Welcome back my fellow cherryblossom lovers!
I hope the seasons are treating you better than this author-who has a case of the sniffles. Don't worry I'm still cognitive enough to bring out your new chapters.
Don't forget to stay safe and healthy!
Here's a quote that made me think "You may not be able to alter reality but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this paradoxically alters reality."
I remember thinking about where my obsession writing about Sakura came from, and it may have started when I began to ponder her reality and attitude within the confines of a story that maybe didn't have the capacity to articulate all of her. And maybe there were other's out there who wondered the same.
Big changes coming up soon and something to look forward to: Stay up to date with me on TUMBLR!
Or type KATSURA369 (Find my socials)
Let's enjoy this journey together!
CHAPTER 48
"We should set up camp for now," Robin suggested.
"And if we want to eat, we'd better start scavenging," Sanji added, getting up. They had already cleaned the bones off one of the sky sharks, though that was mostly Luffy, but it was nothing more than a late lunch.
Sakura looked at the other sky shark they had caught. They had tried to attack while the group was crossing over from the altar, and found themselves on the other side of the food chain.
"The sky shark should be enough as is," Sakura said. That was more than enough protein to keep them going. They were in a forbidden forest, under divine judgment, so inconveniences like bland food should be the least of their problems.
"Sakura-chan." Sanji turned to her. "I cannot serve bland cuisine to my lovely ladies."
Sakura tapped her forehead, "Well, we aren't exactly in a position to have the luxury for those kinds of concerns when we were literally at an altar for judgment."
"Who cares about that?" Luffy chided, his face as bright as ever now that his stomach was full.
"Anyone who wants to get off this island alive!" Usopp yelled. As usual, his over concerns were discarded like most of Luffy's logic.
"Alright." Sanji's voice shifted as he gathered his cooking tools. "Luffy, you stay here and start filtering water for drinking."
"Huh?"
"I'll start preparing the meat. Ussop-
"Is staying right here!" The sniper said, he folded his arms and planted himself down on the ground with a huff. Muttering, he had had enough trauma for one day. And he didn't want to go too far from the Merry.
"The Merry is on the altar," Sanji pointed out. Even with a boat now, it wasn't a simple task to travel across to their ship, not when the area was teaming with sky fish beneath the clouds, and probably other creatures that were looking for a quick snack above the surface. They couldn't take her off the altar until repairs were made.
"Then I'll look from here." Usopp did not move. He did look worse for wear, and they were going to resume their journey tomorrow, so for today, everyone decided to give him some mercy. Not a courtesy they tended to show each other, after all, shenanigans were best performed with those closest to you.
"Then the rest of us will go looking for anything that gives dinner more flavour," Robin offered.
Sakura glanced at her. "I didn't think you'd care about something like that."
Robin's expression didn't change. It almost didn't change. But there was something in her eyes, and Sakura felt the corner of her mouth twitch.
There it is. Something to confirm that she had hit the mark. Robin wasn't concerned about the meal; she had a taste for exploring, a wanderlust with the desire to acquire knowledge, a trait for an archaeologist. Her treasure was the information of the past. And right now they were sitting on a trove of 400 years' worth of buried secrets wrapped in ruins and ancient cities. She wanted to cover more ground with what was left of daylight.
Zoro was already walking away too, heading towards the forest.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Nami called, standing up quickly. "Where do you think you're going?"
"I'm gonna scavenge for more meat," Zoro said, without stopping.
"We have meat." Nami gestured broadly at the remains of the sky shark.
"Oh, I want to go look too!" Chopper bounced on his hooves. He wanted to find herbs to make more medicine.
"How are you going to find your way back?" Usopp called after Zoro's retreating back, voice climbing in pitch. "You'll get lost!"
Zoro was no longer visibly engaging with this conversation. He always seemed to tune people out when it came to addressing his poor sense of direction. He was already running into the forest now at high speed. Gone with the wind and into the foliage.
"Are you kidding!?"
"Will someone go get that idiot. We don't have time to go looking for him when he loses his way." Nami said. She wasn't going to let anything get in the way of her gold, and redirecting their resources for a search party constituted that.
Sakura stood up, "I'll get him."
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Though he had made quite a lot of headway, Sakura still managed to track Zoro down. He moved as if he had no rival in this dangerous forest with its overgrown creatures, leaving obvious signs of movement, slashing through hard foliage, and leaving tracks in the dirt from heavy footsteps. Basically moved with complete confidence in the wrong direction, which meant he covered a lot of ground very quickly and ended up somewhere specific, just never somewhere intentional.
He was crouched at the base of a tree with a focused expression. Then, in one burst of motion, his hand snapped out and came up with a rat wriggling in his grasp before he snapped its neck.
Sakura's face pulled into a sour note, 'He's not thinking…"
"This should taste good."
"PUT THAT RAT DOWN NOW!" Sakura yelled, losing all sense of courtesy. Zoro jumped a little, glaring out into the trees till he saw the pink.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"That's my line!" Sakura jumped down from the fair height, taking the landing silently.
"I'm looking for more things to throw in the pot,"
Sakura recoiled, "And you think a rat is a good option?"
"What does it matter? Protein's protein."
"Drop the rat."
"Why?"
"Because no one is eating that!" She pointed at it violently. "Rats carry diseases, and that's before you factor in whatever mutations sky island wildlife produced."
He looked at the rat and then at her, and somehow, Sakura felt offended.
"Fine." He threw it into the bushes. "I'll get frogs then."
Sakura felt like she wanted to tear her hair out, but she was also relieved that she decided to chase after him, if this was the palette he was trying to base their dinner off of. "No! We have enough edible meat at camp."
"Why'd you come out here then?"
Sakura uncrossed her arms and raised her eyebrow at him. Then she glanced around at the forest, at the identical tree trunks and forest ground with no roads or path, and the complete absence of any landmark that distinguished one direction from another.
"Which way is camp?"
Zoro didn't even hesitate before he pointed in the opposite direction that would've led further away from their base.
"Right." She turned and started walking in the opposite direction. "That's why genius. Follow me."
He followed her, because what else was he going to do? He had to at least keep her from getting lost.
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For a while, they moved in silence. Sakura chose a brisk pace, rather than another leap through the trees, knowing Zoro would end up going in a new direction he invented, and it would be the same song and dance again. Frankly, she had better things to do with her time. Like help Chopper search for herbs.
'Why did I follow after him?' She couldn't help but wonder. Sanji was busy with their dinner, Robin had gone off on her own, Usopp was too afraid to go by himself, Nami probably didn't want to track through alone either, and Luffy would've just added to the problem by getting lost himself, so of course, there was no choice. That was her reasoning.
She was content, enjoying the sounds of the forest, tricking her nervous system into nostalgia.
Then Zoro said, "Are you still mad about Chopper?"
Sakura's pace didn't change even if her mind just crashed. "What do you think?"
"He's not a baby. He can take care of himself."
"He's a medic."
"Yeah?" That single statement showed that he had no clue what she was referring to, and it lit her anger at how little he understood.
"So he can't be on the front lines of defense." Sakura navigated around a root without looking down, eyes still forward. She wanted to finish this conversation and get to camp without stopping, because the more distance left, the more room for arguments. That was all she had come to expect when being alone with Zoro. So to delay that, she decided to give him something to think about.
"What happens if Chopper gets injured so badly he's incapacitated? He can't move, he can't speak, do you know what that means for everyone else in battle?" Zoro stared blankly at her, saying he was waiting for the answer. "If someone else also gets injured, there's no one with medical knowledge to treat them. A medic on the front lines is a liability to their own team. Because they are needed alive and functional to treat the injured. They are the ones who keep everyone else alive. They are the last ones who should be taking damage."
Zoro was quiet for a moment.
"We're not an official platoon. We're pirates."
"Yeah," she said, turning away. "I'm getting that."
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Sanji managed to gather ingredients from their every shrinking pantry to cook something, with the help of his crew mates. Robin found a salt-rock, Chopper and Sakura found a few edible herbs and spices, along with a few medical ones. While keeping Zoro from adding any rats and frogs into their pot. But he was forced to contribute as well. Sanji made him use his sword to hold to giants pot over the fire. Though he wanted to argue, he also wanted to eat. And while the strew was cooking, Nami was cooking up a report.
She pushed up her reading glasses, "Let's review the contents of Noland's picture book."
They realized that the golden city that everyone had brushed off as nothing more than a fairy tale was actually a part of Jaya. The reason that they couldn't find it anymore was that it had been taken into the sky via the Knock-up stream.
"We went to Jaya before, and those two forests are too different."
Robin answered Zoro's queries, "That is likely due to the strange substances inside the sea cloud and the island cloud. It enhances the plants and animals' growth."
"The South Bird that saved us was also big," Chopper said.
"Why would the south bird save you in the first place?" pondered Sanji.
While Chopper was left behind and got attacked by another one of the priests, he called on the sky knight, and while he saved him, the man had fallen into the white sea and Chopper went in after him but of course being a devil fruit user, meant he couldn't swim, that's when he heard that familiar call joh and found himself being lifted up by a giant south bird.
"I don't know, but they were calling the sky knight god."
"God?" Everyone turned to the man with his Pegasus. They brought him back from the ship and had him laid out on a makeshift mattress, so their medics could keep an eye on him without needing to cross paths with a sky shark.
"So then I just have to beat up that old guy?" Luffy pointed to the poor man.
"Of course not!"
"Let's think back on the information on the golden city."
"There was something about a bell-shaped gold, something about a South Bird. ON the last page of the diary, there is something unclear." Robin said, "I saw gold in the right eye of the skull."
"That's it!" Nami pointed, taking her map and the one Sakura and Robin had found in Jaya. She placed one over the other on the corner, and that's when they saw it. A rough yet clear outline of a skull, they had seen enough variations of Jolly Rogers to spot that. And while one eye was an open space for sea and sky, the other looked like it was filled with a building.
"This is the skull's right eye,"
"Because f the island was split in half, it was impossible to solve the riddle. There is no doubt there's some huge amount of gold waiting for us here, and we're going to get it."
"Unless, of course, we all die by God's wrath added Robin.
"Will you stop being so morbid!?" Usopp begged.
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As the sky began to darken, Robin hastened them to put out the fire since it had served its purpose for cooking, but Luffy had other plans. He wanted to camp, and like a dog with a bone, he wasn't going to let it go until he got everyone moving in his direction.
Zoro and Sanji went along, stacking up the logs before he convinced anyone else that this was meant to be. He insisted that when you were camping, you were supposed to have a fire place set, and good food cooking, and apparently no regard for any of the wildlife that wanted to eat them.
Sakura thought that there might be some kind of onslaught, from at least the animals in the forest, but somehow, someway, she couldn't even explain, a pack of wolves had appeared from the darkness, and they ended up dancing with them.
Literally
She looked around in disbelief at the group. Usopp was beating a tune on a drum that echoed through the forest, Luffy was howling around the fire with the wolves who had the ability to follow along to his two-pawed dance routine, Zoro had ended up drinking with some of the wolves, and Sanji was serving them their food. With smiles all around, seemingly everyone forgot about their predicament.
"Even the cloud wolves have been tamed. There is no one who would dare cause so much noise in Eneru's home," said Gan Fall. He had finally woken and had moved to sit along with the crew and their new fury companions.
"My thoughts exactly," Sakura folded her arms.
"You don't seem to be enjoying the festivities," he said, noticing that she was the only one without a drink or a sign of merriment on her face.
"It's not that I dislike anything about this. It's just different from what I'm used to." Sakura tried to explain. "By the way, how are you feeling?"
"Quite well after you treatment, I'm sorry to cause so much trouble. I intended to be helpful but…"
"What do you mean, you've helped enough. You saved Chopper." Zoro said, "Thank you."
Robin came to offer him some food, but Gan Fall politely declined, claiming his stomach wasn't yet up for the intake after the thrashing it had taken behind the armor. Though Sakura assured him, she had healed him well enough that he could start solids straight away.
"Oh, Mister, is Conis safe?" Sanji called from the bonfire.
"Yes, she and her father are in my home."
Then the old man pulled his face tight, "I overheard your conversation. Saying this island was once called Jaya. For your people, heaving ground like this is natural. However, in the sky, it is unheard of."
He grabbed a handful of dirt, letting it run through his fingers, but he looked at it with such fascination and yearning. "We call this vearth, for us it will forever be admiration itself . Clouds can't nurture plants, but they can't birth them."
That's when Gan revealed new truths about the sky world that they had mistaken for a paradise.
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No one expected to wake up easily; it was always the first steps taken for adventure that felt like you were sinking in mud. Unpredictability was the main theme for their lives, but no one could come up with an explanation for what they saw this time.
They gathered at the base of the altar steps. The Merry looked back at them, not just as she had been before she was doused in a chicken costume. The mechanisms and rigging that had carried her up through the Knock Up Stream stripped away cleanly, as though someone had known exactly what didn't belong to her. The hull had been patched, with care, even if the job was rough. New planking fitted against old grain, seams packed and sealed. The mast, which had been lying flat across the was upright. The rigging had been restrung. Metal sheets covered the worst of the damage along the hull's lower sections.
"Usopp, how did you get across here?" Sakura asked, there were sky sharks in the water, and she doubted that he would be able to carry himself over without at least screaming to alert them.
"I didn't…" He couldn't even finish the explanation as he tried to come up with one here. They all looked at each other, trying to figure out who took care of the repairs, but no one stepped forward to take credit. Which was completely unlike anyone in this group. They'd fought over who put away their own laundry, took showers, and ate more.
"I knew it," Usopp exclaimed, glaring at Zoro without explanation. "I told you I saw something last night!"
"What are you talkinga bout?" asked Nami.
Last night, when the drinks finally settled and everyone was asleep, Usopp woke to the call of nature. He got closer to where the Merry was, and the moment he'd looked toward the altar and saw something moving on the deck of the Merry. Assuming the worst, that it was a ghost, he screamed, and Zoro, who had come looking for him, found Usopp nearly passed out in fright.
"He said he saw a ghost, who's gonna buy that?" Zoro argued.
"Evidently not you." Sakura aimed with an attitude that penetrated.
Robin touched the metal sheets. Poor Merry looked like she was on her last leg, and it had been replaced by prosthetics.
"This doesn't make sense. We should be the only ones here," Nami bit her nail. Their freedom was on the line as well as the gold. "But now we can sail out of here."
Though she, as well as everyone were still skeptical, with everything else going on their their determination to find this city of gold, they didn't think it was wise to spread their mentality too thin.
Hey, love
So, you just read that chapter.
And now you're sitting there. Staring at the screen. And thinking about bookmarking till the next update?
Well you don't have to wait.
Right now, over on my Ko-fi, there are 3-7 chapters ahead of what's publicly posted. That means that moment you're dreading or hoping for Sakura? It's already written. Sakura has already walked through what comes next and I promise you, she does not disappoint.
What's waiting for you over there:
The chapter directly after this one
The plot reveal I've been building toward since chapter one
3–7 full chapters to binge (And more incoming)
And coming soon: My author notes-the unhinged behind-the-scenes commentary only Ko-fi readers get.
I write this story because I love Sakura the way you love Sakura.
If this story has lived in your head rent-free, made you feel things you weren't ready for, or made you want to throw your phone across the room in the best possible way the early access chapters are for you.
Thank you for reading.
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EARLY CHAPTERS FOR MEMBERS NOW: BUYMEACOFFEE
-Kunoichi amongst Heroes chapter (105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110)
-Kunoichi amongst Pirates chapter (49, 50, 51)
-Crossroads of Fate chapter (39, 40, 41, 42)
-Through the Looking Glass chapter (55, 56, 57, 58, 59)
- (Bleach crossover) Kunoichi amongst Reapers: (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
-Commission: Demon slayer x My hero academia (PART 1 & 2)
- Kunoichi amongst Benders (Avatar x Naruto crossover) (16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
-Kunoichi amongst Heroes WHAT IF SPIN OFF: Dorms and Exams
-SPECIAL HALLOWEEN CHAPTER: Shinigami amongst Shinobi