[Fic] "An Ounce of Prevention" chapter 17 -- Naruto/Harry Potter

[edenfalling]

This is part 17 of An Ounce of Prevention, a Naruto/Harry Potter crossover that I started as a giftfic for askerian.

Technically, it's an insertion of one HP character/plot device into the Naruto world, but that does count as a crossover of sorts. "An Ounce of Prevention" will not affect canon in either series; that is, it takes place during the Naruto timeskip, and significantly before CoS in HP. (Which gives away at least part of the ending, but whatever. *grin*)

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Chapter 17: A Miss Is as Good
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Sasuke had once told Sakura (in the futile hope that a minute of attention would make her grateful enough to leave him alone for the rest of the day) that using Sharingan didn't actually make his reactions faster. It just seemed to slow the world down and split every motion into a series of still pictures, flipped through one by one to make a jerky, obvious parody of normal motion. It was easy to judge the position of the next picture and reach out to intercept any blow.

Sakura waited one heartbeat, and another -- Tomu lifted his right foot, swung it forward -- he shifted his weight along his left foot, away from the heel -- the tip of his wand twitched up, away from her chest -- a splinter's width of air still separated his right foot and the floor tiles---

Now.

"Die!" Sakura yelled, and hurled two kunai on the same exhalation. She lunged sideways, ripped the nearest sink from the wall, and threw it after her knives.

Tomu shouted something incomprehensible -- red streaked from his wand, wrapping the sink in a net of light, which tightened inward until the porcelain exploded under pressure.

Diving across the room, Sakura noted the effect from the corner of her eye -- effective, if a bit showy. And a distraction, of course, which any genin should have known. You didn't waste chakra on things you could just duck.

She tackled Tomu at the knees and slammed him to the floor.

"You!" he said, blinking, his right hand rising involuntarily to his head.

"Me," she agreed, yanking the wand from his left hand. She held it in front of him, grinned -- the sharp, vicious smile she usually kept locked away in the back of her mind -- and snapped the fragile wood. Something wispy and flame-colored trailed from one of the broken ends, tickling her finger, and she tucked the pieces into her pocket -- there was no sense getting careless now.

Tomu's face went ash-gray, and then white with strangled fury. "Do you know what you've done?"

"Stopped you," Sakura said. "Now, I'd love to learn all your secrets, Tomu, but this isn't the time or the place. Be a good boy and stay still. This will... well, it'll still hurt a lot. But you know what? I don't care."

She slammed a fist against his jaw.

Then she hit him again. Mostly because it was always hard to judge the amount of damage needed to keep someone out for long enough to make a getaway, but partly she just needed to hit someone. And Tomu deserved it.

Sakura slammed his head into the floor one more time, for good measure.

Then she checked his pulse and tipped his head sideways so he wouldn't choke to death if he vomited, because she was training to be a medic-nin and there were some deaths too ugly for anyone to deserve.

She glanced toward the back of the room. Memory Tomu was back on his feet, pale and drawn, and pointing his wand toward the open pipe. The girl lay dead and forgotten, her mouth open and slack, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

"Sorry," Sakura told her, and dashed out the door.

Eight corridors later, she realized she might have a problem. Either she'd lost count of her turns when she was tracking the girls' screams, or the layout of Tomu's mind wasn't fixed. She was completely lost. Also, the pieces of Tomu's wand had vanished from her pocket.

If she couldn't find the door to her mind before Tomu woke up...

Biting her lip, Sakura wedged herself into a ceiling corner and tried to bludgeon tendrils of panic back into oblivion. If she panicked, she wouldn't be able to think, and while dumb luck might get some people out of traps, she was stuck relying on logic. Which required thought. Which required time. But what if Tomu woke up? This was his mind -- he could probably find her in a heartbeat now that he knew she was here, and if she didn't spot him in time he could---

"No panicking!" she reminded herself, and pinched the inside of her elbow; the mild pain jolted her thoughts out of that self-defeating path.

She was in Tomu's mind. Her body wasn't real, any more than these corridors and rooms were real. They were all metaphors, ways to make sense of the patterns of chakra -- or magic -- that held the imprint of Tomu's personality. Therefore, everything here should have the same chakra signature. The only things that would feel different were this representation of her body, and the doorway to her mind; they should, logically, resonate with her chakra signature.

All she had to do was focus. Sakura felt that same vicious little smile creeping over her face. She was good at focusing.

She closed her eyes, held her fingers in a tiger seal, and concentrated, feeling and listening for the faint echo of her own soul.

After a minute, her eyes snapped open. A hair-thin strand of chakra wound around her fingers, tugging gently around the corner. Yes. Home was that way.

Sakura followed the intangible thread back through the labyrinth of Tomu's mind, past rows and rows of locked and lonely rooms. Her footsteps echoed ominously from the stones, but she refused to hurry and break her concentration. She couldn't afford to lose her path.

It seemed like eternity until she turned one last corner and glimpsed the open doorway at the end of a long, curving corridor -- somehow narrower and darker than before. She dropped her thread and began to run.

She was ten steps from the threshold when her entire body froze and crashed to the floor.

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End of Chapter

Back to Fool Me Once

Continue to He Who Laughs Last

Read the final version on ff.net

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I had way too much fun writing that chapter... but seriously, what's not to love about Sakura kicking ass? And a cliffhanger. I love cliffhangers -- don't you? *angelic smile*

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Apropos of nothing in particular, I find that I like hand-coding the minimal html that lj doesn't do for you. It makes me stare very suspiciously at every use of italics, which is good and useful, since I have a tendency to overuse them. When I'm typing [i] and [/i] around every slanted word, the editing corner of my brain takes the opportunity to shove each one in my face, sigh in disapproval, and say, "Liz, you poor silly creature, are you so scared that your words might not say exactly what you want them to say that you're going to put them on steroids?"

And I frown, and waver, and end up putting one to two thirds of the italicized words back into normal type.

You should all be grateful. Italics abuse is not pretty to read. *grin*

Comments

[issen4.livejournal.com]

Cliffhanger! I like the way Sakura thinks.

RE: html coding

That's exactly the same reason I end up not using italics! When I have to add the code, it's an opportunity to think about whether I really need them--and then I don't. I also give myself a quota of one italised word per post.

[edenfalling]

I like writing characters thought processes. I'm not quite sure why, but I think it's because it's a nice window onto characterization -- a way of showing how people attempt to cope with problems and surprises.

I have yet to try an italics quota, but it sounds like a promising idea!

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Love kickass Sakura, and the way she thinks her way out of the trap - or tries to, at least.

[edenfalling]

Well, she found the door. Now she just has to get through it... :-)

[askerian]

HAHAHA YES PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE. >DDDDDDDDD

I love how offended/surprised Tom gets. Go competent!Sakura go~

... Your cliffhangers are just mean.

[edenfalling]

Tom Riddle is one of those characters who just needs to be punched by somebody. I can't think of anyone who'd argue with that. :-)

I especially liked writing this chapter because Sakura gets to fight AND think, and do both of them well.

[lurker-lost.livejournal.com]

Woo~ Kickass!Sakura ftw!

... And I agree with Asuka... Your cliffhangers are just mean. ;p

[edenfalling]

They're fun to write, though... and they have the interesting side-effect of making me start the next chapter almost immediately after I finish the current one, because I want to know what happens next, too! (This doesn't necessarily mean that I finish the next chapter in a timely fashion, but it does help a bit.)

[nights-fang.livejournal.com]

Done brilliantly. I love Sakura when she's kickass

[edenfalling]

Thank you! The world always needs more kickass female characters.

[bewize.livejournal.com]

Foiled by this cliffhanger, though. *sighs*

I really enjoyed this chapter. I like that Sakura lets herself be just a little vicious. It's interesting to see - medic nin or not, she's still a trained killer and a part of her enjoys that. Interesting concept to play with.

Then she checked his pulse and tipped his head sideways so he wouldn't choke to death if he vomited, because she was training to be a medic-nin and there were some deaths too ugly for anyone to deserve.

I wonder if she would think that if she knew what he became. I also wonder if Tomu can die... Hmmm.

Great chapter!

[edenfalling]

I figure any society based openly on the training and use of assassins and elite shock troops is going to have a somewhat different attitude toward the morality of violence than our society does. And anyone who couldn't deal with hurting people would wash out of ninja training early on (unless, as in Hinata's case, they had clans forcing them into a certain path).

I wonder if she would think that if she knew what he became. I also wonder if Tomu can die... Hmmm.

My inclination is to read Sakura as capable of violence and revenge, but not of intentional, gratuitous cruelty. She'd probably kill Voldemort in a heartbeat, if she had the means and opportunity, but I think she'd make the death clean.

As for Tomu's mortality, I think he can't die unless the Horcrux is destroyed. He's the manifestation of the soul fragment in the diary, so as long as it's intact, he'll eventually 'reset,' so to speak. (There's a reason his wand didn't stay in Sakura's pocket.)

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

aaaahahahaha and i am blind and have at one point turned off al lthe style/type/font notifications in my braille display and my speech software. it was distracting me from the text, go figure. it seems to sort of hover abovve the words for me anyway instead of simultaneously seeing letters and that theyr'e bolded, liek sighted people see it.

[edenfalling]

Yeah, I can see how that would be annoying!

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

oh actually it mostly makes me laug hbecause sometiems i completel yforget that these typesettings exist at all. i know i've used them when I was writing papers. i just never look for it for real i ntexts. i mostl yfind it werid of myself that whe ni do notice a nitalic word in abook it sort of distracts me from the sentence.