Lost in the Blue

#14 - Sakura

Everyone was gathered on the main deck, waiting for Sasuke and Naruto to magically appear from wherever they had gone. Sakura's arms were folded over her chest, foot tapping incessantly. She had a hunch they were not on the ship.

"They'll just have to catch up with us!" Kiba exclaimed, "We can't wait any longer!"

Sakura sighed. She could imagine exactly how it happened: Sasuke got angry and decided to storm off and start the fight, Naruto followed because he can't back down.

The issue now was finding where they had ended up.

"They aren't on the ship," she said, "I think something happened and they left to find the Otsutsuki."

"Idiots!" Ino shouted, "Did Shikamaru not say we all had to stick together?"

"Sasuke thinks we'll just get in the way." Kiba said, "It's so obvious he thinks were like, useless."

"He's such an ass." Ino pouted.

"Regardless, standing around waiting isn't gonna help." Sakura said, "Let's go and finish this."

~~~

There was a stone path to the left of the ship dividing the jungle, which Sakura and Shikamaru had decided was the best route to follow. If the Otsutsuki were expecting their arrival, they wouldn't have made it difficult to reach them.

Palm trees weren't the easiest to jump from branch to branch like they did back home, so they settled on walking.

Once they were deep in the jungle, someone called a water break. Sakura was drenched in sweat; the jungle air was dense with little breeze.

"I'm so not used to heat like this." Chouji said, fanning himself.

"I can barely breathe!" Ino whined.

Shino approached her, "I've sent some spies out to see how much longer we have. They are saying that there's activity near the volcano, directly at the base."

"How many?" She asked.

"Just one."

"Only one of them's here?" She frowned, "They travel in pairs normally, right?"

"This one has a Byakugan and a Rinnegan." Shino said.

"Shit." Shikamaru cursed from behind, "That's not good."

"If only Naruto and Sasuke were around so we could warn them." Ino said dryly.

"They'll meet us there. They always end up where the fight is." TenTen said, "You guys know that."

"Yea but, what kinda state will they be in?" Chouji asked.

"I still can't see past a specific point on this island." Hinata chimed in, Byakugan scanning the area, "It's like I'm hitting a wall."

"Some kind of chakra signature wall." Shikamaru said, stroking his chin, "I wonder if they don't want all of us getting past a certain point. They know how strong we are together."

"Yea!" Rock Lee cheered, "They're scared of us!"

Sakura smiled, "To some degree. Let's keep thinking that."

They packed up quickly and returned to the trees.

Walking at the front of the pack, Sakura was overcome with an intense feeling of pride. She always knew that she had leadership skills in her, but being able to wrangle this team in particular alongside Shikamaru felt pretty rewarding. Who knew the scared, little girl five years ago would be doing something like this, now?

It would be even better if this whole thing didn't end up relying on only Sasuke and Naruto to defeat the villain. It was everyone else's time to shine.