Waiting Game

Chapter 6

"Okay, take me to my home. And I mean get me there 'n one piece!" Tazuna grumbled, staggering forward in his drunken form(during the rest of the boat ride, he had chugged down the rest of his alcohol bottle and discarded it). Even though he was doing a selfless thing like risking his own life to save his peoples' lives, I still couldn't bring myself to truly like him. I did, however, respect and admire him; it might not show, but let's be honest. What emotions did I show?

Sakura had edged her way over to the large empty space in between me and Sasuke, in which I lagged behind the group considerably due to my uncontrollable swaying.

We passed the docks and other buildings that I just couldn't seem to analyze properly. In fact, everything seemed to be much more blurry. 'This can't just be a simple sickness... I need to alert someone else. Maybe Sakura could help me... she's the most trustworthy person here...' My ankle was now pounding in pain; I could feel my heartbeat from down there, which meant that I had been injured there sometime ago. I could only wonder when...

Even in my mute state, I could get myself to whisper, right?

"S...Kr...," she couldn't hear me, and I couldn't go any quicker to catch up to her. I reached for my kunai pouch, and was about to bang them together to make an adequate noise, but then Naruto went ahead and distracted everyone.

'% d*dn't even re@l*ze th@t we had m@de o#r w@y *nt0 a f0r^st. 0h, t#ere'$ a l@ke 0ver t#ere... I th*nk...' my thoughts were all jumbled up, and I could barely even formulate a sentence in my brain at this point. I shouldn't have written this, whatever this is, off as just minor fatigue all those moments ago...

My breathing was ragged and uneven, my vision blurred and spinning, my ears pounding; everything was going horribly wrong for me. I tried to step forwards, but it took me a long time to even get the willpower to bring that thought to reality.

'T#*$  *$  b@&...' I twitched at my gibberish-sounding thoughts, and fell over. A moment afterwards, I processed that there was a gigantic sword that had flew above my fallen body and lodged itself into a tree.

I could only thank the fact that I had tripped moments before. It had saved my life, even if only for a few moments.

"TS---AKI----AR---OU---AY?!" I heard jumbled up, garbled sounds. That sounded like Kakashi... huh?

I think I may have whimpered when I felt a heavy pressure on my fallen body. I couldn't feel the pain; I must be high on my own adrenaline. I could no longer even hear the loudest of sounds, and slowly my body went numb. The world stopped spinning....

AND EVERYTHING WENT DARK...

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TSUBAKI! ARE YOU OKAY?" Kakashi yelled as he realized that the albino girl had fallen over, not by her own will. The shirtless rogue Jounin, Zabuza, jumped down from the handle of his sword, landing right next to Tsubaki's near unconscious body. He put a foot on her back, digging it into her spine.

The Genin and Kakashi had each winced at the sound of the emotionless girl's whimper; her cloudy ruby eyes fluttered shut.

"What did you do to her?!" Sakura's voice was no longer high pitched and whiny. It was oddly feral, not child-like.

Kakashi realized why; her twin was in a state between life and death, dying, and she could feel it. Kakashi held his hands out to keep his other Genin back.

"Well, well, if it isn't Zabuza Momochi of the Hidden Mist..." Kakashi's voice was cold in unconcealed spite, anger underlying in his words. His one eye was narrowed; his fourth Genin was injured, no matter how deviant to Konoha, and he was pissed. Extremely pissed. Sakura tore through Kakashi's arms in a rage.