The Perils of Dimension Hopping | A Naruto/LOTR Crossover

Chapter Thirteen: Of Golden Warriors and Wolves

She couldn't smack him.

He was lying there on his front, bandages tinged with red, the smell of some odd herb coating them wafting through her nostrils as she knelt by his side. Her nose wrinkled, both the scent and the worry making her unable to muster the will to fall asleep. She couldn't sleep while he was like that. She had to be strong. She had to protect him just as he had protected her, and if that meant glaring at Strider whilst he treated Madara with strange methods unknown to her, then so be it. She would've thought Madara needed stitches, but either Strider didn't have the necessary tools or the wound wasn't as bad as it looked to her. Neither thought was all that comforting.

Clutching at his clammy hand, she watched and waited with bated breath, but even as the sun rose on the horizon – the dark of night passed – Madara still did not wake. Blinking tiredly, she could only watch through half lidded eyes as her precious idiot was lifted and fastened to Strider's back. Sleepily, she reached up for him, but Strider was already walking away and rousing the small adults.

Frodo was awake. Madara was not.

Sakura blamed the childish body, but some part of her doubted her experience around him would've been as pleasant as it had been if he were an adult inside and out. At least with her childish form she didn't wind up arousing that much suspicion. To others she just looked like a child, and children rarely had evil motives. Unless they were shinobi, her mind added snidely.

Yawning, she got ready herself, struggling to muster the energy for some reason. She had been feeling horribly drained after using her mokuton in that world. She didn't even understand how she'd used it in the first place when she had no chakra. Sakura could barely find the energy to walk, and she stumbled on through the rest of the day, plodding on through unchanging scenery, wishing she could be back in that nice safe underground place with Madara snuggled up to her every night.

Four days passed, and it was only on the fifth that they came upon a road – a change in all the forestry she had been stuck with previously, though they only lingered on the road for a short while. They were off it just as quickly, back to trampling through the forest towards a destination Sakura had no clue about.

Madara was still unconscious, and he grew paler and paler with each passing day. Strider didn't allow her to cuddle him at night either, and Sakura barely slept a wink. Still, somehow she made it through each day, although the strain on her tiny body felt that much worse with each passing night. She couldn't sleep. All she could think about was how useless she had been when facing off against that dark hooded figure.

They plodded on, continuing their trek, and Sakura felt her feet dragging as she was dragged into the constant cycle of worry. Madara and his condition was all but consuming her thoughts day in and day out. Strider was seemingly worried about the pair of them too, for all how he tried to help her sleep instead of shuffling about Madara's comatose form. It was only lucky that both her and Madara could seemingly survive longer than the small adults without food and drink.

The sixth day passed, quickly followed by the seventh – but something happened on the eve of that seventh day. They had been by the road when Sakura had caught sound of it with her wonderfully pointed ears first – the sounds of hoofbeats, light and merry. Sakura hunkered down in the bushes, knowing those scary horsemen were chasing after them. The ones who'd hurt Madara. The ones she really wished she had the strength to beat up – or better yet, kill. Shinobi didn't have to practice vigilance against dead enemies. The only good enemy was a dead one, or so she'd been taught, and she was in the perfect body for forms of adorable murder. Who on earth would expect the cute, squishy-faced pink-haired girl to be capable of heartless murder?