Hm, what to put at the top of this Airborne chapter that is completely irrelevant? I’m going to Germany this summer for two weeks with my dad, that’s something. With an A- in that class and two years’ experience learning the language under my belt I think I might just be able to ask some locals directions to my hotel. That is, if I can make my pathetically shy and cowardly self go up to people and talk without going so fast they can’t understand me.

I’ve got something to say to those who voted in the Airborne poll in my profile: “Who do you think you will die?” You may have noticed that Karin has been taken off the poll. Is it because I’m not going to kill her off at all, or her impending death is so obvious it’s redundant to have her in the poll anyway? Hmmm…. Well, let’s start the chapter. It’s been delayed a pretty long time. Again, no, it’s not because I didn’t have the time. I always have free time, you guys. Tons. It’s just that the males’ POVs became a real challenge yet again.

Reviews: (Some names may be repeated because they reviewed both chapter 14 and 15)

Chocolat-Chan: Of course there will be fluff moments. The story is categorized as Adventure-slash-romance for a reason.

Mindless words: Yes, I did get some inspiration from the fourth book. I also got some previously unknown information: penguins frequently puke, and not only to give their babies some food.

Artemis 411: The fantasticality shall continue…god only knows what’ll happen next in this story. (Cause, seriously, I don’t really know myself.)

Lover’s Eclipse: I’m glad you think so. The first POV section was hell for me to type. It felt it was OOC all the way, but I bet you already knew that. And Sakura showing her trust to Itachi was one of my favorite moments as well. Milestone, that one.

Sakura Angel 4eva: Good to know, some of the students in my German class call the teacher “tai-tai” since she often gets carried away in her stories and tells us the origin of those words and when she lived in Hong Kong and all kinds of things. Thusly we hardly ever have homework there. But 6 years of German for you…I would love to have 6 years of German in my brain. I want to move over there and I hardly have two years of the language.

FakeCompassion: I’m sure being next to her was good enough for Itachi, too. All his life he’s never even been allowed to have skin contact with her, sitting next to her must be something big for him.

Winged wondergirl: I loved that looking-Itachi-in-the-eye moment as well because he wasn’t expecting it at all. Since more than one person seems to like the little meat cleaver moment, I might actually use the cleavers at some point. (I remember that show. Was it that one that showed an alien who was part machine part squid/octopus-face?

Silverymoonfire: Excellence is what I am for, so that’s good.

i-am-cool2121: Talented and original, huh? Well, thank you. Originality is one of the things I myself like about this fanfiction. Zetsu and Neji complete the circle of male experiments, so now you the reader have looked into the minds of all the experiments and most of the important characters. (I don’t think I’ve done Temari yet…)

Lover’s Eclipse: I had a tough time choosing the first “bonder” and Naruto seemed easiest so I just chose him. Kakashi made a close second, though.

Critcal: You’re asking if there’s gonna be any romance? The story is categorized as Adventure-slash-romance, so yes. Kakashi will get a turn with Sakura like everyone else so look forward to that. I can’t promise that none of them will die, though. For that I suggest you go to the poll in my profile and vote who you think will die. The idea of Sakura growing a wolf tail is interesting, but if a wolf tail goes to anyone, I don’t think it’ll be her. I do plan to give them new outfits eventually, though, so you can look forward to that.

Silverymoonfire: I know, good MultiSaku stories are so difficult to come by.

Shreaded wings: A reviewer called the author wicked smart and didn’t just say they enjoyed the story. Damn, finally! I get so sick of people saying they love Harry Potter and not saying a word about J.K. Rowling. Thank you so much, for that compliment plus the one about Airborne itself.

BasicallyAnIdiot: Yeah, she doesn’t seem too Mary-Sue-ish to me, but I thought I should put it there anyway for the excessive attention she’s gotten in the last two chapters by men. And yes, the experiments do see each other as one species, and they only speak to each other, which is why they can understand each other’s talking despite their being different “animals”. Thank you for bringing that up. Oh, and yes, Kakashi is considered leader of the pack since he’s oldest, even though Sasori is probably more intelligent.

LittleFoxDemon: Good, another person who enjoys the nickname! Chambers shall die…in some way that I haven’t thought up yet but will be as creative and destructive as I can make it off the top of my head like I usually do things.

Dictator panda-chan: It’s always good to hear no one’s being OOC. Then again, authors always seem to dislike their own work. Sasuke…I guess I’ll add him in somehow. May as well, along with the siblings of all the other experiments.

Magpie-of-Doom: Somehow in my relationship-less life I know it sucks to have a one-sided romance, if there is such a thing, so yes, she’ll end up liking all of them. The mystery and the reason to read the story is finding out how it happens, how it almost all goes down the drain. Naruto is probably bragging to his pals about how she opened up to him, now that you mention it.

Winged wondergirl: Yes, yes, her early inability to understand the eight male experiments is relevant to the story, yes! Readers should still be wondering how she magically one day understood their speech, and if a regular person hears her talking to one of them, does that person hear Sakura speaking English or purring and growling like the other eight? Oh, and her anger over her nickname is something I do so enjoy writing, so look forward to a bunch of that.

CrazyChancyDreams457: She’s gonna be on the lookout for a long time, probably losing sleep, god knows what else…

Daughter of Unending Darkness: Thank you so much for the comment on the author’s notes, it’s nice to know someone reads them and enjoys them. (Insert smile here.) The riveting and wicked awesome saga continues…NOW.

Chapter the Sixteenth.

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The first few hours of January 15th, I don’t know, maybe 3:00 in the morning? Do I look like I have a watch on me? .Sakura.POV.

666

I’m scared. I’m so scared. I know I’ve been more scared than this many times before. But I can’t stop shaking. I can’t stop seeing horrible pictures in my head. I know I told you guys that, a few hours ago when Naruto was here, I’d climb down the tree and go sleep right in the middle of the male experiments. I should have gone down an hour ago at least. But since then I’ve gotten so freaking scared.

My brain can’t help but make me think of the old problems I had thought of before I met them all at Buffalo Jump: how was it that I could magically understand their words when I could only hear growling from them before? Do I really have a chance of saving Kakuzu, Shikamaru and Hidan? Where the hell did I get the courage to go back to that scientifically white hell?

Somehow, I think it’s the “little one” comment that’s getting to me the most. At least, the reason behind it: the fact that they’re all older than me. It might just be their ages. The fact that I’m younger than all of them has been eating at my mind for a few hours now.

What if I’m wrong? What if I’m not the most intelligent out of the whole group? Kakashi, Itachi and Sasori especially worry me. They could be dumb as rocks and I’d never guess it. They have the look of sharpness and secrecy in their eyes, and you know they say, “wisdom comes with age” or something along that line. What if they’re all smarter than they look, smarter beyond their ages like I am, and they’re plotting something so diabolical and clever I can’t even begin the guess it?

Did I mention that them being older (also taller, heavier, possibly stronger) than me is just plain intimidating? Do you understand why I’m so frightened?

But I have to go down there, don’t I? I know I do. If I don’t, I’ll be worrying over it all of tomorrow while I fly (and they run) closer and closer to the Chambers lab where we were born and dammit, I’m not going to do that with the thought of sleeping near them weighing on my mind for a whole ‘nother day! I’ve got enough on my mind right now, and usually stuff comes to my mind on its own and I think too much and waste several hours on a few half-formed thoughts in my brain and I hope you know how I get when I’m like that because I don’t feel happy enough to explain, okay?!

You know what? To heck with it, I’m going down there now.

You know, I’m finding that I always try to plan for the worst and prepare myself for anything, but I usually just end up winging it and acting on whatever impulse I have at the moment. I’m gonna have to do that now. No more planning. I need to just go. This is what helped me take flight out of the fenced chambers yard. (Also it got me electrocuted to within an inch of my life, but you win some you lose some, so…yeah.)

So then I started climbing down the tree, in the tiniest and softest movements I could possibly make. I was moving on the thickest branches that would make no creaking sounds when I put my weight on them, and when I had to move across the trunk I would place my bare feet on the darkest bark, which I hoped was thickest and had the least chance of breaking off and plopping down onto the head of some unsuspecting experiment.

The branch where I’d been hanging out for the past few hours was maybe twenty-five or thirty feet up, and if my estimation—often reliable—is correct, at this pace it would take me nearly twenty minutes to get down to the ground. But I’m not risking flight. It’s going to create breezes and drafts that might wake up the males. Going slowly and surely and soundlessly is much safer. Next thing I knew, I was halfway there and I hadn’t yet looked down to see if any of them were awake and watching me. So I stopped, closed my eyes briefly in the obvious fear and risked a look down.

They were all…Well, there was no way for me to really know if they were asleep, but that was what it looked like. Spread in a jagged circle-ish thing, the eight experiments lay on the grass or against tree trunks in various positions.

Naruto and Neji were laying with their heads against the trunk of a tree that was next to the one I was climbing down out of. They were using the roots as pillows, and their tails were close together, a mix of light brown and gold. It would have been kind of cute if they weren’t positively evil.

Kakashi, Sasori and Itachi each had found patches of ground that rose up in small mounds that were sort of like pillows and lay with their heads on these. They were two or so meters away from the others (the eldest stick together, I suppose?) and I noticed confusedly that Sasori’s lengthy black tail had disappeared. I reasoned then that he had wrapped it around his legs, and it was covered by his long, black coat so I just couldn’t see it, and he appeared strangely human without it.

Oh, did I mention the navy-blue scarf that Kakashi always used to cover his nose and mouth were sort of low, showing me the outline of his cheek? Wow. Never saw that before.

Deidara and Kisame were more or less next to each other, Deidara laying sprawled out on the grass on his back with his big, ice-blue wings half spread on the ground under him. He appeared to be sleeping most deeply. Kisame sat against a tree trunk that was opposite my tree, maybe ten feet away, looking quite content. I didn’t find it odd that he could sleep sitting up; I’d done it hundreds of times in my small dog crate at Chambers. So that left Zetsu.

Maybe he slept in the ground? I had already known for years Zetsu could melt into the ground and into trees and pop out whenever he wanted to; now I was wondering how long he could stay molded into those things. Possibly, he could—err, jeh—HUH.

I couldn’t barely form a word right then, much less a question, so the “huh” just came out as a flat, kind of disbelieving statement. In the lowest branch of the tree against which Kisame sat, maybe seven feet off the ground, was Zetsu.

His plant-thing…that giant, green mouth-shaped structure that was always on his shoulders, that could open and close whenever he wanted…. It was…it was gone!

Zetsu was just laying there looking perfectly human with his big grey trenchcoat, except for, you know, the purely yellow eyes and the half-n’-half skin coloring, with no flytrap thing on his shoulders! Where the freak did it go?! I can’t believe that at that moment I was feeling a temptation to walk over, wake the guy up and ask him!

I might have stood there for one minute or for ten, twelve or so feet high in what I guessed was a beech tree, staring wide-eyed at Zetsu who had suddenly lost what I’d always thought was a vital body part. Eventually I gathered myself and remembered I had to get all the way down there and face my fears. (Again.) So I kept going, keeping to thick branches, dark bark. Eventually I got down to a point where just one hand on a protruding strip of bark was keeping me on the tree. My free hand was in the air, balancing me, and my bare feet were laying flat against the bark. If my hand let go, I’d fall six inches or so onto the grass below. But I was afraid of the noise that’d make.

So I eased my body down slow as possible, fearful every second that the little stump of bark I held would snap off. In this silent, windless, freezing night, that sound would be like roaring thunder. But I was lucky. My toes touched the grass first, then my heels, and then I let go of the bark piece. I was on the ground now.

Now…the closest to the middle I could get would be in front of Kisame. If I sat down on that spot, Kakashi, Sasori and Itachi would be on my left, and everyone else would be on my right at some angle or other. Walking…okay, that could make little rustling noises. Have to be extra cautious here, slow and safe. I stepped just so, slow and cautious, keeping noise to a minimum.

I think there was only one or two crickets around here, as the only noises were the males breathing and the occasional cricket chirp. Slowly, fearfully as always in situations involving these men, I made my way to the middle.

I was looking around constantly, looking for deadly eyes open and watching me, for Chambers scientists, even, for anything. I was in the middle of danger. When I got to the very centermost middle, I found that…the middle kinda sucked. More than I thought it would.

The ground sloped down a bit, putting me at the lowest point in our whole sleeping area. A disadvantage. When they jump up and attack me, they’ll have the advantage of height. I’ll have to jump harder and higher, flap faster, to get up into the air in time to save myself from being flayed. Another bad thing to add to the list.

I gazed around again as I lowered down slowly to lay onto the grass. There appeared to be no male experiment nor Chambers secret camera watching me. The breathing patterns I heard were all smooth and deep in the illusion of slumber; I knew better than to believe that. There was hardly a sound in the cold night.

Here, I would feign sleep just as they were doing, slow my breathing and loosen my muscles till I was assaulted, at which point I’d fly away just as I’d always wanted to.

I found myself thinking of Naruto. I shivered, remembering his inborn ability to make air particles glow orange and thrust them into me with the force of the blow from a fist. I shivered again, hoping to be lucky enough to dodge that when he jumped me with the others later tonight…which I was one hundred percent sure he would.

Eyes. I could feel eyes on me. Someone was looking at me. I stayed perfectly still.

666

January 15th…sometime late at night, or perhaps early in the morning if you want to see it that way… .Kakashi.POV.

666

It may have been instinct, experience or just logic that told me Sakura would come down from her treetop post eventually. It would be for an obvious reason, I knew: she was trying to prove that sometime in the night we would pin her down and kill her. She was so utterly convinced of this that she’d become afraid of the concept and took twice as long as I expected to come down from the beech tree. And she’d gone so slowly that I could hardly hear her movement at all.

Of this I was sure. She’d made her opinion of us clear enough. I was actually glad I’d been too tired to move hours earlier, that Naruto had been the one to go up into the tree and talk to her. He got so much more information than I or any of my friends could have guessed. He was so ecstatic to know and discover things first.

The first thing to come out of his mouth was that she had said herself that she wasn’t sure how she’d kept herself mute her whole life, but Naruto wondered if this was a lie; she’d said it in such a tone that even our stupid fox kit could hear the confidence and firmness in it. When Naruto asked me my opinion of that (everyone looked at me, of course, it’s a sort of unspoken rule that as the oldest I act as alpha) I only shrugged.

Just because I prided myself in understanding Sakura and her actions better than any of the others didn’t mean I knew everything about her. I hope, but I doubt I ever will.

Then the fox announced with a happy curl of his tail that he’d been lucky enough to tell her about something she didn’t know: Itachi’s Amaterasu, and Deidara’s so far unnamed explosive hand abilities, and their ways of using them to turn raw flesh into spectacular lengths of steaming, gourmet food.

What came after this was his favorite part: after telling her of Itachi and Deidara, she’d cocked her head confusedly in a most innocent pose, so much so that he’d been tempted to pin her onto the branch and nuzzle her then and there for the action was so very adorable. It was only the fear of being electrocuted that kept him from doing so.

That started a little string of talking before we all went to sleep. Deidara and Zetsu got mildly irritated then that they hadn’t taken the chance and gone up the tree before Naruto to speak to her. Zetsu insisted that verbal contact was necessary at the very least if we were going to burn the hidden laboratory to the ground with her help—“Naruto you stupid little brat you wasted a perfectly good chance to ask her about tactics!”—but we all knew Zetsu was secretly shy in both his halves and understood exactly what he felt too embarrassed to say.

Deidara voiced it for him, saying he would have taken the chance to nuzzle her no matter how terrible the voltage she inflicted on him afterward. To cover up the fact that he’d lost a feather of hers that he’d found at Highway 5 back near Portland, he reminded us all to everyone’s chagrin that he’d licked her once, before she’d flown off away from the laboratory.

None of us had ever seen a shock collar up close at that time, so he’d been curious and crept near her while she was preoccupied watching Naruto and Itachi fighting. Killing two birds with one stone, he got a good look at the shock collar she’d worn for years—getting knowledge that helped with taking off our own later on—and given the speed demon a lick that he hoped would convey a cheery, playful message. We all knew it failed, so to cover up that bit some wild, soft berry he’d never had before but was sure he’d scented sometime in his life.

This eventually led to a humorous argument about who would climb the tree to nuzzle petite, frightened Sakura until she was completely convinced we would sooner take bullet wounds than harm her. Sasori and I respected her need to stay in her lonely, cold place and think and reflect things as she loved.

He and I were kept busy the next half hour pushing down anyone who stood up and started walking towards her tree and holding our claws to their throats. This was a symbol of ours that didn’t mean we were going to kill, but more along the lines of “Don’t you dare,” in a way that is menacing and not as life-threatening as it looked. This chased away some of the cold and warmed us a bit.

Kisame, who’s more soft-hearted than one would guess, was either being very kind to her desires to be alone or was too tired to even stand up. He sat against a tree trunk and watched and eventually the exhaustion must have spread from him to everyone else.

After a while only Itachi was still persistent, (unrelenting boy…) and I was still surprised that he hadn’t sided with Sasori and I. I was grateful when he shook his head with a sigh of mock exasperation and lay on the ground to sleep, coat covering every part of his body that needed warmth so he wouldn’t have to bundle himself against the cold like a fool over and over again.

And here I was, nearly two hours after, laying on the ground, scarves covering my left eye and the lower part of my face per usual. I was glad for them, not just for the coverage, but for the extra warmth they gave. True, I could easily survive in this cold, but that didn’t change the fact 

that I just didn’t like it at all. I hoped that by looking at something warm, I would feel a bit better.

She lay down only a few moments ago, going down the tree so slowly and quietly that sometimes the sound of her movements completely disappeared and the cold and my tiredness nearly put me to sleep while I was trying to listen for her. But I heard the rustle of grass as she walked to her designated spot and lay down in a little ditch of sorts in the grass. Her back is facing me. Her wings loosened slightly as all body parts do in sleep, and I watched her as she feigned sleep.

I knew she was aware of me watching her. She was awake and waiting for me to attack her. Poor confused little one. I wonder how long it will take to convince her she’s completely safe with us. I find myself wishing more and more frequently that I hadn’t been so passionate and fanatical in the Predator and Prey games inside the Chambers white rooms. Those encounters had frightened her deeply. I was saddened by, but also looked forward to, the work it would take to earn her trust for the first time.

For now I was satisfied to watch her. Satisfied that she was here with us, truly safe for the first time…yet disappointed at the reason she would get no sleep tonight.

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Sooo…tired….It’s maybe…noon…on the fifteenth of January… .Sakura.POV.

666

Okay…going to sleep way late at night will make you want to sleep late into the morning, yes? Possibly even into the afternoon. Understandable. (I’ve never been allowed to sleep that long at Chambers, and I might have only once at Hidan and Kakuzu’s, but I do understand the concept of sleeping long, okay? I’m smart like that.) Anyway, that kind of sleep is the kind of sleep I did not get last night. Or this morning.

If someone pulled out a watch and said our group here had been sleeping for twelve hours, I would believe them. And the closest I’ve come to sleeping in that time is blinking really fast, fighting sleep. The last time I slept was just before the experiments came to meet me at Buffalo Jump. I’m guessing that nap was a good six or seven hours. I’ve just stayed awake for possibly twelve. I remember once when I was maybe three years old (I looked what, like a seven-year-old kid?) I was forced to stay awake for nearly four days, to find my greatest waking capacity or some such junk and it was…not fun. But that didn’t help me now. I felt horrible.

Furthermore, though the experiments were all still laying down, sleeping, I had a nagging—pulsing, actually—suspicion that some of them were awake. Their tails have moved more than once and their breathing patterns have speeded up a few notches. Sleeping people breathe slowly, deeply. I’m very sure now that they’re awake. They’re listening to me. My body has been loose and limp like an unconscious person, and I’ve made sure my breathing has been nice and sleepy-slow. But my senses and my mind have been sharp as ever.

Why can’t they all just wake up right now, stretch a little and decide to keep running southwest towards Portland and the Chambers laboratory? Get this tension off of me for a little bit? Let me enjoy the freedom of the lonely, cold, gorgeous sky for a few hours?

Something blue was glinting. I moved my head forward against the grass, my tired and exhausted eyes just as keen and ready for action as they’d always been. I looked sideways into the eyes of Naruto.

His orange-gold tail lifted just a bit off the ground and swept through the air. ‘Is he waving at me?’ I wondered. ‘He knows I won’t wave back. Why is he doing that?’ If he was trying to be friendly, he may as well just put that notion out of his mind. I glared back at the fox-experiment fiercely, trying to put all my hate into one little gaze, but this only made him seem happier. My anger is making him smile.

Stupid fox. He’s not even acting reasonable. So much for “with age comes wisdom.” He’s dumb as a rock. Dumb as a potato at best. (What? Can you think of anything “less dumb” than a rock?) Then I noticed how close I was to Naruto. His tail was almost close enough to me to touch. He couldn’t have been laying that close before. He was…he was using a tree root for a pillow before. He’s not anymore.

He moved. Sometime in the night or in the morning he moved closer to me and I was so caught up in my worry and desperate fear that I somehowdidn’t notice. How could I not notice that?! I should have been hearing an air-raid siren at seeing that! should have been going plain crazy at seeing that!

It gets worse! Naruto also seems to know that he’s within reaching distance of me. He lifted his tail again and I watched it, my hand opening slightly, threateningly. He knows I’ll electrocute him. He had better know I’ll electrocute him.

That freaking moron. He touched his tail to the side of my thigh. My thigh, you guys ought to remember, is uncovered. I’m wearing shorts. Naruto’s furry tail was touching my skin. It was surprisingly warm. I would never have guessed it could feel this way, what with him and his friends complaining of the cold and all. His mouth moved, but no words came out. I attempted to read his lips. “Good morning,” I think was what he was trying to mouth.

I knit my brows in confusion, and set my open hand on the grass. I did keep the hand open, though, so I only had to lift it to electrocute him, as opposed to lifting and opening and arranging my fingers properly and stuff. A warm breeze went by suddenly, and I blinked because I hadn’t felt warmness since leaving Hidan and Kakuzu’s air-conditioned home.

I gave Naruto a stare that I hope conveyed the message of “don’t-you-dare-move” and risked a glance up. In the corner of my vision was what appeared to be a black snake. And that didn’t make sense, because snakes couldn’t possibly live this far north and the only black snaky thing I knew of at the time was Sasori’s tail. And what a surprise I got when I turned my head up and saw said scorpion sitting next to me, looking down.

It can seem intimidating when you’re laying down and someone is sitting next to you, looking down, appearing tall even if that person is short. But Sasori wasn’t short. He was tall and wearing a black cloak he looked even taller. Because, you know, wearing all one color can make a person look taller. The effect did him fine justice. But I didn’t like that justice. You know why?

He was in perfect position to kill me and I was such a fucking worrywart-nutcase that I didn’t notice until now. Sasori had stood up, walked over, and sat down behind me and I hadn’t noticed. This day was starting out with an unfairly bad record.

Please, god, if you’re there, if you can help, let me live through this. I’ve been good. I’ve done my best. You know I have. I’m at the mercy of a devil. I might not live to see the next hour of this day.

“How was your sleep, little one?” he asked me. I paused a second before replying. I took up that single second with a grand analysis I hoped would save my life with some random piece of information.

He was sitting with his legs crossed and one leg sort of pressing against my back, warming it—Wow, I’m not noticing anything this morning—and his hands were casually resting in his lap. Close enough and equipped with enough speed to grasp my throat and strangle me if he really wants to. Other than that, he looked the same. For a quick two seconds or so, I noticed just how freaking pretty Sasori was. I don’t have any experience in things of beauty except my own perspective of beauty. And my perspective of beauty contains things like mother nature, birds, falling snow, classical music and the graphics on Hidan’s video games. But Sasori has no category there. He’s just pretty.

Hm. I’m finding this pretty hard to calculate. The scorpion man has good looks, and that’s it. I’m not used to that. I’m used to analyzing, determining. Sasori has good looks and there’s nothing else to think about. Why is that? Let’s try and overview to get the brain processes going… Well, he looks the same as he always does, dunno why I just now noticed this. There’s the bright red hair, the stony stare, er, well the stare isn’t really stony today, he looks kind of drugged, the poison-tipped black tail and the gold…eyes…what?

Sasori’s eyes have always been gold. But I’m looking into them right now—well ain’t I brave—and they’re brown, chocolate-brown. But I’m sure they’ve always been gold! Did the Chambers scientists conduct some kind of color-changing surgery on him before he was sent to chase me down?

But these thoughts took up all of one second. I tried to stall, give myself thinking time, time to do something before he decided he wanted to kill me. Oh, I also had to try and keep from trembling. “Unusual. It’s ridiculously warm down here, and I don’t mean compared to up in the tree.” At least I was telling him the truth. Truth appeased people, even monsters. Sure, it was still roughly thirty degrees down here in our little grove, but compared to up in my tree or the sky, that’s pretty cozy. I was assuming the males all had crazy-high body temperatures, or crazy-fast metabolism, and thusly gave off a lot of body heat.

“I’d attribute that to myself.” he said as though this was something to be proud of. “I woke and noticed you shivering. How could I let my little one freeze when she is right next to me? I came closer to offer what warmth I have.”

My little one, he says? Like I’m wearing a collar with his phone number on it? I wonder if Sasori sensed me tensing up in indignation. I wonder what that is making him think right now.

His little one. Pfft. I am no one’s.

I am free.

But I wouldn’t say this out loud. I’m cowardly like that, you know, expressing my most personal opinions to the enemy. So I sat up, giving myself a better chance of survival if he pounces on me. I got mildly ticked that he was taller than me even sitting down. But of course I’d expected that; I was just feeling peeved right now.

Anyhow, I replied coolly, “You must be thrice as cold as I am right now. Are you sure you didn’t just want to sit next to a person who’s as close to a furnace as you can be in this place? If you really want my trust like Naruto said, you must at least tell the truth.”

The redhead looked genuinely sad. A very convincing performance, I admit. Still looking at me with eyes that were mesmerizingly earth-brown, he moved his left hand near mine and mine, mine…mine just shot up there and our fingers laced together! I don’t know what the hell happened! It was like our hands had magnets in them, and I knew but didn’t care that my surprised expression showed.

“Your skin feels warm even when you shiver. You must know that.” And he was right, I did. “But I sensed that you needed more warmth anyway.”

Sasori saw that my eyes were trained on our hands. I wasn’t looking, but I’m mostly sure that there was a little grin on his face then. “You can create electricity from nowhere.” he said. I nodded absently, half-listening. But that was more than enough for me to understand someone’s words, you should know. “I…I can create strings from nowhere, move things without touching them. It is puppetry. The scientists think I could lift something as large as a house if I needed.”

“And the largest thing you can lift now would be about what size?” I’m so glad my voice sounded collected and cool then. It was totally at odds with the…uh, confusion and shit that was going on in my mind right now.

“An elephant. A fully grown elephant.”

He gave me ten or so seconds to absorb that, but I decided to save that absorbing for later, when I was alone. I observed him, his appearance, to take up the thinking space. His fingernails were painted black, courtesy of Orochimaru or Kabuto, I’m guessing. The fact that one of the male experiments was touching me, and I was allowing it, was so wrong I could only stare at our interlocked hands. At least it let me avoid his eyes. Sasori’s stare was starting to embarrass me, or give some other freak feeling I don’t want to experience.

“Now if you didn’t believe me before, then maybe you’ll believe this.” he said, and though he said nothing about our hands interlocking, I know from his drumming fingers that his mind is still on it. “Kakashi decided it would be best for everyone if we stayed in this area until tonight. Itachi and Deidara want to wash their hair in a river nearby, Kisame wants to experience fresh water, and everyone else will want to sleep some more. Why not rest now while we have a chance, while no one knows where we are?”

To my side I heard an experiment move and my body went rigid at the sound. I turned my head with inhuman speed to see Kakashi just beginning to turn towards us. He was laying on his back, with his hands behind his head and the scarf over his mouth turned up, the sign of a smile. Even with grey sweat pants and a black coat and his usual navy scarves, all intimidating and dark clothes, he looks pretty…cheery. Not quite as frightening as usual.

“The way I looked at it, it would make a nice, cheerful memory if we end up dying over there.” the wolverine experiment said airily. The location of “over there” didn’t need further detail. “If we’re tortured to death, we’ll have something recent and fun to remember and distract from the pain. Yes, I know how morbid it sounds, but that’s the point of ignoring the bad parts of life. You can enjoy the good things for awhile without worry.”

When Naruto shot up suddenly from my right I about had a seizure, but Sasori wouldn’t let me move my hand from his (Prick.) so I could only bounce a little before stupidly landing on my butt again. Naruto, thank goodness, seemed not to notice. “Kakashi when the hell did you wake up?” I found it odd that he would say nothing about Sasori being awake and within my personal bubble.

The wolverine man shrugged. Hm. His hair looks oddly silver today, not so much the normal grey I’d always thought it was. It must be this natural lighting. The fluorescent Chambers laboratory lights are probably to blame. “A half hour, maybe.”

“Is Deidara awake?” As he said this, his fox ears twitched towards said older blonde, who appeared very much asleep.

“He’s as out of it as he’ll ever get.” Sasori answered for him, and, finally, he let his hand out of my own and I set my lovely appendage on the grass, hoping any poison scorpion molecules would be swept off. “Do you mean to drop that on him?” Sasori’s tail was gesturing at some little object in Naruto’s hand, but I wasn’t looking at it. I was distracted by Kakashi, who was using his fingers to make a “Come-here-please” movement.

I bristled my wings just a bit and stared back, keeping my expression uncaring and not spiteful. Since I was still surrounded on all sides by my mortal enemies, it was useful for me to be polite right now. Even if some of them were asleep, or were feigning being asleep. Kakashi sat up and looked me in the eyes. I felt uncomfortable. My grey wings wilted a little, looked smaller. The wolverine cocked his head a bit and gave me a smile for some reason I didn’t see.

But there wasn’t much of a choice now, and the situation seemed good. The only experiments awake were busily conversing and sneaking up on one of the others, who was still asleep. No one was watching me but Kakashi, and I could probably handle him. He was the oldest and possibly most experienced and maybe even the most intelligent, but if anything I’ve got speed on my side.

So I stood up and walked over to him, staring him in the eyes the whole way, and sat down next to him. Painfully, I saw how much taller than me he was while sitting. The funky haircut didn’t help with the height issue, either.

“I heard you have some issues with trust.” he said. The words were casual, but the tone serious and meaningful. I lay my chin the palm of my hand and stared thoughtfully, sorta sarcastically, up at him. “Eight years’ experience should have told you that.”

His fingers twitched a little bit, a movement I perceive as hurt. But his eyes, one red as Itachi’s nightmare-eyes, and one black as pitch, remained strangely gentle and tender. “Eight years’ experience does tell me.” he confirmed. “I hope we can reverse that in less than eight years. I want…we want nothing more than to help you. Care for you.”

‘Care for me? Why? I’m nothing but a piece of prey for him to chase around.’ I voiced this opinion daringly. “Why would you care for me? We have no bond. The feelings you say you have for me are not mutual. I’d think you would get sick of dealing with someone who’s so hostile towards you.”

He arched both his silver brows. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding contact with us as much as possible?” I frowned and replied, “No, I’ve been avoiding contact for the more obvious reasons. The fact that I know in my heart you want to rip my throat out. The fact that I can’t help but fear you and…and the strange way you approach me.” By the word, “approach,” I hope he understood that I meant the caring way they acted towards me.

Kakashi cocked his head a bit again, slowly, something like a confused or cheerful dog. He ignored my last few sentences and went back to what I had said before. “It doesn’t matter how hostile you act. You’re ours. You deserve our protection.”

Now this, for some reason, made me somewhat mad. “I don’t deserve anything from you, well-intentioned or not. I did my best to avoid you in all ways possible all my life. I had nightmares about you and your friends more than once, and I’ve been polite as I can be when I talk to any of you. What could I possibly deserve?”

Kakashi’s scarf moved upwards a bit. He was smiling again. Why? “At first, we pitied the little hawk-girl who’d been born a year and a half or so after Naruto. We couldn’t believe that the Chambers scientists would do that to a newborn female.” He paused, apparently thinking I would comment on the sexism, but I kept quiet and he went on. “I believe Zetsu was the first to see you as an infant. He passed the room where you were being given shots and none of us saw you again for at least a year. The scientists would talk about you all the time, so we knew you weren’t dead.”

“I was the one to see you next. By then you must have been a year and half old. I believe you looked about three and a half or even four. Do you remember being put in a white room with me for the first time?”

I nodded. I remembered most everything I’d ever experienced. It comes with the brains. Kakashi smiled, as though that was a fond memory for him. “Your wings were too big for you. It was cute.” The little shine in his eyes and the curving-up of his scarf was unmistakable. Naruto had given me this exact look before while we talked in my tree. I couldn’t pinpoint what that expression was.

“And I wanted to comfort you. Here was an adorable little angel child,” time went a little slower after he said that, and it confused me so much I can’t even tell you, “who probably suffered the same amount as I did, and from what I’d heard, you were mute, and you couldn’t even scream when you were in pain. I was sympathetic. But you were afraid of me. You ran away and I gave into an instinct out of the blue. I chased prey. I thought you were enjoying the game with me.”

I shook my head, just to remind him that those male-experiment-encounters were some of the worst memories I had. “It was the same with the others, too. They wanted to console the mute little bird who had to endure the same searing torture that we did. You became older, stronger and ever faster. Chasing you was such a challenge, such fun. You were always playing the prey while we played the predator. You were our prey. Ours.”

That logic burned into my mind forever. It made sense, but it was primitive. I had thought that some of the males were actually intelligent. Thank goodness Kakashi kept elaborating. “Your beauty only made it better, made us more motivated to catch you. We wanted to touch that beauty. Even just once.” He reached out a hand, the nails sharpened a bit. I knew those tiny sharpened bits, those claws, could cut tree trunks.

“Now we can touch it. And we can keep it. The intelligence, too…” he leaned closer, looking at all angles of my face, like he’s thinking he’ll find the answer to some riddle somewhere on my face. “I don’t understand how one so young can know so much. It’s impossible. But it’s right here, it’s true.”

The next action made me stiffen with fear, and I almost forgot to breath. He leaned his forehead against mine and I tried, tried desperately, to keep from moving myself backwards and away from him. “I would love to understand. Not just how you know so much. Everything. And to start everything, you really need to trust me. I know just the way.”

He moved back a bit, sitting straight up, and I collected myself, using one fist to bunch the frosty grass at my side. (It was a way to keep from shivering or doing some other stupid thing.) Kakashi lifted his left hand to the black scarf covering his mouth and nose.

He pulled it down.

666

Well, wasn’t that second half fangirl-satisfying? SasoSaku and KakaSaku moments. I think I’ve got a thing now for Sakura and an older man. I don’t know what it is, I just like that concept. Oh, and sorry, no two-for-one chapter this time. Just be glad I didn’t make you wait any longer. Sakura mistaking Sasori's eyecolor is somewhat significant. His eyes are actually brown but she always thought gold because she was too afraid of Sasori to really get a good look at them.

Yes, in this story, Zetsu can take off his plant-thing if he so pleases. There’s no particular reason. He’s genetically enhanced like that. Again, as in the beginning of the chapter, please note that in the poll in my profile, the “Who do you think will die by the end of Airborne?” poll, the choice of Karin has been taken off. Again, do you think I took her off because she’s not gonna die at all, or because her death is so freaking obvious that having her on the poll is just stupid? Guess.

I highly suggest listening to the soundtrack of “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” when thinking of this fanfiction. A lot of my inspiration songs come from that CD, particularly the songs “Homeland,” “Sound The Bugle” and “Run Free.” All these songs can be found on Youtube, FYI. Freedom is a big element in this story, if you didn’t get it already, mostly in the case of Sakura, because it’s the only thing she wants from life.

I hope Kakashi’s explanation cleared up any questions of “why do the boys like Sakura?” and…well, I should be in bed by now so I’m too tired to think of any other comments. Enjoy.

Ta…Storm