MTTE15 Finding the Lost

"The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself."
-Publilius Syrus


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"O-oh my god—i-is that . . .?" Naruto wasn't able to finish his question.

The body lay in the hole on its side, the face going into the ground. The arms were spread out, one of them bent at an unnatural angle. The legs were bent straight. By the long brown hair, they could tell it was a woman.

"Is she dead?" he asked.

"It isn't obvious?" Sasuke snapped. He was still shaken; they had just found a dead body—who wouldn't be? He looked over at Sakura to see her just as shaken as he and Naruto. She had gone a sickly pale and her hair hung around her face in tangles. She was breathing heavily, a hand placed over her heart.

"I . . . I've seen plenty of ghosts before—in many different ways," she whispered, seemingly to herself. "I've seen gruesome things—enough that one dead body shouldn't get to me like this. But I've never seen the dead body of a ghost before," she rasped.

And she hoped that she never had to again—it just connected everything to the fact that someone was actually dead.

Her thoughts were cut off by a quiet, almost inaudible moan. The three of them stopped and looked down at the "dead" body. Acting quickly, Sakura jumped down and knelt next to the woman, placing a hand on her shoulder.

"Miss? Can you hear me, are you alright?" she asked quickly. The only reply she received was a pained gasp. Her body shuddered before going limp again.

"My arm . . ." came a whisper. Sakura looked over the woman for any other injuries. She noticed that the woman looked to be in her mid twenties or so.

"Is there anything else that hurts that we should be aware of?" she asked.

"My head—I think . . . I hit it pretty hard . . ." she rasped.

Sakura nodded and crawled over to the other side so that she was behind her. "Okay," she began, "I'm going to slowly lift you up by the shoulders; keep your arm close to your body—we'll help you. Do you think you can do that?" she asked calmly. After an answering nod of the head, Sakura placed her hands on the backs of the woman's shoulder blades and slowly began to maneuver her into a sitting position. Sakura winced as she gasped in pain, using one arm to clutch the injured one to her stomach. "Okay, now we need to somehow put it in a sling or something." She looked at the boys, hoping they had any ideas. After a moment Naruto stripped off his jacket and tied it into a makeshift sling and handed it to Sakura. While Sakura was putting the sling on around her shoulders and carefully adjusting her arm into it, she started asking questions.

"So what's your name?" Sakura asked.

"Keiko. And you guys?"

"I'm Sakura—the one whose jacket you're using is Naruto, and the other is Sasuke," she answered. "Can you tell me what happened? How you got hurt?"

"My friend and I came down here by ourselves. I had heard of this legend from my great-great-granddaddy. Something about hidden treasure down here. So we found the map and came down." She was quiet for a moment. "Lily didn't want to go—not as badly as I did. She suggested that we hire shinobi to go with us. I shot down the idea because I thought that they would steal the treasure and just run off with it—or completely tell us we were fools for believing in such things." She looked at the three ninja. "Sorry, but I've never been too trusting of ninja—they've always seemed to be a bunch of liars and traitors," she confessed.

"I know what you mean," Sakura mumbled.

"Well, we were coming down here. I had the flashlight since I had the map. I was ahead of her and . . ." she struggled to remember. "I know that after a while I stopped hearing her—she usually walks like a horse, so it's not like she can be quiet. And she talks all the time. I stopped hearing her; I had called back to see if she was still there. I panicked and started running back. Though I forgot about the drop here and fell, I think." She looked up again, her arm now in the temporary sling. "How'd you all know I was down here? We didn't tell anyone where we were! Is it really so late that our families sent out search teams for us?" she asked, sounding incredulous.

Sakura looked at her boys for a moment, then back at Keiko. "Look. You told me that you've always believed that shinobi were liars. So what kind of person would I be if I lied to you now?" Sakura took a deep breath. 'I can't believe I'm about to do this. . .' "What I'm about to tell you, you cannot tell anyone; my own life depends on it—trust me," she demanded, looking straight into the older woman's eyes. "Ever since I was a little girl, I've been able to talk ghosts. Don't ask me how, it's a long story. But I can. A woman came to me today begging for help. She said that her friend was stuck down in some secret tunnels beneath the Hokage Faces and didn't even know it—the stairs in the entrance had collapsed."

Sakura watched as the Keiko started to comprehend what she was saying. Once she dead, shock and horror were painted on her features. "Are you telling me that Lily is dead?" she whispered. Sakura looked away for a moment.

"I'm sorry . . . she had wanted us to save you. I know this is hard to understand, but—"

"No. No, I believe you. My grandmother was able to talk to the dead, as well," she mumbled. "Is Lily here?"

"No . . . she disappeared a while ago—before we even got to the mountain side, actually," Sakura confessed.

It was quiet for a few minutes in the small space. "Her parents will want an open casket funeral," Keiko murmured. "So . . . maybe we should . . . you know . . ." She looked away, her eyes tearing up momentarily. Sakura nodded and helped her up and out of the dip.

The group slowly made their way out of the tunnel (this time with Naruto staying at their pace). When they returned to the part of the path that had split, Keiko agreed that it was there were she and her friend had probably split up and became separated at. They followed the footsteps the led into the other tunnel. It was flatter and a bit wider than the one that Keiko had gone through. As they continued on through it, there was a faint sound up ahead. It sounded like some kind of shuffling, but a bit more . . . blurred. As the sound became louder the closer they came to it, it also became much more distinct. Once the group finally saw what the sound was coming from, their suspicions were correct.

It was an underground waterfall.

Keiko gasped and shook. "No . . . no, this can't be how . . ." she couldn't finish.

Sakura knew what she was talking about. But as she looked out over the water with the flashlight, she couldn't seem to find a body anywhere. From where they were, she judged that the fall would have been about a hundred foot drop, if not a little less. It would have been nothing for a ninja to bounce back from. But for a civilian who was taken by total surprise, she doubted anyone could have survived.

From where she stood and the amount of light, the water didn't look to be too deep. That still didn't take out the possibility of drowning. "I don't see where she would have fallen," she whispered to herself. As she moved the light closer to the edge below them, it seemed closer than the water itself. As she looked closer, she concluded that there was a ledge about a little more than halfway down.

And that's where she saw the body.

She pointed the light at Lily's corpse, a sick feeling coming to her again. 'Great. We found her. Now we have to go down there and get her,' she thought, feeling dreadful. She didn't want Keiko to have to walk back with them when her friend's dead body was near her. Sakura didn't have the heart to do that.

As she knelt down to get ready to jump, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Looking up, she saw Sasuke kneeling next to her; Naruto was a few feet back with Keiko.

"I'll get her; I'll follow a little bit behind you guys," he ordered. Before she could question him, he gave her a look—one of understanding. Sakura sighed before giving him a grateful smile.

"Thank you."