Sakura beat back the dragons attacking her and bought time for the prisoners to escape.
She caught the rear leg of a charging ornith and did a shoulder throw to slam it into the ground. Two prisoners came racing up and jumped onto the fallen bird-dragon.
Ganno and Penzila.
They brought the hoes in their hands down on the backs of the ornith’s knees.
“Graw!”
The ornith threw its head back and tried to get away, but it couldn’t stand up now that the bones in its knees had been smashed. But dust soon collected on its crushed joints, healing the injuries. With miserable looks on their faces, Ganno and Penzila brought down their hoes again and again, compelled to keep up with the pace of regeneration.
“Dammit! Quit healing!” Penzila cried. “You can’t go fixing yourself!”
You’re going too far, Sakura started to say and then closed her mouth. Both humans and dragons were similarly desperate.
The reanimated dragons looked like powerful monsters in the eyes of the prisoners. But the dragons were also frantic. The orniths and the pachycephalors were herbivores and did not have natural predatory instincts. However, they also couldn’t disobey their reanimator’s order to slaughter all the prisoners.
“Hah!” Sakura cried and caught a ptera plunging down from on high.
The pteras were also unsuited to battle. Their bodies were extremely light, having evolved for flight. They were long, nearly ten yards in length, but they didn’t even weigh twenty-five pounds. Their lone weapon was their sharply pointed beak, but after cracking open the skulls of so many prisoners, their sole weapon was losing potency.
Even so, they were not permitted to retreat. Or die. The spirits brought back to life with Edotensei were under absolute control of their reanimator. A ptera would tangle with Sakura for a bit, they would push and pull at each other, and then finally the ptera would withdraw. It would spread its wings and start to escape into the sky, but the swarming prisoners would catch it and yank it back down to the ground.
The pteras were wild and desperate, and thrashed at the prisoners’ heads. But even when the pteras were covered in blood, not one of those hands let go. The ptera rachis, having evolved from the finger-like bones of their front legs, were light like twigs and would break easily if the creature’s wings were pinned behind its back.
At first, they would squawk and cry for help, but when the bones of their neck were beaten down and their airways blocked, they could only wheeze.
As soon as they were hurt, however, the dust of the reanimation jutsu would cover the wound and heal the creature. Meanwhile, the prisoners would frantically beat at them with rocks to keep them from recovering. It was endless torture on either side. Until the reanimation jutsu was released.
We must hurry and find Jiji and free these dragons.
The moment Sakura thought this, she was overcome with dizziness.
Dropping to her knees, Sakura felt an aura of bloodlust behind her and rolled to one side. The kunai that grazed her cherry-pink hair plunged deep into the ground.
“Jiji!”
Not even a heartbeat later, Sakura flipped around and leaped to her feet. She lifted a piece of rubble as big as she was tall and threw it toward Jiji.
He drew his sword and sliced it in two with his long blade. By the time the pieces clattered to the ground, Sakura was gone.
She ran …
Jiji sniffed contemptuously. At this late stage of the game, fleeing was pointless.
A ptera in the sky found Sakura descending the cliff and reported back to Jiji.
Her movements were sluggish. He wasn’t sure just how she’d escaped from the wreck of the observatory, but it seemed that she hadn’t recovered completely from the poison. Jiji wove signs as he ran and thrust a hand down to the ground.
“Earth Style! Mud Wall!”
A wall of earth rose up and blocked the way forward, forcing Sakura to stop. Jiji chased after her.
Backed up against the dirt wall, Sakura glared at him with sharp eyes. “What are you after?”
“Eeaugh!”
Jiji heard a shriek in the distance. He didn’t know whether it was the cry of a person or a dragon.
“Making dragons and people suffer like this! What exactly is it that you want?!”
“I do feel awkward about striking you with a killing blow twice, Doc.” And he really meant that. It was selfish, but he would have liked the doctor and Sasuke to survive, if possible. Now that it had come to this, however, he had to kill them.
I told Sasuke. Don’t go leaving your wife alone.
Sakura took a step back and bumped into the wall of earth.
Jiji took a step forward.
Bang!
He suddenly couldn’t move.
“?!”
By the time he realized he was in trouble, it was too late. His joints were firmly fixed in place, and he couldn’t even wiggle his body.
A barrier. A trap lying in wait.
The sand at his feet blew up in the wind, revealing a ward with a curse mark carved into it. A thread of bright red chakra twined up to bind Jiji’s body firmly in place.
The ward had clearly been set to activate a jutsu when the target passed over it. While pretending to run away, Sakura had been luring him here right from the start.
“Dammit.”
Jiji pulled a kunai from his sleeve and cut at the chakra threads. But the threads only released the crackling chakra contained within. There was no place where he could cut himself free.
At some point, a mark patterned after a sakura petal had popped up on his wrist.
“When did you … This mark …”
“When you came to the infirmary. Just in case,” Sakura said calmly. “I’m a doctor. I can easily tell just how much of a chakra user someone is when examining them.”
Jiji struggled furiously to find a way out, but he soon realized that he would not be able to break away and relaxed.
Not yet. He hadn’t lost yet. If Zansul joined up with him here, he could still get out of this. Or maybe there was a way to make Sakura release the jutsu. Negotiate, say that he would release the reanimation jutsu …
As he grasped for whatever chance at victory he had left, Jiji suddenly sensed an enormous amount of chakra around him, and a chill ran up his spine. His knees gave out. The pressure of this chakra was so intense that any remaining thought of escape was shattered in an instant.
“Jiji. You’re the one behind the reanimation jutsu?” came a low voice from behind.
Appearing with Meno in tow was his cellmate, who up to that point had never once shown bloodlust like this.
Sasuke reached into the pocket of Jiji’s coat and took back the vessel containing the ultra particles. He kept digging and found a yellow liquid sealed in plastic.
“Is this the drug you used on Sakura and me?” Pushing down the anger simmering up inside of him, Sasuke activated the Sharingan and faced Jiji.
“Those eyes,” Jiji gasped when he saw the Sharingan. “You’re Uchiha? You’re not going to get Zansul with that. You’ve basically got the same chance at winning as I do.”
Jiji met the red eyes of his own will.
“You’re going to use genjutsu on me, yeah? Fine, do what you want. If you’re going to do it, I want you to make it so I never wake up.”
“I’m not letting you off so easily. You’ll pay for what you’ve done, but there’s something I want to ask you before I use my genjutsu.” Sasuke drew his Sharingan back and lowered his voice as he continued. “What is your objective? Zansul’s was to use the revived dragons as weapons of war. But you’re not that type.”
“That type?”
“The type to act on behalf of his country.”
“Ouch.” Jiji smiled lifelessly. “That’s just your opinion. Maybe I was working with Zansul because I agreed with his convictions.”
“In that case, why did you save Penzila?”
Jiji blinked slowly at Sasuke, uncomprehending.
“When Penzila was about to be attacked by Meno,” Sasuke explained. “If you were going to get rid of all the prisoners, then why didn’t you let him die then? Because you cared about Penzila? Or because you were reluctant to make Meno a tool of murder?”
“Neither, okay?” Jiji snapped. “I brought Meno back to life for that purpose. And I mean, Penzila—I’m not going to start caring about some guy just because he happens to be in the same cell as me. Not too long ago, I stood and watched when Ganno was about to be killed.”
“But.” Sasuke stared back at Jiji. “You acted instantly.”
Sometimes, people were spurred on by feelings they weren’t aware of and took action they didn’t expect.
Even now, Sasuke clearly remembered when he had protected his close friend before he even realized he was doing it and leaped out in front of Haku’s Thousand Stinging Needles of Death. At the time, he’d been deeply perplexed by his action, but now he understood it. They’d had any number of breaks between them, but from that time on, Naruto had been Sasuke’s good friend, in a way that went beyond reason or logic.
He didn’t think that what Jiji felt toward Meno, Ganno, and Penzila was the same as the feelings Sasuke had for Naruto. But at the very least, he must have had some kind of affection for them.
“Zansul is dead,” Sasuke declared. “We’re handing you over to the Land of Redaku and returning to our own country. But before that … If you have some exceptional circumstances, tell me now.”
“Why should I?”
“I don’t want to end this without knowing.”
Beside Sasuke, Meno stretched out his neck, cocked his head slightly to one side, and stared at Jiji.
Jiji looked back and forth between Meno and Sasuke, and his expression relaxed with a sigh.