There was a moment of silence after what she had said.

"Um, Toph-chan?" He, whoever he was, finally landed on the ground. Toph locked onto his location. "You're supposed to come with me. Ran-chan brought you here to help me."

The jovial tone was fading, being replaced by a more normal voice. "Didn't she tell you?"

"Who is this 'Ran'?" Toph asked, not moving an inch. Her brain was working overtime, connecting the dots and placing the puzzle pieces that the self-proclaimed Tobi was giving her. "Is she the spirit who kidnapped me right out of my world?"

"Well," the Tobi man seemed to have a little bit of common sense. He moved slightly away from her. "Yes?"

Toph struck.

"Eep!" Tobi yelped. "What are you doing!?"

She sent up a giant spike. He dodged, arms flailing, and Toph attacked again, viciously uppercutting a pillar of hardened stone.

He wobbled away, just barely missing getting catapulted into the air, and Toph noticed something strange.

His heartbeat.

His heart rate was slow, steady.

She slammed her foot into the ground. A rockslide burst towards him, and, he slipped and fell out of the way, shrieking.

He wasn't afraid.

For all of his posturing, all of his acting, he wasn't scared.

Toph stopped. She still held a defensive position, but she didn't attack.

"Who are you?" She asked.

"Tobi!" He chirped. He was still for a moment, then lunged forwards. Toph stumbled back, but she wasn't fast enough to avoid his swift hand.

His fingers closed over her face, and then she - they - were suddenly gone.

Vanished.

▪▪▪

The clearing was empty.

There were signs of a battle, but no participants, alive or dead. If someone had happened to enter to survey the destruction, they might've heard an ethereal cackle as a spirit of revenge faded from view.

They wouldn't have seen her, though. The Onryo would only be visible around those fated to carry out their bloody works of vengeance.

But no one was there to hear her voice or see the chaos.

Only a few birds and a single squirrel had witnessed the events.

And they wouldn't tell.

Ever.

▪▪▪

A few weeks after Sakura had gotten her letter and charm, Naruto had skipped into town dragging along a busty older woman in robes.

This was a very inopportune time; she had just raided the chuunin section of the library and made off with an advanced technique book that most people wouldn't have lent to a genin. It was hidden under her coat, but even buried in the grey fabric, the flat side showed all too clearly. It was practically asking to be discovered and confiscated.

Sakura had seen them coming from down the street, and she had zero desire to have anything to do with her peppy teammate at the moment (advanced techniques called), so she'd tried to slip down an alleyway and vanish. Of course, she had no such luck.

Naruto spotted her pastel pink hair from a mile away and led the charge.

"Sakura-chan! Sakura-chan!" His hand clamped down over her arm, effectively cutting off her escape route. "I'm back!"

"I can see that," she deadpanned for a moment, then remembered to be chipper. "Who'd you bring?"

Of course, with the current political upheaval, the woman's distinctive diamond seal, and the face she'd seen in a dozen medical textbooks, she knew exactly who he'd brought. But she was determined not to let her personality shine through and let him introduce her to the third and final Sannin, Tsunade Senju.

And, just because she could, she hammed it up all throughout their introduction. Sakura had honestly enjoyed subtly misleading Naruto all throughout their conversation.

"So you learned the super twisty spinny jutsu and convinced her to come back with you?" Sakura shut her eyes in Kakashi-sensei's usual eyesmile and beamed at him. "That's so cool, Naruto!"

He preened at her praise. "It's not a super twisty spinny jutsu, though! It's the rasengan, and the pervy sage told me it was super special!"

Sakura continued smiling at Naruto, but she flicked her eyes to the lady, who was standing there evaluating her. Their eyes met, jade green against hard hazel, and Sakura allowed her facade to drop for a few calculated heartbeats. Then she tore her eyes away and back into the eyesmile.

The Senju's eyes narrowed, and she interrupted Naruto's story. "What's your name, girl?"

Sakura tilted her head, hiding more of her right cheek behind the coat collar. "Me?"

"Yes, you." Tsunade glared at her.

"That's just Sakura-chan, granny Tsunade. She's super strong!" Naruto introduced her for her. "You should have seen her in the chuunin exams! She was all like whoosh! Bam! Collapsing huuuge towers like this!"

He made a few nonsensical hand motions, waving his arms about like a child.

She didn't drop her wide smile for a heartbeat.

"Speakin' of which, where's Toph at? She never wrote back to any of my letters! And she said she would!"

Sakura's face froze.

She knew the Senju saw it, that Naruto saw it, but she was more concerned with covering up the sudden gaping hole that question left in her. She felt her hand come up to grab at her arm, but she stopped it and forced it to fall back to her side.

"Well, I don't know," she cocked her head again and pointed up in the air. "Maybe you should ask Kakashi-sensei!"

"Maybe," he squinted at her a little weirdly. "But she's usually with you though, right?"

With what seemed to be the greatest effort in her life, Sakura kept her face in the smile. "Yeah, I guess that's true. Ah, well. Maybe next time."

She stepped onto the alley wall and grinned at Naruto from a sideways stance. "I've got to be going, but I'll see you soon!"

Before he could utter a single protest she was up the building and escaping over the rooftops, holding the book firmly under her coat and trying not to cry.

Then she got to what she was starting to think of as her own, personal training grounds and began to read.

▪▪▪

The second the girl was gone, Tsunade turned on Naruto.

She had seemed harmless, with her candy pink hair and her over-sized coat, but Tsunade had seen cool calculation in those bright green eyes.

Here was someone who hid behind clothes and features and who did it well. Even she wouldn't have been able to tell the act for what it was if not for the girl allowing her to see past her facade.

It made Tsunade's blood run cold to see someone like that.

A true shinobi.

Her acting skills were incredible, the only thing that could possibly be keeping her from a life as an espionage nin would be her strength.

"Who was that?" Tsunade asked, keeping her voice steady and quiet.

The other shinobi she had seen with those skills, that deadly smile, had been well remembered.

Orochimaru was one.

Itachi Uchiha was another.

"Eh? It's just Sakura-chan," Naruto blinked at her sudden intensity. "My teammate."

No. He had spoken of a girl with innocence and sun. Not... not that.

There had been one point of time where her carefully crafted mask had cracked.

"Who is this 'Toph'?" She asked as they exited the alleyway, heading back into the murmers of the street.

"Oh, Toph is suuuper cool! She does this awesome thing with the ground! And she's teaching Sakura-chan! She totally beat Sasuke in a fight too, and when we were playing tag, she-"

Tsunade listened to his speech with a cynical ear; a young woman with powerful doton jutsus. A friend. The pink haired girl's teacher, despite the fact that they were on a genin team together.

It would seem this girl would be worth looking into.

▪▪▪

Toph could feel nothing as Tobi dragged her through the weightless space. She reached out with her Earthbending, trying to find some sort of anchor in the freezing blackness.

There! Tiny pinpricks of something! Toph tried to grab them, to pull herself away from Tobi's grasp.

But she couldn't latch on. It slipped from her grasp like it had been oiled and ripped from her.

And then they were falling somewhere different, the air warmer and slightly humid. Her fingertips touched cool stone.

In less than a second, Toph's fingers had dug into the rock and she pulled it up and out, launching them at where Tobi should have fallen, copying a move from one of her old Earth Rumble opponents. Her ribs screamed at the movement.

He eeped! dodged, a lot more clumsily then he had when they had been fighting just a little while earlier, then his feather light footsteps pitter patter to hide behind-

Whoah.

That dude was huge.

Toph slid into her usual stance, hands angled directly towards where Tobi was cowering.

"Come out, wimp," Toph hissed. "And explain where exactly you've taken me. Now."

There was a tense pause.

"Tobi," a new, threatening voice rumbled. "You didn't say she was a kid."

"I didn't know, senpai!" Tobi squawked. "Ran-chan didn't tell me her age!"

"How old are you?" The new guy asked, a question directed to her. Or at least that's what she assumed.

"Who's asking?" Toph's eyes narrowed.

"He- heck, she looks younger than Itachi, and we were hesitant about bringing him in." The speaker took a step forwards, then dropped to a knee. "What's your name?"

"... Toph Bei Fong," she stood firm despite his nearer proximity, despite the pounding pain in her sides as the adrenaline wore off. "And that's none of your buisness."

"Oh, Kami," he grumbled. "Tobi, you've screwed up, big time. Leader-sama will kill you for real this time. Look, Toph-san, my name's Kisame Hoshigaki. Could you give us a truce until we've sorted this mess out?"

"No killing the wimp?" Toph asked, toeing the ground.

"No killing the wimp," Kisame affirmed. "For now."

"But senpaaaaii..." Tobi protested.

"Fine," Toph opted to ignore him. She straightened into a less tense stance, but didn't fully drop her guard. She didn't approach or retreat from the two- no, the man and-a-half. "Truce."

"Tobi, go and alert Leader-sama. I'll keep an eye on her until he's ready to see her." The man rumbled.

"Why Tobi?" Tobi asked.

Toph bared her teeth at him.

"Because this is all your fault and so that the other members don't kill her on sight," Kisame explained, not an ounce of patience left in his voice. "Hurry up. While I'm still asking nicely."

"That was nice, Kisame-senpai?" Tobi asked incredulously.

Despite Kisame's growl, the childish teleporter continued. "Besides, Toph-chan doesn't need protection! Tobi needs protection from her!"

Kisame's heartbeat didn't change. "I highly doubt that."

"Hmm," Tobi hummed. "Okay. Bye-bye!"

He promptly skipped off down a hallway. Toph followed his progress for a second, then turned her head unerringly towards where Kisame stood.

"Would you like to sit down?" He asked in a gruff but gentle voice.

Toph took a skirting step to the side so she could get a clearer read on her surroundings. There was a kitchen behind the Kisame guy, a bar with stools, and a bunch of appliances. Behind her was a couch, and beyond that a lounge area with armchairs and a big coffee table with the top made out of something decidedly not wood. Was it glass?

"I'll make you a drink," he offered.

"My mentors taught me not to accept foodstuffs from suspicious criminal strangers," Toph shot back.

This was true; Anko had drilled it into her during their first meeting, an affair that had ended in her having to leave and Toph getting the rest of the dango Anko had brought.

Kakashi... Not so much.

"You don't know I'm a criminal," Kisame remarked.

"Pfft." Toph snorted. "As if Tobi would take me to law-abiding citizens. And even if you weren't, you're participating in a kidnapping, and that's a crime."

"True."

She heard the fridge open and shut, the clink of glass, then a running faucet. A second later a cup came sliding down the bar towards her.

"Sorry we don't have any milk or juice or anything," Kisame apologised. "We're a group of grown men and no one except Sasori likes sweet stuff, and he's a puppet now."

Huh. That had been a lie. Why would someone lie about that?

Well. That made no sense. Toph kept her hands folded in her lap and didn't touch the glass. She didn't think he had put anything nefarious in it, but then again she had just felt him lie.

And she had just met him, like, five minutes ago.

She felt him make himself a drink of something that was not tap water. Kisame leaned against the bar. "So, Toph-kun, where are you from?"

"Not here," Toph rubbed her nose.

He laughed a little at that.

"That ghost, the Onryo, brought me here," Toph admitted. "I didn't even know the five elemental nations existed until a few months ago."

Months.

She'd been gone for so long.

She hadn't realized...

"Why?" Kisame asked. "Why did she bring you here?"

That was the worst part.

"I don't know," Toph whispered.

Why?

Whywhywhywhy?

She squeezed her fingers together and tried not to cry, alone in another strange new place.

Again.

▪▪▪

So, I was drawing the other day (not digitally, I'm still working on that) and I did Sakura's coat. I thought you guys would like to see.

Also, I've been having a bit of a writer's block, so I don't know when the next few chapters will be out at all.

Sorry.

Have a great day.