GAS STATION

Sakura glared at the crack in her rearview mirror and reached for it again, tilting it to see higher into the back of her skeleton rig. She was supposed to be empty, towing nothing, but the back still dragged with an extra weight. She felt it in the drifts, when she turned into the winds and expected to fight the gusts, her back end stayed down like it was filled with fuel, and now she was hearing things from back there.

Marauders from the dunes? She hadn't stopped since the Avalon Alcove, an oasis colony hidden deep in the earth, but knew that passing through the dunes was to risk an encounter with the sand riders and the sand people. She didn't doubt some of them were talented enough to sneak up behind her rig and attach themselves to her rear with a little help.

Of all rides to pick up trouble!

Sakura turned hard to the side and then countered to send her back end careening sideways, nearly tipping. If someone was hiding in the back fuel tank they would be sourly tossed. She ripped out the wheel to her rig and latched it onto the back of her belt buckle, linking it into the komodo dragon armor that moved over her backside like living scales. She slid from the driver's seat like her armor's namesake and stalked around her rig like a snake.

She leveled a sawed off double barrel with her left side and kicked off the latch. The metal came away shirking on hinges until it banged into the side and bounced before settling. A pair of blinking eyes stared up into the light of the afternoon sun, haloed around his hooded face, while a second and third face turned away entirely.

Sakura had been right about the stowaways, wrong about the sand people theory.

One of the males groaned and shrank further back, hiding his face behind gold shackles. Sakura's eyes went to what little was left of their clothing and cursed out loud when she recognized the court attire of Seraglio boys and the gold ink tattoos.

"Shit."

Sakura kept her gun close to her hand, set across her lap and she reclined against the base of a ruin while the boys ran out to stretch their legs. The blond one had too much energy and, like a mutt, needed to be walked regularly. She called him mutt in her head, even though he had told her his name after their discovery. She hated to admit how quickly she had forgotten it.

Off to the side the one with teased black hair, styled in a way that set him aside from the common, starving boys, crossed his arms at Mutt's excitement and scowled. Beside him the other dark hair lad smiled in a stiff manner and offered some words of advice? Sakura couldn't read lips, but even if she could she wouldn't have cared enough to eavesdrop.

"Sakura!" the blond screamed for her across the dirt. She tensed on reflex and readied her shotgun, eyes roving behind the vizor she hadn't removed since the day before when she found them.

One of the two boys hit the blond and cursed at him. "You're going to get shot that way."

"What?" Sakura gruffly interjected, standing from her crouch under the shade of the ruined wall.

She kept her gun in hand never the less, just in case they decided they could drive her rig without her. Just because she had let them live and agreed to take them where she was going didn't mean she trusted them to not slit her throat in her sleep. She wished she had Karin with her as a second.

"I'm hungry. When do we get to eat again?" he chirped, sounding more cherry than the other two.

"We just ate."

"Y-yeah, but that was breakfast. What about lunch?" His smile seemed to dim as he looked behind him at the other two only to see their blank stares. There was no back up there. "Whhhat?" he whined, dragging out the sound of the word.

"Where do you think the food is coming from, idiot?" the boy with the chicken butt hair hissed.

"B-but I'm hungry."

The mutt's blue eyes had the audacity to waste water in emotion.

"You should have thought about that before you decided to joyride in the back of my rig for a jaunt." Sakura took a half step back adjusting the weight of her body so that it was more evenly distributed and balanced. She could spring any direction in a moment if she needed to.

The blond looked down, rightly chastised. It was enough to make her almost regret her stern tone, so she looked away, off to where she parked her rig. Shielding her eyes through her visor with a hand above her covered brow she muttered under her breath. "I don't swing by the oasis for weeks. How do you think you'll get back?"

"We're not going back," the last boy stated, hearing her when she was sure none of them would. His words made the others perk up.

"That's what you say," Sakura groused, stalking off towards her rig. The three started to trail after her. "But I've never heard of this Kakashi fellow you're all looking for and I've a living to make. You should have planned better."

"There will be someone who knows. He is skilled. He will find us."

Sakura looked back, trying to match the voice with the face. It was hard to tell them apart sometimes even though they looked so different, but she was sure it was the stupid hair boy that said that last part.

"What the hell are your names again?" she asked, hoping she would remember this time.

"Naruto!" the blond cheered before either of his companions could open their mouths. He jumped up and pointed to the other two. "This is Sasuke!"

"Hn."

"And this asshole is Sai."

"You can call the blond dickless, he's still a virgin."

The blond turned bright red and started to squawk and yell while Sakura rolled her eyes behind her visor and turned back to her rig, not caring how they treated each other. Sasuke was the first to follow her, but Sai and Naruto were close behind, the latter running ahead of them all.

Sakura kept the bottom part of her mask up as she traded for the food with bullets. She watched the hands of the trader and the hands of his companion.

"Can't say I've heard of a Kakashi, but there are several nomad types that come through here. One eye you say?" The older man with scars down his chin and tattoos down his throat looked back over his shoulder before nodding. "But there are one or two that sound like they could be him. One has a glass eye, blown clean out in a raid, the other has a red colored eye. Accident leaked blood into his eye and it never turned back, or something like that."

"Did either of them come through here recently? He owes me money through a mutuel friend and I'm starting to think I got swindled."

"Eh, well the first one with the glass eye goes by the name Hoi and I've not seen him in a year or so. The other freak passed by before the last dust storm and he's pawned things from the aviation boneyard, so that's a good enough guess for where you might find him."

A heavy breeze made Sakura brace, pinning the cloth against the side of her face with her free hand, but it was the hand holding the food and the cloth flew free for a second before she could turn her head back around and hide her chin and lips again.

The desert was in her teeth, small grains just as rough and gritty as the sky. Sakura wanted to spit.

"Damn storms," she cursed, feeling the change coming. She looked back over at the man and nodded. "Boneyard then."

The man grabbed a cloth to wipe over his head, keeping his eyes on her the entire time. "They're both freaks if you ask me. Better off with company that appreciate what they see."

Sakura tensed at the drop in tone and drew faster. The man in the back fell with a hole through his face while the one in front of her reached for her mask, holding a needle thin dagger in the other. Sakura felt the elastic snap as she reeled back and pulled up the butt of her gun to knock across his face. Sakura screamed, bringing her gun down again and again, digging it into the man's skull until it was just as empty as the one she shot.

Heaving a breath, Sakura picked up the gun and box of bullets she had meant to trade before stacking them on top of her food. Her mask was hanging open, but her hands were filled. If someone was alive to see it they might have caught the black ink, but there was only blood and dust behind her.

She climbed back into her rig and deposited her goods on the seat next to her and pulled her vizor back in place, clicking on the secondary attachment that looked like a vulture's beak, hiding the lower half of her face from view.

There was shifting in the back and it was Sasuke that eventually peeked out from the trap in the back floor. "I heard shots. Are you okay?"

"I'm sitting right here. Of course I'm okay." Sakura reached over and grabbed one of the packed nutritional bars wrapped in old paper. "Give this to the mutt if he's still hungry. It tastes like shit and should kill his appetite for a while."

"Doubtful," Sasuke snorted, catching the food with ease.

Before he retreated and closed the latch behind him Sakura caught sight of Sai in the dim, watching her. The door closed but Sai's stare never wavered. Sakura had the suspicion he saw or knew something by the way he stared at her, but then again, he always looked at her like that.

Sakura reattached the wheel and put the gearstick back in place before revving the engine. She started to pull back onto the road but heard a muffled, 'I love you Sakura!' from below the metal.

She grumbled something, making sure her mask was in place before revving and accelerating.

There was plenty of road between here and there.

To the boneyard.

It was late into the night when she finally pulled over and parked. It was getting too hard to see the road in the moonlight and half her lights didn't work anymore. Sakura turned the seats around and spread out her spare cloak of feathers and cotton, sleeping with her wheel hidden under the cushions of her driver's seat.

Just when she thought she was ready to lay down and sleep the hatch creaked. She growled in warning and the hatch quivered, but raised regardless.

"Sakura?" Naruto whispered. "Are you still awake?"

"What do you need?" she grumbled, pulling her mask back on before sitting up and looking over the edge of the chairs.

"What was the gunshot for?"

"Ignore it. Go to sleep."

The hatch creaked and Sakura sighed, thinking that would be the end of it, but then there was the sound of scampering as Naruto pulled himself out. Sakura reached for the knife under the dashboard and tensed, but Naruto didn't come close enough to stab or attack. He seemed to be sensitive to her need for space. In the moonlight his blond hair seemed silver, and the frown never seemed deeper.

Sakura hated how her heart wrenched a little at the sight of his melancholy. "What?" she hissed, sitting up.

"Is it because of the food, because we ate so much?" he asked.

"Sasuke and Sai don't eat that much, just be clear and ask if it was because of your extra food," Sakura answered.

Naruto flushed, even in the silver light, and teetered from one foot to the other. "Was it because you had to stop for me? Was that the reason?"

Sakura pushed herself up the rest of the way and put the knife back under the dashboard where Naruto couldn't see it. "No, your food actually had nothing to do with it this time. I think I was recognized after asking about your Kakashi friend. You ever hear about an aviation boneyard from him?"

"The gas station?"

That would make sense. Sakura thought back to what she knew about the surrounding area. There were several pit stops one could pull a rig into, and may of them had stations for gas. When she had heard about the aviation boneyard she had forgotten about the gas station it sat next to. It had been dry for a while, and the well it tapped into hadn't functioned in years.

When was the last time she tried going that far out of the way?

If she went that far and found no fuel she could be stranded. Loosing a rig was second only to death in the wastelands. If she took them there she would need to refuel before, and that meant another venture with a trader who wasn't from the clasp. Anyone else was just as likely to turn her in for her bounty.

"It's a little out of my way and I need to refuel before then, but we'll check it out."

Naruto seemed in inflate with energy. "You will?"

Sakura glared through her mask, forgetting how the gesture was lost on the boy. "Don't keep asking for pit stops. It has already slowed me down more than I think I can make up with your flimsy bracelets."

"Those are gold, though."

Sakura waved a hand between them. "Gold doesn't feed anyone and it doesn't move my rig. Only a few idiots are stupid enough to think it's of any real value in the dead, dry world."

"You sound like one of those old world paladins or a veteran from the first wars."

Sakura raised a brow from under her mask and almost moved it off her face to look at him better. "Excuse me? A paladin? What the hell I look like to you? In case the gun and bloodstains didn't give it away, I'm a criminal, kid."

Naruto seemed to reel at the nickname and pulled himself up. "It's not a stupid guess, and I'm not a kid! Th-there are criminals who used to be important people in the old republics."

"And they're all as young as me?"

"I can't tell how old you are, you're always wearing a mask." He inched closer. "I don't even know what you look like and we've been traveling with each other for days now."

Sakura pulled the knife from under the dashboard out to flip over her wrist and lay across her lap. The handle was the color of bleached bone. "Maybe, but I only pulled you out of my back four days ago. You've been stowing away an addition two. And blame me if you want, but I've learned to not trust anything that moves, even if they are pretty to look at."

There was silence between them for a full minute, full of sixty painful seconds that felt so much longer in the silence. Sakura realized her mistake after about the first half of the minute and panicked for the other thirty seconds. Naruto's blush was back, but this time his eyes seemed to glow with new vibrance in the moonlight.

"Heh, you think I'm pretty to look at."

Sakura grimaced. "Don't let it go to your head, kid. You're from the president's harem, of course you would be pretty to look at. It's not a big deal."

"Do you like me, Sakura?" Naruto hummed, grinning wide.

It was Sakura's turn to flush. Underneath the mask no one could tell, but when she sputtered she was sure Naruto had an inkling. "Do-what a stupid question. Go back to sleep."

Naruto's voice was little different than a song as he rocked back on his heels. "Sasuke is going to be jealous when I tell him you have a crush on me."

Sakura picked up another ration and tossed it at his head. "Go back to bed!" she hissed. She didn't want to ask what he meant about the other boy being jealous-of what?-she just wanted him back down the hatch so she could sleep in peace.

Naruto snickered but did as he was told, scampering back over to the hatch an easing himself back down into the dim cavern below.

"Let me go with you this time."

Sakura turned around in her seat to glare at Sasuke. "No."

"Let me go." His face didn't change and his words were just as strong and unyielding. He didn't sound like he would change his mind after hearing her answer just once.

"You look like a skimp. I'm not taking you to the refinery to barter. What do you think you'll do, distract me?"

Sasuke narrowed his eyes but quickly turned around and reached out for something left behind in the lower chamber. He pulled out one of her old cloaks with the leather apron front and dropped it over his harem skirt. The gold tattoos were hidden and with a hood even his good face was partly obscured.

"Still no."

Sasuke was pulling on a spare set of boots and reaching for some old gloves. He looked like a mess of random items, and she guessed that's what he really was. He didn't stop assembling accessories even after she told him a second time.

"Sasuke, put that all back. You'll only be a distraction in there. I don't need another liability to look out for."

"Then give me a gun. I can protect myself."

Sakura's voice was shrill in spite of her intentions to remain calm. "No! I don't trust you to not pull it on me."

Sasuke almost looked upset by her reply, which was the first time she saw any other emotion on his face all morning. "We've been traveling almost a week together. What do you mean you don't trust me?"

"Did I stutter, asscheeks? I don't trust you and I don't need to. I don't trust anyone but me." Sakura jabbed her thumb at her own chest and waved her shotgun between them.

Sasuke almost flushed. Almost.

"Asscheeks? Where did that come from?"

Sakura rocked back on her heels, crossing her arms. "You bend over in a short skirt and people notice things. Sai was the first one to call you that."

"You were looking at my ass." He said it like he was proud of the accusation.

"You're as bad as Naruto," Sakura hissed. "Go back and wait down below with the others. Or stay up here and guard the rig. I don't care. You're not going in there with me."

Sasuke leaned in closer, eyes narrowed once more. "You're not going in there alone. Last time someone tried to kill you."

"Someone is always trying to kill you in the wilds. What did you think it would be like when you jumped ship from one of the only stable oasis communities in the red world? Brats, all of you!" Sakura reached for the door to her rig, intending to jump down but paused, hand on the handle. "I don't want any more eyes on me. Watch my rig for me, don't let her get picked up. That's how you could help me."

"What if you need help?"

"I've been doing this for years, punk. I've not needed help yet," she lied. There had been plenty of times she needed help and plenty of times she had used help or asked for help. But Sasuke didn't need to know any of that. He was already enough of a brat on his own without the added information.

"How long?" Sasuke asked through narrowed eyes.

"What?"

"How long have you been doing this?"

Sakura felt like she needed to leave. He wasn't going to let her disengage unless she just powered thorough and ignored all his questions. "I don't know, just years. I've done this long enough to know things. I'll be fine, I'm not buying much. I'm not worth the trouble of messing with."

Sakura turned the handle and opened the door a crack. Sasuke started to move towards her but she pointed the barrels of her gun at him. This only seemed to further provoke him.

"You were nearly shot last time."

"Not even close. I'm not that slow. Back off, watch the rig, keep the others safe."

Sakura pushed open the door and dropped down, feeling the scales of her armor shift and her lower face mask clink in place. She didn't look back, but trusted that the boy in her extra armor would do as she asked.

She heard the door close behind her and it was enough to make her smile when no other footsteps followed her. She crossed the parking lot to the old refinery where kegs and metal barrels were being sold alongside other goods.

As she said it would, the meet went fine and she paid more than it was worth, but got the fuel she needed. When she came back to the rig Sasuke was waiting eager and tense in the driver's seat. He left the rig behind to hop out and meet her, assisting in carrying the barrel to the fuel chamber.

"I told you it would be fine," Sakura said as they closed the hatch behind the barrel.

Sasuke watched her with half lidded eyes until she turned to face him. Then he looked away and muttered under his breath something that sounded like, 'hn.'

The aviation boneyard was what she remembered it being from years ago. The old flying boats still stuck out of the ground with their wings and tails a broken mess. There was an old substation and the office for the refinery plus several other buildings, but no activity.

Naruto ran ahead and Sai hung back when Sasuke took off after the blond.

"What will you do without us?" Sai asked, voice half it's usual volume. He watched her with the same unwavering eyes that seemed to always find her in the dark, even when metal came between them.

"I have work. More deliveries and transportation runs to make on the roads."

"Isn't that dangerous?" Sai asked.

"So is life." Everything in the red world was built up to kill them. Nothing was easy. Danger was everywhere from the dust to her bones to the teeth of the men and women of the road.

"Will you leave us here and go on your own, alone again?" Sai asked. He still watched her and Sakura couldn't help but feel his stare was different than the others. He was rude and used the language of an adult, but sometimes he felt like a child beside her.

"Let's see if this Kakashi guy is here first. I'll decide after that." Sakura nodded at the two boys running ahead of them and started to walk. Sai fell into step behind them. It was minutes later, when Sakura was close to the first substation house that she heard Naruto calling for her.

She didn't run, but quickened her pace a bit to follow his trail. Inside the building there was a net filled with boxes, cut open by Sasuke. Naruto waved a note.

"What day is it? What month?"

"Who keeps track of that?" Sai asked, glancing to Sakura.

"It's the middle of the Sick Season. We're a few days away from the Dry Season, and then comes the Storm Season, then the Dust Season."

Each of the seasons lasted 28 days and were named after the 13 evil gods of the old world. Sakura didn't track the days, but the seasons were easy enough to pick out from the stars. Travelers and traders needed to know such things.

"Why do you need to know this?" Sai asked.

Naruto waved the note again. "Kakashi said he would be coming at the end of the Sick Season for us. If we wait we'll meet him. And look, there's food here for us to live on!"

Sasuke was opening a book and skimming the pages. "It's the directions for working the refinery again. Kakashi thinks there's enough to pump." He looked up from the book. "You could help us with this!"

"A pump? Sakura asked, wrinkling her nose. "You don't know if I could do something like that."

"You fix your rig and know more than we do about how machines work. Wouldn't this make you money if you could process your own gas?" Sasuke asked, stepping closer to her with the manual. "Just until the season is over."

He wasn't wrong. Sakura would make more money that she'd know what to do with if she could get the pump working again to pull out her own oil for gas. It would be the thing that frees her from the cycle of poverty and survival. Wasn't that what she dreamed about? That and true freedom.

"Please, Sakura!" Naruto whined. "Without you we'd not make it. Just a little more. Please, it'll be good for you and we'd treasure you. We'd pay you!"

Sai reached out for her hand to hold but didn't say anything. Sasuke offered her the book.

Would the road be enough for her, or was it time to leave it behind?

Sakura reached up with her free hand and found the latch on the side of her mask and helmet. She loosened it and grabbed the underside before pulling the mask up over her face and back across her skull. The stray pink bangs fell across her face again, free from the scalp braids that kept her hair hidden from sight.

Naruto, for once, was speechless.

"Until the season is over," Sakura said, taking the manual in place of her mask.

You might remember this from Tumblr, but I've come back to it and I have two more chapters on what happens next. So have fun!