The Way Through Stone Village (Naruto)

103: Finding Tsunade

[OP: "This Will End"--The Oh Hellos]

Sakura wiggled her fingers. "Yay, I can move again," she sighed.

Karin pulled her sleeve down. "I think I gave you enough for you to be able to fight, too...a little."

"With that," Sakura said, "you could do that seal jutsu much better than I could." She seemed a bit miffed about the idea but also impressed. "You should learn it."

"Maybe," Karin said. "How does it work?"

"Discuss that later," Sasuke cut in. "Karin, where will we find the others?"

Karin gave him an annoyed look of all things. "Okay, Bossy Person... They're all more to the center of the Village now. But Shine said not to join them till they start moving again, so we should find the others... Maybe we should just meet up with the ones who went after Suigetsu instead. That's probably the less guarded place."

"I want to help Tsunade before it's too late," Sakura objected. "Wait...who went where? I don't understand."

"The heroes went to the medical center," Naruto said. "Because they're immune."

"Right...of course they are," Sakura said. "But I have a way to cure the plague potentially without it being so...strenuous. Something we were talking about..." Looking at Ami. "But I need to test it... So I guess it makes the most sense to go there, if Tsunade was brought there..."

"Then let's send that message," Karin said. "And if I can get out of this tunnel, that would be great. I'm tired of masking my chakra of those goons...but at least we did one thing--now they have no hostages."

"Yes, part one of our mission is accomplished," Hinata said.

Sakura looked a little bothered. "You all came to find me so they wouldn't have leverage?"

"Yeah." Naruto didn't seem to understand the problem. "They were going to make us wait outside the Village or leave, or else they'd do something to you guys, so it's good we got you before they found out we'd broken their agreement."

"Oh," Sakura said.

No one noticed her mood shift.

"Let's hurry," Hinata said. "Can we go above ground now?"

"Now it hardly matters," Ami said. "We need to hurry more than we need to hide, if you can cure the poison. Anyone we meet will probably just let us go unless they're Kasasagi's elite b-----ds."

"Mother!" Eichi was shocked at her language.

"I'm sorry," Ami said. "Cover your ears next time, son."

"By the way, who is this?" Karin asked.

"Later," Sakura said. "She's with us for now. Let's just go."

They went for the next exit of the tunnel, hoping that no one would see them leave it this way.

Sasuke was tempted to brood to himself again but then thought he'd better be more focused if they ran into the bandits, and he didn't have time to think about his own growing doubts about his powers.

Going to the only other thing that came to mind, he recalled that Sakura had seemed rather put out earlier. At least that was a distraction.

"Shine would have sent us after you either way," he said.

Sakura didn't register what he'd said at first and gave him a strange look. "Huh?"

"Not just to avoid being blackmailed." Sasuke assumed this was why he felt the need to explain. "She was going to send us after you anyway. She wouldn't have left anyone to the bandits."