Sakura’s eyes flew open. “Really?!”
What? That dream. It can’t actually be coming true?
For a moment, a smile very nearly floated up onto her lips, but from Gaara’s tone and expression, she assumed that this situation was not all smooth sailing and kept her grin in check.
“Sasuke’s here?”
“Why?”
Sakura and Ino gave voice to their questions simultaneously.
Gaara clasped his hands together on top of the round table and let out a deep breath.
“I’m not quite sure where to start. I suppose it would be best to simply tell you what happened as it happened,” he said. “Two days ago, Uchiha Sasuke contacted terrorists hiding themselves in our village.”
“What?!” Ino shouted, her voice wild. “Hold on a minute. Why would Sasuke talk to terrorists—”
“Ino.” It was Temari who interrupted her. “Gaara will talk first. Save your questions for after.”
“Sorry.”
Gaara nodded and continued. “Two days ago, members of the Anbu and I surrounded the terrorist base. Normally, the leader of the village would not directly accompany such missions, but the situation being what it is…”
The terrorists were originally ninja from Sunagakure, but they opposed Gaara’s appointment as Kazekage and left the village to form an antigovernment group. For a long time, Gaara hadn’t been able to pin down their location, but a month or so earlier one of the Anbu had discovered their base, and the group had been placed under Anbu monitoring.
The group had made a move about a week earlier.
A lone man visited their base to talk with the terrorist leader. The member of the Anbu on monitoring duty had reported that the man visiting the base soon exited the tent and disappeared.
The meeting had been so short that the Anbu hadn’t been able to eavesdrop on their conversation. But a concerning report from one of the Anbu was brought to Gaara.
“The man who appeared at the base very strongly resembled Uchiha Sasuke of Konoha.”
Sasuke quietly drew a sharp breath. But her questions would have to wait.
“I thought that it was a mistake, an accidental resemblance,” Gaara remarked. “But I was reluctant to simply dismiss the matter so easily. So I decided to join the Anbu the next day on their monitoring mission.”
Gaara would have been able to peek inside the tent with his sand eye, and if he manipulated the sand, it was an easy matter to plant a listening device.
A few days after he joined the monitoring team, Uchiha Sasuke appeared at the terrorist base. Once he was there, he began negotiating with the terrorist leader.
“Sasuke pushed at the leader and demanded that they become his subordinates.”
“Subordinates?” Ino furrowed her brow.
Gaara nodded. “Sasuke came to them with the idea that they become his subordinates and help him destroy Konoha. If they did, he would help them with their own terrorist attacks.”
“But that’s—!” Sakura cried out reflexively.
Gaara ignored her. “The terrorist rejected Sasuke’s demands. So the negotiations broke down. But rather than leaving then and there, Sasuke killed the terrorist leader. He said he couldn’t let him live now that he knew Sasuke’s plan to destroy Konoha.”
Witnessing this with his sand eye, Gaara had given the order for the Anbu to charge in. A melee soon broke out between terrorists and Anbu, and in the midst of the chaos, Sasuke escaped. Gaara took off in pursuit, but at some point Sasuke hid his chakra, and Gaara lost him.
“This happened two days ago.”
Sakura closed her eyes. But her mouth didn’t open. Silence descended on the room.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Ino said, finally, half-laughing. “You think we’d believe a story like that?” The situation was simply too far from reality.
Sakura could empathize with how she felt.
A family’s tragedy. A hatred that made him want to leave the village. Sasuke overcame this; he was their friend, he fought with them in the Great Ninja War. Why would Sasuke now need to join up with terrorists and plot revenge on Konoha? She would never have expected this of him.
“Hey, Gaara, you’re completely sure that it was Sasuke?” Sakura asked.
“Right,” Ino said. “I mean, like, with a transformation technique or something, someone could have turned into Sasuke…”
“I’d like to believe that myself. But it’s hard to imagine that’s the case.” Gaara shook his head lightly. “Even if someone were able to use a transformation technique to resemble him, they wouldn’t be able to make their chakra the same color and type. The Sasuke I saw at the base two days ago had the exact same chakra as the Sasuke I know so well.”
“I’m sure I heard about a ninja in the Konoha Anbu who can mimic chakra. Any connection there?” Temari said.
Sakura had also heard about the existence of such a ninja. But that ninja probably had nothing to do with this.
“I don’t think so,” Sakura replied. “Sasuke has no point of contact with that ninja, and I don’t know why he would do such a thing in the first place.”
“In that case, there’s a very good possibility that the Sasuke who Gaara saw is the real Sasuke.”
“Temari! How can you say—”
“I’m just stating a fact,” Temari said, turning sharp eyes on Ino.
“White Zets—” Sakura started to say, and quickly dismissed it. “No, of course not.”
“I thought that for a minute too,” Gaara said. “It also had the ability to mimic chakra. But given that Otsutsuki Kaguya has been destroyed, I can’t imagine it survived.”
“So then…what about the possibility of Impersonation Jutsu?” Sakura asked. She had read in the Archive Library that the leader of Akatsuki, Pain, had used this jutsu, a technique to split a person’s chakra with a vessel, which the person then controlled as if it were their own body.
“True, that jutsu could explain why his face and his chakra were the same. But Pain’s gone. And if there were someone else who could use that technique, that still leaves the problems of why Sasuke would be in touch with such a person and why he would let that person make a copy of him.”
Gaara was right. Even if the Sasuke he had seen was a copy instead of the real Sasuke, that didn’t clear Sasuke from suspicion.
“Can you get in touch with him?” Gaara asked. “I heard he left on a journey.”
Sakura shook her head helplessly. “There are these contact spots all over where we can leave a message, but…”
“But we don’t know when he would get to them,” Ino picked up where Sakura left off.
“Suna has no intention of leaking this matter to the outside. We plan to take care of it internally. The only people who know about it are the members of the Anbu assigned to this mission, along with Temari and a few senior ninja, and me. The terrorists we arrested at the base are also currently imprisoned, so no information will get out of the village.”
“There’s no way Uchiha Sasuke would try and join up with terrorists. Gaara and I think so too,” Temari said. “To begin with, I have a hard time believing that Sasuke would be so sloppy as to abruptly demand anyone be his subordinate in a negotiation.”
Sakura nodded.
“Sakura, Ino. I think you should hurry back home and ask Kakashi for his judgment,” Gaara said. “Although I do really wish you could have a bit more of a leisurely stay, since you’ve come all the way to Suna.”
Naturally, Sakura intended to return to the village. Coming to Sunagakure, she had had a lot of things she wanted to do. She wanted to learn more about the medical system in the village, and there was a specialist she wanted to talk with about poison research.
But right now, returning to Konoha was their priority.
“I’ll send a messenger falcon to Kakashi outlining the situation. I’d go myself and explain the situation, but given my position as head of the village, I can’t exactly leave so easily.”
“I understand.”
We took four days to come, but we’ll make it home in three, Sakura told herself.