NejiTen, SasuSaku "Straight On Till Morning" Part Three
Sorry. Got a little sidetracked by True Blood and Teen Wolf. ♥
TITLE: Straight On Till Morning
SERIES: Naruto
CHARACTERS: NejiTen, SasuSaku, Team Gai, Itachi, Orochimaru
WORD COUNT: 2,203
RATING: PG-13
NOTES: Itachi enters stage left.
STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING
Part Three: Out of the Frying Pan
For a moment, all Sakura could do was stare at the image on the vidscreen, watching as the sleek, dark ship sailed out of Whitefall’s shadow, headed straight for them. It looked exactly the same, the sharp fins on the side, an engine on each in addition to the large one in the tail. A blood red moon adorned the starboard side underneath the stencil of its name. Tsukiyomi.
“Itachi”, Sasuke growled, fists clenched at his sides. In another moment, he was out of the medbay and moving towards the flight deck before she could stop him. She watched him go, knowing nothing good would come of it but unable to abandon Tenten who was now flat on her back on the exam table, hands still over her ears, her features twisted in pain.
“You’re not on fire, you’re not on fire,” she mumbled, rocking sideways a bit, sending a few of Sakura’s instruments clattering to the floor. Sakura hovered near the other girl’s side, unsure if it was safe to touch her not.
“Tenten, tell me what to do. What can I do?” Her hands fluttered helplessly over the Whispered’s hunched form. She hated feeling so out of her depth. She had trained in some of the finest medical schools in the universe, why now could she do nothing?
“The... weapons room,” Tenten managed, gasping. “You... have to take me...”
Sakura nodded quickly, taking Tenten by the arm and helping her off the table. It was harder than it might have otherwise been. Tenten seemed unable to uncurl her body, shoulders curved in, head down. Sakura could only put an arm around her and lead her on, propelling her out of the medbay and towards the locked room she’d glimpsed on her first tour through the trip. Now she understood why Lee hadn’t wanted to talk about that room. It must be where Tenten was able to access the core of the the Byakugan.
They made their way towards it at a limping half-run, Sakura holding on to Tenten to try and keep the other girl from collapsing on the floor. When they finally reached the door, she helped Tenten lean against the nearby wall and gently positioned her head for the eye scanner. There was a beep, a light flashed green, and the door slid open.
Inside was a transparent blue pod, similar almost to the medical beds Sakura had used in high-tech surgery. She helped Tenten over to it, mystified as the Whispered climbed in, still cringing from whatever the Tsukiyomi was mentally feeding her.
“I’ll... call Neji back,” she panted, “Protect the ship, don’t... let them board us.”
Sakura nodded hurriedly. “I will. I’ll do whatever I can.”
Tenten managed a strained smile and then laid down, the capsule closing over her head. Once closed, Tenten’s expression eased and her body relaxed, stretching out again. Sakura exhaled at the sight. However this room worked, it was clearly what Tenten needed. Perhaps, with the whole of the Byakugan now between her and the Tsukiyomi, Tenten could filter out the ship’s screeching voice.
Carefully, Sakura backed out of the room, letting the door slide shut again. For a moment, she simply stood in the hallway, breathing, getting herself under control. Suddenly a door down the hallway slid open on its own, revealing stairs up to the flight deck. In the now open door, a phantom shape appeared, faint and translucent. It slowly resolved into an image of Tenten, long dark hair unbound and looking free from the pain she’d been in earlier. She nodded once at Sakura and then very clearly pointed at the open doorway before disappearing again.
Sakura blinked, awed. She stumbled forward, half-falling through the open door and clamoring up the steps. Both Lee and Sasuke were already on the flight deck when she arrived, Lee sitting at the controls while Sasuke stood on the bridge, watching the Tsukiyomi grow larger and larger in the window.
Overhead, Tenten’s voice came through the ship’s intercom, mystical and remote. “Approaching warship Tsukiyomi, please state your intentions.”
Instead of answering, the Tsukiyomi fired. Laser fire peppered the Byakugan’s nose, sending off an alarm. Without Lee lifting a finger, the Byakugan’s engines revved to life.
“Firing Twin Dragon cannons.”
The ship shook as two large, energy missiles shot from the forward cannons, leaving tails of energy in their wakes that twirled around one another. The energy spheres burst against the Tsukiyomi in a flash of light and fire. Immediately, the Byakugan took off, flanking right, missing the Tsukiyomi’s retaliatory laser fire. The black ship soon sped after them, following as Tenten pointed the ship towards Whitefall.
Lee glanced back at her and Sasuke from his seat at the controls. “Get buckled in quickly!” Flames streaked across the large flight deck windows as heat shields activated to protect them. Tenten’s voice sounded overhead.
“Entering planet atmosphere in 10...9...”
Sakura threw herself into one of two swivel chairs located across from Lee with Sasuke buckling himself into the other. The sound of atmospheric entry roared around them until, with a boom, they pushed through, a burst of speed from the Byakugan’s engines sending them streaking across Whitefall’s sky.
Sakura clutched the arms of her chair. “The Tsukiyomi... is it following?” she asked, anxiously.
Lee punched a few buttons on the computer screen in front of him. “Yes,” he said tightly.
As if he were giving her an order, Tenten answered.
“Initiating evasive maneuvers.”
A sudden drop in Sakura’s stomach made her gasp as the Byakugan seemed to plummet towards the planet’s dry and dusty surface, the ground coming up to meet them at an alarming rate. The moment it seemed as if they would surely crash, a large canyon opened up in the earth and the ship dipped down into it with perfect timing, weaving around rock formations and underneath stone bridges. At the speed in which they were traveling, only a Whispered could have piloted the ship through such a tight and convoluted space. The Tsukiyomi would not be able to follow them.
“He’s tracking us from above,” Lee said quickly. His eyes flickered across the monitor. “Tenten...”
The Byakugan banked an almost impossibly hard right and then...
“A cave,” Sakura breathed in relief, as darkness enveloped the ship. It was just barely large enough to hold them and the ship slowed and then finally settled on the cave floor, engines powering down.
“It will be hard to read our energy signals beneath all this rock,” Lee said, relaxing in his chair a bit. “We should be safe for now.”
Sakura unbuckled herself slowly, her eyes on Sasuke. He was unbuckling himself as well, his eyes on the viewing screens like if he just looked hard enough, he’d be able to see his brother’s ship out there, somewhere overhead. Carefully, oh so carefully, she reached out to touch his shoulder.
“Sasuke...”
The muscle underneath her fingertips was as hard as rock, he was so tense. He jerked away from her in the next second, turning on his heel and stalking past her, disappearing down the steps. She watched him go, worried, but knowing that nothing she said would be enough. She was never enough.
For several long moments, she simply sat there, watching idly as Lee tinkered with various instruments, focused on keeping them hidden. She couldn’t understand why Itachi would be after Sasuke now, after all this time. If he had wanted to kill Sasuke, wouldn’t he have done it back on Uchiha? Unless he didn’t realize that his brother was onboard the Byakugan? But no, she couldn’t imagine Itachi making such a careless mistake. The way he had avoided answering when Tenten had hailed the ship... Why keep silent unless he knew absolutely what he was doing?
Lee made a soft sound in his throat and she looked up, drawn out of her thoughts. “What is it?”
The mechanic glanced at her, his expression kind, as if he wished he had better news. She clenched her fingers together. “The cargo bay doors just opened and closed. Audio confirms that a firearm was discharged.”
She breathed out. “Orochimaru’s spy?”
Lee nodded slowly. “I think Sasuke just dealt with him.”
Deep within a subspace of mechanical equations and electrical wiring, Tenten flew. Or perhaps it was not so much flying as it was swimming. She floated through circuit boards and couplings and engine statistics, all of it filtered by the capsule her body lay in, information pouring directly into her mind. With a thought she killed the power to the ship’s engine, turned off all non-critical systems so keep their energy signature small. She could feel the Tsukiyomi overhead like a vulture, ready to pick at their bones. The ship’s voice was silent now, waiting.
Tenten melted through walls, opened the cargo bays doors for Sasuke as he pushed the spy’s body out onto the hard rocky floor of the cave. She moved onto the flight deck, checking on Lee and Sakura before pushing upwards, stretching out to the edges of the ship. She could tell that Neji’s shuttle was still half an hour away, she felt it homing beacon on it blip across her senses. She fed the shuttle’s computer system their coordinates and updated it on the whereabouts of the Tsukiyomi. Neji would not be able to rendezvous with the Byakugan unless he could do it under Itachi’s radar. She thought she might be able to do it though, when Neji got-
The virtual landscape around her changed, darkening, and she paused, stilling herself within the walls of the ship. Around her, colors shifted and shapes formed, curves and eddies of-
Flames.
Black, cold flames that ate at the space around her, systematically spreading like a virus. Cold, hard dread filled her and back in her capsule, her heartbeat rose, her breathing quickened.
“I wasn’t sure we could meet like this.”
She turned smoothly, coalescing into the transparent image of her human shape to face what must be the image of Itachi. He was dressed in black robes adorned with red clouds chased in white while she stood naked, hair loose. A ship did not need clothes, so Itachi was not a Whispered. However he had come to be before her, it was not that way.
When she spoke, her voice echoed. Her mouth did not move. “What are you doing here?”
“There’s something I need you to do,” he replied, calmly. He made no move towards her, but far away, distant, she felt the lid of her capsule slide open. She couldn’t scream, not there in that world, and her body could not wake, she was still connected to the ship. Trapped in two places, her Whispered form stood frozen in place as the Itachi onboard the Byakugan lifted her body from its mechanical bed, while the Itachi before her watched without expression.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, unable to move in either direction, back towards her body or deeper into the ship.
“It won’t take long,” he replied, not answering her question. “I don’t have long to give.”
The Itachi - the real one - onboard the ship disintegrated before her eyes, taking her body with him. As soon as he disappeared, she felt her virtual form start to fade, pulled to wherever it was he had taken her body. How he had managed to teleport from the ship, she didn’t know. The illusion of Itachi next to her offered no answers, merely held out a hand, as if she had any choice but to go with him.
Transparent and barely there, she put her hand lightly in his. The two of them winked out, candles extinguished in the dark.
The moment Neji entered Whitefall’s atmosphere, he knew something was wrong. The Tsukiyomi was nowhere to be seen, but the Byakugan was exactly where the shuttle computer said it would be, hidden down inside a cave on a canyon wall. He stayed as low as he could under the radar but was surprised when it was Lee’s voice he heard over the com, initiating the docking sequence. By the time the air lock stabilized and he stepped out of the shuttle into the cargo bay, Neji felt tense, like his skin was too tight. Lee greeted him.
“Neji.” The look the mechanic gave him was grim. “Something’s happened.”
“The Tsukiyomi?” He hadn’t seen the ship on his approach but that did not mean they were in the clear.
Lee gave him a sober look. “It’s Tenten. She’s missing.”
Neji stilled. “What do you mean?”
“She’s not on the ship. We’ve looked everywhere and the scan came up negative three times.” Lee’s dark eyes were wide.
“She’s not here, Captain. She’s not anywhere.”
TO BE CONTINUED.
TITLE: Straight On Till Morning
SERIES: Naruto
CHARACTERS: NejiTen, SasuSaku, Team Gai, Itachi, Orochimaru
WORD COUNT: 2,203
RATING: PG-13
NOTES: Itachi enters stage left.
STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING
Part Three: Out of the Frying Pan
For a moment, all Sakura could do was stare at the image on the vidscreen, watching as the sleek, dark ship sailed out of Whitefall’s shadow, headed straight for them. It looked exactly the same, the sharp fins on the side, an engine on each in addition to the large one in the tail. A blood red moon adorned the starboard side underneath the stencil of its name. Tsukiyomi.
“Itachi”, Sasuke growled, fists clenched at his sides. In another moment, he was out of the medbay and moving towards the flight deck before she could stop him. She watched him go, knowing nothing good would come of it but unable to abandon Tenten who was now flat on her back on the exam table, hands still over her ears, her features twisted in pain.
“You’re not on fire, you’re not on fire,” she mumbled, rocking sideways a bit, sending a few of Sakura’s instruments clattering to the floor. Sakura hovered near the other girl’s side, unsure if it was safe to touch her not.
“Tenten, tell me what to do. What can I do?” Her hands fluttered helplessly over the Whispered’s hunched form. She hated feeling so out of her depth. She had trained in some of the finest medical schools in the universe, why now could she do nothing?
“The... weapons room,” Tenten managed, gasping. “You... have to take me...”
Sakura nodded quickly, taking Tenten by the arm and helping her off the table. It was harder than it might have otherwise been. Tenten seemed unable to uncurl her body, shoulders curved in, head down. Sakura could only put an arm around her and lead her on, propelling her out of the medbay and towards the locked room she’d glimpsed on her first tour through the trip. Now she understood why Lee hadn’t wanted to talk about that room. It must be where Tenten was able to access the core of the the Byakugan.
They made their way towards it at a limping half-run, Sakura holding on to Tenten to try and keep the other girl from collapsing on the floor. When they finally reached the door, she helped Tenten lean against the nearby wall and gently positioned her head for the eye scanner. There was a beep, a light flashed green, and the door slid open.
Inside was a transparent blue pod, similar almost to the medical beds Sakura had used in high-tech surgery. She helped Tenten over to it, mystified as the Whispered climbed in, still cringing from whatever the Tsukiyomi was mentally feeding her.
“I’ll... call Neji back,” she panted, “Protect the ship, don’t... let them board us.”
Sakura nodded hurriedly. “I will. I’ll do whatever I can.”
Tenten managed a strained smile and then laid down, the capsule closing over her head. Once closed, Tenten’s expression eased and her body relaxed, stretching out again. Sakura exhaled at the sight. However this room worked, it was clearly what Tenten needed. Perhaps, with the whole of the Byakugan now between her and the Tsukiyomi, Tenten could filter out the ship’s screeching voice.
Carefully, Sakura backed out of the room, letting the door slide shut again. For a moment, she simply stood in the hallway, breathing, getting herself under control. Suddenly a door down the hallway slid open on its own, revealing stairs up to the flight deck. In the now open door, a phantom shape appeared, faint and translucent. It slowly resolved into an image of Tenten, long dark hair unbound and looking free from the pain she’d been in earlier. She nodded once at Sakura and then very clearly pointed at the open doorway before disappearing again.
Sakura blinked, awed. She stumbled forward, half-falling through the open door and clamoring up the steps. Both Lee and Sasuke were already on the flight deck when she arrived, Lee sitting at the controls while Sasuke stood on the bridge, watching the Tsukiyomi grow larger and larger in the window.
Overhead, Tenten’s voice came through the ship’s intercom, mystical and remote. “Approaching warship Tsukiyomi, please state your intentions.”
Instead of answering, the Tsukiyomi fired. Laser fire peppered the Byakugan’s nose, sending off an alarm. Without Lee lifting a finger, the Byakugan’s engines revved to life.
“Firing Twin Dragon cannons.”
The ship shook as two large, energy missiles shot from the forward cannons, leaving tails of energy in their wakes that twirled around one another. The energy spheres burst against the Tsukiyomi in a flash of light and fire. Immediately, the Byakugan took off, flanking right, missing the Tsukiyomi’s retaliatory laser fire. The black ship soon sped after them, following as Tenten pointed the ship towards Whitefall.
Lee glanced back at her and Sasuke from his seat at the controls. “Get buckled in quickly!” Flames streaked across the large flight deck windows as heat shields activated to protect them. Tenten’s voice sounded overhead.
“Entering planet atmosphere in 10...9...”
Sakura threw herself into one of two swivel chairs located across from Lee with Sasuke buckling himself into the other. The sound of atmospheric entry roared around them until, with a boom, they pushed through, a burst of speed from the Byakugan’s engines sending them streaking across Whitefall’s sky.
Sakura clutched the arms of her chair. “The Tsukiyomi... is it following?” she asked, anxiously.
Lee punched a few buttons on the computer screen in front of him. “Yes,” he said tightly.
As if he were giving her an order, Tenten answered.
“Initiating evasive maneuvers.”
A sudden drop in Sakura’s stomach made her gasp as the Byakugan seemed to plummet towards the planet’s dry and dusty surface, the ground coming up to meet them at an alarming rate. The moment it seemed as if they would surely crash, a large canyon opened up in the earth and the ship dipped down into it with perfect timing, weaving around rock formations and underneath stone bridges. At the speed in which they were traveling, only a Whispered could have piloted the ship through such a tight and convoluted space. The Tsukiyomi would not be able to follow them.
“He’s tracking us from above,” Lee said quickly. His eyes flickered across the monitor. “Tenten...”
The Byakugan banked an almost impossibly hard right and then...
“A cave,” Sakura breathed in relief, as darkness enveloped the ship. It was just barely large enough to hold them and the ship slowed and then finally settled on the cave floor, engines powering down.
“It will be hard to read our energy signals beneath all this rock,” Lee said, relaxing in his chair a bit. “We should be safe for now.”
Sakura unbuckled herself slowly, her eyes on Sasuke. He was unbuckling himself as well, his eyes on the viewing screens like if he just looked hard enough, he’d be able to see his brother’s ship out there, somewhere overhead. Carefully, oh so carefully, she reached out to touch his shoulder.
“Sasuke...”
The muscle underneath her fingertips was as hard as rock, he was so tense. He jerked away from her in the next second, turning on his heel and stalking past her, disappearing down the steps. She watched him go, worried, but knowing that nothing she said would be enough. She was never enough.
For several long moments, she simply sat there, watching idly as Lee tinkered with various instruments, focused on keeping them hidden. She couldn’t understand why Itachi would be after Sasuke now, after all this time. If he had wanted to kill Sasuke, wouldn’t he have done it back on Uchiha? Unless he didn’t realize that his brother was onboard the Byakugan? But no, she couldn’t imagine Itachi making such a careless mistake. The way he had avoided answering when Tenten had hailed the ship... Why keep silent unless he knew absolutely what he was doing?
Lee made a soft sound in his throat and she looked up, drawn out of her thoughts. “What is it?”
The mechanic glanced at her, his expression kind, as if he wished he had better news. She clenched her fingers together. “The cargo bay doors just opened and closed. Audio confirms that a firearm was discharged.”
She breathed out. “Orochimaru’s spy?”
Lee nodded slowly. “I think Sasuke just dealt with him.”
Deep within a subspace of mechanical equations and electrical wiring, Tenten flew. Or perhaps it was not so much flying as it was swimming. She floated through circuit boards and couplings and engine statistics, all of it filtered by the capsule her body lay in, information pouring directly into her mind. With a thought she killed the power to the ship’s engine, turned off all non-critical systems so keep their energy signature small. She could feel the Tsukiyomi overhead like a vulture, ready to pick at their bones. The ship’s voice was silent now, waiting.
Tenten melted through walls, opened the cargo bays doors for Sasuke as he pushed the spy’s body out onto the hard rocky floor of the cave. She moved onto the flight deck, checking on Lee and Sakura before pushing upwards, stretching out to the edges of the ship. She could tell that Neji’s shuttle was still half an hour away, she felt it homing beacon on it blip across her senses. She fed the shuttle’s computer system their coordinates and updated it on the whereabouts of the Tsukiyomi. Neji would not be able to rendezvous with the Byakugan unless he could do it under Itachi’s radar. She thought she might be able to do it though, when Neji got-
The virtual landscape around her changed, darkening, and she paused, stilling herself within the walls of the ship. Around her, colors shifted and shapes formed, curves and eddies of-
Flames.
Black, cold flames that ate at the space around her, systematically spreading like a virus. Cold, hard dread filled her and back in her capsule, her heartbeat rose, her breathing quickened.
“I wasn’t sure we could meet like this.”
She turned smoothly, coalescing into the transparent image of her human shape to face what must be the image of Itachi. He was dressed in black robes adorned with red clouds chased in white while she stood naked, hair loose. A ship did not need clothes, so Itachi was not a Whispered. However he had come to be before her, it was not that way.
When she spoke, her voice echoed. Her mouth did not move. “What are you doing here?”
“There’s something I need you to do,” he replied, calmly. He made no move towards her, but far away, distant, she felt the lid of her capsule slide open. She couldn’t scream, not there in that world, and her body could not wake, she was still connected to the ship. Trapped in two places, her Whispered form stood frozen in place as the Itachi onboard the Byakugan lifted her body from its mechanical bed, while the Itachi before her watched without expression.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, unable to move in either direction, back towards her body or deeper into the ship.
“It won’t take long,” he replied, not answering her question. “I don’t have long to give.”
The Itachi - the real one - onboard the ship disintegrated before her eyes, taking her body with him. As soon as he disappeared, she felt her virtual form start to fade, pulled to wherever it was he had taken her body. How he had managed to teleport from the ship, she didn’t know. The illusion of Itachi next to her offered no answers, merely held out a hand, as if she had any choice but to go with him.
Transparent and barely there, she put her hand lightly in his. The two of them winked out, candles extinguished in the dark.
The moment Neji entered Whitefall’s atmosphere, he knew something was wrong. The Tsukiyomi was nowhere to be seen, but the Byakugan was exactly where the shuttle computer said it would be, hidden down inside a cave on a canyon wall. He stayed as low as he could under the radar but was surprised when it was Lee’s voice he heard over the com, initiating the docking sequence. By the time the air lock stabilized and he stepped out of the shuttle into the cargo bay, Neji felt tense, like his skin was too tight. Lee greeted him.
“Neji.” The look the mechanic gave him was grim. “Something’s happened.”
“The Tsukiyomi?” He hadn’t seen the ship on his approach but that did not mean they were in the clear.
Lee gave him a sober look. “It’s Tenten. She’s missing.”
Neji stilled. “What do you mean?”
“She’s not on the ship. We’ve looked everywhere and the scan came up negative three times.” Lee’s dark eyes were wide.
“She’s not here, Captain. She’s not anywhere.”
TO BE CONTINUED.