His conspirator was Jiji.
Sasuke raced with Meno against the stream of fleeing prisoners and hurried to the observatory, slicing down all the dragons he encountered.
Zansul had referred to Kakashi as “your comrade.” The only one who knew that Sasuke had a comrade was Jiji.
Zansul wasn’t a shinobi. The one using Edotensei was Jiji. He had concealed his true nature so that Sasuke couldn’t see that he was a shinobi. He had mastered a forbidden jutsu and had brought back to life multiple dragons at once. There was no doubt that he was a skilled ninja.
The observatory was in a terrible state. The wall, residential building, and library were all crushed. Only the main building was still standing, but just barely. The battered bodies of prisoners lay in piles everywhere, and dragons had their heads thrust into those heaps, feeding. In the chaos of everyone wildly trying to escape, Sasuke couldn’t see any sign of Sakura. If she was looking for Zansul, she would have been in the main building.
“Meno, we part ways here. You help the prisoners escape. Get as many out as you can. Okay?” He turned toward the main building.
At the same time, there was a tremendous trembling of the earth.
The rupture in the courtyard turned into a ravine, and an enormous dragon, likely thirty meters long, appeared from below. The foundation was crushed under its weight, and the walls of the main building cracked and snapped. And then the whole courtyard collapsed.
Every other thought flew out of his mind.
His wife was still inside the observatory.
“Sakura!” Sasuke leaped into the cloud of dust and shoved aside rubble. “Sakura! Where are you?!”
He got no reply.
He looked with his Sharingan, but he couldn’t detect any trace of her chakra and panicked even more. If he didn’t know exactly where she was in this mess, he couldn’t simply knock the rubble aside.
Sakura was no average jonin. Normally, being trapped under this amount of rubble would have given her little trouble. But not so if she couldn’t use her chakra.
The poison painted on Meno’s claws. If the same poison was used on Sakura she wouldn’t be able to get out of this collapsed building using her own strength. Having experienced the poison himself, Sasuke knew that better than anyone else.
“Dammit …” He bit his lip in frustration.
Wasn’t there any way to find her?
He racked his brain desperately, but in his frantic state, he couldn’t think straight. In the end, all he could do was dig at the mess of bricks and wood before him.
“Answer me! Sakura!”
When Sakura came to, the first thing she saw was a peeling plaster wall. The tip of a nail poking out from it had stopped two centimeters from her right eye.
I … What happened …
Digging into her hazy memories, she remembered that she had gotten pulled into the collapse of the observatory.
When she turned her gaze downward, she found a large pillar lying across her lower body. She could sense wetness along the back of her thighs, but she couldn’t determine where the bleeding was coming from. When she breathed in, an unpleasant sensation rose from deep in her chest, like her internal organs were twisting around.
Very tentatively, she tried moving. Her left hand was stuck, caught under something, but she could move her right hand. She pushed on the piece of wood in front of her, and it slid away so that her field of vision opened up just a bit. The narrow slice of night sky was clear on the other side of the dust, framed by the remains of the building.
She tried to knead her chakra, but there was absolutely no reaction from the chakra channels that should have been active inside of her. This was bad. Her body was numb, unmovable, and only wheezes came from her throat when she tried to call out. She couldn’t make any sound. And if she couldn’t work chakra, Sasuke’s Sharingan wouldn’t be able to find her.
She would have to get out of here on her own.
“Ngh!”
Sakura forced her twitching arm to move and tried to push away the pillar weighing down on her body.
The instant it moved the tiniest bit, she heard a clattering as something slid down somewhere else, and her hand froze. If she moved this chunk of what had been the observatory, another part of the wreckage might come crumbling down. Given that she didn’t know if anyone else was buried there with her, she didn’t dare push the pillar any further.
She was trapped.
“Hah … Hah …”
She panted, her vision growing pale and hazy.
It was impossibly frustrating that she was stuck here like this, helpless, while reanimated dragons were attacking prisoners outside.
Her pulse faded to a muted tapping, and the world around her became almost terrifyingly quiet. Her limbs were cold as ice, almost like she was dying slowly from her extremities inward. The cells in her body were utterly exhausted and wanted nothing more than to stop functioning.
No … If I pass out now, I’ll die …
Sakura bit her lip and tried desperately to remain conscious, but she couldn’t do anything about the strength leaving her body. As a medical ninja, she was well aware that this wasn’t the sort of poison that could be overcome through sheer willpower.
Cherry-pink eyelashes slowly veiled her field of vision.
Her consciousness sank to the bottom of her brain.
“Sakura!”
The familiar voice yanked her fading consciousness out from the abyss.
She slowly opened her eyes and found the face of the person she wanted to see most in this world there before her.
The weight pressing down on her body had disappeared. All of the wreckage around her had been cleared away, and she was being held up, supported by Sasuke’s shoulder.
Sasuke, she tried to say, but her chest was on fire, and no words came out. Still, she had to tell him what she knew. She forced air through her vocal cords.
“Ji … ji … betray.”
“Don’t talk,” Sasuke said curtly and touched the wound on her back.
The chakra he sent to the palm of his hand flowed into her with a mild heat, eliminating the poison and the havoc it was wreaking on her body, and warmth returned to her frozen limbs. But the pain suddenly sharpened, and she felt it stab at every part of her body.
“Can you move?” he asked.
“Mm hmm …” Her throat still wouldn’t do what she wanted it to. Nonetheless, she managed to produce a confirming groan, and Sasuke’s face finally relaxed the tiniest bit.
“Sasuke …” she whispered. “You came. Thanks …”
Relieved, the tears she’d held back finally spilled out of her eyes.
“Sorry … I couldn’t stop Jiji … Couldn’t do anything.”
“Don’t apologize when you’re in this sort of condition.”
The look on Sasuke’s face made Sakura feel incredibly guilty when she thought about how she had worried this man. But more than anything else, she was relieved that he was there with her. When she had thought that she might die, the thing that had scared her the most was not seeing Sasuke and Sarada again.
The wound on her back slowly closed over, and familiar fingertips wiped her damp cheeks.