inbox;

[craters]

❝Hi, you've reached Haruno Sakura. If this is a medical emergency, please leave your name, location, and a brief description of the injuries.❞

𝗧𝗘𝗫𝗧 🌸 𝗔𝗨𝗗𝗜𝗢 🌸 𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡

（ ooc; if you'd like to handwave her healing/helping your character, feel free to reply and just put HANDWAVED in the subject line. helps me keep track! ）

Comments

un: bloodrose | text

[immortalrose]

Long time no see, Sakura. It's Augustine again.

This may come as an odd request but I believe I will need stitches.

[craters]

Where are you at the moment?

( she is already packing her things. stitches aren't likely unless her chakra fails — but just in case. )

[immortalrose]

In the Barrens at an old manor that has flowers at the front. I've been striving to make this place somewhat...livable.

[Out of all the abandoned buildings here in the Barrens, his manor is probably the most colorful of them all thanks to the flowers he stoletook from the Oakwoods. His new garden is meager at best but he's slowly recreating it out of various oddities he found throughout Stygia.]

It's not far from the entrance. Just go West.

@Sylvain

[philandery]

[ I HOPE... IT'S OKAY TO PING SAKURA HERE AFTER YOU GOT SUPER SLAMMED ON THE NETWORK POST... but yeah he is avoiding!! the public network for Reasons!!! ]

I could use some healing.

[ he also owes her a check-in anyway so 2 birds with 1 stone? ]

[craters]

( all good, buddy! the more the merrier. sakura's response is immediate — )

Of course. Where are you at the moment, and how serious is your injury?

( he's texting, that means both conscious and sound of mind. she's not immediately alarmed, but she is packing a bag. )

[philandery]

[ 🥺 and OOPS HE PROBABLY should've mentioned before giving her a potential scare, ]

It's nothing too serious. Just, haven't been able to use my own magic very well.

[ suxx 2 suxx ]

I can go to your clinic instead, if you're there right now.

[ delivery ]

[mercedis]

[ It's not exactly a large haul, but he's trying to be more considerate of his promises, and besides, the more that he sticks to his word, the more he might be considered for more work. A good reputation is important, when it comes to being a mercenary--someone told him that, once, he just can't remember who, or why.

So it's at the beginning of the week, if he's gauging the days correctly, that he leaves a rickety wooden shipping crate by the entrance to what he assumes to be the clinic; the description had made it pretty easy to locate. Inside the crate, wrapped in an old blanket, are three gently-used plush toys: a rabbit, a bear, and a cat, or at least those would be good assumptions for what the toys are meant to represent, anyway. There's a small sheet of torn plastic that holds two pairs of sharp scissors and a pair of medical tweezers, clean but not exactly sparkling, tucked into the side.

A small torn piece of paper--on the back of which appears to be some scrawled writing, like it's been ripped from a book--says, in Cloud's handwriting: ]

It isn't much, but here's what I got so far.

Tell me what you name the toys. Call it professional curiosity.

-- Cloud

text ↪ un: 012601 (a few days later)

[craters]

Hi Cloud!

Thank you very much for the delivery, it's all gone to good use so far!

I have it on very good authority that the little bunny is now called 'Horace'.

I'll keep you posted about the others as I learn them...

Let me know if you ever need me to help you out, too!

- 🌺

text; un: strife

[mercedis]

No problem. It also doesn't hurt to have a healer owe me a favor.

[ 'Horace' ... ]

Who came up with that name? It sounds pretty [ weird ] regal.

text ↪ un: retort

[nagano]

Doctor Zero-One-Two-Six-Zero-One, may we meet at the docks for our unscheduled weekly exchange? I need to top up on my ointment.

[ Kaito doesn't usually get straight to business within the first text. There's always some sort of banter or smalltalk that precedes him announcing his intent to pile food into her arms and pick up more drugs salves.

He's hoping that she picks up on the inconsistency. ]

[craters]

（ it's a deviation from his normal, perhaps, but not so much so that it immediately has her on her guard. there are any number of reasons why someone might be more brusque than usual, and so after a moment — ）

Of course. See you there in ten?

（ presumably he's close, reaching out like that... ）

[nagano]

Ten seconds will do. I'm already here. You don't have any other patients coming in for a few minutes, do you?

[ Well, now he's just laying it on thick. And where is he? There's no sign of the dark-garbed chef around the harbor. ]

un: undying

[midway]

Miss Sakura! I hope you've been keeping your head above water.

[craters]

Hi!

You know, I never did get your name, Mr. Immortal.

And water doesn't want any quarrel with me, make no mistake! 💪💪

（ being glib is... easier. ）

delivery

[prozaic]

[there's a delivery of a small mason jar, just about 290mL, with a simple note-- even if the writing is anything but simple. in fact, it's downright elegant, a cursive only seen in people who went to expensive, fancy schools or had special tutoring. no signature, except the "S" in spiced tea is stylized specifically to be a snake, larger than the rest of the writing, and eye-catching.]

Spiced tea, but with a little kick! (Don't drink too much in one go, please.)

As a small token of friendship, may it keep you warm even for just a moment in this snowy weather.

[inside the jar itself is a light brown liquid, still with a bit of the ingredients used to make it-- a thin slice of lemon, zest from an orange, so on and so forth. as for the kick? it's rum.]

un: 火 / early december

[chokuto]

[She should be expecting this message. By now, surely Sakura has noticed as well. Perhaps she's even scoured Naruto's usual locations on her own — as he himself has done, the two of them orbiting the same bright sun without collision.]

I can't find him.

[craters]

（ she was dreading this conversation from the moment she felt the absence of naruto's chakra, how bleak and cold and broken the world seemed in the aftermath. she has looked, in her own way, and even visited his door in the shadowlands.

maybe cowardice is the reason she didn't reach out first. she has no idea how volatile sasuke will be in the wake of naruto's absence, and she feels like she's only ever been good at making him worse. ）

Me neither.

Where are you?

un: d; text

[damnpire]

[Sakura receives a lil text in December:]

I'm leaving for the Shadowlands. If you're still interested, you can meet me there when you have time.

Be careful.

[I'm sorry to noncon you into a December thread.]

[craters]

（ 'i hope this message finds you well' it does nOT in fact. ）

All right.

I was going there anyway. A friend of mine is

（ missing. gone. she doesn't know. it's been a week since all traces of naruto's chakra vanished from stygia, and in that time she's barely slept, running on soldier pills and furious worry and a slow, steady build of wailing grief.

(if they can't find him. if he's not here. what then? did he find a way back? but if he had, wouldn't he have taken them —

one thing she knows for certain. naruto would never abandon his friends.)

the text is sent, but unfinished. a second follows not too long after — ）

I'm looking for him. So, it will be a good chance to search there as well.

un: jonas.

[coherer]

(noctis' and asa's disappearances have made jonas more of a worrier than he had been. it's perhaps unnecessary to be concerned over sakura's well-being as he had been with theirs, but behind her natural strength and will, he believes there's a wall that's been erected there to keep others from seeing past it and within her. some projection is likely; he knows he's always pretended to be fine or used jokes to explain his true feelings. this situation, however, appears different.

she wasn't at the clinic for their usual fare of homemade lunches or takeout. isolated, this wasn't odd, and jonas hadn't thought much of it. on returning the next day to find more of the same, this time with a man in her place, his pulse began to race.

now, hours in with no sign she's even on the network—with no proof of life, his shadow corrects him—his thumbs hover over her contact card in his phone, paranoid. it's then lifted to his ear with a tap, unsurprised to hear her voicemail recording.)

Hey, this is a medical emergency. My name is Jonas Ward, I'm at your clinic, and there's a doctor here who is not you. Confused, upset, clutching my pearls. I need immediate confirmation that you are still a young lady with pink hair and not a forty-year-old guy with depression stubble.

...

I'm worried about you. Just let me know when you get this, okay?

(here he sighs away from the receiver, pushing tarp away from the clinic's entryway to peer out into the harbour's streets.)

I'll talk to you soon.

↪ text

[craters]

Hi Jonas. Confirmation granted, still nineteen and pink-haired. 😋 And wow, he's not forty! You might need your eyes checked...

I'm okay, thanks for checking in. Just needed a few days to myself.

The man at the clinic is Doctor Leonard McCoy. He knows his stuff, so don't worry if you need anything there, he'll help you out.

VOICE to start with...

[boarwitness]

[out of nowhere, sakura's phone starts ringing—and it's felix??

if she picks up though, there's just. nothing. maybe some cloth rustling noises, some muffled sounds, like someone humming to themselves, but there's nothing else.

this is undoubtedly a butt dial.]

[craters]

（ what even is going on.

she doesn't actually assume buttdial at first — she assumes he's gotten himself injured stupidly (somewhere) and actually needs her help. the humming is easily explained away by another person being in the vicinity — was he mugged? he was probably mugged. or maybe he ran his mouth to the wrong person or something.

so don't mind her as she's putting everything into one of her bags, and then: ）

Felix, hey, can you hear me? Where are you?

un: mccoy; audio

[homeostatic]

Hey, Sakura. Sorry to message you on your day off, I just got a quick question for you.

Do you know a 'Sasuke'?

( he 100% butchered the pronunciation in his slow southern drawl, but there's no mistaking the concern in his voice. )

[craters]

（ ruh-roh. ）

Yes, I know Sasuke. （ it's a very, very gentle correction of that pronunciation. you tried, bones. ） Is everything all right?