(Tim Seltzer, seltzer@seltzerbooks.com) Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I do not own Wedding Peach.
I do not own any great quantity of money or property. I'm a STUDENT; that's
why I'm poor, okay?
Author's Notes: This is just a random observation, but... was
it I who came up with the trend of surrounding X's and other junk around
a name, at least among those who read Naruto fanfiction? Because it sure
seemed to sprout out in recent months. If this takeover is indeed my unintentional
doing, I just want to say that it's NOT an original idea of mine. I got
it from a German foreign exchange student.
Sakura screamed. In rage, she ran with Tennyo in her grip to kill the
monster. She did not care whether the goblin was twice her weight and could
swat her like a fly. As she knew was that this was not her idea.
'This isn't right!' she yelled inside. 'This isn't supposed to happen!'
A pure and innocent creature like the unicorn was mortally hurt because
a stupid kunoichi did not hear the goblins trailing her. The animal could
not fight on its own. It did not deserve to die in such a degrading manner.
The stallion, despite having an axe buried in its chest, kicked the
goblin in the head. The goblin staggered back. The unicorn reared again
and stomped directly onto its assailant's face. The monster's head came
between the weight of the giant horse and the temple stone underneath:
it was crushed dead in an instant.
Sakura was bewildered. The unicorn was severely wounded; it was a marvel
that the beast could move so quickly and strongly in those conditions.
'Maybe it's strong enough to live!' she hopefully thought. The unicorn's
knees buckled, and the magnificent animal fell onto the ground. Sakura
immediately ran to the fallen beast. She knelt down, and examined the wound.
A clear liquid was going out in soft bursts. 'Unicorns... have transparent
blood,' Sakura remembered. 'Oh, no...'
Sakura gulped. Yes, she did take medical lessons from Tsunade, but she
had hardly an experience to perform such a complex operation. Nevertheless
she had to try. She dug into her supplies, and pulled out a medical kit.
Sakura looked into the unicorn's black eyes. "This will hurt, but it
needs to come out," she whispered. The animal blinked, and held still as
Sakura reached for the axe.
It winced as she pulled it out. The bleeding increased, and the kunoichi
quickly surrounded the wound with her dress to slow it down.
Sakura put her hands together in a hand-seal. Her thoughts fell upon
Tsunade the lady's personality, and her kindness. Sure, the woman was
rough and rude at times. She still had her vile habit of gambling, and
drinking sake. Yet the woman looked out for Sakura, and especially Naruto,
like an older sister. She loved the village, and protected it with her
life.
'I want to be like you, Tsunade-sama,' Sakura thought. 'Please, please
give me the strength... So that I can make you proud.'
The kunoichi felt her hands glow with chakra. She opened her eyes, and
reached into the unicorn's wound. She had to fuse the cells back together,
and hope for the best. This had to work.
The clear blood pumped out over her fingers, like some sort of thin
glue. "Live," Sakura ordered quietly.
(( "This move requires cold concentration, and perfect control of chakra."
Tsunade explained. Sakura nodded, her face determined. "If you get it right,
it's quite handy. Even at the first stage of mastering it, it leaves no
scars unless a large chunk of flesh came out in the first place. As the
wounds get deeper, you need more chakra, and more skill." ))
The horse's breathing became shallow. The unicorn's eyes calmly watched
what Sakura was doing. "Live," Sakura repeated, ignoring the obvious sadness
in the animal's eyes. The crevice in the animal's flesh began to close
up.
(( "Remember, though this doesn't heal everything. If the patient
looses too much... well... blood," Tsunade said nervously, "there won't
be enough oxygen going to the brain and vital organs." ))
Sakura felt the unicorn's heart-beat drop to a lull. The wound was half-way
closed. Yet her strength was failing; it too was deep to begin with. Sakura
growled.
The unicorn weakly moved its head, so that the tip of its curled, crystal
horn touched Sakura's forehead. 'Don't do it anymore,' the unicorn telepathically
told her.
Sakura hissed in annoyance. "You WILL live after this," she stubbornly
said. She was too focused in her work to even be surprised at the unicorn's
psychic abilities after all, if the unicorn died, there would be none
of those talents left.
'I am finished,' the unicorn said in resolve. 'Even when I added some
of my powers to your own, it was not enough. I should not burden you anymore.
It is too late.'
"No, it's not!!" Sakura exclaimed. She tried to pull the wound together,
but the unicorn was in a terrible position for an operation. Its breathing
was weak. The blood over Sakura's hands jelled into a cool, whitish substance
over her fingers. Her lower lip wavered. "I'm... the one who's a burden."
The unicorn's eyes were soft. 'I know that you were not sent by the
goblins. No matter what blood relations you have, your heart is strong
and good.'
Blood relations. Sakura had almost forgotten the main reason she was
here in the first place.
'Little one, I see the options laid out before you... And I tell you,
you are not the Angel of Death. It is yet too early of this world to stop
existing; the stars and gods have told me this. However, I give you this
warning: if you combine your angel and demon powers the power might be
too great for you. There are laws in this dimension, and a being whose
angel and demon forces somehow fuse together will self-destruct... whether
it is by accident, or by choice. That is why when the One comes... the
blast shall be so massive that everything will cease to exist.'
Sakura's breath caught in her mouth. Self-destruct?
'As a final request... Save the Tree of Life, near the elfin village
of Frida. I give you my horn for the ordeal, once my body disappears.'
The tears dripped down Sakura's face. There was nothing more she could
do. Her chakra was depleted, and she could barely move. The kunoichi wiped
as much crusted blood from her hands as she could, and stroked the unicorn's
nose.
She sobbed into the white mane. In her arms, the unicorn drew its last
breath.
Two loud, clattering goblins stumbled into a hallway. Their eyes met
with those of Minoru and Potamos.
"Keep the last one alive, devil-child!" Minoru ordered, drawing an arrow
across the shaft. The arrow whizzed through the air and sank into a goblin's
head, while Potamos ordered some water to engulf the other.
Potamos irritably tucked her upper lip under the lower one. "That's
not fair; you get to kill one, but I have to keep mine alive!"
"How DARE you say that when you ran away!" Minoru snarled, making Potamos
jump.
"Yes," the water-demon peeped. Her water pinned the goblin to the wall,
but the monster put up a struggle. "I can't hold 'm!" the water-demon yelled.
"He's too strong!"
Minoru growled, and vines burst out of the ground from under the goblin,
twisting and turning around its limbs. The monster snarled in its trapped
state. Potamos sighed. "Thanks, Mino-chan."
The elf panted, glaring at the monster. "Devil-child..." he said, glancing
to Potamos, "I give you the honor of... questioning him. The standards
I give you is to keep him conscious and get answers."
A small smile crept over the water-demon's face. "Really?" she squeaked.
"Yes," Minoru said, annoyed that he was starting to accept Potamos'
rather strange fetishes. But at the same time, she was better than him
in interrogation techniques. "Sakura-san must be safe now. We need answers
of just why some goblins were hiding out in the depths of the temple of
Lumina."
Potamos weakly grinned at Minoru, then turned her gleaming yellow eyes
onto the monster. "Who sent you?" she asked cutely.
Minoru rolled his eyes. The goblin snapped its jaws at Potamos, clearly
underestimating what she was capable of.
A tiny, straight dagger of ice morphed in her palm her most recent
achievement and she pointed it at the goblin's throat. Before, she had
used a mist-illusion of a spear, and the chakra in the mist would give
the victim an acute touch of coldness at the skin. But now was the real
deal: she pushed the sharp weapon into the goblin's neck, and blood began
to seep out. "Ya know," she giggled, "I can tell that you have SOME knowledge
of language. Why? Because I heard you talking with the other one, before
Mino-chan here put an arrow straight into his head." She grinned. "My,
there was a lot of blood."
The goblin's jaw clenched. Potamos' cat-eyes twinkled, and she grinned.
The goblin roared, as Potamos' spear of ice pushed deeper. "Alrigh', Alrigh'!!!"
it exclaimed, sobbing. "My master sent us out to kill the unicorn!"
"I wanna know the NAME," Potamos sing-songed. "Of your master," she
ended. The purple-haired girl began to twist the dagger into the goblin's
skin like a screw, making it shriek.
"The likes of me, don't know the master's name!" the goblin said in
a raspy voice. "Just stop, stop!!"
Potamos frowned. "How can you not know YOUR OWN MASTER'S NAME?"
"He's speaking the truth, devil-child," Minoru said, wiping his brow,
still attempting to digest the fact that he and Sakura put up with this
girl. "Lower-ranking goblins are not informed of their master's name, because
the leader doesn't trust them enough. Anyway... the unicorn, remember?"
"Oh yeah!" Potamos turned back to the goblin. "I ask you 'bout the unicorn!"
she repeated. "What happened to it?"
A vicious grin spread over his face. It began to laugh, clearly enjoying
its brief power. "It's... dead," it said in a choking voice. "And so's
the human girl."
Potamos cat-eyes creased in fury. "Liar!!" she screamed, stabbing the
weapon deep into the vile monster's throat. The goblin began to make choking
noises, and it lost consciousness. "Man, that felt GOOD," the water-demon
hissed. "Anyways, we've gotta find Sacchan!"
The vines fell away from the monster's corpse. "You shouldn't have done
that," Minoru said, shuddering at what just happened. "Sakura is alive.
She shouldn't be too far from here."
They turned a corner, and something in the water-demon's brain clicked.
"We... passed here," Potamos said. She glanced at a tall column, and recognized
the markings. "It was around here that we saw the unicorn!"
Minoru frowned at the markings of the column. "This must be the main
pillar," he mumbled.
"You noticed, too!" Potamos exclaimed. "Sacchan was really suspicious
of it; it's not in the same style as the rest of the building." She glanced
around, trying to find Sakura.
"Well, that's actually... normal," Minoru said. "When one renovates
a building, it's reasonable to assume that the people want it more in fashion."
Minoru's fingers traced the ancient script. "Sakura-san was observant,
yes but she was overanalyzing it, without knowing the trends in architecture."
"Mino-chan, over here!" Potamos exclaimed, waving to a pile of rubble.
Minoru sighed, knowing well that the peppy water-demon had not digested
an ounce of his explanation.
Minoru's breath seemed to stop at the picture. Potamos quivered.
The dead unicorn lay on the grass, its head in Sakura's lap. The corpse
of an enormous goblin lay nearby. The smaller bodies of two decapitated
monsters were sprawled over the ground, with the detached heads nesting
in the grass like moth-infested cabbages.
Minoru ran over to Sakura, and embraced her. "Sakura-san..."
"It rescued me," Sakura said quietly.
"Huh?" Potamos timidly walked over, her eyes saddening at the scene.
"Sacchan, what do you mean?"
"The unicorn... knew that I was no match for the leader," Sakura choked.
"I didn't realize until now... He risked his life to crush the monster,
before it got to me. The unicorn could have gotten away; it could run fast
enough. But it was because of me... that it died... It's all my fault..."
Sakura felt the blond elf's gentle hands stroke her head. It was so
comfortable that it tempted her to burst into tears. "Minoru-san..." she
sniffed. "He said... I'm not the Angel of Death."
Minoru stroked her pink hair. "From the beginning, I knew it didn't
sound like you. And I am happy that you are safe."
"He... also told me something else."
Sakura rubbed her eyes as she trod through the rocky ground. Her red
dress was back on when the carcass of the unicorn faded away, so did
the blood in the dress evaporate. All that was left of the great animal
was the crystal horn, which Sakura kept wrapped in a bundle of cloth in
her supply bag.
Sakura mentally repeated the ninja saying: 'A true shinobi does not
display emotions...'
"It's not your fault," Minoru soothed, reading Sakura's facial expression.
"Had I come earlier, instead of interrogating those two other goblins
I might have been able to help heal him."
"It's nobody's total fault..." Sakura said quietly, wiping away a tear
that escaped her green eyes.
Potamos hiccupped. She couldn't take the tension anymore. "Sacchan is
miserable, and it's all 'cause of me!" her voice suddenly burst out, startling
Minoru and Sakura. "And all because I... I ran away..."
"No, it was right for you to go get Minoru-san's help," Sakura said.
Potamos twiddled her fingers nervously. "Well, not exactly... The truth
is, I wanted so badly for you to meet the unicorn. But I was afraid that
he might not welcome me..."
"Why?" Sakura asked. She curiously looked at Potamos' blushing face.
Potamos gulped. "I had a boyfriend once," the water-demon quickly explained.
"And?" Minoru pushed on. The blond elf grinned widely. He couldn't resist;
it was too perfect.
Sakura innocently blinked which made the water-demon blush even more.
Minoru's innards were screaming with mirth. Surely, the poor little
demon did not have to explain ever detail to the smart kunoichi? Oh, he
would pay big to see that...
The water-demon's face turned from pink into a bright crimson. "Well...
we kinda... YOU KNOW!!"
Realization dawned on Sakura. "You mean"
"Don't say it!" Potamos yelled, clutching her head.
Minoru let the laughter seep out of him.
Sakura stared at the elf, wondering how he could laugh. But it was contagious.
The pink-haired girl started to giggle, helping to wash away some of the
sadness in her. Even though there was death, there was also life. And if
there was life, there was always the possibility of humor.
"Mino-chan, you're so mean!" Potamos squealed, covering her red cheeks.
"And you even got Sacchan laughing at me!"
"Was he GOOD, Potamos?" the kunoichi asked sweetly.
Potamos fanned her face. "Oh, yes... I mean, he was a JERK personality-wise;
I dumped him after a while. Wait, why am I telling you two this?! Let's
stop this conversation, right now!"
Notes:
In the Wedding Peach manga, Potamos had crushes on at least two demons
(she killed one of them, by the way). She is so cute! I love her!
If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please tell me! If
I suck, by all means tell me. In an intelligent manner.
Book
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