🌸The Journey🌸

Day 8

Where... Am I?

Sasuke shook his head as his eyes opened to find everything around him in a blur. He shut his eyes tight and moved his hand to rub his eyes only to find it tied up to the ceiling of--

"A... Cave?" Sasuke finally understood that he was being held captive in some sort of cave. Certainly not the one he'd destroyed when he found out Sakura was gone, "W-wait... Sakura..."

"Sasuke!"

He looked a little further down the cave and recognized the trio all tied in the same way but further from him, "Shikamaru?"

"Yeah."

Sasuke peered his eyes to see in the darkness better, "is that Ino and Choji with you?"

"Yeah. How are you?"

"Not dead."

"Heh." Shikamaru tugged his arms at the rope, to no avail, he finally groaned, "this is such a drag..."

Sasuke peered down the other direction of the cave in search of an exit. He finally decided that there was no exit nearby and turned back to Shikamaru, "how long was I out?"

"Oh..." Shikamaru shrugged, "since I woke up? About thirty minutes to an hour... But then again, we've been in this cave. The guy out there told me it's been two days."

"Damn..." Sasuke wiped his forehead on his shoulder and stared at the cave floor, "that... That was no ordinary sleep..."

"Yeah." Shikamaru nodded, "I was able to wake from it because it was a Genjutsu. It took me a while, but I broke it. Choji and Ino aren't close enough for me to wake them with my Chakra, but I thought you'd wake up soon enough."

"But..." Sasuke pursed his lips, "how could that Genjutsu effect me? I'm an Uchiha, it shouldn't have--"

"Wait." Shikamaru shut his eyes, "you hear that?"

Sasuke turned to look in the opposite direction, where he saw a small light coming closer, "someone's here."

"He knows I'm awake." Shikamaru looked at Sasuke, "pretend you're asleep."

"What?!"

"Just do it."

He had no time to react, but Sasuke followed orders begrudgingly, shut his eyes, and fell back against the wall.

The leader set the torch he was holding in a rung on the cave wall and knelt by Shikamaru, "good morning. It's 5 in the morning."

Shikamaru peered at him and tried to make out the details in his face, only to be blocked out by an ANBU mask, "so, who are you?"

"Who am I? It wouldn't be much fun if I just told you, would it?"

"That... That chakra-masking technique..."

"Ah, you know." The man smirked, "I somehow knew you'd catch on. You know him, don't you? He helped you in the Land of Silence against the country head, Gengo, am I correct? His name was Rō?"

Shikamaru shivered, "'was'?"

"Oh yeah, he knew our plan, so we had to do something to keep his mouth shut, and that was our only option. As a valuable member of the Leaf Village's ANBU Black Ops, we had to do something to keep our mission under-wraps."

"Well." Shikamaru sneered, "your mission won't be too under-wraps once the Hokage finds out about this."

"Unless you die before you could ever tell the story."

After a moment, Shikamaru sighed and shook his head, "What do you want with us?"

"Heh." The man chuckled, "it's not you that I want. I just want revenge on this failure of an Uchiha."