Naruto : Path of Wind

I rock back on the heels of my feet and stare into Sakura's green-gray eyes. Almost immediately she twists around and reaches for the scalpel again.

I just watch her, stunned into silence, until she makes another cut near her shoulder, and blood creeps to the surface of her skin. She twists around and grabs something behind her and sprinkles it over the new cut.

"What is that?" I ask, latching onto this new development desperately.

"Sugar to prevent the blood from running," she says, making another sharply curving cut all the way up to the base of her collarbone. As easily as if she were making a brush stroke. As if I'm not sitting a foot away, having a mental breakdown right along with her.

"Alright, that's enough." My hand flashes out and I grab the scalpel out of her hand none too gently. She shrinks back with a pained hiss. "You're going to the hospital. Right now." I say firmly. To hell with the doctors and their diagnosis. I'll make them look at her a hundred more times if that's what it takes to find out what's wrong with this girl.

"What?" she asks, panic coloring her voice. "No, you can't, it's-"

"I could give a shit," I growl, and forcefully gather her in my arms, standing up and turning back towards the balcony. The pink-haired girl thrashes hysterically in my grip, moaning and begging for me to let her go in a manner that reminds me disturbingly of the skeletal nukenin before Sasuke smothered him. I step out onto the balcony, into the midday sunshine.

Sakura shrieks in agony. Her nails claw at my eyes, and while I'm flinching away from them she kicks me in the gut. I stagger to one side, wheezing, and she bursts free from my grip and bolts back into the darkness of her room, taking back the scalpel in the process.

My back hits the balcony and I gape at her shadowed figure. "What is wrong with you?" I gesture wildly into the room. "What about the shadows!? You couldn't even stay outside after sunset yesterday and now you don't care?" She shakes her head and mumbles something, but I can't quite catch it.

I rub at my stomach and creep warily forward again. "What'd you say?"

"It's changing."

My stomach rolls. "It's what?"

"It doesn't need to try to get in anymore," she whispers hollowly. "It's different now."

I can count on one hand the times in my life where I've had no idea what to do. The instant after the old man told me about my defect. The first time I had a crimson dream. The day Sasuke came to me in tears because his father had finally come out and said that he was a disappointment. Everything else, I've always had a solution for. Whether it's a logical solution with a high chance for success or some half-baked plan I came up with on the spot, I've always had something to do.

But now as my teammate carves the symbols to a seal that can't exist into her skin, I realize I have no idea what to do.

"God, Sakura," I finally croak. "You need- You need help. We need to go back to the hospital, or the old man, or..."

"I can't, Naruto." I look up sharply, snapped from my reverie. Not at her words themselves, but how they're said. She sounds terrified- literally insane with fear.

"Why not?"

"Because if I don't do this now, I'll be too late." She sprinkles sugar on her latest cut with a shaking hand. Then she looks up at me with eyes so wide I can see the grays of them. "I can feel it, corrupting things, changing me. If I wait any longer..."

"I thought you said you were just testing it?"

"Testing to make sure my blood wouldn't ruin it. It didn't."

I almost leave right then, hop up onto the balcony and scale the apartment building to flag down a patrol team of medic Anbu. I almost write her hysterics off as just that- hysterics of a disturbed young girl. Irrational fears that are driving her to skip out on her duties as a shinobi to mutilate herself. I come so very close to doing that.

But then I remember the haunted look on Team 9's faces. I remember Tenten herself, obscured by a mountain of blankets and wires and cringing in a constant, unseen agony.

I turn back to my teammate, the bizarre contortions of the blood seal I'd seen while in the hospital burning in my head, and I wonder just what in the hell I'm dealing with here.

I crouch down beside her again. "Do you need my help?" I ask quietly.

She pauses, scalpel poised just above her left shoulder, and nods. "The scroll is on my bed."

I go and grab it off the mess of a bed, finding it neatly rolled up. I hold it up and stare at it. It occurs to me that she hasn't even been looking at it. She's been carving symbols into her head by memory alone. In the world of sealing, those who do that have either committed the components of the seal so thoroughly to memory that they could do it while drunk and half dead, or they have a death wish. I find that both possibilities are equally horrifying.

"What happens if this doesn't work?" I ask. I don't even want to know the answer, not really. All it will do is make me feel even less sure of myself. Because even if it's not serious, how far can I trust her?

The scalpel swirls down her arm. "It wins."

"No pressure, then," I mutter, savagely unfurling the scroll and spreading it out on the floor. Then I pull out my sealing brush and my ink tab and get to work.

I've only ever drawn one sealing circle before. It was a direct copy of the seal decorating my stomach translated onto my hardwood floor to make it easier for me to study and pick apart. Of course I didn't actually do any picking apart, and my studies haven't taken me anywhere since then- no, the important thing I learned from that experience is that sealing circles are stupidly complex.

I sweep my brush across Sakura's pristine white carpet, staining it black with ink, and mentally compare Sakura's creation with the circle I drew years ago. The thing about sealing circles is that everything has to fit together. You can't leave anything hanging and just hope the chain will stop after it's served its purpose. It all has to connect back to the center, to the purpose of the seal. I've looked at plenty of examples in textbooks over the years, but I've never seen a better example of this than my mystery seal.

So as my hand dances haltingly across the carpet I hold the seal up to my memory, and what I find shocks me.

It fits. It all fits. I lean back over the scroll, memorizing another section to trace, and as I do I see once again that it connects to an entirely different branch of symbols, just like the one before it connected to it. I can't vouch for the purpose of the symbols and how they sync together, for obvious reasons, but on the other hand I can't do that with half the subseals on my stomach either. The general shape of it, though... As I piece together more and more of it on the carpet, the deranged mass of nothing slowly coalesces into something that actually works.

After an eternity of unravelling I sit back on my haunches and glare at the scroll, looking it over three times to make sure I haven't missed anything. I don't find anything. Just the two final wavering lines connecting the outer circle to the blood seal portion. I take a deep breath and turn to Sakura.

She stares expectantly back at me, her dress bunched up around her waist, spidery lines of crimson red dancing beneath her collarbone and around the curves of her breasts. I clench my eyes shut and breath again. God damn it, Uzumaki, what are you even doing-

"I'm ready," she says, voice shaking with anticipation. I force myself to move forward.

I make my way carefully into the circle of black ink and draw the first line, connected to one of the hanging restriction subseals. She taps her thigh and I take that as my route to the dangling red line just above her belly button. I connect ink to blood and move onto the second line, shuffling behind her and connecting the second line to a thread of blood on her back.

"There," I rasp. "What now?"

"Get out of the circle." Her voice isn't the only thing that's shaking now. Her body practically vibrates with... I'm not sure what. Eagerness, fear, or simple tension? I get out of the circle. "Now channel chakra into the free hook on the outside of it."

I look down at the lone gash of ink sitting unconnected outside of the circle."That won't work," I say. Doubt begins to gnaw at my determination. How am I supposed to know what this seal will do? What does "I lose" mean? Why didn't I just take her to the hospital? "You can't activate seals with wind chakra."

"Doesn't matter," she says, shaking her head rapidly back and forth. "It only needs the body and the spirit. The chakra doesn't matter. Just channel your chakra."

I sit there for a long moment, just looking at my position. At my situation. I stand up abruptly "Okay, you know what? No." I jab a finger at her.

"I don't know why I went along this far with this to begin with, but I'm not going another step until you tell me what the fuck is happening to you. Tell me what "it" is, and tell me how this seal is going to deal with it. And so help me god if you don't I will tie you up and drag you by your hair-"

"Naruto! Please!" Sakura cries in a strangled voice. She stares up at me, her green-gray eyes boring into my own. Her eyes, which are quickly being turned from green-gray to solid, murky gray. Tenten's eyes. It's happening right in front of me.

To construct and utilize a seal that one hasn't learned inside and out or used in the past is more than unwise. It is suicidal.

...

 Don't forget to write a review and throw power stones for the story :)

...

if you want to read ahead of the public release you can join my p atreon :

 p atreon.com/CarriePoppins