46 Terror.

Most of the ninja had dispersed to fight and keep the bandits away from the people they were supposed to protect, me, mum, dad, Naruto, Kushina and Kakashi was also with us.

The sounds of battle were apparent through out the evening as we all kept hearing clashes between metal and sometimes a few explosions producing smoke clouds high into the sky.

But suddenly an eerie silence fell upon the forests, that bordered the roads we were travelling and chose to rest in as the night deepened, gripping it, suffocating it, there weren't any bushes twitching, or even any worms wriggling.

The horses from the wagon that had the weapon crates stood by quietly, frozen without making a sound as dark clouds hovered over everything, blocking any moon light. I, mum, dad, Kushina and Naruto along with the drivers of the weapons delivery wagon had encircled around a pit fire that Kakashi had lit using lightning transformation after pouring a bunch of what smelt like alcohol.

Kaguya without letting out a squeak nestled deeper inside my hoodie as she seemed to be afraid of the hostile environment, afraid of being discovered.

Everything about the situation felt eerie and unreal, as if I was sitting in the middle of an Iron Maiden with the iron spikes poking around my neck, waiting for me to make a movement to impale me.

*crack*

The sound of a twig breaking on the right side of the camp attracted the attention of everyone present.

Kakashi had his kunai raised, while Kushina slide out her own kunai with Mum and Dad both readying their own kunai.

A ninja that looked like Minato appeared parting the bushes to find a way for himself through them.

Kakashi walked up to the person walking towards the fire camp and began to talk.

"Sensei! You're here! Is everything fine on the outside?" His unusually cheerful voice threw off all the people on guard since he had stayed silent throughout the entire trip.

"Haha! Yes! I was just checking around a little bit more since I found no activity anywhere near us. You know, you've got to make-" 

*PUCHI* *PUCHI* *PUCHI* *PUCHI*

*puff*

Before the transformed ninja could complete his words, kunai stabbed him once in each limb, while Kushina had immobilized him using her Uzumaki Sealing chains and began performing a strange jutsu as she threw Kunai with seals tied to them around the ninja in a star pattern.

"Who're you?" Kakashi asked as he placed a sharp kunai, whose edge glimmered under the moonlight, under the neck of the ninja.

"What are you guys doing!? I'm the Hok-!" The ninja attempted to speak as he raised his hands to perform a handseal.

Kushina threw a kunai that sliced away his fingers, causing them to fall to the ground and stop the ninja from speaking because of the pain.

'Why did she stop him from talking? Is there something that will happen if he simply talks? Or was he doing something like a sound based genjutsu?'

'Hey Sakura did you feel something when he started speak-'

'Yes. I'm sure everyone here felt it, how did you not?'

'What…? Well alright. But what did you feel?'

'I don't know? It felt like I was being dragged into the infinite Tsukuyomi again, I just felt wrong, as if someone was forcibly making me think and feel something else until Kushina-nee stopped him from speaking any further?'

'What the hell… this is getting scary.'

I felt the hair on my body rise by as each moment passed making the surrounding colder and colder, goosebumps filled my skin as the feeling of something lurking around us to observe us all as prey lurked around preying on my sanity as if any attempt at comprehension would only result in my death.

The feeling of fear was being forced down my throat and into my stomach twisting it into knots, through my pores into my blood vessels making it feel like frozen water was running through them, my mind devolved into a flurry of thoughts forcing me to abandon it and disassociate from it instinctually just to continue and maintain my sanity.

I heard an orchestra of screams all around me as something was trying to intimidate me, I heard Sakura calling me for help with Naruto wailing about something incomprehensible as I felt a sense of evil rise from him.

I heard Kushina scream something incomprehensible in the cacophony of screams.

And then it all stopped, stopped as if it was all a lie.

The voice of an ancient entity sounded all throughout the space that existed around us, within us, and inside us, reverberating not only the surroundings, our bones and bodies but also the very cores of our beings, our chakra.

I felt the connection between my mind, body and chakra shake as I felt a simply push was enough to tilt the entire concept of reality that I held and break it down.

Curious about what this feeling was I attempted to push myself further but stopped myself when I instinctually felt fear. Not in the mental or emotional sense. A psychic sense that pushed the knowledge deep within me that right now was the wrong time to try what I was doing.

Holding my curiosity and eagerness to try something new back, I paid attention to the voice that was slowly becoming audible as everything about my experience went back to normal.

"I kshpsh will pskpash Find kshahk You paskhsakh YouCannotHideForLong."

The voice was strange. It felt like it was composed. Not told. Not spoken. The silence in between words felt like static white noise, not silence, like it should.

The eerie feeling left as I found everyone around me bleeding in some way, either from dislocated body parts or from their orifices which looked like they had damaged internally.

The position where the ninja that had intruded was standing was now a blood bath and looked like someone had pulverized his entire body by running it through a shredder.

No one was awake and everyone seemed to have collapsed.

'Sakura! Sakura! Are you here!?'

Receiving no response I rushed into my mindscape only to find that it looked like an earthquake had wreaked the entire dimension altogether, as if Whitebread had used the Gura Gura no mi to destroy it completely. Fractures ran through the entire area and make it look like a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

I found Sakura laying down in a pool of her own blood, unconscious just like everyone else was.

I didn't know what to do since I didn't know any medical jutsu and the only way I could help anyone right now was by calling for Tsuna-nee who should be following us from somewhere near by if I had deduced correctly earlier. I packed a few wounds that Sakura had on the surface from external things with duct tape just to keep her blood inside and punctured her chest so that no blood inside would choke her to death and left.

I didn't know how to signal to Tsuna-nee, so I came up with a quick plan to take a few firesticks from the camp and use the alcohol Kakashi had on him to make a make shift fireball in the air but as soon as I moved toward the firepit I found the entire thing frozen over, and it was only then that I realized that the entire floor of the forest was frozen.

Forcing down the panic attack I was having I pulled out myself from my mother's grasp and began to think of a solution as I watched that I had at some point activated my hidden blades which had pierced through my palms and for some reason, probably the cold, I couldn't feel any pain for now.

I looked around to see if I could help myself in anyway and found that all the trees in the area had become bone dry as if someone had sucked out their life like a vampire would the blood of his victims.

I rushed to get some alcohol from Kakashi and poured it onto the tree closest to me after which I lit it on fire by making sparks by roughly smashing two kunai over each other.

Just as the tree caught fire, I realized that I had lost a lot of blood, so I dragged myself away from where ever I felt fire could spread and then collapsed by dad's side.

It wasn't long before I felt like I was loosing my consciousness while desperately trying to keep pressure on my wounds to lessen the bleeding as pain slowly started returning to my brain because of the huge fire thawing up all the ice.

Just before everything faded to black I felt someone arrive in the camp as I thought I heard a few twigs crunch and then rush around where everyone was collapsed.

…..

**Tsunade POV**

'Where are you?!'

'I don't want to loose you as well.'

' Megumi! Shizune! Sakura!'

I frantically searched around running by the last known positions I had seen everyone at when I suddenly lost sight of everyone that was right in front of me while they set up camp and began cooking dinner for everyone on the trip.

It was as if the place they had been sitting in was ripped out of existence or reality itself, it had vanished into thin air, right in front of my eyes.

I just couldn't find them, neither could I find the group by trying to sense any of their chakra signatures, nor could I look around and depend on any of my five senses to see, smell or hear them.

Jumping on top of the tallest trees I looked around the forest to spot even a spark of light that I could use to locate them in the depth of the night.

I didn't want to summon Katsuya, since we didn't know any longer if she was on our side or someone that supported the Toads who we suspected.

As the seconds passed I grew more and more desperate trying to find something, anything to give me a reassurance that everyone was alright.

*BRRROOOMMMMM*

A sudden rumble caught me off guard sending me almost slipping from the branch on the tree I was standing on top of.

I turned around only to come face to face with a large forest fire that I had somehow completely ignored until now.

I rushed towards the site and even from a distance I could smell the familiar scent of iron that coated battlefields during times of war, the smell of blood.

Rushing into a clearing in the forest that felt like it was a comfortable spot to choose for laying camp but now surrounded by fire all around, I immediately doused the fire that lit the few trees nearby using the great water wave jutsu and moved to assess the situation.

The scene in front of me froze my blood but I pushed ahead.

I watched as a few people had blood coming out of their eyes, a few out of their noses and mouth, but most if not all had their bones bending at all the wrong angles from all the wrong places.

Each of them were laying in a pool of their own blood looking dead.

I looked at my hands that were shaking, bringing up my fears once again, until I spotted Megumi's barely open eyes that were loosing focus.

I rushed to his side and found him with a bottle of alcohol in his hands that I assumed he used to light the trees on fire.

I found that he had the least amount of damage done to his body, with only his wrists slit because of his hidden blades stabbing through them into his palm.

I carefully disengaged the weapon and started to heal him as his little body had lost a lot of blood.

I looked around me and found that I didn't have enough time to heal everyone present.

Biting my thumb I mad a tough choice and used my blood as the sacrifice with my chakra to summon Katsuyu to help me.

It wasn't a gamble I was willing or even wanted to take, but something that I had to since right now I would loose everyone close to me if I didn't move myself to do so.

"Kuchiyose no jutsu."

*PUFF*

I waited with bated breath as the cloud of smoke cleared revealing a small part, but enough, of Katsuyu.

"Tsunade-sama!" Katsusyu responded in a worried tone as she looked around us which greatly helped me trust her.

"Katsuyu can you help me heal everyone here?"

"Yes!"

I watched as Katsuyu split up into various smaller versions of herself and move toward the other people and help heal them while I moved into Megumi's mindscape as soon as I finished healing him to heal Sakura since I thought she could be the reason that Megumi hadn't taken much of the damage of whatever had happened here.

Entering his mindscape I found it to be fractured quite a bit, which suggested that something had dealt damage to the very chakra of everyone present here by trying to forcefully separate it from their bodies.

I found Sakura lying on the floor with a few of her deeper cuts patched by Megumi using something that looked like a strap that was stuck to her cut.

I quickly healed Sakura and lay her down to rest in an open environment where there was nothing of immediate danger nearby and moved back out of Megumi's mindscape.

I found Kaguya, Megumi's little rabbit bleeding as well, so I healed her a little and then passed her over to Katsuyu to save on my chakra for any emergency right now.

"What happened here!? Kushina! Are you alright!?" I watched as Minato moved into the clearing, coughing up blood as he tried to take Kushina away from Katsuyu who was healing her.

"Minato hold yourself!" I said as I pulled him away form Katusuyu and let her do her work.

"But Kushina and Naruto!!! She isn't- de- dead is she? Is Naruto alright?"

"No they will be fine, something happened here as I lost track of them for no clear reason."

"Lost track?" He asked with an incredulous expression.

"Yes, one moment they were all in front of me and the next these guys weren't, not for the entire last hour and a half." I said as I laid him down, his blood loss wasn't let him focus as I watched his eyes move in and out of consciousness as he was struggling to hold himself from passing out.

"But…"

"Where were you and why are you covered in blood?"

"I was…. I got caught fighting the red cloaked people, one of them was a puppet master but it was harder to defeat Orochimaru who kept interfering and was able to evade every time I marked him by shifting into a new body or using a snake to substitute the mark of the flying Raijin onto."

"Are you injured anywhere?"

"Ah… well." I watched as Minato slowly pulled away his cloak to reveal how his entire left side was charred. "I remembered you telling me that I shouldn't let my blood be taken by any of the Akatsuki members but I couldn't make sure, since Orochimaru got me with the Kusanagi sword that was in his throat. I did damage both of them enough to make them flee from here before I could kill them, I don't know if they got my blood or not."

"It's alright. I'll take care of everything here, you can rest."

"Ha… I don't think I'm fit to be a Hokage. I just didn't want to let anyone disrupt the peace that was so hard fought for and let my family be harmed, why is all this happening....."

"Sssshhhhh, it's alright…"

I closed Minato's eyes as I began to heal him and then laid him next to Kushina and Naruto who were being healed by Katsuyu and fell down beside Shizune who looked fine now apart from the blood stains that covered her face.

'What a troublesome life. Why is no one in my life a person who does not enjoy danger. Haha, Megumi would probably shout at me for not informing him of what I and Kushina had decided to do before hand, he'll probably be mad that I put everyone's lives at risk. I definitely have to apologize. He'll probably also have a better solution to the situation, but this time we just couldn't risk talking about our plans.'

I looked at Kushina and wondered what had happened here that she couldn't even help anyone out and was in such a condition. Just who was this enemy we were up against that even knowledge of the future was falling short by such grand margins?

I closed my eyes to rest a little and calm my nerves that felt like they were shot with a stimulant.

-------------------------

A/N : Please donate to the link in the creator's thoughts if you can to help me turn this into my main focus, every little bit you can spare is much appreciated.

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