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Losing an Arm to Dragons-Chapter One (Draft)
How (Not) to Lose an Arm in the Land of Ages
a Dreaming of Sunshine/Dragon Age Inquisition crossover no one asked for.
Featuring Glowing Hand!Sasuke, Mistaken for Enchanter Shikako, and Actual Spy Shino totally disrupting the plot of the game.
Prologue Here
One - Into the Valley
Cassandra considered the prisoner- if what he said was true... many things might be different than she feared. “You were unconscious for two days. Can you open the rift again, and bring your team and the Divine back?”
“I remember what it felt like.” he flexed the hand that held the mark. “And my reserves should be enough.”
“Getting you back into the valley could be a problem,” Leliana put in as she pulls the man to his feet. Standing, Sasuke Uchiha only comes up to her nose, but he holds himself with enough contained power and confidence to compensate. Leliana lets out a half-laugh of stress escaping when he hands her the shackles, having freed himself during the interrogation. “Or perhaps not.”
“Demons are falling from the sky, Leliana,” Cassandra reminds them before they could form a conspiracy of scouts and sneak off. “Even if you can get past them, you will need protection while you are focusing on re-opening the rift to the Fade.”
“Very well Cassandra. You two can gather the other volunteers while I go ahead to the forward camp to arrange reinforcements.”
“Very well.”
It is the work of minutes to gather the Apostate Solas and Varric from the tiny camp kitchen and collect the freshly re-armored Sasuke from the chantry cells. When they all step out of chantry she can feel the glares of various survivors, but after a moment the feeling dissipates along with the presence of her former prisoner. “I’m still here, lead on,” she hears him whisper, and so she does.
Whatever stealth technique he is using fades as they exit the gates to introductions and talk of the nature of the Breach and the Mark on Sasuke’s hand as a pulse in the former causes the latter to spark and shake. Solas shares his theories and Sasuke raises an eyebrow when the mage tries to assure her that ‘he is no mage’ but doesn’t correct the description. From what little Cassandra can sense and from his report, Sasuke and his team are at least Mage-adjacent. Still, when their group encounters small groups of demons, Sasuke pulls a sword with cross guard from nowhere and backs her up rather than holding back with Solas and Varric. His blade glows faintly as he cuts into a Wisp demon, as precise as his steps across the ice, and Cassandra realizes he must be saving his magical energy for the task at the end of their journey.
They cut down the demons outside the bridge gate before attempting to close the small rift that had formed there, despite Solas urging Sasuke to close it before more came through. Solas reaches for Sasuke’s wrist to drag him hand-first toward the glowing green shimmers, but the shorter man twists out of his grip and flickers to the other side of the rift circle. Sasuke settles into a more grounded stance, then raises his hand and focused. A loop of green energy lances out to grab onto the heart of the rift, spinning like a rope in a pulley cranking the rift closed. He smirks at all of them as the energy disengages with a flash and turns to face the soldiers manning the gate with a slight bow. “Open up!”
* * *
Sasuke is already so done with social interactions for the day, but holds his head high and body language open. The morale of the soldiers around them is fragile, and he can feel as much as see the frission of hope still spreading through them with the closing of the smaller rift. Eyes shift to them, and he dares not shrink under the scrutiny. To be Shinobi is to endure.
He listens to Chancellor Roderick call for his imprisonment and a retreat and spout his hopeless drivel for about thirty seconds before he calls on his untapped reserves of Grandstanding to cut the man off. “I am not your prisoner to kill,” he tells the Chancellor, and the man shrinks back.
One simply could not be part of Team Seven without learning the art of Hope Talk no Jutsu, even if Sasuke preferred to let Naruto and Shikako give the motivational speeches. Sasuke motions with his marked hand up the mountain toward the temple ruin and the hole in the sky above it, raising his voice to carry over the bridge and the surrounding troops. “Your battles are not in vain, the rifts like the one that was outside the gate can be closed. I will return to the Temple of Sacred Ashes. With your brave soldiers to help,” he indicates all of them are included with another glowing gesture. “We will rescue Divine Justinia and my team from the Fade. Then deal with the Breach. Together.”
He stepps up to the Chancellor’s table, looking over the maps and lists there. “Leliana, Cassandra, can you tell me about the abilities of the available troops?”
Leliana smirks at him as the Chancellor relinquishes the command table to the three of them. Sasuke tilts his head and focuses his gaze on the map, though he listens to the muttering behind him. Elders could find ways to make your life difficult without ever lifting a blade. In this case, the Chancellor is spluttering about his claim about Justinia’s potential survival, while the nearest soldiers are amazed and energized by the same idea. Roderick wouldn’t be able to do anything unless they came back empty-handed, but if they did he’d make their lives hell.
Sasuke didn’t intend to fail.
*
“If you can’t trust the mages behind you, Commander Cullen, let Leliana and her scouts bring them and let’s go,” Sasuke cut across the argument from his perch on the parapet and put his left foot down onto the deployment map they’d scratched together. “It’s been an hour. I ate and did a sketch for you, I’m ready. If you’re not ready now then you can follow us.”
“But-”
“Now, Commander.” Sasuke uses the table as a launch point to leap to the middle of the double-squad of mages standing just far enough away to feign not hearing the argument about them.
“Is the Divine really alive?” young man about Sasuke’s height, but with pointed ears and elegantly pointed features askes before his elders can stop him.
“Yes,” Sasuke replies confidently, because if any of them died before he has a chance to rescue them Sasuke would storm the afterlife and drag them back for the lecture of a lifetime. “My team keeps her safe for now, but the sooner we get them out the better.”
“We’re with you. The fighting needs to stop, and the Divine is our best chance,” a silver-haired woman says, and the others nod in agreement.
“If you can close the Breach, I don’t care about the Divine,” one of the men mutters too low for most people to hear, and Sasuke doesn’t react to the comment, but notes it for later.
“We’re glad for your help.” Sasuke motions them toward Leliana and starts walking uphill. Wrangling the different factions into working together isn’t his job, except where it interfers with protecting the Divine. Which, if this job continues, may end up being a lot.
Varric is the first to fall into step with him, as if he’s been waiting for such a cue, “You rally the troops often?”
“Not usually so many,” Sasuke admitts.
The stout man considers the squads forming up around them as they continue their walk. Many still eye Sasuke with a mix of suspicion and hope. “Let’s hope you can keep it up.”
Sasuke finally gets to a chance to use his favorite word, “Hn.”
Varric laughs.
*
The auditory illusions were not genjutsu, Sasuke didn’t need his Sharingan to know that. Instead they prickle along the edges of his new chakra brand in a different harmonic to the rifts, like the strings of a koto vibrating when their neighbors were plucked. He focuses as the words of the ritualist and the divine wash over the group, moving his hand slowly to feel how the plucking changes.
He thought perhaps what he was feeling was “the Veil” that their briefing documents had spoken of, the poorly understood Difference that made chakra use so different on this continent. Shikako had mentioned feeling it as their ship had approached, like a fog across her mind and senses, and they had all taken to checking themselves for genjutsu upon waking because of the strange effects upon their dreams. It made splitting chakra into Yin or Yang release easier, but they had not had the time to study any other effects.
The energy in the lingering in the air is not anything he’s encountered before- not the lingering traces of old jutsu or seal, but lines of flowing, living energy twisting through the air and the ground. From the reactions of the others, the effect is broadly visible. He shields his eyes to hide the tell-tail red of his Sharingan and is both please and dismayed what it shows him. The easily visible lines are spillover, the smoke compared to the actual fire of chakra lines running through the area. His eyes trace a line of Energy from the Breach overhead, through the rift he wants to open and down into the earth toward something that is alivingheartofstone-beatssoslowbutsteady he tears his gaze and attention away, deactivating his Sharingan. He stares at the brand on his hand and tries to think of how it might- might- be making him see dragon lines. The “It could kill you, really don’t mess with Nature energy Shikako-” “Oh, we can use them to make an Earthquake, I believe in you Taicho-” “Lets get some actual training from Tenzou so if you have to rewrite a map in the future we can be more efficient, oh but let’s not level the village” Dragon lines. Or perhaps the Veil makes Nature Chakra so different in this place that anyone can see it. There isn’t enough time to test it.
At least he doesn’t have to worry about collapsing again from chakra exhaustion, if he can pass the Closing String Technique to the Line rather than doing it all himself.
“Can you do it?” Cassandra asks, bringing him back to the present, and he hums an affirmative, following the others as they move through the rubble.
Some of that rubble is growing red crystals, but Sasuke’s shoulder nudging Cassandra’s side is much less subtle than Varric’s unhappy identification of the stuff. Sasuke makes a note to find out what color ‘lyrium’ is supposed to be soon.
Varric doesn’t hiss in outrage when Sasuke steps closer whispers that the Red Lyrium “felt the same as the Ritualist who did this,” but it’s a close thing. The calculating look he flicks between the Ninja, the Seeker, and the rest of their group only confirms Sasuke’s assessment of his general shrewdness. Good. Sasuke didn’t really trust these people and he needn’t feel alone in that. Solas’ inane statement about the explosion “corrupting the lyrium” is either disingenuous in the extreme or it was plain dumb luck that the mage hadn’t made the Chakra-brand on Sasuke’s hand worse while studying it while he was unconscious.
In fact, Solas keeps trying to walk near him, but Sasuke is an S-rank master at maintaining a teammate buffer between himself and unwanted attention. Varric is nearly as good as Naruto for this, and Cassandra exuded Protection like a smaller and stabbier Akamichi.
When they arrive at center of the explosion crater, Cassandra pulls out the drawing he had done and compares it to the smoky figure yelling in fury, nodding. “Perhaps you can do another?”
“I told you that was just a sketch,” Sasuke replies, staring up at the shifting green spikes of the rift below the larger Breach and the visual echoes of the Ritualist. The Fade is better at sounds than Visual, it seems. “I can do better with more time.”
“Fair enough.” Cassandra tucks the sketch away.
“I’ll try to signal my team so they’re the first ones through, but we had to fight a bunch of demons the first time we found a rift,” He trails off. Sasuke ss more than willing to let her direct the local forces in this little fight, as he is still learning about their capabilities. Instead he stations himself above the dragon line and steadies his breathing.
“That means demons. Stand ready!” Cassandra calls, and squads move into position around them.
At Cassandra’s nod, Sasuke raises his hand, hooks the chakra of the Brand into the Rift and pulsing it in the Kohona code for /Evacuate, Back-up Ready. Evacuate,/ He waits, pulsing the message twice more as he counts to 49 in his head, and then begins opening the rift in earnest.
* * *
Shikako felt the pulses of energy and reads the first code before even trying to figure out the exact location of the source. Evac.
“Shino, Justinia, Time to go,” she calls, tucking her notes into hammerspace with more speed than neatness. They’d discussed what to do after the first rift they’d found had eaten Sasuke, and put the plan into motion without discussion. Justinia douses the fire with a thought and turns to Shino, who knelt to accept her onto his back. Shikako turns in place to refine her lock on the signal. It’s isn’t far, but it will take some tricky jumps even with the weird mind-over-matter physics of this place. But they are ninja, physics is no obstacle to their shenanigans.
They aren’t the only ones to notice when the gate started to open. The scurrying spiderling demons aren’t fast or mobile enough to climb the floating rocks, but there are wisp-things that grow in size and morph in shape as they approach. Shikako tries throwing up a barrier to keep them out, but several smaller wisps combine and push through her barrier- not breaking it entirely but eroding it like a fast-acting acid. At least they won’t be swarmed.
They go through as one, Shikako pressed against Justinia’s back and fingers dug into Shino’s coat- they don’t want to have to do this again if the rift closes before they all get through. Passing through the Rift is disorienting, like falling out of bed and forcing herself through solid stone all at once. Shikako resistes the urge to go into Shadow State- adding another factor to the soup of weirdness is unlikely to help here. Instead she held on and wills herself forward.
They are through, falling into chaos and battle: giant scaled monster to the left, Sasuke and a rope of chakra connected to the rift to the right, locals scattered around in groups of similar uniforms hacking at the monster, firing arrows or fireballs or setting up barriers around the melee fighters and Sasuke. The entire place is alive with streams of greenish white chakra flowing down from the roiling hole in the sky above them, almost thick enough to choke on.
Many variations of “the Divine!” and “she survived” and “he was right” fall out of the locals mouths as they appear- Justinia was right to make them recover her giant white hat from the spider demon that had stolen it- but the cry of “They’re safe! Close it!” from the dark haired swordswoman leading the fight against the scaled demon is both louder and more joyous than any of the rest.
Shikako can hear the eye rolling in Sasuke’s retort, “You do your job, Cassandra, and I’ll do mine.”
Sasuke’s ring of local guardians let the ninja and the Divine into their circle with gratifying speed if not the smoothness of practice. Shikako smiles as the press of too much chakra eases- a young elf guarding Sasuke’s left just cast the protection barrier again. It’s a relief until the lack of sensory overload lets her focus on the shift in Sasuke’s stance- something like Earth Flow, but focused upward- but there was no Wind Flow, what was he planning?
Then Sasuke is catching one of the floating chakra ribbons across his branded palm and restarting the spinning-rope technique, and the ribbon propagates it in both directions. Up into the hole in the sky, and down into the earth and the well of chakra buried beneath them, focused through the hole in Sasuke’s hand like a river focused through the eye of a needle.
It works, but Shikako will have words with her teammate about this.
a Dreaming of Sunshine/Dragon Age Inquisition crossover no one asked for.
Featuring Glowing Hand!Sasuke, Mistaken for Enchanter Shikako, and Actual Spy Shino totally disrupting the plot of the game.
Prologue Here
One - Into the Valley
Cassandra considered the prisoner- if what he said was true... many things might be different than she feared. “You were unconscious for two days. Can you open the rift again, and bring your team and the Divine back?”
“I remember what it felt like.” he flexed the hand that held the mark. “And my reserves should be enough.”
“Getting you back into the valley could be a problem,” Leliana put in as she pulls the man to his feet. Standing, Sasuke Uchiha only comes up to her nose, but he holds himself with enough contained power and confidence to compensate. Leliana lets out a half-laugh of stress escaping when he hands her the shackles, having freed himself during the interrogation. “Or perhaps not.”
“Demons are falling from the sky, Leliana,” Cassandra reminds them before they could form a conspiracy of scouts and sneak off. “Even if you can get past them, you will need protection while you are focusing on re-opening the rift to the Fade.”
“Very well Cassandra. You two can gather the other volunteers while I go ahead to the forward camp to arrange reinforcements.”
“Very well.”
It is the work of minutes to gather the Apostate Solas and Varric from the tiny camp kitchen and collect the freshly re-armored Sasuke from the chantry cells. When they all step out of chantry she can feel the glares of various survivors, but after a moment the feeling dissipates along with the presence of her former prisoner. “I’m still here, lead on,” she hears him whisper, and so she does.
Whatever stealth technique he is using fades as they exit the gates to introductions and talk of the nature of the Breach and the Mark on Sasuke’s hand as a pulse in the former causes the latter to spark and shake. Solas shares his theories and Sasuke raises an eyebrow when the mage tries to assure her that ‘he is no mage’ but doesn’t correct the description. From what little Cassandra can sense and from his report, Sasuke and his team are at least Mage-adjacent. Still, when their group encounters small groups of demons, Sasuke pulls a sword with cross guard from nowhere and backs her up rather than holding back with Solas and Varric. His blade glows faintly as he cuts into a Wisp demon, as precise as his steps across the ice, and Cassandra realizes he must be saving his magical energy for the task at the end of their journey.
They cut down the demons outside the bridge gate before attempting to close the small rift that had formed there, despite Solas urging Sasuke to close it before more came through. Solas reaches for Sasuke’s wrist to drag him hand-first toward the glowing green shimmers, but the shorter man twists out of his grip and flickers to the other side of the rift circle. Sasuke settles into a more grounded stance, then raises his hand and focused. A loop of green energy lances out to grab onto the heart of the rift, spinning like a rope in a pulley cranking the rift closed. He smirks at all of them as the energy disengages with a flash and turns to face the soldiers manning the gate with a slight bow. “Open up!”
* * *
Sasuke is already so done with social interactions for the day, but holds his head high and body language open. The morale of the soldiers around them is fragile, and he can feel as much as see the frission of hope still spreading through them with the closing of the smaller rift. Eyes shift to them, and he dares not shrink under the scrutiny. To be Shinobi is to endure.
He listens to Chancellor Roderick call for his imprisonment and a retreat and spout his hopeless drivel for about thirty seconds before he calls on his untapped reserves of Grandstanding to cut the man off. “I am not your prisoner to kill,” he tells the Chancellor, and the man shrinks back.
One simply could not be part of Team Seven without learning the art of Hope Talk no Jutsu, even if Sasuke preferred to let Naruto and Shikako give the motivational speeches. Sasuke motions with his marked hand up the mountain toward the temple ruin and the hole in the sky above it, raising his voice to carry over the bridge and the surrounding troops. “Your battles are not in vain, the rifts like the one that was outside the gate can be closed. I will return to the Temple of Sacred Ashes. With your brave soldiers to help,” he indicates all of them are included with another glowing gesture. “We will rescue Divine Justinia and my team from the Fade. Then deal with the Breach. Together.”
He stepps up to the Chancellor’s table, looking over the maps and lists there. “Leliana, Cassandra, can you tell me about the abilities of the available troops?”
Leliana smirks at him as the Chancellor relinquishes the command table to the three of them. Sasuke tilts his head and focuses his gaze on the map, though he listens to the muttering behind him. Elders could find ways to make your life difficult without ever lifting a blade. In this case, the Chancellor is spluttering about his claim about Justinia’s potential survival, while the nearest soldiers are amazed and energized by the same idea. Roderick wouldn’t be able to do anything unless they came back empty-handed, but if they did he’d make their lives hell.
Sasuke didn’t intend to fail.
*
“If you can’t trust the mages behind you, Commander Cullen, let Leliana and her scouts bring them and let’s go,” Sasuke cut across the argument from his perch on the parapet and put his left foot down onto the deployment map they’d scratched together. “It’s been an hour. I ate and did a sketch for you, I’m ready. If you’re not ready now then you can follow us.”
“But-”
“Now, Commander.” Sasuke uses the table as a launch point to leap to the middle of the double-squad of mages standing just far enough away to feign not hearing the argument about them.
“Is the Divine really alive?” young man about Sasuke’s height, but with pointed ears and elegantly pointed features askes before his elders can stop him.
“Yes,” Sasuke replies confidently, because if any of them died before he has a chance to rescue them Sasuke would storm the afterlife and drag them back for the lecture of a lifetime. “My team keeps her safe for now, but the sooner we get them out the better.”
“We’re with you. The fighting needs to stop, and the Divine is our best chance,” a silver-haired woman says, and the others nod in agreement.
“If you can close the Breach, I don’t care about the Divine,” one of the men mutters too low for most people to hear, and Sasuke doesn’t react to the comment, but notes it for later.
“We’re glad for your help.” Sasuke motions them toward Leliana and starts walking uphill. Wrangling the different factions into working together isn’t his job, except where it interfers with protecting the Divine. Which, if this job continues, may end up being a lot.
Varric is the first to fall into step with him, as if he’s been waiting for such a cue, “You rally the troops often?”
“Not usually so many,” Sasuke admitts.
The stout man considers the squads forming up around them as they continue their walk. Many still eye Sasuke with a mix of suspicion and hope. “Let’s hope you can keep it up.”
Sasuke finally gets to a chance to use his favorite word, “Hn.”
Varric laughs.
*
The auditory illusions were not genjutsu, Sasuke didn’t need his Sharingan to know that. Instead they prickle along the edges of his new chakra brand in a different harmonic to the rifts, like the strings of a koto vibrating when their neighbors were plucked. He focuses as the words of the ritualist and the divine wash over the group, moving his hand slowly to feel how the plucking changes.
He thought perhaps what he was feeling was “the Veil” that their briefing documents had spoken of, the poorly understood Difference that made chakra use so different on this continent. Shikako had mentioned feeling it as their ship had approached, like a fog across her mind and senses, and they had all taken to checking themselves for genjutsu upon waking because of the strange effects upon their dreams. It made splitting chakra into Yin or Yang release easier, but they had not had the time to study any other effects.
The energy in the lingering in the air is not anything he’s encountered before- not the lingering traces of old jutsu or seal, but lines of flowing, living energy twisting through the air and the ground. From the reactions of the others, the effect is broadly visible. He shields his eyes to hide the tell-tail red of his Sharingan and is both please and dismayed what it shows him. The easily visible lines are spillover, the smoke compared to the actual fire of chakra lines running through the area. His eyes trace a line of Energy from the Breach overhead, through the rift he wants to open and down into the earth toward something that is alivingheartofstone-beatssoslowbutsteady he tears his gaze and attention away, deactivating his Sharingan. He stares at the brand on his hand and tries to think of how it might- might- be making him see dragon lines. The “It could kill you, really don’t mess with Nature energy Shikako-” “Oh, we can use them to make an Earthquake, I believe in you Taicho-” “Lets get some actual training from Tenzou so if you have to rewrite a map in the future we can be more efficient, oh but let’s not level the village” Dragon lines. Or perhaps the Veil makes Nature Chakra so different in this place that anyone can see it. There isn’t enough time to test it.
At least he doesn’t have to worry about collapsing again from chakra exhaustion, if he can pass the Closing String Technique to the Line rather than doing it all himself.
“Can you do it?” Cassandra asks, bringing him back to the present, and he hums an affirmative, following the others as they move through the rubble.
Some of that rubble is growing red crystals, but Sasuke’s shoulder nudging Cassandra’s side is much less subtle than Varric’s unhappy identification of the stuff. Sasuke makes a note to find out what color ‘lyrium’ is supposed to be soon.
Varric doesn’t hiss in outrage when Sasuke steps closer whispers that the Red Lyrium “felt the same as the Ritualist who did this,” but it’s a close thing. The calculating look he flicks between the Ninja, the Seeker, and the rest of their group only confirms Sasuke’s assessment of his general shrewdness. Good. Sasuke didn’t really trust these people and he needn’t feel alone in that. Solas’ inane statement about the explosion “corrupting the lyrium” is either disingenuous in the extreme or it was plain dumb luck that the mage hadn’t made the Chakra-brand on Sasuke’s hand worse while studying it while he was unconscious.
In fact, Solas keeps trying to walk near him, but Sasuke is an S-rank master at maintaining a teammate buffer between himself and unwanted attention. Varric is nearly as good as Naruto for this, and Cassandra exuded Protection like a smaller and stabbier Akamichi.
When they arrive at center of the explosion crater, Cassandra pulls out the drawing he had done and compares it to the smoky figure yelling in fury, nodding. “Perhaps you can do another?”
“I told you that was just a sketch,” Sasuke replies, staring up at the shifting green spikes of the rift below the larger Breach and the visual echoes of the Ritualist. The Fade is better at sounds than Visual, it seems. “I can do better with more time.”
“Fair enough.” Cassandra tucks the sketch away.
“I’ll try to signal my team so they’re the first ones through, but we had to fight a bunch of demons the first time we found a rift,” He trails off. Sasuke ss more than willing to let her direct the local forces in this little fight, as he is still learning about their capabilities. Instead he stations himself above the dragon line and steadies his breathing.
“That means demons. Stand ready!” Cassandra calls, and squads move into position around them.
At Cassandra’s nod, Sasuke raises his hand, hooks the chakra of the Brand into the Rift and pulsing it in the Kohona code for /Evacuate, Back-up Ready. Evacuate,/ He waits, pulsing the message twice more as he counts to 49 in his head, and then begins opening the rift in earnest.
* * *
Shikako felt the pulses of energy and reads the first code before even trying to figure out the exact location of the source. Evac.
“Shino, Justinia, Time to go,” she calls, tucking her notes into hammerspace with more speed than neatness. They’d discussed what to do after the first rift they’d found had eaten Sasuke, and put the plan into motion without discussion. Justinia douses the fire with a thought and turns to Shino, who knelt to accept her onto his back. Shikako turns in place to refine her lock on the signal. It’s isn’t far, but it will take some tricky jumps even with the weird mind-over-matter physics of this place. But they are ninja, physics is no obstacle to their shenanigans.
They aren’t the only ones to notice when the gate started to open. The scurrying spiderling demons aren’t fast or mobile enough to climb the floating rocks, but there are wisp-things that grow in size and morph in shape as they approach. Shikako tries throwing up a barrier to keep them out, but several smaller wisps combine and push through her barrier- not breaking it entirely but eroding it like a fast-acting acid. At least they won’t be swarmed.
They go through as one, Shikako pressed against Justinia’s back and fingers dug into Shino’s coat- they don’t want to have to do this again if the rift closes before they all get through. Passing through the Rift is disorienting, like falling out of bed and forcing herself through solid stone all at once. Shikako resistes the urge to go into Shadow State- adding another factor to the soup of weirdness is unlikely to help here. Instead she held on and wills herself forward.
They are through, falling into chaos and battle: giant scaled monster to the left, Sasuke and a rope of chakra connected to the rift to the right, locals scattered around in groups of similar uniforms hacking at the monster, firing arrows or fireballs or setting up barriers around the melee fighters and Sasuke. The entire place is alive with streams of greenish white chakra flowing down from the roiling hole in the sky above them, almost thick enough to choke on.
Many variations of “the Divine!” and “she survived” and “he was right” fall out of the locals mouths as they appear- Justinia was right to make them recover her giant white hat from the spider demon that had stolen it- but the cry of “They’re safe! Close it!” from the dark haired swordswoman leading the fight against the scaled demon is both louder and more joyous than any of the rest.
Shikako can hear the eye rolling in Sasuke’s retort, “You do your job, Cassandra, and I’ll do mine.”
Sasuke’s ring of local guardians let the ninja and the Divine into their circle with gratifying speed if not the smoothness of practice. Shikako smiles as the press of too much chakra eases- a young elf guarding Sasuke’s left just cast the protection barrier again. It’s a relief until the lack of sensory overload lets her focus on the shift in Sasuke’s stance- something like Earth Flow, but focused upward- but there was no Wind Flow, what was he planning?
Then Sasuke is catching one of the floating chakra ribbons across his branded palm and restarting the spinning-rope technique, and the ribbon propagates it in both directions. Up into the hole in the sky, and down into the earth and the well of chakra buried beneath them, focused through the hole in Sasuke’s hand like a river focused through the eye of a needle.
It works, but Shikako will have words with her teammate about this.