Chapter Text
The outskirts of Rain were, in general, uninhabitable.
The scene before him now, however, looked like a wasteland.
Bodies lay everywhere he turned, thrown over outcrops of earth and pinned under rocks and debris. There had to be at least a hundred dead, it looked like a scene straight out of the Third War and Shisui had to remind himself to take a breath. Rain pelted his cloak, steam curled up into the air over the bodies that were still warm. They must have just missed out.
“Come in, Captain.”
Shisui raises a gloved hand to his earpiece. “Spread out, look for any traces of Team Seven.” In his gut, Shisui knows that his baby cousin’s team was alright, but the carnage before him was impossible to ignore. He couldn’t see any remnant of Sasuke’s jutsu at all, couldn’t even feel his chakra among the wreckage, and that made his stomach twist.
Shisui spreads out his senses, his eyes bleeding red beneath his mask. He silently walks through the area, taking note of the missing limbs from some of the bodies, the caved in chest cavities, some of their faces absolutely mutilated. An uneasy feeling churns in his stomach, none of this looked like Sasuke’s doing, it didn’t look like anything he had seen before. Did Naruto lose control of the Kyuubi? Were Sasuke and Sakura laying somewhere amongst the dead?
Shisui continued, his Sharingan taking in everything, until a wisp of chakra caught his peripheral vision. It was barely there, and if not for his clan’s kekkai genkai he would have missed it completely.
He moved towards the flicker cautiously, and the closer he got Shisui found that it was not just a small burst, but carefully laid strands of a high level genjutsu. Relief bloomed in his chest — Sasuke. The illusion rippled against his skin like the current of a river, invisible to the naked eye. It was laid perfectly, weaving in and out of the surrounding trees instead of just a wall of chakra that was much easier to detect.
His Sharingan sees three warm bodies in a tent set up against the base of one of the larger trees in the area. Shisui doesn’t wait a second longer.
“Kai.” The genjutsu melts away, revealing a warm green glow visible from the open flap of a small tent situated at the base of a large tree trunk.
Sakura looks straight at Shisui’s masked face and says one word. “Medic.”
Shisui speaks into his radio. “Team Seven found, thirty kilometers due east. Medic is needed.”
“Copy.”
“Approaching.”
Shisui steps closer. “Haruno, report.” The pink haired medic glances at him from the corner of her eye, a short tut escaping her lips before returning to what she had been doing, her glowing hand coming to rest over Sasuke’s chest.
“We were ambushed by a team of six on the way home from our mission, no visible village affiliation. They got Sasuke down with a poisoned kunai. Naruto overexerted himself, again,” she tosses a withering look behind her at the unconscious blonde. “I extracted most of the poison, I’ve been waiting on Sasuke’s liver to filter out the rest of the toxins because I can’t transport them both on my own. They’ve been unconscious for two days.”
A team of six? “There are more than a hundred bodies out there.”
Sakura looks at him again, her eyes eerily calm. “Whoever it is keeps sending more.” Shisui sits with this for a moment. Her teammates have been unconscious for days, those bodies are fresh. Was she the cause of that massacre? It was her genjutsu that he barely managed to notice?
Stag is the first to show up and he lifts a glowing green hand as he approaches. “Haruno, tell me what you need.”
“Well, this is getting pretty uncomfortable.” Sakura shifts her upper body towards them to reveal a bloody gash adorning the left side of her waist, stretching from her rib cage to her belly button.
Stag curses. “What the fuck, Haruno?”
She simply rolls her eyes. “It’s fine, my seal is keeping the poison from doing any damage. It looks worse than it is.”
“Poison?” Stag sighs harshly. “Sakura, get over here.” The woman glances at her teammates before she complies, unfolding her legs and standing slowly.
Shisui assesses her. She favors her left side as she walks towards Stag, his teammate meeting her halfway and guiding her to sit back down against the trunk of a tree. Her headband is nowhere to be found, long pink locks braided tightly against her scalp, the rest of her seemingly unharmed.
Hare and Boar show up just as Stag unzips the front of Sakura’s short red dress, easing her arm out of the sleeve. She grimaces, but doesn’t complain. She lifts her arm over her head, stretching the wound on her ribs so Stag could see it properly.
“How long have you been like this?”
“Two days.”
“And the other two?”
“Same. They’re recovering.” Stag wets a rag from his pack with his canteen and gently cleans her wound.
“You’ve been letting this fester for forty eight hours?”
Sakura bristles. “It is not festering, and if you couldn’t tell I’ve been a little busy.”
Shisui is struck with the familiarity in which she speaks to his own teammate. She addresses the Anbu healer as if she were talking to Naruto, and while Shisui is of course aware of the fact that she is often in HQ bringing the operatives back from the brink of death, he realizes that he’s never actually paid attention to her interactions within the cement walls.
Stag mutters, “Yeah, I could tell,” before bringing his glowing hand to Sakura’s side.
“You’re focusing too hard.” The woman supplies.
“I’m too focused for you now? That’s hard to believe.”
“You know what I mean, you’re staunching your chakra, let it flow, think of a river, and the skin will stitch back together more evenly and quickly.” Stag hums, his tensed shoulders relaxing and even Shisui can see how it helps.
“The least you all could do when I take the time to teach a class is pay attention, I just talked about this.”
Stag scoffs. “Trust me, I am amongst the only ones looking at the white board and not your ass.” Sakura sputters.
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I mean you should wear looser pants.” The Anbu deadpans blandly and Shisui hears Hare snicker behind him.
Sakura’s eyes narrow. “There is nothing wrong with my pants.”
Shisui turns away from them. “Hare, Boar, start checking the bodies for anything that would identify where they came from.”
After an hour of searching, his teammates find nothing just as Sakura said, and they prepare to move. Hare throws Naruto over his shoulder - “Gently.” - and Sasuke’s limp body is strung between Boar and Stag. When Shisui holds his gloved hand out to Sakura, she stares at it, then him.
"What?" She asks, as if it weren't obvious.
Behind his mask, Shisui blinks, trying his best not to sigh. "I'm going to carry you." She looks at him with a grimace.
“I’m fine.” His jaw twitches.
“You need to rest.”
The medic rolls her eyes. “You don't know what I need.” Shisui stares at her, wondering the last time someone had challenged his authority so blatantly, in front of his team no less, and he couldn’t remember.
“Fine.” He says, flippant and annoyed. “Keep up.” Sakura raised one eyebrow, her eyes running down his form and back up.
“Don’t worry about me, Captain.”
Shisui does not slow his usual pace for her, half hoping that she would break and have to ask him to carry her. He should have known that Sakura Haruno of all people, the girl who fought and clawed her way up the ranks and for every recognition she received, would never admit defeat. In fact, he is sure she stayed right next to him for the duration of their journey purely out of spite.