advice from the sky because Ino’s completely sure that the moment they have shelter Shikamaru’s not leaving it even though his life depends on it. They’re all level three, except Chouji who’s going to hit four any second now.

“Shadow creatures, Shika~!” Ino calls out with a chiming sing-song as fizzling beings begin to crawl out of the sand. Their texture is constantly shifting between the white and black static of an old TV screen left on. Their skin is constantly shifting and moving in wrong gangly ways that Ino doesn’t want to think about. She doesn’t want to think about the way their bodies crack and snap with every movement either. They twitch this way and that, and that alone proves to her that this might be a game of sorts. The sky helped, these things somewhat confirm it.

They’re not people, they’re not monsters, they’re simulated pieces of existence refusing to properly retain reality’s focus long enough to allow her brain to take them in. They move too fast for her to react to and her eyes try to settle anywhere but on them.

To put it simply, they’re horrific shadow monsters that crackle endlessly and generate themselves into existence more and more as the day goes on. Which’d be a real problem, except uh, “go shadow monsters!” She claps as the creatures rush more kobolds, it turns out Shikamaru has complete control of them. He doesn’t even have to use a Jutsu, merely looking at them causes them to fall under his command as if he’s been given some sort of shadow king power-up. It’s glorious, and it’s a big part of why they’re progressing so fast.

She hopes these are a constant throughout the entire week. They do a lot of damage and the exp from monsters they kill is spread between them, mostly going to Shikamaru. Between Chouji and him, there’ll probably be two level fours in their group before they set up shelter. Yes, set up, she’s not letting Shikamaru anywhere near the cabins even if it means she also doesn’t get to sleep in a comfy cabin.

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“I’m not complaining, but isn’t it a little weird that Akamaru’s with me?” Kiba asks, pointing up at his dog resting tiredly on his head. They’ve been doing a lot today, slaughtering monsters and even taking a bite out of a few of them. Goblins are very nutritious, or at least they taste that way. Akamaru bit first and then, well, it wasn’t hard to convince him to give it a try.

Hinata and Shino insisted they find real food and shelter and he was arguing up until shambling nightmares dragged themselves out of the ground and even Akamaru didn’t want to try eating those. They looked like walking indigestion to them, maybe Chouji’ll give it a try if he goes long enough without a snack.

“Would it not be weirder that my hive is with me?” Shino asks, his bugs are doing all the housework right now so they get to laze on the couch they found. It’s nice, the sky ladies - he’s probably calling Sakura that when they get back because it’s funny - weren’t wrong about these cabins. They should be a priority, anyone who decides to camp out is missing out.

“No, I already knew bugs don’t have souls.” The look Shino gives him makes him think he should probably reword that, “I mean like, big souls. They’re tiny creatures, Sakura’s Necromancy can’t even summon them back. But Akamaru? Akamaru definitely has a workable soul, Sakura’s dog comes from three Inuzuka ninken. Why is he just with me for free?”

“If I was to make a deduction, I would say that he was deemed a part of you,” Shino explains with a raised finger, “perhaps he’s cheaper to resurrect, and resurrecting you without him would be considered an act of cruelty.”

“You think whoever’s making us fight for our lives cares about that?” Kiba’s eyes narrow questioningly.

“I think if they were the type to not care about that, they would have devoured our essence for power,” Shino says tonelessly, “that is clearly how this system is working, and I imagine it reflects their reality. How else would they come up with something so convincing?” Shino’s expressions are odd without his big coat, but at least whatever system controls this allowed him to keep his sunglasses.

“Video games?” Kiba suggests with a shrug, “how’s dinner coming, Hinata!?”

“You already ate!” She shouts back from the kitchen, these cabins are really decked out.

“Monsters don’t count, I want some of that ham!” Well, Shino’s bugs are doing most things around here, like cleaning up, hanging a cloth over the window, setting up barricades. Hinata wasn’t letting them near the fully stocked kitchen.

“Arf!” Akamaru agrees.