Chapter 119 - Arc 8 - Forest of Quest: Sakura's Enemies, Mother Said So

I just got too many plans and I'm pretty sure I can't do them all without this arc getting boring.
Woe is me, the harbinger of ideas.

Gaara plays a small part in this chapter but it's so nice, he's such a good boy.

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“Annnnnd, the clone is dead.” Naruto announces suddenly, startling her out of her fugue. It’s super easy to get lost in the moment while hugging him. It turns out the Hugging Skill, which is already level 2 - she’s not sure what a level in hugging does - also clears her mind and lets her get into the moment as just a part of the galaxy, watching time pass. She presumes this is so she can’t get bored of comforting someone.

In fact, it’s such a powerful effect that she’s finally had a huge breakthrough in something she’s wanted for a while, ever since Gai suggested it to her during a late training session.

[Congratulations, You’ve gained the Meditation Skill

Meditation: You may now zone into your senses and surroundings. Simply take a deep breath and focus, the world is not as it seems. When meditating, your senses become stronger, the range at which they function becomes larger, and you may mix spiritual and physical energies to generate mana.

You may experience a slowed reaction time when brought back to reality, and if forced, may receive mental backlash.]

It’s a cool skill, the ability to generate her own Mana instead of having to just wait for it is an incredible boost she’s wanted for a while and it makes her rather annoyed she couldn’t get it when she first tried. It might be slow, and costly, but it’s still something she’s been eager to seek out for a long time. Even if it ends up sucking, she’s happy.

Though, she is a little worried about that last part. What does mental backlash even mean in this instance? Could it get her killed? She’ll use it as a last resort, maybe tonight when she’s stuck sitting around waiting to take her five hour nap? “Did the clone die to the KSH or a random monster?” Sasuke asks.

“The KSH.” Naruto says, “they introduced themselves and asked if I was really Sakura. When I said yes, they filled me with Kunai.”

“Time to go then.” Sakura finally removes him from her lap and pushes herself up along the tree they’ve been resting against. She’s a little stiff but that makes sense. She’s been in that position for at least an hour, probably longer if she lost track of time like she thinks she did. That Naruto let her hold him that long would be weird under normal circumstances but he seemed really hurt by what he saw. It’s good to get a perspective on just how different their mindsets are. It also helps that he’s been hugging people as the twins a lot recently, so maybe he likes hugs.

With Naruto being that easy to traumatize, she’ll have to be sure to be quick and precise with any kills she does in front of him, if she can’t ensure the deaths are out of his sight entirely. It shouldn’t be too hard, this is the Forest of Death, not a warzone. Chances are she won’t have to kill anyone else in the entire forest, and her first kill was completely an accident. She still feels a little bad about it, it was just a fellow genin pulling a trick on the wrong people. “I guess I should go handle them, you coming Sasuke?”

“Ready when you are.” Sasuke nods in what seems like greedy affirmation.

“I’m not going?” Naruto asks, looking up at her.

“Ah, no, I think your energy is best spent making more clones. In fact uh, send your clones as far away from them as possible, it’d be bad if they killed more of them.”

“Sakura…” Naruto narrows his gaze at her. Okay, she’s probably going to have to kill the KSH, but that’s different, and she doesn’t want Naruto looking. “Fine.” He relents quickly, grumbling under his breath at her. “Can I go see Karin?”

“Not yet, Naruto, we want the sense of danger to have completely left her before a leaf genin shows up. She could have a heart attack or something, and none of us are medical ninjas.” Sakura points out as sternly as she can, and he slowly nods at her in affirmation that he understands.

He doesn’t trust it, but that actually is her reasoning. That girl has been through a lot if the observations she’s heard back from Naruto’s clones are to be believed, and she’s not about to lose Naruto’s family to impatience when they’re this close. She has an army of undead watching her, and she’ll terminate them all to kill anything and everything after her before she lets that girl take anymore damage. They need to give her another day, at least. She’s still freaking out about everything that passes by and as concerning as that is, calmness is a simple math equation. Boredom plus time. They have to ensure Karin is bored enough to be calm and curious when Naruto shows up to eliminate as many exterior variables for what could possibly go wrong.

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The day before

Karin’s feet are sore, but that’s just what happens when you drop your shoes behind and flee through a forest. She’s been stabbed by countless twigs, cut herself on bark, and even managed to trip over a normal snake that bit her in the leg. She wasn’t aware normal snakes were a thing here! Luckily she heals quickly, and its venom wasn’t too strong, but that doesn’t stop her from bemoaning how much her feet hurt. Every time she thinks she’s found a way to go she finds herself face to face with another of those glowing eyed monsters. It’s like they’re herding her, but she doesn’t have the presence of mind to ask where. She’s running, and running, and running some more. Now her lungs hurt, there’s sweat in her eyes, and she’s staring into a dark cave from its entrance.

She hears the monsters come closer, and she sprints in. Maybe they won’t find her in here? That’d be nice right?
Yes?
No?

She doesn’t think about it. She rushes in and hopes they miss her. Hopefully whatever calls this cave home doesn’t come back to a five star meal. She thinks she’s five stars at least, damn monsters might think differently. They might not even eat her, they might just tear her apart and leave her corpse to cool untouched. “Haah, haa-why, hah, am I always-oop!” Tripping over something in the dark isn’t uncommon for her anymore. That’s life here. Finding herself landing face first into a splashy puddle on the other hand, that’s very new. “Ew…” She rolls over, kicks it, and hears a wet thunk, her foot smacking against something soft but puffy. “That’s a person, I just tripped over a dead person.”

Its smell will bring monsters, “damn-it.” She barely has time to get up before her survival instincts have her grabbing a mangled arm and dragging it along towards the entrance of the cave. She tries not to look at it, she doesn’t need the image clawed into her mind and forever staying there rent free. She shouldn’t be here. She doesn’t have the mental training or the physical training to survive in this hellhole, and nothing has made that clearer than the last few hours.

At the cave entrance, she looks at the corpse she’s dragging just long enough to see the pouch at its side. She doesn’t take in its gender, its hair, or even what it’s wearing. She especially doesn’t take in any of the wounds that led to its demise. “Damn-it!” Grabbing that pouch, she contemplates if she should go back into the cave. Whatever killed him or her probably wasn’t a Genin if they left the balls. If this forest is this deadly, why in the hell is it a good testing ground? Is their goal to kill them off, or are most examinees just that much better than her and this poor soul? They could have been ready and gotten unlucky too, luck is a huge part of being a Ninja and tripping into an enemy’s mouth would do anyone in.

“No.” She decides to stop thinking about it, turning away from the cave, only to find herself face to face with a giant snake. Its tongue sticks out, its eyes somehow get even bigger and it hisses at her. “Errrr-” She finds herself unable to conjure words, she’s only able to look deeply into those powerful glowing eyes. A look to her side, ever so slight, finds a giant spider seemingly sniffing her hand with curiosity.

To her left, she sees a bear. The same bear, different bear, who knows. What she does know is that her feet take her backwards. “You have fun, I’m gonna go.” She gulps out, admonishing herself for saying something stupid and meaningless in her final moments.

Oddly enough she finds that they don’t follow her as she slips deeper into the cave. They don’t even touch the corpse at the entrance, they just watch her disappear into the darkness like stone guardians. “Okay, they’re not going to kill me.” She decides, turning around and walking deeper in. “This is my life now.”

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[Quest Alert - KSH, Introductions

Description: The KSH have snuck into the Forest of Death by bribing ninjas. Most of which are allies of Konoha, or Konoha ninja themselves. The pretense is that you’re a lowly Genin that stepped out of your place, and it’ll be an easy mission with good money involved. You should ensure this attempt goes very poorly, possibly catastrophically.

Objective: 0/1 Official KSH team dealt with, 0/4 KSH bribed teams dealt with.

Success Reward: Enemy Trait Reduced to level 5, The Next Quest in this Chain

Failure Reward: Enemy Trait Increased to Level 10, The Next Quest in this Chain]

A quick check reveals Enemy is at Level 8, when the hell did that happen? She needs to get better at checking things like that, it’s pure laziness and it’s unacceptable. She has a gaming system and she’s treating it like it’s a soggy quest log filled with side quests she got at the start of the game. That’s it, from now on she’s giving everything a thorough look every week. No more of this being blindsided crap. She doesn’t care how focused she is, she can spare twenty minutes a week. She already got better at checking her stats but traits are just as important.

“I got a quest to deal with their organization in the forest, it specifically says deal with them.” Sakura muses aloud, looking at Sasuke and getting a totally helpful and informative nod back. Her feet land on a branch, and she glides through the treeline beside him like she belongs there. If she has anything to say about it, she does belong there. “Let me rephrase, it doesn’t say kill.”

“Do you not want to kill them?” Sasuke asks, his voice lowering a little in question.

“I dunno, I just think the option is important to notice.” She explains, pondering the quest prompt with a lot of attention. “I think we should kill the official team, but a lot of them are just bribed. Isn’t the entire mission system a little like taking a bribe to do something? Does that really deserve death?”

“Isn’t taking unofficial missions treason?” Sasuke asks, giving her a pointed glance.

“Well, uh… I dunno, they’re kids.” She shrugs, “I take quests and I don’t think that’s treason.”

“We’re kids by that logic,” he snorts at her justification, “they’re trying to kill someone important to me, I want to hurt them.”

And you know, when he puts it like that, she can’t argue with him. It does feel warm to see him wanting to enact violence for her. It’s like flirting but she actually gets it. “I didn’t say we couldn’t hurt them, I just think maybe we should let their villages decide their punishment.” She finds it a little awkward being on the other end of this exact argument. She was saying they should kill all the rebels, but here she is when they’re directly targeting her.

Is that her low self worth acting up, or has she just grown as a person?
The situation is very different, but is it different enough that her opinion should be this different?

[Quest Alert: 1/4 KSH bribed teams dealt with]

“What the hell just happened?” She blinks at the alert in surprise.

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“Should you really have killed them?” Temari asks, touching her brother’s shoulder while watching the sand drip blood into the dirt below. Three lives were just snuffed out faster than it takes her to take a shaky breath. That’s the Gaara she knows, not the one she’s seen the last couple of weeks. It feels nice to see, which is something she doesn’t think is a healthy statement. She has wires crossed, she’s sure of it now. “That treehugger girl might be annoyed at you for killing Konoha ninja.”

“They were her enemies,” Gaara says with a stern and cold tone of voice, “mother told me so.”

“How would- you know what, I’m not sure I want to know.” Temari shakes her head, looking away from the squishy mulch towards Kankuro, who’s shrugging.

“Well, they did come up and ask about her.” Kankuro says, pointing towards the writhing sand still crushing bones. There’s a loud pop that would have made them jump if they didn’t grow up with Gaara. “And they didn’t seem friendly. They even knew he’d hung around her at the start of the first exam, so they were spying.”

“They were enemies.” Gaara reasserts as balls pop out of the sand, shooting towards his hand. He catches them gracefully, inserting them into his burgeoning pouch. There’s a lot of balls in there, they could have passed a long time ago but Gaara won’t let them leave until she does.

It’s a bit annoying, but at least the forest is fun. There’s a lot of fascinating wildlife here, and watching Gaara crush something besides humans is oddly cathartic for her. Watching Gaara crush stuff in general is nice, her normal has been permanently warped. Maybe Kankuro’s right.

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“I think they lost us.” Sakura grumbles, darting off the side of a tree and landing in the middle of a clearing with a glare in all directions. “The quest isn’t giving me markers either, how am I supposed to find five, er, four different teams in this forest without markers?”

Sasuke lands beside her with a shrug, his gaze focused on the dirt, presumably in search of tracks. She’s not about to question him, especially not when he’s feeling spiteful and his red eyes are out and focused.

Besides, she has her own tool to try. She whips out a scroll and thanks herself for thinking to pack it for these exams. It probably won’t work for this, but who knows what else she’ll find.

“What are you doing?” He asks her as she lays out the scroll at her feet, and channels her chakra into it.

“Treasure hunting.” Out comes a long stick with a Y shape at the top, one she’s very happy to see is still in pristine condition. Items normally don’t get damaged in scrolls, but with conceptual, clearly magical items, she was a little worried. What if something crossed between the two energies and now she’s unsealing a bomb?

That isn’t the case and as she stands up Sasuke’s quirked gaze becomes an afterthought.
The dowsing rod will have its uses here, she’s sure of it. Holding it up, she allows herself to focus on it. A little chakra is needed, but sure enough as she spins it in a circle around her, things in the distance begin to glow. She is one hundred percent sure this is not how an actual dowsing rod is used.

A tunnel, quite a few caves, the river in the distance and “bingo.”

“You found them?” Sasuke asks, “I wasn’t aware it could find people.”

“No, I found a dungeon.” It draws her attention like nothing else. A red glow in her vision that draws her in and begs her inner adventurer to take a look.

“We can’t go dungeon exploring right now.” Sasuke reminds her, poking her arm, “even if we aren’t hunting a group of people actively trying to kill you, we’re on a timer for this test, remember?”

“Right… I still want to check it out though.” She points towards it, “we can come back and explore it after all these exams.”

“You go, you have a tracker for me right?” He asks, and watches her nod in response, “I’ll try to find them. Catch up.” With that he’s gone, and she has something to explore.