Her moves and jutsus were the same. The way she fought was almost completely unaltered from when he had last seen her in combat, in spite of all the time passed. On the other hand, he never got to observe her closely, since he never cared, and her fighting style was not what made her recognisable to him. Neither was the fact that her hand would glow with healing chakra from time to time when she received a critical wound that needed instant mending.

It was the hair. Bright pink, like a goddamn candyfloss was stuck to her head, as he could imagine Hidan would have said. Seriously, who wouldn't remember seeing that before, even in a world of shark-men and dual-coloured plant cannibals?

But some things had changed, he quickly realised. For instance, the once vibrant green eyes were no longer swimming with emotion. Instead they contained a strange mixture of pain and emptiness, as if you could see straight to the back of her head through those glassy orbs. It was a common sight in the shinobi world. It meant that she could finally call herself a true kunoichi, and the bitter irony of her dreams being fulfilled only after the illusion of them had shattered, was what was staring through her eyes into his as they locked kunai for a split second.

She had been strong when she had defeated his danna, he knew. But he didn't consider her a threat then, as neither did Sasori. After all, it is not just skill that makes a shinobi – it's the mentality. To kill, to suffer, to endure. It had set Sasori apart from her then, and even though their abilities had fit together in her favour, she couldn't have killed him without help from the battered old witch by her side – she couldn't have delivered the final blow.

But watching her eyes now, Deidara knew this was no longer a problem. He grinned widely as he retreated from the ground, where he had been deftly dodging her chakra-filled blows, and unto the back of his clay bird. It lifted him out of reach in an instant, and the leaf nin fairly snarled when seeing her enemy's retreat.

"Come back and fight!" Sakura hollered, fists alight with chakra.

Deidara chuckled to incite her. "Oh, I don't think I will, little leaf," he called out. "Why risk getting near those fist of yours, when I can take you down just as easy from the sky, yeah?"

With that, he raised two fingers in front of his face, snapping, "Katsu!"
The ant-shaped pieces of art that she had failed to notice closing in on her, bulged and blew up in an instant. The ground the leaf nin was standing on got torn to pieces, and a cloud of dust rose all around it.

Deidara waited patiently till it had dispatched, and was both pleased and surprised to see that there were no torn limps or spatters of blood amongst the debris. Apparently, the leaf nin had gotten better. He wouldn't have pitched her as a ninja capable of avoiding even the simplest of his own attacks, because even though she technically defeated his danna, Deidara prided himself on making good use of stealth and distractions, and that was something the arrogant Sasori had never deigned necessary himself. But what would you know. The girl had some skill after all.

Now where the hell was she?

Deidara swept the area with his chakra and came up blank. The girl was a healer; so she must have a decent enough chakra control to conceal her presence from him entirely, maybe even with intention of waiting him out. Deidara grinned wickedly. Fat chance of that happening. The teeth in his palms where already chewing furiously.

Ten seconds later, the first five explosions rocked the forest. Deidara laughed over the sound of it, sending tiny clay ladybugs to zoom after the terrified birds that took to the air with hoarse squawks. How he missed the old days! Right after the Akatsuki had taken control, the world had gone ballistic, and so had Deidara. Free at last from his forced contract with Akatsuki and its decree to lay low, he had taken to a wild killing spree, exhausting himself with destroying entire towns just for fun, starting of course with the one town he never got a hit on the first time around: Suna. It was the one and only hidden village he ever went for, and he had been on the run for weeks on end afterwards, grief-wrecked sand nin hot on his trail. But it had been worth it. Oh, it how it had.

However, mindlessly annihilating one city after the other had become tedious, and therefore lacking the artistic expression that Deidara sought so furiously. He missed being tracked down by hunter nin, only to destroy them after a good long fight, proving himself invincible and them inferior, victims of and participants in his creations of art. These days, the missing nin outnumbered the regular nin by far, and neither group seemed to hold any interest in being slaughtered by Deidara, branded Akatsuki as he was and would always be. They stayed clear of his path, and though he could have tracked them down himself, there really was no fun in killing somebody when it was done as a means of intercepting their flight from him.

Quite frankly, Deidara was getting bored.

And then this little leaf nin came around. Sakura, he remembered hearing somewhere. Of course. With that ridiculous hair colour…

Fragile as she looked, he didn't think she would have taken the time to hunt him down, only to flee the first chance she got. He wouldn't let her. Laughing, jeering over the wind that he would find her, be it in pieces or otherwise, Deidara let lose another series of explosion to rock the forest. He was at home in this scenario as much as a cat on the hunt for a mouse, and it was just as exhilarating.

BOOM.

The blast was larger than any of the previous and drew his immediate attention as everything beneath him exploded upwards.

It only took Deidara a split second to realise that this was not his doing, but another went with marvelling over the scene of unravelling taking place beneath him, and then time was up. The hurtling mass of heaving soil closed in on him.

Unconcerned, Deidara left his bird and dived into the still rising chaos around him. The bird would be unable to lift him out of this, anyway, and when he was far enough away he could let it detonate, blowing a clear path –

Half blind, continuously hit by rocks and pebbles, Deidara only just caught a flash of pink. His eyes widened fractionally. He had assumed this was a ploy to get him off the bird and onto the ground, he had been prepared –

But not for this.

Over the roar of the ground rising all around him, he thought he heard a shrill cry of, "CHA!" Then, the following second, the soil just ahead of him changed motion, pushed aside by her glowing fist.

That exact second, the upwards motion of the ground stopped. As if in slow-motion, it began to fall again. Deidara's hands were already moving to perform seals for a transportation jutsu, but he knew it was too late. The unusual circumstances slowed him down a fraction, and in shinobi combat, a fraction makes all the difference in the world.

Sakura's punch struck home, slamming into his jaw.

Deidara felt several things at once. He felt his jawbone crush, his neck snap, and even the gentle huff of air that carried from the leaf nin's pale lips to his cheek. But most of all, he felt surprised. And strangely satisfied.

Then his vision went black.

It had begun to rain.

Sakura lay stock still were she had collapsed, dimly aware that the soil was turning into mud around her. Everything within a ten meter radius of her was destroyed, splintered trees and grimy leaves haphazardly spread across the muddy field. And somewhere in this mess was his body. The blonde one, Deidara.

"I did it, Naruto," Sakura croaked up against the rain, blinking the moisture from her eyes. She hadn't cried in nearly a year. It had to be the rain. "I did it for you."

Had it been luck? She couldn't determine it. It was by the skin of her teeth she had avoided Deidara's attack by going underground like Kakashi had taught her once, shortly before he died. At that point, learning how to affectively hide had been high priority for all shinobi with a wish to stay alive, and she was grateful he had taken the time to teach her this relatively simple, but largely effective jutsu.

In the weeks Sakura had been in pursuit of Deidara, she had spent most of her waking hours coming up with a strategy to defeat him. Deidara, as a long range fighter, had the definite advantage. Frankly, she had been dumb enough to think she could lure him off of his bird by making taunts about Sasori – she had heard Deidara call him "danna", after all, and a cold heart is a dead heart. But it had all been a game to him, a test of her abilities. Once he was satisfied with what he knew, he retreated to safer grounds. She never got the chance to put her detailed plan into action.

Then she was forced to dive to safety.

She sat in the damp darkness, holding her breath, in what seemed like forever. Above and around her, she felt the harsh tremors and heard the distant blasts from Deidara's bombs. He was seeking her out. She hadn't had the time to go deep, and any movement now would blow her cover; one of Deidara's bombs would find her soon, and then it would be over.

She had been so frustrated.

Yet another failure.

Thoughts of her beloved lost ones surfaced in her memories like bubbles through water, and everything inside Sakura tightened painfully. The face of the blonde Akatsuki grew in her mind, grinning, taunting. He had been there. He had been sitting on Gaara's body like it was dirt. He could have done the same thing to Naruto, for all she knew. He could have stepped on his face and laughed.

At that same second, she heard his distant voice jeer somewhere above the ground.

She stopped caring whether or not she got out of this alive; whether or not she could go on to kill the rest of the bastards; whether or not this was really what anybody needed. She just wanted to hurt him.

Sakura forced her way out of the ground with violent, livid movements. As faith would have it, her reappearance was covered by the dust cloud from the latest, closest explosion, and the blonde Akatsuki never saw her. Sakura had a split second to make a decision. She needed to get up there, now, and there was only one way she could think of how.

Her fisted hand tore into the ground, and she let lose nearly all of her primly hid chakra like she had never done before.

The world turned in on itself. Suddenly, everything was roaring chaos. The desperate force of her punch tore everything to pieces and heaved the entire top layer of earth clean off the ground, tearing upwards in one devastatingly powerful motion. Blessing Kakashi for teaching her how to move almost effortlessly beneath the ground – as well as in the ground when it was airborne, as this experiment would prove – Sakura boosted herself into the air with chakra, latching herself mentally to the pulsating chakra signature that was Deidara. In a matter of seconds, she was close enough to strike. Focusing every last bit of chakra she possessed, Sakura threw her fist forward. The power of the punch forced all obstacles away, until she could look straight into the surprised eyes of Deidara the Akatsuki. The moment after, her fist met its target.

And here she lay. Numb and weak with chakra depletion and common exhaustion. She had given her everything. She had prevailed. She had killed the first in a line of people who had hurt her more than anything, hurt her to the very core of her being. Slowly, achingly so, a feeling of grim satisfaction grew in her chest, powering her limbs enough so that she could force herself on her feet, though she wobbled unsteadily.

Sakura straightened up entirely, and very nearly blacked out. Gritting her teeth, she waited the nausea out. At last, she reopened her eyes and surveyed the intense destruction and heavy silence that filled the air around her.

"One down, Naruto," she said to herself and her memories. "Five to go."

Steeling herself, Sakura took her first, shaky step away from the battlefield. She had a new target to take down.

A/N: Sakura = The bloody bride. :3 I own nothing.