Shikamaru's team was long out of Haruka's range and without a tracker their only choice was to make an educated guess and hope they weren't too far off the mark. Sasuke was defecting to Orochimaru, which meant he would most likely head for Otogakure, and that was in Rice. Neither Haruka nor Sai knew where exactly the village was, other than north, but it was reasonable to assume that Sasuke would have moved along the river, at least for the first few kilometers. Accordingly that would be their path as well.
"Hey, can we use one of your birds to fly?" She asked hopefully. "Should make catching up a lot easier."
"Yes," Sai agreed. "But it would also mean we don't have a way to get out quickly. I only have one prepared and making another one now would take time and chakra we can't spare."
"Fine, no birds."
It took only half an hour before they ran into the first trap. Explosive tags that were arranged so that they formed the corners of a cube. Haruka had never seen anything like it before, but it was easy to spot because the tags were active seals and thus gave off chakra. She assumed the whole thing would explode if a person entered the area. Not that she was willing to test that theory. In fact, they gave it a wide berth just to be safe.
There was no way Sasuke knew how to do something like this, which meant he either wasn't alone or they had stumbled across someone else's path. The latter theory was quickly abandoned because the further they went the more traps they found. They were all deadly, but also simple and sometimes rushed. It seemed too unlikely that someone else just happened to go from Konoha to Rice in a hurry and expected to be pursued by hostiles.
"Tell me you see that too," Haruka requested when a tremor shook the earth and a cloud of rock, dust and foliage rose in the distance. Sai merely nodded and moved on, For a moment she wished Shikamaru was there because he would have at least cursed or something. Then again maybe not. The Nara more than likely knew that Choji could become a forest-obliterating giant, so it was a lot more likely that he would have laughed at her.
The Akimichi performed a rather ungraceful body slam, smashing trees to bits, and Haruka seriously wondered who he was fighting. Or had he taken a page out of Naruto's book? After all, the blond had won his fight against Kiba by having a massive frog sit down on him.
Then Choji was suddenly up in the air, seemingly having been hit by something strong enough to lift him off the ground. He shrunk again as he fell, and then Haruka couldn't see him anymore. She decided to head in his direction anyway. The team had likely split up because otherwise Choji would have risked crushing them, but there was still no one close enough for her to sense, and the Akimichi definitely needed help. Whoever he was fighting had to be incredibly strong to survive being pressed into the ground by that much weight.
Only minutes later a massive amount of chakra manifested out of nowhere. It startled Haruka so badly that she body flickered backwards out of pure instinct, which in turn made Sai stop and rush to her side.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know. Choji did something. His chakra it's—it's a lot more than he's supposed to have. We need to hurry."
They'd already been running as fast as they could without wasting chakra, but with the added urgency of this development they still managed to push a little harder.
When they arrived at the scene of the fight, it was to see a monstrous guy in an outfight not unlike the one Orochimaru had worn in the Forest of Death. He had a mane of bright orange hair on his head, two tiny horns on his forehead and his skin was an odd reddish-brown. Behind him stood Choji, much, much slimmer than he'd been the day before and with so much raw chakra protruding from his back that it formed beautiful butterfly wings.
The Akimichi gathered all of that chakra to his left fist a moment later, and then hit his opponent in the face while shouting something about stealing his last chip and insulting Shikamaru. The impact made the air shimmer as the chakra was released, and the shock wave gave Haruka a headache.
Choji's enemy died almost instantly and then his strange skin color began to unravel into arrow shaped markings. These too receded until his eyes were no longer black, his skin was white again and the mane of orange hair was nothing more than three lines that ran from the front to the back of his head. Choji was breathing hard, all of his chakra spent and Haruka had to move fast to catch him before he hit the ground.
Whatever had been going on during this fight, other than Choji's brief transformation into a giant, had created a new clearing in the forest and turned its floor into nothing but rubble.
"I won," Choji wheezed. "I actually won."
He tried to stand up, but Haruka held him down. Sure, he'd won, but he'd also almost killed himself doing it. That last technique had completely emptied his chakra stores and even burned most of his body fat to create more energy. He had no reserves left at all and without a quick way to restore them organ failure would only be a matter of minutes.
"He needs food, preferably something that can be digested fast," she told Sai.
The boy rummaged around in his bag for a few seconds and then held out a single packet of sugar from one of Konoha's tea houses. Haruka didn't ask why he had it on him, merely opened the thing and emptied it in Choji's mouth. The Akimichi was barely even awake and she had to slap him twice to get his attention. He desperately needed to eat more, which meant he had to stay awake.
He more than likely was aware of that fact, but Haruka explained it to him anyway while Sai handed her ration bar after ration bar. The things tasted horrible and would take some time to digest, but the sugar packet should tide him over until then. At least she hoped so.
"You gotta go after Shikamaru," Choji forced out between bites.
"Yeah I know, don't worry." Haruka waited a few more minutes to make sure Choji could stay awake on his own, but he was right. During the invasion there had been four Sound shinobi in those uniforms. Barrier specialists and Orochimaru's personal guard. She hadn't actually seen any of them herself, but the description Ibiki had given her fit well enough, now that the guy no longer looked like a monster. That more than likely meant there were three others with Sasuke.
Choji handed Sai a small pouch full of soldier pills before they left to follow the others. He also told them to watch for markings on the trees because the plan had been for him to catch up with the squad after defeating his opponent.
"If he had that many soldier pills, why didn't he just take one of them?" Sai asked as soon as they were on their way again.
"Do you know how Soldier Pills work?"
"By stimulating the body to produce more chakra faster."
"Exactly. The technique he used did the same thing, only it already used up all of his non-essential reserves. To create chakra the body primarily burns fat. When most of the fat is gone, or after prolonged periods without food, muscle and lean tissue is burned instead," Haruka explained. "You saw Choji. He was thinner than Ino. The only way his body could have produced any more energy without food intake would have been by starting to metabolize his organs, which would have been just as deadly."
Sai nodded once, filing away the information. They continued in silence afterwards, following the arrows that were indeed carved into the trunks of some trees. Neither of them mentioned that the marks that had appeared after the Sound shinobi's death looked a lot like the ones Sasuke's cursed seal produced.
There weren't any more traps, which likely meant the Sound nin hadn't expected anyone other than their comrade would come after them from that point on. It made following them considerably faster, and being underestimated like that was a huge advantage. At least if Shikamaru's squad didn't let pride get in the way. She had no doubt that the Nara would use any advantage his enemy gave him. Neji, Kiba and Naruto on the other hand were rather likely to insist on being taken seriously