[1039] Act II, Scene IV--Sakura
Welcome to the penultimate scene in Act II. This time we get to see this wonderful world from Sakura's POV.
As always, standard disclaimers apply, and I always love feedback. Hope you enjoy! ♥
Original drabble by askerian
Act IAct II
Scene I, Sasuke
Scene I, Naruto
Scene II, Shikamaru
Scene II, Sasuke
Scene III, Neji
Scene III, Tenten
Scene IV, Tenten
Scene IV, Sakura
Scene V, Lee
“--casted at the request of the Department of Homeland Security. A local area emergency has been declared in the following counties: Benton, Chelan, Clackamas, Clark, Clatsop, Columbia, Cowlitz, Hood River, Jefferson, King, Kittitas, Klickitat, Lewis, Lincoln, Linn, Marion, Multnomah, Pierce, Polk, Skamania, Snohomish, Thurston, Tillamook, Wahkiakum, Wasco, Washington, Yakima, and Yamhill.”
The speaker was threatening to slip out of her left ear. Sakura adjusted the earphones automatically and made a mental note to tell everyone when it was time to wake up that Chelan had been added to the list. Twenty-eight counties now, and it had been only twenty-two when she had collapsed in a pile of loose hay and straw and fallen asleep with the alert system ringing in her left ear. The right ear she kept clear so she could hear the noise of her surroundings.
“All residents are advised to seek immediate shelter. Lock and barricade all doors, windows, and other ground-level openings--”
She wondered what the adults did when they ran out of the boards they needed to nail the boards across the doors. They probably resorted to heavy furniture, shoving couches against flimsy glass porch doors, bracing kitchen chairs underneath doorknobs, turning tables on end to block low-hanging windows. It was a tossup whether tables would be more effective than the hay bales. She ran her fingers over the smooth wooden handle of her axe.
Poised just inside the inexplicable second-story door, Sakura kept watch over the pre-dawn fields. Nothing but shadows and sheep moved out in the high grass, at least, not as far as she could see. The night was less black than it had been; the sun was probably approaching the horizon. She had no idea how far off the dawn was; in spring she was never out of bed when the sunlight first spilled over the eastern horizon.
“--fer assistance to any persons who have been injured or are ill. Stay within your shelter until you receive further notification through the Emergency Alert System, local authorities, or the National Guard. Do not use your telephone. Telephone lines must be--”
The steps behind her creaked, breaking her focus on the man’s mechanical voice. Sakura turned sharply, tightening her fingers around the wooden shaft in her hands. She relaxed, though, when Naruto’s familiar silhouette headed over.
“Hey, Sakura,” he said. Not even his whispers were truly quiet, and it was reassuring to have proof that not everything could change in just a few hours. He plopped down in the hay next to her, sitting crisscross with his baseball bat balanced on his knees. “Everything looks fine downstairs. How about up here?”
It was difficult trying to listen to two voices in two ears, so Sakura turned down the volume on the mp3 player until it was a barely audible drone. “Nothing in the fields,” she answered.
Naruto leaned back on his palms, his right hand just inches away from her left hip. He sighed, long and loud, and spoke a moment later. “How’re you holding up?”
“Fine.” She shifted to look back over the fields. Nothing moved. It was getting brighter; the sheep-shaped lumps were getting defined edges.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” When Naruto didn’t respond, she shot him a look. “I am.”
He flinched away from her glare. “Sorry. I just--never mind.” His fingers curled around the loose hay.
The silence stretched between them. She glanced at him while he stared out into the open air. He didn’t seem to be moving anytime soon, so she stood up. “I’ll take downstairs.”
“No, you don’t have to,” he said quickly, dropping the hay to push himself to his feet. “I can take care of it.”
“So can I.” The words came out sharper than she meant them to.
“I know.” Naruto had paused, down on one knee, his baseball bat ready to lever him up like a cripple’s cane. He looked up at her, and Sakura shifted her feet, feeling the need to find more sturdy ground than the hay she was standing on. “Shit, Sakura, I know.”
Something inside her twisted, and she turned away, swinging the axe up and onto her shoulder. The haft settled against her collarbone, wide and heavy and comforting. “Then let me pull my own weight,” she said and headed for the stairs.
By the time the dawn light began to seep through the grimy barn windows, three more counties had been added to the list, and she could recite the entire broadcast by heart. She didn’t understand why they were still sticking to the ridiculously long list of affected counties and hadn’t simply declared the entirety of both states to be lost causes. Apparently someone in the Department of Homeland Security was an optimist.
Ino was an optimist. An optimist with a practical streak, at least. When Sakura found her, Ino would probably chew her out about running off like an idiot. Couldn’t trust me to take care of myself? she’d ask, smirking. Just what sort of weakling do you think I am?
She would never let Sakura live it down.
On the floor above, hay rustled as someone moved about. Sakura unlatched the gate separating the western and southern rooms and slipped through, though she did not climb down the two steps. She looked up instead, hidden beneath the last bit of ceiling beside the staircase, and watched as a pair of ill-fitting shoes wandered down the creaky wooden stairs.
Those were a pair of Sasuke’s sneakers, she realized with a start. But not the shoes he was wearing now. Naruto was wearing them. He’d tightened the laces and tied them in a double knot, but they still were a bit loose.
The answer came to her in a moment. Sasuke and Naruto had gone to Sasuke house before finding her. They’d gotten supplies there, and Naruto must have swapped his baseball cleats for a pair of sneakers.
Come to think of it, when she had run off from the school, they’d both still been in uniform, like Neji, Shikamaru, and Lee were now.
How could she have missed the change in clothing? It wasn’t like her to completely not register what Sasuke looked like. But she had.
What happened to the brain behind that huge forehead of yours? said Ino’s voice.
Naruto hit the bottom of the stairs. He turned slowly, surveying the area, until he spotted her. Then his stance relaxed, and he gave her his usual stupid smile. “Hey, Sakura,” he said over the EAS humming in her left ear. His voice dropped to a loud whisper as he walked to her. “It’s almost six. We should get everyone up and moving.”
How could she not have noticed how that black t-shirt was too big for Naruto? And the dark blue sweatpants were so long that the hems were matted with bits of hay.
How could she have completely missed the change? She wasn’t a genius like Shikamaru was, but she was smart. It was one of the reasons she’d been allowed to start helping track the baseball team’s stats in the first place. And in times like this, when the world was turned upside down and she absolutely could not be a burden, she couldn’t afford to be stupid. She couldn’t afford to be unobservant. She couldn’t afford to think that other people were going to step in and protect her.
“Sakura?” Naruto’s smile was slipping.
“Sorry,” she finally said, pulling the earphone out of her ear. The world seemed far too quiet now. She mustered up a smile; his knuckles went white on his bat. “I’ll get breakfast.”
He didn’t try to stop her this time.
When Sakura climbed up to the second story, her pockets stuffed full with protein bars and little packets of dried fruit from the car trunk--they weren’t going to be able to keep eating like they were, not with seven people, not if they were going to last until the early hours of Thursday--Naruto had managed to get everyone into various states wakefulness.
It was no surprise to her that Lee appeared to be his normal, energetic self, which gave her a sudden and unwanted infusion of hope. A tiny smile threatened to tug at her lips as she watched him dart back and forth between Shikamaru and Neji like a worried mother or girlfriend. Shikamaru was yawning with his eyes half-closed, but he was at least putting up with the fussing with a reasonable amount of grace.
Neji, however, was most certainly not a morning person, and he looked more and more irritated by the second. There was a spectacular bruise stretching along the left side of his face, but his eye seemed unharmed despite a bit of swelling along the socket. He swatted one of Lee’s hands away before his friend could poke at his wound.
Sasuke was standing by the door that opened into the air, apart from everyone. His arms were folded, and he was paying more attention to what was going on outside than what was happening inside. Naruto had decided to start investigating the rusting tools that had been piled up, forgotten, in another corner.
Tenten emerged from behind the stack of hay bales they’d designated as their makeshift bathroom. She looked tired, lingering on the edge of their little clearing, her shoulders drooping slightly. When she caught sight of Sakura, she straightened up and smiled as if this were any other normal Sunday morning. “Morning, Sakura.”
“Good morning.” She set her axe down so the handle leaned against a post, upright an easy to reach. “I’ve got breakfast.”
It only took a few moments to dole out the food, which was greeted with varying degrees of enthusiasm. By some unspoken agreement, no one complained aloud about the prospect of four more days of similar fare. Her news of the thirty-one counties with local area emergencies was not received as well. Shikamaru grimaced as he pulled out a pen and started scribbling on the map.
Sasuke swallowed his last mouthful of protein bar and brushed the crumbs off his hands. “We should be able to hit the national forest around noon,” he said abruptly. Everyone, including Naruto, turned to listen to him. “So long as we don’t have any serious problems.”
“A zombie apocalypse doesn’t qualify as a serious problem?”
Sakura wasn’t the only one who shot Naruto a withering look.
After a beat, Shikamaru sighed and put away his pen. It took some maneuvering, but he was finally able to spread it out on the hay. “We’re here,” he said, pointing to a lonely, tan colored part of the map as everyone but Sasuke crowded around. “The National Forest is here.” He pointed to broad expanse of light green paper.
Sakura scanned the map quickly, following the little red, blue, and black lines that marked roads of varying sizes. There were any number of ways to get about three-fourths of the way to their destination, but that’s where their freedom ended. She realized the problem just before Shikamaru pointed to it.
“If we’re going to hit any trouble, it’s going to be in Cottonwood City,” Shikamaru said. His voice was quiet and tired, though he sounded like he was in less pain than he had been the night before. “It’s got around eight thousand residents. At least it did five years ago, the map’s not current.”
There was a moment of silence.
“That’s...,” Naruto trailed off as he did some division, “twice the size of Independence?”
“Twice and half again,” Sakura answered without looking up from the map. Independence was the largest town in their school district, and it was spread out over a wide area thanks to its fair share of farms along the edges and country roads that wandered off in a dozen different ways. You could bypass Independence entirely with a bit of forethought.
They weren’t going to be able to do that with Cottonwood City. According to the map, the city was nestled in a long stretch of hilly terrain at the foot of the mountains. It was only a few miles from the national forest if the road had been built in a straight line; as it was, they were going to need to take a long, twisting road up through at least one pass.
“If we can get through there,” Sasuke said, “we can be in the forest in no time.” He pulled away from the bizarre door and joined their group, crouching beside the map. He reached out to tap a small rectangle just inside the green area. “There’s a ranger station here. We can hole up there until Wednesday, maybe even through Thursday if I can get cell phone reception there.”
It was Lee who finally asked what was on everyone else’s mind. “What if someone else is already there?”
Sasuke stood up. “We can’t afford to be turned away again.” He gave Neji and Shikamaru significant looks; Neji stared straight back at him, and Shikamaru focused on folding up the map. “We’ll make them let us in if it comes to it.”
Act II, Scene V--Shikamaru
As always, standard disclaimers apply, and I always love feedback. Hope you enjoy! ♥
Original drabble by askerian
Act IAct II
Scene I, Sasuke
Scene I, Naruto
Scene II, Shikamaru
Scene II, Sasuke
Scene III, Neji
Scene III, Tenten
Scene IV, Tenten
Scene IV, Sakura
Scene V, Lee
“--casted at the request of the Department of Homeland Security. A local area emergency has been declared in the following counties: Benton, Chelan, Clackamas, Clark, Clatsop, Columbia, Cowlitz, Hood River, Jefferson, King, Kittitas, Klickitat, Lewis, Lincoln, Linn, Marion, Multnomah, Pierce, Polk, Skamania, Snohomish, Thurston, Tillamook, Wahkiakum, Wasco, Washington, Yakima, and Yamhill.”
The speaker was threatening to slip out of her left ear. Sakura adjusted the earphones automatically and made a mental note to tell everyone when it was time to wake up that Chelan had been added to the list. Twenty-eight counties now, and it had been only twenty-two when she had collapsed in a pile of loose hay and straw and fallen asleep with the alert system ringing in her left ear. The right ear she kept clear so she could hear the noise of her surroundings.
“All residents are advised to seek immediate shelter. Lock and barricade all doors, windows, and other ground-level openings--”
She wondered what the adults did when they ran out of the boards they needed to nail the boards across the doors. They probably resorted to heavy furniture, shoving couches against flimsy glass porch doors, bracing kitchen chairs underneath doorknobs, turning tables on end to block low-hanging windows. It was a tossup whether tables would be more effective than the hay bales. She ran her fingers over the smooth wooden handle of her axe.
Poised just inside the inexplicable second-story door, Sakura kept watch over the pre-dawn fields. Nothing but shadows and sheep moved out in the high grass, at least, not as far as she could see. The night was less black than it had been; the sun was probably approaching the horizon. She had no idea how far off the dawn was; in spring she was never out of bed when the sunlight first spilled over the eastern horizon.
“--fer assistance to any persons who have been injured or are ill. Stay within your shelter until you receive further notification through the Emergency Alert System, local authorities, or the National Guard. Do not use your telephone. Telephone lines must be--”
The steps behind her creaked, breaking her focus on the man’s mechanical voice. Sakura turned sharply, tightening her fingers around the wooden shaft in her hands. She relaxed, though, when Naruto’s familiar silhouette headed over.
“Hey, Sakura,” he said. Not even his whispers were truly quiet, and it was reassuring to have proof that not everything could change in just a few hours. He plopped down in the hay next to her, sitting crisscross with his baseball bat balanced on his knees. “Everything looks fine downstairs. How about up here?”
It was difficult trying to listen to two voices in two ears, so Sakura turned down the volume on the mp3 player until it was a barely audible drone. “Nothing in the fields,” she answered.
Naruto leaned back on his palms, his right hand just inches away from her left hip. He sighed, long and loud, and spoke a moment later. “How’re you holding up?”
“Fine.” She shifted to look back over the fields. Nothing moved. It was getting brighter; the sheep-shaped lumps were getting defined edges.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” When Naruto didn’t respond, she shot him a look. “I am.”
He flinched away from her glare. “Sorry. I just--never mind.” His fingers curled around the loose hay.
The silence stretched between them. She glanced at him while he stared out into the open air. He didn’t seem to be moving anytime soon, so she stood up. “I’ll take downstairs.”
“No, you don’t have to,” he said quickly, dropping the hay to push himself to his feet. “I can take care of it.”
“So can I.” The words came out sharper than she meant them to.
“I know.” Naruto had paused, down on one knee, his baseball bat ready to lever him up like a cripple’s cane. He looked up at her, and Sakura shifted her feet, feeling the need to find more sturdy ground than the hay she was standing on. “Shit, Sakura, I know.”
Something inside her twisted, and she turned away, swinging the axe up and onto her shoulder. The haft settled against her collarbone, wide and heavy and comforting. “Then let me pull my own weight,” she said and headed for the stairs.
By the time the dawn light began to seep through the grimy barn windows, three more counties had been added to the list, and she could recite the entire broadcast by heart. She didn’t understand why they were still sticking to the ridiculously long list of affected counties and hadn’t simply declared the entirety of both states to be lost causes. Apparently someone in the Department of Homeland Security was an optimist.
Ino was an optimist. An optimist with a practical streak, at least. When Sakura found her, Ino would probably chew her out about running off like an idiot. Couldn’t trust me to take care of myself? she’d ask, smirking. Just what sort of weakling do you think I am?
She would never let Sakura live it down.
On the floor above, hay rustled as someone moved about. Sakura unlatched the gate separating the western and southern rooms and slipped through, though she did not climb down the two steps. She looked up instead, hidden beneath the last bit of ceiling beside the staircase, and watched as a pair of ill-fitting shoes wandered down the creaky wooden stairs.
Those were a pair of Sasuke’s sneakers, she realized with a start. But not the shoes he was wearing now. Naruto was wearing them. He’d tightened the laces and tied them in a double knot, but they still were a bit loose.
The answer came to her in a moment. Sasuke and Naruto had gone to Sasuke house before finding her. They’d gotten supplies there, and Naruto must have swapped his baseball cleats for a pair of sneakers.
Come to think of it, when she had run off from the school, they’d both still been in uniform, like Neji, Shikamaru, and Lee were now.
How could she have missed the change in clothing? It wasn’t like her to completely not register what Sasuke looked like. But she had.
What happened to the brain behind that huge forehead of yours? said Ino’s voice.
Naruto hit the bottom of the stairs. He turned slowly, surveying the area, until he spotted her. Then his stance relaxed, and he gave her his usual stupid smile. “Hey, Sakura,” he said over the EAS humming in her left ear. His voice dropped to a loud whisper as he walked to her. “It’s almost six. We should get everyone up and moving.”
How could she not have noticed how that black t-shirt was too big for Naruto? And the dark blue sweatpants were so long that the hems were matted with bits of hay.
How could she have completely missed the change? She wasn’t a genius like Shikamaru was, but she was smart. It was one of the reasons she’d been allowed to start helping track the baseball team’s stats in the first place. And in times like this, when the world was turned upside down and she absolutely could not be a burden, she couldn’t afford to be stupid. She couldn’t afford to be unobservant. She couldn’t afford to think that other people were going to step in and protect her.
“Sakura?” Naruto’s smile was slipping.
“Sorry,” she finally said, pulling the earphone out of her ear. The world seemed far too quiet now. She mustered up a smile; his knuckles went white on his bat. “I’ll get breakfast.”
He didn’t try to stop her this time.
When Sakura climbed up to the second story, her pockets stuffed full with protein bars and little packets of dried fruit from the car trunk--they weren’t going to be able to keep eating like they were, not with seven people, not if they were going to last until the early hours of Thursday--Naruto had managed to get everyone into various states wakefulness.
It was no surprise to her that Lee appeared to be his normal, energetic self, which gave her a sudden and unwanted infusion of hope. A tiny smile threatened to tug at her lips as she watched him dart back and forth between Shikamaru and Neji like a worried mother or girlfriend. Shikamaru was yawning with his eyes half-closed, but he was at least putting up with the fussing with a reasonable amount of grace.
Neji, however, was most certainly not a morning person, and he looked more and more irritated by the second. There was a spectacular bruise stretching along the left side of his face, but his eye seemed unharmed despite a bit of swelling along the socket. He swatted one of Lee’s hands away before his friend could poke at his wound.
Sasuke was standing by the door that opened into the air, apart from everyone. His arms were folded, and he was paying more attention to what was going on outside than what was happening inside. Naruto had decided to start investigating the rusting tools that had been piled up, forgotten, in another corner.
Tenten emerged from behind the stack of hay bales they’d designated as their makeshift bathroom. She looked tired, lingering on the edge of their little clearing, her shoulders drooping slightly. When she caught sight of Sakura, she straightened up and smiled as if this were any other normal Sunday morning. “Morning, Sakura.”
“Good morning.” She set her axe down so the handle leaned against a post, upright an easy to reach. “I’ve got breakfast.”
It only took a few moments to dole out the food, which was greeted with varying degrees of enthusiasm. By some unspoken agreement, no one complained aloud about the prospect of four more days of similar fare. Her news of the thirty-one counties with local area emergencies was not received as well. Shikamaru grimaced as he pulled out a pen and started scribbling on the map.
Sasuke swallowed his last mouthful of protein bar and brushed the crumbs off his hands. “We should be able to hit the national forest around noon,” he said abruptly. Everyone, including Naruto, turned to listen to him. “So long as we don’t have any serious problems.”
“A zombie apocalypse doesn’t qualify as a serious problem?”
Sakura wasn’t the only one who shot Naruto a withering look.
After a beat, Shikamaru sighed and put away his pen. It took some maneuvering, but he was finally able to spread it out on the hay. “We’re here,” he said, pointing to a lonely, tan colored part of the map as everyone but Sasuke crowded around. “The National Forest is here.” He pointed to broad expanse of light green paper.
Sakura scanned the map quickly, following the little red, blue, and black lines that marked roads of varying sizes. There were any number of ways to get about three-fourths of the way to their destination, but that’s where their freedom ended. She realized the problem just before Shikamaru pointed to it.
“If we’re going to hit any trouble, it’s going to be in Cottonwood City,” Shikamaru said. His voice was quiet and tired, though he sounded like he was in less pain than he had been the night before. “It’s got around eight thousand residents. At least it did five years ago, the map’s not current.”
There was a moment of silence.
“That’s...,” Naruto trailed off as he did some division, “twice the size of Independence?”
“Twice and half again,” Sakura answered without looking up from the map. Independence was the largest town in their school district, and it was spread out over a wide area thanks to its fair share of farms along the edges and country roads that wandered off in a dozen different ways. You could bypass Independence entirely with a bit of forethought.
They weren’t going to be able to do that with Cottonwood City. According to the map, the city was nestled in a long stretch of hilly terrain at the foot of the mountains. It was only a few miles from the national forest if the road had been built in a straight line; as it was, they were going to need to take a long, twisting road up through at least one pass.
“If we can get through there,” Sasuke said, “we can be in the forest in no time.” He pulled away from the bizarre door and joined their group, crouching beside the map. He reached out to tap a small rectangle just inside the green area. “There’s a ranger station here. We can hole up there until Wednesday, maybe even through Thursday if I can get cell phone reception there.”
It was Lee who finally asked what was on everyone else’s mind. “What if someone else is already there?”
Sasuke stood up. “We can’t afford to be turned away again.” He gave Neji and Shikamaru significant looks; Neji stared straight back at him, and Shikamaru focused on folding up the map. “We’ll make them let us in if it comes to it.”
Act II, Scene V--Shikamaru