Archive of Our Own ^beta

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3

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Or was it 6? She considered it for a second. No, 6 feels odd, forced.

…

She couldn’t figure anything else past that, so she simply sighed and reclined back. To little success, since the bench was a slab of wood jutting out at some uncomfortable angle.

“Where did you get to this time?”

“775”

“Last time you were at 730!”

“I was aiming for 830.”

“...because aaaaaall those digits’ll help you find the area in a circle but better .”

“It’s for my spiritual energy”

“Yeah that makes so much sense since we all know chakras ONLY made up of it and is in no way affected by physical energy and that doing this will be reaaaaally helpful while you still have those twig arms.”

“Okay but it has to do something — “

“I can read minds. My dad can read minds. Trust me when I say it doesn’t —”

Iruka came back into the classroom. “Sakura Haruno?” Hearing the announcement, she absentmindedly followed him to the next room. Iruka sat down next to Mizuki, gesturing to the center of the room.

“Please create three clones of yourself”

“And then I pass?” Iruka chuckled a little, nodding. “Yes.”

She absentmindedly plucked at her chakra, and she walked away, two doppelgangers following after her. They looked at the two proctors impatiently.

“Do I pass?”

Mizuki leaned forward. “They have shadows. Those aren’t shadow clones or anything like that?” She noticed a gleam in his eyes, though it quickly vanished.

“No, I just added the shadows in.” Snapping her fingers, the shadows cast by the dopplegangers disappeared. She snapped again and they came back. Do you want to see the hand signs?”

Iruka and Mizuki exchanged a few brief words. “No, that won’t be necessary”, Mizuki explained. “You pass!”

Sakura simply accepted the forehead protector from Iruka with thanks, walking back to the room with her classmates. Ino saw the protector, whooping.

“I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT!” It wasn’t much of a surprise to either of them, considering that they had reviewed together the night before. But Sakura gave her a small smile in appreciation and sat down next to her before speaking again.

“I passed first.” Ino just opened and closed her mouth in indignation. Sakura tried very hard not to snicker.

“...your last name starts with an H”

“Too bad”

“...do you want to change my name to Gamanaka?”

“The hardest of choices require the strongest of wills”

“You want ALLLL my family, my mom and my dad and my uncle and my baby cousin — my sweet, adorable baby cousin — to be condemned to the name Gamanaka.”

A mock sigh. “I knew you don’t have what it takes”

Ino grabbed her forehead protector and pretended to whack Sakura over the head with it. It came down as a light tap.

“I bet I got brain damage from that.”

“Not much brain to damage.”

Iruka came back again. “Shikimaru Nara?” Ino leaned over and whispered to her. “He better pass. Choji and I promised him that if he doesn’t we’d tie him up in a sack with a few kunais and shake it until he turned into meat paste.”

“...what the fuck?”

“This man better pass. I swear to god if he does that thing where he tries to get as close to the fail line as possible I will personally do my utmost to make my promise reality,  Jounin-Commander dad or not—”

Shikimaru sauntered back into the room. Dragging his feet back up to the bench, he plopped his forehead protector and feet on the desk and promptly fell into a sleep a dead man would be jealous of. 

“THAT’S MY FAVORITE NARA!”

“I’m trying to sleep”. A few snores came not seconds later. Ino frowned and turned back to Sakura. Despite Ino’s words, Sakura could see she was relieved.

“Guess you have your team figured out?” Ino nodded. “Yeah, I honestly don’t know what I would’ve done otherwise. Could you imagine me being placed with Naruto?” 

Sakura looked at the blond boy in the back left. He was staring out the window. Despite the wide frown plastered over his face, she could see his hands were shaking. Naruto, from what she knew, was an orphan. Common for her generation, especially considering the Nine-tails attack more than a decade back. Tragic past aside, he was also notorious for living … fearlessly. Painting the Hokage monument, doing whatever the hell that was yesterday — seriously, why did he think that transforming into a naked, female version of himself in front of the entire classroom was a good idea?

Sakura looked at Ino. “I hope they swap Naruto and Shikimaru. It’d be really funny.”

“What makes you think he’ll pass?”

Sakura thought about it, about the adults around him. The Hokage, watching him scrub off the paint off the monument, had apparently laughed — laughed! And he had never managed to get kicked out of the academy — not for not showing up to school for nearly a month before Iruka dragged him back, not for reportedly failing nearly every test the academy had to offer, not for this latest stunt. Sakura figured he had to be some sort of nepo baby, there was no other way. Probably someone who went way back with the Hokage or something. It probably helped that he was from the Uzumaki clan, and though she didn’t know anything about it, it was enough that their crest was on the side of every Chunin flak jacket.

“He’s probably a nepo baby. He has to be. Think about it.”

Ino briefly thought about it on the same line of reasoning, then shrugged. “His last name’s Uzumaki, right? That would make sense.” Neither were interested in the subject though, so Ino changed it. “Which team do you think you’ll be part of?”

“Genin Corps”

“...you’re joking.” Ino looked at Sakura’s blank expression and frowned. “No, you’re being serious. Just a little. You think you won’t get a Jounin-Sensei.”

But unlike someone like Ino, she did not come from a shinobi family. Her mother was a seamstress, her father a cryptography expert for Konoha’s intelligence division. She did not have the guarantee that she would even be placed in a team — from her own research, the ratio of clan to civilian children with a Jounin-Sensei was six to three, despite the civilians outnumbering the clan children in a six to four ratio. Furthermore, the assignment never seemed to depend on actual academic performance — for all she knew, they could’ve stuck names on a target and threw shuriken to pick. Meaning that, despite being at the top of her class and learning everything the academy possibly had to offer, she still had the glaring possibility of being placed in the Genin Corps. 

Not that there was any shame in it — her own father was in it for about a decade right out of the academy, before he had passed the Chunin exams five years ago and finally got his desk job in Intelligence. She had been so happy, hugging her dad after his grueling years of preparation had paid off. It meant that she didn’t have to worry her dad would come back every time he went on a mission, that when she could see him at the end of the day at home instead of in the hospital like she and her mom used to do when he was injured — a frighteningly large number of times actually.

Getting a Jounin-Sensei meant avoiding those years of risk and being on the fast-track to promotion. It meant better mentorship, connections — it meant that you were important to the village, that she could get off the field as fast as possible. And it was why she had tried so hard on the exam: despite her disinterested performance, she had spent backbreaking hours learning everything the academy could possibly offer.  Textbook-perfect katas. Every trap described in the academy library. The three jutsu she knew, she removed the hand signs from, scraping them down to their maximum efficiency. She learned the basic sealing jutsu from the shinobi library. And the result? Mediocrity all around.

Take Sasuke, for example. Hailed as the biggest prodigy of the Uchiha clan since Itachi, he demonstrated the sheer cliff between what she was and what she had to be. Where she simply droned hand-to-hand drills, he took them and turned them into an art form, ending all his fights nearly as soon as they started. Where she could throw a kunai to hit her target, he could throw ten while blindfolded and somehow hit them dead on: never mind that they were behind the tree he was aiming at. He demonstrated it once at recess, after much pressuring from the other kids. He tried to brush it off too — it was just his clan teachers, he tried to reason. Not that it stopped anyone there from understanding how out of their league they were. 

And even outside of competence, sasuke and all of the other clan kids had a defined role in Konoha, a guarantee that their unique talents would be nurtured. Sasuke for example would likely have a role in the Police force, seeing as his father headed the division. Kiba and Hinata, would always have a place in the tracking and sensory division. Ino, heir to the Yamanaka name, would eventually become her dad's boss as head of Torture and Intelligence. At the end of it, Sakura didn’t —

“Have anything compelling to offer,” Ino rolled her eyes, drawing out the words. “Because knowing the ENTIRE academy curriculum to the t isn’t enough. Six Path’s Sake, you’ll get a team because they’d have to be stupid not to —”

Iruka walked back into the room, calling Ino.

“Wish me luck!”

“You won’t need it.”

She came back with a headband.

Sakura smirked. “Told you.”

Sasuke passed.

Naruto failed.

Ino and Sakura got snacks at the corner store afterwards, and tried to guess which Jounin would be instructing. They weren’t very successful, since they only knew three: Kurenai, the new one, Kakashi of the Sharingan, and Sarutobi, the Hokage’s son. “You’ll be fine,” Ino reassured. Sakura was not reassured.

She went home, her headband around her forehead. Her parents, waiting outside the door, saw it and ran up, both of them wrapping around her in a hug. She allowed herself to relax in their arms. Even if she joined the Genin Corps, she’d still have them, and she was grateful for that. They had dinner together, rice and fish. She tried not to worry. Her parents told her not to.  Then she dug in.

Usually she took the time to train or do needlework, but tonight she decided to let herself have a good nights rest. After all, she had just finished six years of training. She deserved it. But instead of resting, she tried in vain to predict the rest of her life. 

She couldn’t remember falling into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

Waking and sleeping hours are foreign concepts to shinobi. They should be awake when they are needed, and rest when they aren’t. Maybe this was why the shinobi identification pictures started at 4:00 AM and continued to 5:00, a time down to the second specified on the back of the headband. And that was why at 4:27:05 AM, she glared down the lens of a clunky-looking camera.

“Done,” the operator grunted. She was gone before the syllable ended. Intent on reuniting with her bed, she was practically skipping home, a pulse of chakra expertly applied at each step at the balls of her feet, when she saw Naruto, in full clown make-up. She stopped in front of him. “What’s the get-up for?”

He seemed a little spaced out, and a little surprised. “This? I was told to come here because I became a real ninja yesterday —” he proudly pointed at her headband — “so I decided to become the first ninja to have an ID in full clown makeup!” He hopped from one foot to another. “You like my style?”

Her first instinct was to ask how he was wearing that headband. But then she remembered how the instructors, the Hokage treated her. Of course a little thing like passing an exam would matter if you were special enough. So instead, she let out a chuckle. “Really good!” She neglected to bring up that more likely than not he’d have to redo it. After all, they were the same ones used for mugshots on the wanted posters hung around Konoha. Wouldn’t make sense to allow him to obscure his face.

He gave her a salute in response. He looked at his watch and made a sound. “OH SHIT Iruka’ll kill me if I’m late!” He took off running, turning back one more time to yell goodbye.

Really loudly too, she noted as she walked the rest of the way back home. Her encounter with Naruto had surprised any exhaustion out of her. 4:00 AM was an awfully early time to wake though, so she decided to get ahead with her work for the day.

Firstly, this included helping her mom. As a small but fairly busy shinobi gear producer, there was plenty of cutting and sewing work, which was often relegated to Sakura when she didn’t have school or training. Thus, instead of going straight home, she flicked the key to the shop next door out of her shoe sole and unlocked the door. The shop itself looked cluttered — canvas and tiny scraps of fabric littered the floor and the work desk in the center of the shop, but everything was where she knew to look. Thread of various sizes in the bottom left tray of the desk. Tape measures and straightedges directly above. she could  measure and cut straight pretty accurately by now but she used them anyway just for the principle of it, chalk in the top cabinet, along with scissors. Needles were also there in a neat box, but she stopped needing them a while ago. Today, her job was to stitch together the patterns her mom had cut the day before so, channeling chakra into her arm, she grabbed it with one hand and lightly set it down on the desk, pulling the fabrics out and getting to work. The trick to moving the thread, she had learned, was varying chakra. More than that, it was varying the types of energy in the chakra. Physical energy, she had learned, gives impetus for motion. Therefore, it was good to put where the thread needed to slide along fabric, in place of a needle for example. However, spiritual energy provided direction direction: this made it good for tying knots and turning the thread itself. Together, they provided strength and precision, something she smugly noted as the stitches aligned themselves and tightened themselves into a perfect final backstitch. The now-completed leggings, which Sakura folded and placed at the bottom of the cardboard box next to her. 

She spent the next hour doing that and would’ve worked for longer, but she also needed to train. If there was any silver lining to her being up this early, it was that she could train for longer. Which was why, at 5:30 AM, she was throwing kunai at a tree in her yard. Stopping after each throw to vary the sizes of her targets (planks of wood from the scrapyard), along with their height and position, she never missed one. She was tempted to try it blindfolded, but that was within the realm of the Uchihas. Besides, she would need a position to go with it, and that would be more difficult to set up than the practice itself. So instead, after practicing her hand-to-hand with a well-loved punching bag (that her mother had so graciously made for her when she first joined the academy) she moved on to traps. She could assemble them blindfolded. With her sealing, she could drop a kunai on her leg and store it on the seal wrapped around it. A flare of chakra and it came back again. Success. Finally, her jutsu. First, she became a tree. Then, she became two trees. The tree substituted itself for a plank of wood. She switched with it three more times before she was gasping for breath. 

There really wasn’t much she could do about that. Substitution was a chakra intensive technique. Physically speaking, it involved accelerating a target using a tether of chakra to give the user a high velocity, before using the momentum of that same target to counterbalance their own when they needed to stop. Unfortunately, the principle itself required incredibly large amounts of energy. From her own calculations, the smaller the object, the larger the amount of energy. Thus, when the technique was first taught in the academy, they practiced with logs a little less than the students weight, about the maximum that the tethers could hold and accelerate. This meant that even if it was the best high speed technique in her arsenal, it was also the most limited. 

The other two techniques of the academy three, however, did not have that limitation. As genjutsu techniques, they simply required light manipulation. At the efficiency Sakura had achieved, she barely felt the chakra leaving her. Which was all well and good until you started asking questions. For example, what good is transforming into another guy on a one on one battle? Clones were slightly better in that respect, but they didn’t even cast shadows or interact with the things they touched. At best, they were a flimsy diversion, especially to a shinobi even remotely trained in sensory.

Looking for a solution, she looked into sensory techniques. Most information about any decently complicated jutsu was classified. However, she found a vital piece of information to go off of: sensory techniques required a focus to work, something to look for. Clones, for example, were practically walking targets for sensory. What about something like shrubbery? Well, Sakura figured that between the guy with a big knife and the landscape, only one of them would get the attention. And while using her clones for glorified landscaping seemed stupid, half of a battle was knowing the terrain better than the opponent. Control over terrain meant control over the battle, at least according to the Academy treatise on it. So, she started by focusing on disguising her clones as inanimate objects. And she got pretty good at it too, except there was one problem.

In order to properly control the landscape, she would need to make lots of changes. Trees, bushes, leaves, clumps of dirt — they added up. Of course, the chakra was negligible. But what really added up was the concentration required. And if she was more intent on making sure the shrubbery was green enough than dodging the guy with a knife, she was as good as dead. Her solution? Seals.

It wasn’t very innovative, actually. The academy used seals, for example, to constantly maintain a subtle genjutsu which warded off civilians from the grounds for safety reasons. She instead used it to modify terrain, using a hand-drawn paper seal stuck to the bottom of her foot.

Well not hand-drawn, really. The problem with paper seals was that, unless the seal pattern itself was changed, it would produce the same result each time. This was fine if you wanted a desk every time for the same seal. This was not fine if you needed a tree and only had a lamp. Sakura had considered making seals for every situation, but had eventually realized what a stupid idea it was. For example, even if she had a seal to create a tree, she would need to change the color of its leaves, the orientation and wood of its trunk and branches, whether it had fruit — all on the scene. Thus, she was learning to draw seals on the fly.

First, she grabbed her sealing paper the size of a playing card, and a bottle of ink. Dipping her finger into the ink, she traced the design out on the seal with her chakra. Enough chakra to form edges, but not enough to burn the paper. Instead of blotting the paper, the ink ran along the design. A Swirling hand-like design for the tree, jagged areas for the texture of the leaves, fruit, and branches, as well as details for how they would move. At the bottom left, a tiny inscription to summon another blank seal from the box of them in her room. That way she would never run out of them in a fight. She let it run down her hand, using chakra to guide it down her arm and to the bottom of her sandal. And then she stomped, flaring chakra into it.

An oak tree stood in front of her, 10 feet tall, vibrant green leaves blowing in the wind. The edges of the illusion shimmered unnaturally in the light. That wasn’t good . The shimmering meant that it broke immersion. Breaking immersion meant that the opponent would see through it. Seeing through it meant losing the advantage. What did she have left if she lost the advantage? Nothing , she concluded bitterly.

“Looks like someone learned wood release,” her dad remarked behind her. He was watching from the sliding door to the yard, with a slight smile and twinkling eyes.

“They just might make me Godaime,” she remarked dryly.

“How are you doing that though?” he inquired curiously. She lifted her foot, showing the seal. The tree disappeared. “It controls the illusion,” she explained. “Makes it disappear if I lift it off the ground though,” remarking at the empty space where the tree once was.

“You can just perform it like that?”

“It barely uses anything actually, and with the seal I don’t even have to think about it, but,” creating the illusion once again and pointing to the edges, "you can see the clipping, so I need to work on it.”

“First time I’ve seen a non-compulsive genjutsu since the clone technique though, so that’s definitely interesting. Better than I was at your age too. Want breakfast?”

She was going to say that she was going to practice more. But with a start, she realized that it was now 7:30. Besides, she had used a good amount of chakra already. Eating couldn’t hurt. “Breakfast sounds good.” Going to the kitchen, they sat down to eat with her mom.

“Training so early?” she asked as father and daughter dug into their bowls of oatmeal.

“They made us take our registration pictures at 4:00 AM. Rule 5: a shinobi is always alert and awake when they are needed,” she said, rolling her eyes. 

“How many of those rules are there?”

“150”

“Did you learn them?”

“I memorized them. Wish I didn’t.”

“So after this, you’ll start working as a shinobi. You know how that’ll work?”

“It depends on whether or not I get a Jounin-Sensei or not. If I do, I run missions with a team? The more likely option is that I join the Genin-Corps.”

“She says that despite being top of her class,” her father chimed in.

“Not with a Hyuuga and an Uchiha,” Sakura replied.

“You have to stop comparing yourself to them,” he replied. “Seriously. Just because you don’t have magic eyes doesn’t mean you don’t have impressive abilities yourself. I literally just watched you use a technique that some shinobi would kill for, and you made it yourself at that.” Impressive doesn’t mean good enough, though . Especially considering an Academy Student with said eyes could see through the technique in a second. She couldn’t say that out loud, so she opted to simply sigh.

“You might be right,” she conceded. She didn’t want to draw this out. She finished her bowl in silence. “I’ll go and train.” 

She walked back to the yard. She didn’t see the concerned glances her parents exchanged as the sounds of punching and kicking resumed, though.

Chapter Text

Kakashi didn’t mind teaching. That was a common misconception among Konoha’s top brass, founded in his failing every prior team that had been assigned to him. They thought it was a way to shirk teaching duties. But he wasn’t — his first and last lesson to them was one that most ninja went without realizing until they watched their comrades choking on their own blood, helpless to save them.

 Those who break the rules and laws are regarded as scum, but those who would abandon even one of their friends are even worse than scum.

He wasn’t ever going to pass a team until they understood that lesson, until they were willing to be worthy allies for one another. Sure, they could become great shinobi under him. But that would be at the expense of their humanity. He tried to be like that once, a rule-follower to the letter and a stone-cold killer. A Shinobi by six, Jounin by 12 , the people around him whispered. How impressive. I wish I were like him . But who would want to wear the eye of their first friend? To hold the heart of their teammate, being forced to memorize her terror-stricken face in excruciating detail as she died? He hadn’t cried when they died. A shinobi must never show their tears during a mission. But a fool would mistake that for strength. If nothing else, he wanted his students to understand how to be human, that the emotions inside them weren’t a weakness. But what would he know? He was a scarecrow now, stuffing where his heart had been and mismatched parts thrown together into some sort of thing . A disgrace who couldn’t protect his father, Obito or Rin, Minato or Kushina or their orphaned son as he endured the scorn of the village he had saved.

Yes, back to the academy rather than becoming like him .

But that was just a distraction as he surveyed the three files in front of him. He looked back at the Hokage, puffing away at his pipe smoking Sage knows what, and then back at the files.

Naruto. Overnight, he had gone from the village joke to a human army. Cheerful. Kind. Determined.

Sasuke. Itachi’s younger brother, next in line to the Uchiha name after him. Kind. Friendly. Exceptional.

Sakura. Daughter of a seamstress and a Chunin in Intelligence, but top of her class. Aloof. Disinterested. Precise.

“If they fail my test, I won’t teach them.”

The Hokage gave him a truly infuriating smirk. “They won’t fail.”

And, as an eraser whacked him in the head and he got a good look at his students, he found himself doubting the Sandaime’s words for the first time.

Sakura never expected to watch the Kakashi of the Sharingan get hit by a blackboard eraser. Then again, she shouldn’t have expected any of this morning. 

Firstly, but some stroke of luck, every jonin she and Ino discussed was accepting students. She knew this because two of the three were at the front of the classroom. She just wished that Sarutobi and the black-haired one (Kurenai) would stop making eyes at each other. Ino wouldn’t stop mentioning it.

Speaking of Ino, she got placed, along with Choji and Shikimaru, under the Hokage’s son. Meanwhile, Hinata, Shino, and Kiba got placed with Kurenai. 

She didn’t know any of them very well, but still chose to be happy for them. The clan kids tended to mingle among themselves and Ino didn’t talk about them the way she did with Choji and Shikimaru. Some of the children from more minor clans did so out of snobbery. However, according to Ino, many of those in clans had unique circumstances. Shino, for example, was filled with bugs. Even her new teammate Choji was ostracized due to his weight. For those kids, it was only among the children like them that they could truly be understood. Ino and Sasuke were exceptions, but still understood the line between those who were in and those who weren’t in the clan system.

Not that this line mattered anymore: Sasuke Uchiha, second-in-line to the second founding clan of Konoha, was in a team with the bottom of the class and a civilian .

All the other kids left with their Jounin-Senseis or went back home. The three of them were stuck in their seats. All of them wanted to say something but none of them were quite sure what to say.  So they just sat in silence while Sakura overthought about it.

Why were her and Naruto in a team with Sasuke Uchiha ? Naruto obviously had a unique set of circumstances, demonstrated by the fact that despite him being unable to create even a single clone, he was now sitting in his corner seat, a headband around his forehead. Either by nepotism or some obscure talent his lineage provided him, he was deemed suitable to be on the same team as the younger Uchiha. What she would give to have a snazzy lineage. But that wasn’t what worried her.

The real mystery was why she was on this team. Objectively, she was average. She did not have any unique circumstances, to the best of her knowledge. She was grateful for the chance of course. However, there had to be more to it. And so she waited … and waited … and waited for two hours.

All of them were confused. Naruto was the first to speak up. “Where’s that Kakashi guy? Why’s he not here yet? Everyone else’s gone!”

“That ‘Kakashi guy’ is one of Kohoha’s strongest ninja. He’s probably coming back from a mission,” Sasuke replied.

That makes sense , Sakura thought. Ninja were supposed to be punctual. If he was late, he probably had a good reason to be. 

Either way, it had been 15 minutes now. Couldn’t hurt to get some reading in. Unsealing a small booklet, a pen, and some paper, she opened to page five. She had been looking for books on nature transformations in the library last week when she had found one on yin release. There were no specific techniques listed, of course. The academy three were the only ones that were freely disseminated in Konoha. While the village as a whole boasted a huge variety of them as a whole — there was a reason Fire Country was a global superpower — those techniques were strictly locked in Clan libraries or in Headquarters at the Hokage building. It made sense as a security measure too. Thanks to this system, where only specific shinobi were allowed full access to Konoha’s techniques, it had suffered relatively few intelligence leaks regarding them. However, this airtight security was now a problem.

See, techniques were the lifeblood of ninja. A ninja’s techniques decided how strong they were, despite the Academy instructor’s relentless assurances that this was not the case. There was a reason why three of the four kage were from shinobi clans. Minato, the exception, proved the rule: by improving on the Second Hokage’s Flying Thunder God, he became the scourge of Konoha’s enemies and the only shinobi to ever hold a flee on sight notice in history.

God, she wished her father wasn’t joking when he said she had Wood Release.

But she didn’t, so she settled by trying to create her own techniques. This was the first good manual she had found — all the others simply gave dumbed down, unusable information about the techniques themselves, so it would have to do. It made sense, too: if she could manipulate shadows, she could perhaps use that to improve her illusions and expand her technique. There was one small problem, though.

The manual was Hard to understand. Not because the writing was bad: whoever had written the cracked, paper manual had clearly known their stuff. The problem was that she was not used to thinking the way she needed to in order to understand it. Specifically, yin release did not work in the same way that regular shadows did.

Shadows, physically, are the absence of light. Open and shut for any physics textbook. Except, of course, this one. The manual was currently trying to convince Sakura that shadows were intrinsic parts of objects. And if this wasn’t bad enough, it was now trying to convince her that they had weight. Yeah right. She was currently on page 5 because she was sure whichever shinobi had written the manual had been smoking the wrong leaves. The reason she hadn’t returned it, however, was because she was not absolutely sure it was wrong. It mostly boiled down to her incredibly limited knowledge of shadow techniques, and the fact that the Nara clan technique somehow involved immobilization of some sort using shadows. If shadows were just a lack of light, then it wouldn’t make sense for the technique to even work, meaning that she had some reason to believe it.

But even if she did believe it, it didn’t necessarily mean she could understand it. Absorbed in her thoughts, she didn’t even notice Naruto walk up to her.

“What’re you reading?” he asked. She looked up. He had a frown, examining the green paper cover of the book.

“It’s supposed to be about shadow release,” she replied, frowning back. “Can’t figure out whether the author was a genius or just delusional, though.” It was the first time she had seen him take interest in anything even remotely academic. A year ago, Iruka had seated her next to Naruto, presumably to help him. What she found was that he wasn’t struggling at all; struggling implied that he was trying to learn the material. But the fact was that he found looking out the window far, far more interesting than learning the difference between bear and fox prints. Not only that, when she tried to talk to him he had only given one word replies on a good day. Most times he just ignored her. Which was why she was so surprised to see that not only was he talking to her, it was about a book.

Whatever the reason, he didn’t seem very anxious to continue the conversation. “Huh, good luck with that I guess,” he concluded while sauntering to the front of the classroom. She went back to reading, oblivious to the fact that he had grabbed a blackboard eraser and wedged it on top of the door.

Her Jounin-Sensei at the door an hour later, wearing a flak jacket with leggings and sandals, his forehead covering his left eye, a black mask covering his mask. When she saw his white hair made even whiter by the chalk now in it, she was as shocked as he pretended to be.

As Kakashi widened his eyes in mock surprise, he locked eyes with his mentor’s son. He was jumping up and down, his eyes squeezed shut. He wasn’t surprised, honestly. He must have gotten that from Kushina. Sasuke was staring at the blank blackboard, his eyebrows and mouth pressed into an expression of concern. The pink-haired girl was engrossed in some paper booklet, writing down what he assumed were notes. At the sound of the eraser clattering to the ground, all of them froze where they were and looked at him. Naruto voiced the three new Genin’s thoughts.

“Where were you?” Naruto made a show of looking at the clock at the front. “We waited an hour and …” he seemed to be tallying numbers in his head  “30 minutes for you!”

“That’s rude to ask,” Sasuke replied for him. “He was probably on a mission that he can’t talk about.”

“Oh no it’s fine,” Kakashi replied. “I wasn’t on a mission. I was lost on the road of life.”

All three of them looked at him with utterly dead eyes. Kakashi wanted to giggle. “Let’s meet on the roof.” He flickered away before Naruto opened his mouth again.

“Let’s get acquainted with each other, all right? Name, likes, dislikes, dream or hobby or whatever. I’ll go first. I’m Hatake Kakashi, I don’t like talking about my likes and dislikes, and my dream is none of your business. Who wants to go next?” What a non-answer , Sakura thought. Why were they even doing this? Well I guess it couldn’t hurt to know Naruto and Sasuke a little better . 

“I’m Naruto! I love ramen, and Ichiraku. I dislike the three minutes it takes to boil. My dream is to become Hokage so that everyone will acknowledge me!” Naruto exclaimed. Interesting dream , Sakura thought, for a guy who climbed out the window when he didn’t like the subject. Maybe he’d be the first Kage to get his seat through nepotism. Sasuke looked at her. Oh, one of them had to go next She gestured for him to go first, which he did.

“I am Sasuke Uchiha. I like knife-throwing, and I dislike traps. I want to be like my brother when I grow up.” Everyone knew who Itachi Uchiha was, the envy of every shinobi in the village and the pride of the Uchiha clan. Everyone wanted to be like him. So why did it sound so serious coming from Sasuke?

…

“Sakura?” Kakashi prompted. With a start, she realized it was her turn. “I’m Sakura Haruno. I like math and physics and sewing and learning jutsu and …” she considered for a second  “and I dislike sparring drills. I want to work in cryptography like my father.” A moment passed, and then Kakashi clapped his hands. 

“Great! A few items. Firstly, we will start training tomorrow. Your first mission will be a test to determine who will be on this team.”

Naruto yelled. “What do you mean who will be on this team? All of us passed the academy exam!” Honestly, Sakura had to agree. 

“Oh, that was just to weed out the hopeless cases. This test will determine who will remain, which is to say two of you at most,” he drawled. Sakura felt her blood run cold. Of course there was a final test . How could someone like her be on a team like this ? She barely felt the paper that was pushed into her hands.

“Here are details for tomorrow's mission. I suggest you don’t eat a big breakfast.”

Naruto yelled something else. Sasuke neatly folded the paper and put it in his pocket. 

Sakura walked home, dead on her feet. 

Chapter Text

When Kakashi arrived at 8:30 holding two, shining bells, Sakura was glad she had done her shopping yesterday. For how bitter food pills were, she conceded, they were doing a remarkably good job of staving off hunger. Not that it matters, since you’ll be off this team before dinner. She ignored the thought, but only to the best of her ability. She also tried to ignore the fact that he was wearing the same thing as yesterday. Like a cartoon character . 

Not that her teammates were any better. Naruto was wearing an orange and blue tracksuit, while Sasuke a black t-shirt with a wide turtleneck collar with blue shorts. She, personally, had tried on a battle-dress she had dreamt up a while ago, a red zip-up dress with white concentric circles and black shorts. On the hip, she had sewed in a storage seal for her weapons. It was pretty tedius to do, since she had stayed up two hours past her regular bed-time in order to sew it with enough precision. Hopefully, it would prove effective in this battle. 

All of them had arrived at the specified time. And she had tried talking to them, she really had. But Naruto and Sasuke weren’t interested, neither in the extra food pills she brought nor in discussing strategy. Sasuke refused with a polite smile, saying that he couldn’t accept since they were competing. Naruto was more enthusiastic in his refusal, saying he didn’t need any help to beat Kakashi. Sakura was tempted to ask where that confidence came from.

Maybe that confidence was what inspired him to attack Kakashi on sight. However, as he thrust his kunai towards him with one arm and grabbed the bells in his hand with the other, he exploded in a puff of smoke, instead spearing a log. Substitution , she realized. Then she noticed Kakashi standing behind Naruto, a kunai touching his neck.

“I didn’t say start. Though I’m glad you came at me with the intent to kill.” He turned towards Sasuke and Sakura, tying the bells to the bottom of his flak jacket with one hand. “If you hope to pass the test you’ll need to do the same.”

Bullshit . There was no way in hell that any of them could kill one of the strongest shinobi in Konoha. Hell, she couldn’t see how attacking with the intent to kill would help them in any way. But she pushed the thought aside, watching Kakashi put down an awfully clunky-looking alarm clock and hitting it. “If the alarm rings and you do not have a bell, you fail.”

“Now start.”

Kakashi vanished.

I am so screwed .

After Kakashi vanished, the three Genin split up without exchanging words. Naruto stalked off. Sasuke hopped up into the trees, leaping off into the distance. Sakura stuck to the ground, concealing herself in the foliage. Her first course of action, she decided, was to find Kakashi. Finding Kakashi meant finding the bells. So where could she be? She pulled out the map she had gotten from Konoha headquarters. At the center was the clearing, where they started. She pointed at the point directly above it, her own location. Even further up was a lake, which took up the top of the page entirely. A few clearings were scattered around too. Let’s suppose I want to fight three enemy shinobi. Three inexperienced, incompetent, shinobi. Where could I absolutely crush them? None of the clearings looked very inspiring in that respect. She looked at the lake. The lake would be an objectively terrible place to fight , she realized. After all, it meant that he would be fighting with his back to the water — she slapped her head. Any shinobi worth their salt can walk on water , she remembered. Meaning that if a fight happened there, they would be the ones with a disadvantage. Lake it was.

“Wonderful view to fail an exam,” she quietly remarked. Kakashi, watching from above, agreed. Lake it was, then. He disappeared without a sound.

She made her way to the lake, ever so slowly. After all, she couldn’t blow her cover.

Naruto could not fail. He couldn’t just go back to Iruka, wearing the headband he was gifted, and tell him that he wasn’t good enough for this stupid Jounin. He was tired of not being good enough. For the stupid instructors who whispered things behind his back, for the stupid kids who mocked him when they thought he couldn’t hear, and now for this guy. He seethed at that mornings events so far. First he comes late, then he tells him that he — get this — hadn’t started yet! He would show him. He would show that star Uchiha kid, that pink-haired girl (Sakura?), he would show everyone just how strong he was. He heard a noise, and, sprinting towards it, eventually arrived at the bank of a lake. Kakashi was standing on the water. His one eye crinkled, a smile behind his mask. 

His stomach growling, the sound was soon eclipsed by the roar that rose out of his throat as he launched himself into the water.

Sasuke could not fail. He couldn’t go back to his father, his mother, his brother, his clan — and say that he failed to become a Genin. He couldn’t be weak now. Not for his father, who had patted him on the back and gruffly assured him that he’d pass. Not when his mother told him about her own Genin days, and assured him that he’d do great. Not when Itachi tried to do the same, only to break into a coughing fit, spitting blood onto the kitchen table. Itachi was the best of the Uchiha clan. But the illness, the doctor had told them he couldn’t reverse the damage it had already caused, that it would get worse as he got older. That was why Sasuke needed to be strong. Because Itachi tried to be for him, because the clan needed him to be strong.

Arriving at the lake’s bank, he looked at his watch. 9:30. Only four hours. But four hours was plenty of time. He watched as Naruto launched himself into the lake, Kakashi neatly sidestepping him. He walked back to shore and sat down, opening an orange paperback. Straining his eyes, he read the words on the cover — was that pornography? Sasuke couldn’t control the expression of disgust which contorted his features. Great. His teacher was a freak. He focused again. He couldn’t get distracted. Now was the time to strike. He crept up to Kakashi, only to stop in surprise as a barrage of kunai and shuriken rained down at the Jounin. Where did those come from — Naruto. But not just Naruto. The water was now dotted with blonde and orange, all angrily yelling. Did they throw those? Kakashi had now retreated back, only for some of the clones to make land. More and more, forming a one man, preteen army.

“YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS!” they yelled in unison as they tried to dogpile him. It would’ve been funny if it wasn’t even more terrifying. Sasuke shuddered. Even he couldn’t escape that. One of the clones was behind Kakashi. When had that happened? He cursed himself for  not having his Sharingan for this battle. Damn it, Itachi had them at half his age. But he couldn’t ever hope to be like him, right? — he shook the thought out of his head. He was tempted to intervene, to fight off Naruto. Couldn’t let him get the bells. Then he decided against it. If needed, he could ask for one, and if he refused, then he could ambush him. After all, Naruto didn’t need the bells as badly as he did.

But he didn’t have to. He watched as Kakashi transformed into Naruto and then substituted away, too quick for ordinary eyes to see. Too quick for Naruto too, because by the time he got his head out of his brawl with his own clones and deactivated the jutsu, Kakashi was gone. But where there wasn’t Kakashi, there was a shining bell. He reached towards it. Sasuke was tempted to do the same, but he felt a twinge of hesitation. It couldn’t have been that easy. He was rewarded as a rope wrapped around Naruto’s leg, suspending him from a tree. Kakashi walked up, staring him down with a bored eye.

“A shinobi must see the hidden meanings within the hidden meanings.”

“I know that!”

Kakashi bent over and grabbed the bell, swinging it in a circle. “Then why am I here” he gestured to the ground “and you there” gesturing to the tree, resulting in Naruto swinging wildly. “Oh and I wouldn’t think about escaping,” he said, scattering caltrops all around the tree with a flick of a hand. “Guess I’ll go back to reading.”

At that point, Sasuke was advancing behind him. Kakashi turned around, not even bothering to fake surprise. “Are you next?”

Sakura was going to fail. She knew it coming in, but the feeling really sunk into her gut when she watched Kakashi fight off a human army — how the fuck had Naruto learned to do that? — and beat Sasuke with one hand , sinking him into the ground like a human carrot. Sasuke had run in, a barrage of shuriken hurtling towards the Jounin. He had sidestepped it, but no wait — with his other hand, he pulled on a wire in his hand. So quick Sakura couldn’t see it, a spool of ninja wire appeared around Kakashi — that was a log. Somehow, Sasuke knew that Kakashi was behind him and crossed his arms, blocking the blow from his left arm. But Sasuke soon swapped to an offensive, sweeping his opponents leg and then launching a blur. Sakura couldn’t see any of it. Kakashi had opened his book again, barely sidestepping all of it. And then, the Jounin disappeared. Next thing Sakura knew, Sasuke slumped to the ground, Kakashi catching him by the hair. Making handsigns, the earth opened up, swallowing both of them, Sasuke up to his head and Kakashi entirely. What the fuck was that?

She fled.

Hidden in a bush, she considered her options. 

One. Meet Kakashi head on, get it over with. She didn’t even take a second to dismiss it. She was weak, not stupid.

Two. Come up with some way to trap Kakashi. The problem was that there were too many variables to consider. This man could move faster than she could blink in any direction. Even for her, traps wouldn’t work. 

Three. Meet up with Naruto and Sasuke, team up with them to get the bells. Maybe they would be more open after getting so soundly beaten. The problem arose with getting them to trust her. How would she even — she saw Kakashi walk into the clearing, staring at the tree she was disguised as. Maybe he couldn’t see her? Then he waved. Fuck.

She ran. Naruto and Sasuke it was.

Arriving at the bank, she saw Naruto dangling from the tree. Kicking aside the caltrops, she threw a kunai, cutting the rope and barely catching Naruto in her arms. “Naruto. We need to work together. Can you make clones?” 

“WHY SHOULD I LISTEN TO YOU —” he saw Kakashi and made the hand signs, a hundred of them surrounding Kakashi.

“THIS IS A REMATCH YOU BASTARD!” There went the possibility of working with him. As Naruto engaged Kakashi, she worked on freeing Sasuke, digging at the ground with her hands. It was surprisingly fine, allowing her to make fast progress. “Why are you doing this?” he asked, a confused look on his face. She just looked at him.

“Kakashi beat both of you in a fight. I can’t hope to get him on my own. We need to team up —”

“—No.”

“What?”

“We’re competing. How can I trust you?” Sakura glared at him.

“Fine,” she spat out. He better be grateful she finished digging him out before she stalked off.

Sakura watched Kakashi beat Naruto into the ground again, Sasuke just watching from the side with dull eyes. She was going to fail this test. She was going to go back to the academy, because she failed a stupid test and her stupid teammates were too pigheaded to even give themselves a chance to succeed. How could I trust you? Why would they trust her? She didn’t have anything to contribute. The only thing she was to them was a threat to their success. And why would they trust her? She hadn’t done anything. She couldn’t get them to work together. Kakashi and Naruto had just disappeared. She couldn’t think of a feasible way to trap him.

She was fully convinced of the stupidity of facing Kakashi head-on when she was back at the original clearing. For the first time, she noticed the concrete monument in the middle. Naruto was struggling against ropes tying him to a log, pressed into the ground. Did he do that with the jutsu he used on Sasuke ? Were the other two for her and Sasuke? Kakashi leaned against a concrete monument, with her back to her. But he didn’t need to see her to know she was there.

Kakashi answered the question for her. “Don’t worry. Naruto was a bad boy and tried to take your lunches for himself.”

“...Okay.” She said, focused on the seal at her hip. She slipped another one under her foot, distorting the ink already on it into the desired shape. That was an advancement she made just last night, in a stroke of genius. Instead of wasting time drawing the ink on, she could move ink through the paper to draw the tag. It was the same technique too, so she didn’t need to think about it as she launched a kunai at Kakashi. Naruto yelled something she didn’t pay attention too. Kakash caught it with one hand and hit Naruto on the back of the head with another. How the FUCK did he do that? She charged him. Ordinarily, it was a stupid strategy. However, she needed to get the bells. The only way she could get the bells was if she could get close to Kakashi. Her mind did the calculations. She couldn’t break through his guard in a lifetime if she tried. Sasuke was better, and look at what happened to him. Unless… He aimed a punch at her face. She barely managed to block it, crossing both her arms. The only way she could get close to him was if he wanted her to. She could only do so if she lost. He swept her leg, knocking her to the ground. The activated the seal, and the ground appeared to open under Kakashi. He jumped back.

“I didn’t realize they taught illusions at the Academy” Well there went her technique . Next thing she knew, her arms were locked behind her neck, her face sideways. Kakashi looked at her, bored.

“Do you have something else planned or …”

She didn’t, actually. She was now two thirds of the way to success. The third involved simply grabbing the bells. With what though? The hands behind her back? She considered. Her leg? Maybe it would be possible to channel chakra to it and stick the bells. The position she was in made it awkward to do so, and Kakashi still had a free hand on his book. She could hear the bells jingling too. They were on his left, hanging by a thread. So close. If she could just —

She would have slapped her forehead if she could. She couldn’t move her arms. She snarled, biting at Kakashi. He simply moved his head back. He barely noticed the threads she undid with her chakra extending from her dress to the bells. She could sense the threads wrapping around with her chakra. So close so close so close — 

And then a lot of things happened at once. First, Kakashi dropped his book, a kunai in his hand swiping at the threads.Was it in his sleeve? Secondly, he let go of her. Thank God, that was uncomfortable . She struggled to her feet, gasping. Thirdly, he disappeared in a swirl of leaves. What? Oh. Genjutsu. She shut her eyes and halted her chakra with a little strain. Back in the real world, Kakashi was a few feet away from her. His headband was lifted, and she made the mistake of meeting his red eye.

Intense vertigo came first. Then, a roar in her head, shaking her skull, followed by her vision being filled with red, consuming everything. She wanted to throw up, but found she couldn’t breathe. She was glad when unconsciousness finally came her way.

She woke up in that same clearing. The alarm clock was blaring. She pushed herself to her feet. Naruto was yelling something. Sasuke was panting and covered in dirt. When did he get here?

“That’s it! None of you are fit to be shinobi. You’re just spoiled brats, just with jutsu grand enough to distort the truth." She turned towards Kakashi, standing next to the monument. He pulled out his book and opened it to the middle.

“THAT’S NOT FAIR YOU’RE A JOUNIN YOU’RE TOO STRONG —” and for the first time Sakura was inclined to agree with him. She shuddered at whatever Kakashi had put her under. Never again .

“Correct, Naruto. You couldn’t take the bells even if I was tied to that post.”  Kakashi sat down on a log he pulled from somewhere and stared down at them. “Each of you are strong, strong enough to beat an average Chunin one on one. One of you already has,” he said, his head turned at Naruto.

“THAT’S RIGHT! THEN WHY —”

“Your teamwork, or rather lack of it.”

“Work together? Then why did we get two bells?” Sakura asked. 

“To create conflict between you too.”

“BUT —”

“The two bells were there specifically to see if you could put aside your short-term interests for the greater good.” I tried, I really did .

“You are a team. Bad teamwork is suicide.” And then suddenly Sasuke was buried underground again. Kakashi tossed a kunai to Sakura.

“Kill Naruto or Sasuke dies”

“What? —”

“Bam! He’s dead. This is standard for any team which has a hostage taken. Do you want to have to make this choice because of bad teamwork ?”

Kakashi made hand signs, and suddenly Sasuke was on his feet again. Kakashi gestured to the monument. “Written on this monument are the names of Konoha heroes. The names of my best friends are written on it too.” This guy has friends?

“WHAT SORT OF HEROES ARE THEY? I WANT TO BE LIKE THEM!”

“They’re dead.” Oh.

“Ill give you one last chance. Behind Naruto are two bento boxes. Sasuke, Sakura, you each get one.”

“WHAT ABOUT ME?”

“You tried to steal both of them for yourself. You had this coming. Sasuke, Sakura, if I see you share anything with him, I will personally escort you both back to the Academy.” And with that, Kakashi was gone.

Naruto and Sasuke pretended they weren’t hungry. But Sakura had taken a food pill that morning, and she was feeling ravenous. She still felt a twinge of sympathy for the two of them, but Naruto especially. She opened her bento box, her mouth watering. It looked pretty good. Rice, egg, veggies — God it smelled delicious too. Were the inscriptions on the side of the box for heating? She looked at them, taking a brief moment to memorize them before turning her attention back to the food. Chopsticks were attached to the bottom. She was about to dig in when Naruto’s stomach rumbled. Oh .

“I’M NOT HUNGRY I’M FINE!” but his yelling the words didn’t make them any more convincing.

“Sasuke?” He turned towards her. Ah. So he was having the same trouble as her.

“You know, I could put up an illusion. Make it so Kakashi can’t see anything.”

“You can?”

“Yeah. Though I think he can see through them.”

“He’s probably way away though.”

He’s right, she thought . She summoned a sealing tag, distorting the ink and slapping it on the ground. Now, anyone who bothered to approach would see two heartless preteens casually eating their lunch, having tied up their classmate. 

“Naruto. Open up.”

“BUT WE’LL —” Naruto’s stomach rumbled again as Sakura held up a bite of food. He blushed in embarrassment.

“I didn’t realize you weren’t hungry,” she said deadpan. She lifted it towards her own mouth.

“FINE FINE FINE I’M HUNGRY” He accepted the food from her. “God that’s amazing.” Sasuke held up his own chopsticks. “Here, have some more.”

And so they ate, taking turns feeding Naruto and themselves. Sasuke spoke.

“I’m sorry for rejecting your offer when you rescued me. I thought that I needed to fight him on my own to prove my own strength, and that was stupid and selfish of me.” Sakura was stunned. “That’s alright the test was made to prevent us from working together.”

“Even with the conditions provided it was still stupid not to, like we could’ve taken the bells and then decided among ourselves who would get them. But that thought didn’t even cross my head because I was so caught up in getting the bells for myself, so I’m sorry.”

“...I accept. Don’t think about it, okay? It’s fine.” But Sakura felt something lifting inside her. Maybe that’s what vindication felt like. Naruto was the next to speak.

“I’M REALLY SORRY FOR TAKING BOTH OF YOUR LUNCHES AND YEAH WHAT SASUKE SAID IT WAS REALLY STUPID TO ATTACK KAKASHI ALONE AND I’M SORRY FOR NOT WORKING WITH EITHER OF YOU.”

“Touching,” Kakashi drawled. “Could you say it any louder?” FUCK .

Well, he can’t prove anything , Sakura desperately thought. Then, all of them watched a grain of rice fall from Naruto’s lip. Nevermind. We’re all screwed.

“All of you … pass!” Kakashi exclaimed. The three Genin stared at him, mouths agape. That was the most excited any of them had seen him.

“WH-WHAT?”

“Until now, all of you have simply listened to me. Teamwork this, teamwork that, blah blah blah.” he continued. “A shinobi should see hidden meanings within hidden meanings. The fact that you were willing to disobey me to care for your comrades means you have taken this lesson to heart. Those who break the rules and laws are regarded as scum, but those who would abandon even one of their friends are even worse than scum.”

“That’s it for now! You will commence missions with your team tomorrow.” and then he was gone. Sakura was starting to think he enjoyed doing that, just disappearing after conversations. Not that it mattered.

“I-I’M A NINJA!” Sakura and Sasuke both had smiles on their faces as Naruto yelled the words on both of their minds.

That evening, she hugged her parents for a long time before telling them the news.

Chapter Text

Naruto and Sasuke started bickering at each other midway through and Naruto knocked over the bucket. The amount for the new paint was docked from the mission reward. 

It was her first time meeting Hinata since graduation. The mission went pretty smoothly, though Naruto and Kiba bickered relentlessly. Hinata kept activating her Byakugan, blushing a deeper shade of red each time. Wonder what that was about. 

The Hokage winced when handing Kakashi this one. He turned it down swiftly. Wonder what that was about.

After this mission, Naruto called the Third Hokage an “old fart.” Kakashi had just sighed, cupping his face in his hands. Sasuke got Naruto in a headlock and tried to cover his mouth. Naruto licked his hand.

“Ew. So all you’ve been doing for the past two weeks have been …”

“D-ranks, yes.”

“D-ranks? That’s it?”

“No actually. After our missions, Kakashi-Sensei calls us to one of the training grounds and he …”

“Teaches you new Jutsu? He’s called Kakashi of a Thousand Jutsu for a reason.”

“...He beats the shit out of us.”

“Huh?”

“Every. Single. Day. We do D-Ranks, and then he paints an innocent training ground with us.”

“...That’s it?”

“Sometimes he mixes it up a little. Like day before yesterday we were cleaning trash from the river, when he started beating the shit out of Sasuke.”

“What? —”
“So he took turns beating the shit out of us, one by one, while the other two cleaned trash”

“I’m sorry. How did it go for you?”

“Horribly. It’s bad enough to come back home from training every day at some ungodly hour in the night, discovering which new muscles you’ll discover screaming in pain the next morning. It’s even worse if you come back wet .”

 “He sounds like a pretty lousy teacher”

“He …” Sakura was about to affirm Ino’s statement when she started thinking about it. In a lot of ways, she’d made leaps and bounds since the academy. For one, her illusions were harder to notice. She knew that because on one occasion, she had created a rock in the ground. Kakashi-sensei actually took time to criticise the illusion, pointing out the way the chakra was wobbling at the edges, creating the clipping effect. She would’ve been really grateful if he hadn’t spent 10 minutes lecturing her on predictability in tactics, and how diversions only worked if you could capitalize on them to your advantage. All while pummelling her into the dirt in new and creative ways. And she’d learned to tree-walk and water-walk because of him. She was pretty good at it too, since it took the boys the entire day to get them down. Meanwhile, she barely had to think about either before she was standing sideways on walls, or standing on top of the lake they were practicing on. Kakashi practiced sparring with her while they figured it out, offering her tips on footwork. According to him, her stances were fine but she needed to learn to transition between them smoothly. She wanted to say she hadn’t learned anything, but that just wasn’t true.

“I’ve learned a lot from him actually. Like I’ve learned tree and water-walking, and my taijutsu has improved, and I can substitute without looking at the object I’m substituting with.” 

“Really? That’s cool —”

“I either do it or he kicks me in the face.”

“Oh. Speaking of not looking, I’ve been thinking about learning sensing since if I want to substitute, I need to know where and what the target is.”

“Are you sure? It usually requires concentration and —”

“I know, but it’s generally used over larger areas. I was thinking about using it short distance and seeing if that changes things.”

“Oh. I could give you books on it … when would you want them by?”

“About that I was thinking of just getting a brief rundown since I’ll be leaving for a mission tomorrow.”

“—I’m sorry what? You took a C-RANK? How? We didn’t get a C-rank.”

“Right so I didn’t finish my story. So you know when Naruto called the Hokage that —” Ino made a face “and all of that stuff? So Naruto actually kept on speaking. And then he went on a rant, about how we were training so hard and how we could do more than just chores, about how he wasn’t just a screw-up, and the Hokage agreed with him. He agreed , can you believe that?”

“Nepo-baby confirmed?”

“Ino, I think we were wrong about the nepo-baby theory. He-Naruto is strong, absurdly strong.” She watched Ino stifle a laugh. She stopped when she saw the dead serious look on Sakura’s face.

“Strong and Naruto together are an oxymoron together the guy couldn’t make a clone if he spent the entire day trying.”

“During our bell test — I didn’t tell you about that, did I? — he … he performed a clone jutsu. It wasn’t one that we learned in school though, it couldn’t be — because when he was done, there were about five hundred of him. And they were real . They weren’t like the illusions that we learned in class. They could punch and kick and …”

“You’re describing the Shadow Clone Jutsu. They definitely don’t teach that one to Academy students, that’s for sure.”

“Oh. So you’re saying that someone just gave Naruto some — stupidly strong technique and —”

“No, actually. The reason why it isn’t taught to Academy students is because it’s dangerous. Each time you use it, it divides your chakra in half. Hell, I can’t use it for an extended period without collapsing out of exhaustion.”

“So what Naruto learned was —”

“The multi-shadow clone technique. It’s one of ten forbidden by the Second Hokage, the creator of the Jutsus, because of how dangerous they were. However he learned that technique, it would’ve killed anyone else.”

Sakura was stunned. Clearly, she had misjudged Naruto. He was clearly a strong, if unconventional ninja. But at the same time, the fact that he had access to such a jutsu — a forbidden one too! — meant that he was special to the village in some way.

“Oh right! How are your teammates? What’s it like saddled with Boy Wonder and Sasuke?”

“They’re getting the same treatment as me, actually. I think that Kakashi’s trying to improve Naruto’s use of the clones, because in his hands it’s an amazing technique, but …” she made a face. “Naruto uses it …”

“Badly?”

“Yeah.” She recalled the time Kakashi transformed into Naruto during the bell-test. Just yesterday, he tried the same thing against Naruto again. Naruto dispelled his clones, but Kakashi simply used the opportunity to knock him down and into the water. When Naruto resurfaced, Kakashi handed him a book on tactics and told him to get them down or else . Ino winced when Sakura told her about it.

“And Sasuke?” During his match, he somehow spat a fireball at Kakashi. Anyone would be impressed at a Genin performing a C-Rank justsu (it had to be, since it used fire.) Kakashi, easily dodging it, told him not to waste so much chakra unless Sasuke was sure he had him pinned. She was glad to be picking up trash as Kakashi gave him a combination of blows which sent him flying ten feet into the air.

“Huh.”

Sakura moved the subject back to sensing. Ino frowned for a second, thinking about it. Then she started speaking.

“Okay so a lot of this is simplified, okay? So if you ever read about it you can’t start bashing me for explaining something wrong because if I was trying to be accurate we’d be here for a week.”

“I would never do that.”

“Sure you wouldn’t. Anyways. Sensing relies on the fact that chakra emits waves.”

“Waves?”

“Yeah, waves. Most things do actually —”

“— I know that —”

“—but so does chakra. It’s sort of a weird in-between for plain old matter and energy, okay?”

“...huh”

“Okay so the thing is that regular energy produces a lot of waves. Sound, light — radios pick up on those. Sensor ninja pick up on the waves that chakra produces. It can emanate directly from a person, allowing for them to be directly tracked. Or, it ricochets around a lot, sort of like light. Usually, a single person can’t really do much if the source is from far away. So what we do is that two people are stationed on opposite sides of the village, in order to sense far away threats. That way, they can use discrepancies caused by their position in relation to the signal themselves —”

“—Discrepancies caused by their position in relation to the signal. Heheh. Nerd.”

“I’ll gut you right now. They can use that information in order to find out more about a certain signal in a lot more detail. We’re talking distance, amount of chakra, number of people if there’s multiple, so on and so forth.”

“How do you synchronize the two if they’re on opposite sides of the village?”

Ino pointed to herself, proud. “That’s where the Yamanaka clan comes. A Yamanaka is receiving the sensor information in T&I, making sense of what information the sensors give them.”

“...Is this classified?”

“It used to be, up until every single village found out in some way and how. There’s really no point revealing the general principles, since anyone well versed in sensory could figure it out themselves. And besides, that’s just the bare bones of it. There’s plenty I’m not telling you.”

“The security of the entire village depends on two sensors.”

Ino gave her a look that screamed disappointment. “I want you to think about that statement.” Sakura did and then slapped her head. “Do you see what you did wrong?”

“...I forgot that the village needs 360 degree surveillance, meaning that we would have sensors stationed around the entire village. In addition, we have the Hyuugas, whose entire shtick is seeing far.”

“Good job. Though about the Hyuugas, they can only see about 10 kilometers and those are the really talented ones.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Absurd isn’t good enough, though. Guess how far our sensors can reach.”

She guessed. “30 kilometers?”

“60 kilometers.” She gaped at Ino. “But that’s —”

“The entire Fire Country, and every hidden village spare Mist. Yes”

“So —”

“Konoha is a superpower for a reason.” Sakura processed that information for a moment. “...Okay. That was … very informative. Thank you so much.” And then she realized she hadn’t even asked about Ino. 

“How’s your team training?”

And then Ino briefly told her about the team training Asuma was making her do. He was unconventional, according to her. “One time, he tied us together at the foot. And then made us dodge water balloons he threw at us. I think he really enjoys making Shikimaru suffer. I swear, he got hit five times consecutively.”

“...huh.” 

“He’s clearly Asuma’s favorite too. I think they met a bit? Shikimaru mentioned something about playing Shoji with him. But you can see his eyes just light up when he’s talking to him. I think the only time he’s happier is when he’s with Kurenai actually.”

“Tell me about it …”

And so that was how they spent the next hour, Sakura eagerly eating up the developments in the two other jounin-senseis budding relationship that they failed miserably to hide. “You should have seen their faces when we found them at the park together … they were holding hands, can’t you believe that?”

Sakura finally got home at 7:00, glad she was able to talk to Ino for the first time since graduation. Wrapped up in missions and training, neither had really had time to talk to each other until today. Over dinner, she told her parents about the mission. Both of them looked concerned, despite Sakura telling them that it was just a C-rank and with her teammates, she would be fine.”

“It’s just that these sorts of missions, things happen,” her father said, looking at the ground. Her mother made her promise to be safe. They then made her pack, and only when her dad had checked it over — “there are bandages, right? Don’t forget them you must absolutely not forget them” — was she allowed to go back to her room to practice her sensing, which she was now practicing sitting on the floor next to her bed.

First problem: There was nothing to sense. According to Ino, sensing was based off of emitted chakra. Currently, the only thing emitting chakra was …

Herself. She, however, realized something. As she vainly tried to sense anything , her eyes shut and her ears plugged, she quickly realized that her chakra was too dim for her to sense. How could she fix that?

If it’s too dim, then there aren’t enough waves. How do I make more waves? She thought about what Ino had said about them. Chakra was, in her words,  a weird in-between for plain old matter and energy . Therefore, if she could make her chakra more like energy and less like matter, it might be easier for her to sense. But how —

And then it hit her. Physical energy made chakra solid, less flexible, more solid. More like regular matter. So she would increase the spiritual energy. As she tried that, she felt something emanating from her stomach, from behind her face, from behind her wrists. If she was to describe it, it would be somewhat like a weird cross between touching and hearing. That feeling, she tried to extend it further. She noticed an obstruction next to her. That must be her bed . But that just might’ve been confirmation bias. She moved forward, feeling the object in front of her. A chair? That would make sense there was a chair in front of her. She found her desk. This would be her test , she decided. A bottle of ink, two pens, some nibs, a book she couldn’t name, another book, shorter, with a smaller booklet on top of it (that must be the shadow release pamphlet) and then the desk ended, and then the doorknob. She opened her eyes. And there they were, all in the correct order. Opening her door, she went down to the living room. Her mom and dad were drinking tea, unreadable expressions on their faces.

“Mom. Dad. I’ll be outside training.”

Chapter Text

They met in front of Konoha headquarters. Sakura carried a water satchel strapped to her, a small bag with absolute necessities — food pills, a water purifier, ninja wire, some kunai (though not enough that they weighed her down), and a first aid kit. That wasn’t to say she hadn’t packed more, though: sleeping bags, more weapons, blank sealing paper and ink (if the pre-inked tags she didn’t have weren’t enough), other things her parents told her to bring, meticulously sealed in a scroll with scarily expensive paper (a gift from her had, for their first C-rank apparently.) They were too nervous, she thought: every member of Team 7 that wasn’t her could take down most ninja in their sleep. And besides, this was a C-Rank: the risk of violence was minimal, and at worst it would come from civilians. She tried to tell her parents this, but she didn’t have the heart to, not with the fearful faces they made as she walked outside the steps of her house.

“I’ll be back!” she called.

A silence. “I know you will!” her dad and mom together. She smiled.

Sasuke arrived a while later. He was blushing, rubbing the side of his head. “Something happened?” she asked.

“No,” he replied.

“I’ve seen tomatoes less red then your face right now.”

“My parents … saw me off.”

She giggled. “Mine too,” gesturing to the pack she was wearing.

Naruto ran up to the two of them. “Our first real mission guys! Are you excited?!”

And honestly, Sakura was. Her rational brain said that she shouldn’t, that this would probably be a glorified field trip, except longer and — as the drunkard (Tazuna) appeared from the door of Konoha headquarters, swigging alcohol he procured from Sage knows where — with exceptionally bad company. Kakashi flickered in from somewhere, and he saluted all of them, is one eye crinkled in a smile. 

“I hope all of you are packed?”

Naruto shook his head impatiently. Sasuke simply gave a thumbs up. Sakura nodded. Tazuna yelled. “WHYYY WERENN’T YOU HERRRE SOONNERRR?”

Even he couldn’t kill the enthusiasm. Not at first. Not after the first time he said that they were too young to be ninja. For the love of the Six Paths, couldn’t he see the head bands they were wearing? Not after he called Naruto a runt and Naruto snapped, running at him before being restrained by Kakashi. He was annoyed. As he continued belittling them, saying they didn’t know what they were doing, asking if they knew how to use their kunai — Sakura felt tempted to demonstrate her knife skills on his face — that they didn’t know what they were getting into, her annoyance started morphing into something else.

They didn’t know what they were getting into. He could be saying that because they were children, and maybe it weighed on his conscience. But there was another possibility, one that Sakura’s mind latched onto. They didn’t know what they were getting into because he didn’t tell them. I am NOT dying on my first real mission. So she started using her sensing, scanning the area around them for traps, jutsus, enemy ninja. It probably wouldn’t be very useful. But best case, it would probably prevent them from falling into a hole and dying. Worst case, it would mean she’d have a heads-up before being gutted by an enemy.

And then, there was a puddle. Immediately, she felt there was something wrong with it. What do I do? Fight it? And so she did the smarter thing, to call attention to it.

“Guys, make sure to avoid the puddle!” Sasuke thanked her, with a hint of annoyance at the obvious fact. Naruto yelled that he KNEW there was a puddle, and he was damn capable of avoiding it.

Kakashi flinched. When the puddle got within sensory range, she flinched too. Were those two … just there? She couldn’t tell the specifics, but she knew they were people, judging by the webs of chakra emanating from them. She also knew that they had to be shinobi, judging by the way that chakra appeared to be coiled up, suppressed. No wonder she couldn’t sense them at such a short range. Making sure to maintain the same pace, she slid a tag down to the dirt right outside the puddle. And continued walking, stretching her chakra to it, as thinly as she could. And then the two signatures started rising up.

She looked back, saw two shinobi with slashes through their headbands — from mist? — and very sharp, very dangerous-looking weapons. She didn’t hesitate before letting go of the chakra.

This innovation came about as she tried to improve her illusions. Originally, she needed to channel a certain amount of chakra to them in order for them to function. Obviously, this came with drawbacks. Either she constantly stepped on the seal, or she preloaded it with the appropriate amount of chakra. This meant that the illusion she created would function only for the amount of chakra it was preloaded with. But what if she didn’t stop the flow? She first tried to do this by extending a wire to the seal. But this didn’t work very well. Through trial and error, she found out that simply stretching the chakra itself to the seal actually worked better.

In this particular instance, there were two major differences. Firstly, the moment she let go of the chakra, the seal would trigger instead of stop functioning. Secondly, the seal was an exploding tag.

Dust exploded out, and a roar echoed. The two signatures vanished. She wanted to believe that they were both resting in pieces, but that was too much to hope for. After all, the blast itself was localized. Too easy to substitute away. And sure enough, a chain wrapped around Kakashi. He appeared to be ripped to pieces, exploding in red like a paintball. Obviously a substitution. One of the shinobi, letting go of the chain, came sprinting at Sasuke. He looked bored as he dodged swipe from his opponents gauntlet. That’s good, she thought in relief. He can handle it.

“Naruto! Help guard Tazuna!” He looked a little stunned. She clapped her hands in front of his face before standing in front of Tazuna, kunai pointed out.

“R-right!” he summoned about twenty clones. Ten of them surrounded her and Tazuna. The other ten ran at Sasuke. Where was the other demon brother? She strained her sensing, and then looked at the tree in shock. The other shinobi’s chakra was emanating from it. And then it vanished. Oh fuck. Did I just … “Naruto! I’ll find the other shinobi. You continue guarding Tazuna! Without waiting to hear his response, she ran, strategy or mission be damned. She climbed up the tree, fished the shinobi out of the tree, and hopped down, grunting with the effort it took. The shinobi was an exact replica of the one Sasuke was currently treating to an exceptionally viscous axe kick. If he wasn’t missing his mask and the side of his face, if he didn’t smell like copper and burning flesh, if his arms and singular leg weren’t twisted like a puppets. I killed someone.

She watched numbly as the other shinobi saw her, holding his brother. His eyes narrowed in rage and he wrenched himself out from under the shoe Sasuke had placed on his chest, an inhuman growl coming from his throat. “ALL OF YOU WILL DIE!!!”

Sasuke was prepared to block an attack, as was Sakura. But instead, the enemy made a seal. Substitution. He substituted for one of Naruto’s clones, and started swinging at Tazuna. The other clones tried to dogpile him, but he stabbed one and tripped up the other, and then swung at another. The clone he swung at backed up in fear. He shouldn’t have to do that, she thought in a haze of panic. Unless … That was Naruto. Her eyes went wide. She felt a cold wash over her, her legs frozen in place. She couldn’t get there in time. Sasuke was sprinting, but he couldn’t get there fast enough, she knew it.  My teammate is going to die, she realized. Because I decided to check out a corpse. The shinobi thrust his kunai straight at Naruto’s throat.

Before Kakashi, flickering in out of nowhere caught the hand holding it, twisting it with a cracking sound. Then, he grabbed the shinobi’s head and bashed it into his knee, twice. As the shinobi dropped, letting go of the kunai he nearly killed Naruto with, Kakashi grabbed his other arm, stomping down on his shoulder. The crunch told her that their assailant wasn’t much of a threat anymore. Hopefully.

As Sakura, Naruto, and Sasuke walked towards him, Kakashi dragged the shinobi’s head up. She recognized the headband, although it had a gouge through the design of waving lines. Mist. Or at least, they belonged to it. 

“Sorry I was late, Naruto. I didn’t expect you to freeze up like that. All of you, good job.” Good job my ass, I nearly got Naruto killed. She watched Naruto clench his fists. Sasuke noticed.

“You okay, chicken?”Sasuke was taunting, but it brought Naruto back as he instantly went into his competitive mode again.

“O-of COURSE I’M FINE!”

“Naruto, not so loud. We also need to clean up that wound, it might be poisoned.”

“WHAT?!” Naruto started waving his hand around. Sakura, widening her eyes, caught it. “Stop! You’ll make it spread faster if you do that. Keep still.”

Kakashi turned his head to the rogue Mist shinobi, lifting up his headband. “You’re after Tazuna,” he said. Shinobi were specially trained not to give away their expressions. However, some though around the eyes, were simply  involuntary, if borderline indescernible. But Kakashi, using his Sharingan, saw confirmation in them. The interrogation was over, though the shinobi didn’t know it yet. 

“As if I’d tell you anything … bastard. Not after your pink teammate did that to my BROTHER!” He looked over to Sakura, having dragged over what he presumed used to be used to be the brother. It didn’t take his magic eyeball to know she was now attempting first aid on a corpse. He felt a twinge of sympathy. Even if he’d been younger when he’d gone through worse, nobody deserved that. He tied the Mist nin to a tree and knocked him out.

“They were after you,” he said, referring to Tazuna. “Did you expect an assault by shinobi?” This time, Tazuna flinched. “You knew that. You knew that this mission was at least B-rank. Even if you had your reasons, you should have provided a complete picture. Currently, besides me, nobody on this team has been a ninja for longer than a month.” Tazuna simply looked at the ground, his firsts clenched.

Sakura looked at Naruto, concerned. If he was poisoned, would they need to get to a hospital? They couldn’t get one here, in the middle of nowhere. It had taken three hours to get here, but if they sprinted, they could get there in 15 minutes.

“Should we head back? Then, Naruto can get to a hospital and we can exchange the mission with someone better suited. It would be the smart thing to do. I’m not letting Naruto get killed because of my stupidity again. She didn’t notice as Naruto gritted his teeth and pulled out his kunai. 

“Hmm… do we turn back? Or make sure Naruto gets the medical attention he needs?” Kakashi asked. His face was frustratingly blank.

She turned around just in time to watch Naruto stab it into his wounded hand. What the hell was he doing — 

“With this kunai, I promise to protect the old man.” Was he trying to drain out the poison? But still, who the fuck does that? Just how serious was he about this? She was about to recommend that they head back when Kakashi smiled with his one eye.

“Naruto, we need to get that wrapped up. Alright! We’ll continue.”

Just then, a voice sounded out. The mist ninja, she realized. “Please kill me,” he wheezed. Kakashi walked over. “Are you sure?”

“My employer won’t tolerate failure, especially with the other shinobi he has. And besides,” he said, glaring at Sakura, “I don’t have anything to live for. Not after she took it.” Kakashi paused. “Alright.”

They walked away, blood soaking into the mist-shinobi’s clothes, blood pooling on the ground, blood staining the bandages around Naruto’s hand. As they continued on the road, Sakura wanted to bury her hands in her face, before she realized that they too were covered in blood.

Chapter Text

They were all going to die. Kakashi was trapped in a bubble of water, and the man with the giant sword (Zabuza) was going to use it to cut them to pieces and then kill their client. 

They had taken a boat. The team was just two kilometers away from the location. So close! Sakura was lucky she had been practicing her sensing, because it was the only way she could’ve pushed herself and Naruto to the ground to avoid the spinning blade.

The man standing on it was called Zabuza. He had matched Kakashi . And now, while he was waiting for Kakashi to drown to death, he was busy insulting Naruto. Between Tazuna and now this guy, it seemed to be a running trend, she noted. Of course, it was a distraction from the fact that after about three minutes, they were all going to die.

You’d think there’d be more three shinobi could do against one, especially since he was standing in one pace with a jounin in one hand. But then came the water clones. One of them had beat Naruto into the ground, only to take his headband for some reason? And then leave it under the real Zabuza’s foot. Hence where the insults came from. Something about Naruto not being a real ninja and how he was and his bingo book. He also decided to drop that he killed his entire graduating class. Fun guy. Personally, Sakura thought it was a load of crock. They graduated. Therefore, they were ninja. Simple. Naruto, however, was more offended. Not even bothering to create clones (?!) He rushed Zabuza, who delivered a swift blow to his ribs. Sakura ran to his side. Kakashi made a gesture of shock, presumably to convey Naruto’s act of idiocy. Sasuke facepalmed. But when she got to Naruto’s side, she saw he was triumphant as he tied the headband around his head. Why the hell would he risk his life for that? She didn’t have the heart to say anything, though, probably because they were all going to die.

She considered the options for the team.

1. Run. That would be the best option. Kakashi had gestured several times for them to do so. Sakura didn’t like this option though. Firstly, it involved Kakashi dying. That didn’t sit well with her. She wasn’t letting another person on this team die because of her. Also, the Zabuza guy was probably really fast.
2. Face Zabuza head-on. Nope! Not possible. 100% life completion speedrun, three seconds.
3. Save Kakashi. This…was the best option in her opinion. But also the most risky. In her opinion, they only had one shot at it. If they failed once, Zabuza would lose his sense of humor and then actually kill them. Currently, the only reason they were alive is because he saw the three of them as jokes, and they needed to keep it that way.

“Naruto! Use your shadow clones to get Kakashi! I’ll guard Tazuna! Sasuke! Help Naruto!” She chose this course of action for several reasons. Firstly, if she or Sasuke attacked Zabuza head-on, they incurred the risk of dying. Naruto, fortunately, had his clones, making him the best for a head-on attack. Sasuke, meanwhile, could back him up using long-range attacks. He was crazy good at them, after all. They immediately agreed. Now for her part.

She had chosen a relatively simple, yet vital role for herself: playing keep-away. If they got Tazuna, it was over. If they got Naruto or Sasuke, it was super-over. Therefore, her mission was to keep the water clones away from all of them, while they got Kakashi. Currently, he was controlling only one clone, which was intent on attacking Tazuna. With Naruto and Sasuke attacking, it would hopefully prevent them from creating more, so long as the clone kept after Tazuna. Hopefully . Hopefully they save Kakashi, hopefully all of them live. Hopefully — and then a water clone was running towards Tazuna and her. Fuck, it’s fast . She made handsigns for one of Kakashi’s Earth Jutsu, making a spike rise high out of the ground, The clone easily jumped over her. She grabbed Tazuna, and, pushing his head down, ran around the spike. Couldn’t let them onto the fact that they were illusions too quickly. She threw a kunai with an exploding tag at him while he was in mid-air. While the explosion itself was more loud than it was dangerous, the shock would hopefully be enough to destabilize the clone — nope! The clone used its sword to knock it back towards her. She just barely managed to steer Tazuna away before the tag blew up where they once were. Seriously, how did he do that? Wasn’t the clone made out of water? She put the thought out of her head as the clone landed. The clone turned towards her and she shuddered. What the fuck is that expression? She saw the cruel amusement plainly through his eyes, and suddenly the part about killing all his classmates seemed so much more believable.

“Clever, you think you’re clever? Well then let’s PLAY!” and he was sprinting towards them again. She tried the same trick again, but the clone simply ran through the spike she created. Fuck, he found out .

“God, I can’t imagine what the Copy-nin has been teaching you. My apprentice is so much better,” he gloated. Fuck, he has an apprentice? Is he here? “You don’t have to worry about him, though, because I’ll kill you MYSELF!”

She created a clone, which diverged off. Zabuza was catching up, fast. She couldn’t play keep away anymore. “Naruto! Sasuke! Wrap it up quickly!” And Zabuza was right in front of her. “You thought you could fool me with the clone?” No actually, though it distracted you enough to step on the exploding tag I placed just now . Several things happened. First, Zabuza exploded in a spray of steam and mist. Tazuna covered his ears and Sakura wished she had done the same. Secondly, there was a super loud wet ripping sound. Thankfully, it was the water jutsu trapping Kakashi instead of Naruto or Sasuke being ripped apart. Thank the Sage .

And then all hell broke loose. Zabuza couldn’t look away for a second from a feral looking Kakashi. Blows were exchanged between kunai and sword, too fast for Sakura to see. Handsigns were made. How the hell do they sign that fast? Pillars of water rose into the air from behind both of them, spinning and twisting into dragons. The one behind Kakashi slammed into Zabuza, washing him straight into a tree. When the water cleared, there was Zabuza, kunai stuck in his thighs and right arm, and for the first time Sakura felt some hope. Zabuza spoke.
“You can … see the future?” He seemed genuinely scared. Despite herself, she felt a tiny twinge of sympathy. She fought this guy too, she could relate.

“The only future I see … is your death.” And then blood flowed from Zabuza’s neck, his hands, his chest. Did Kakashi do that? Oh no, it was what appeared to be a masked boy, his hair in a bun, wearing a turtleneck and leggings, a haori over it.

“Your prediction came true,” the boy said in a sing-songy voice. She was really scared, now. Would they have to fight this guy too? Resigned, she slipped a kunai into her hand. Better go out fighting, if it came to that. But Kakashi checked Zabuza’s vitals, and the boy spoke again.

“Thank you for your help, though I hope you don’t mind my interfering. I wanted the opportunity to put thing ” he kicked Zabuza “down myself.” How many enemies did this Zabuza guy make?

“Are you a hunter from Mist” It was Kakashi speaking. He seemed cautious. The masked boy paused.

“Aren’t you a smart one!” And then the boy started prattling about his position and his job and quite frankly, Sakura was struck by how young he looked. So young, and yet so strong . Naruto must have thought the same thing, because he looked at Zabuza’s corpse and then back at the boy.

“WHO ARE YOU?”

“Relax, he’s not an enemy —” Kakashi tried to explain, but Naruto just wasn’t having it.

“NOT THAT, HE TOOK OUT ZABUZA, EVEN THOUGH HE’S LIKE HALF OUR AGE! DO WE SUCK AS NINJA OR SOMETHING?”

Kakashi merely patted his head. “This probably won’t be the last time you’ll see a kid who’s younger than you … and stronger than me. Just a fact that all shinobi have to live with.” Meanwhile, the masked boy flickered down and picked up Zabuza’s body.

“Now…I will be off to dispose of the secrets in this man’s body.” and just like that, the boy was off. All of them stood in silence before Kakashi spoke.

“We still have the rest of the way to go.”

“Don’t worry! You can rest at my house,” Tazuna offered. And Kakashi took that moment to hit the ground, limp. Sakura ran over and checked him over. He was still breathing, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him. His sharingan eye was uncovered. She stared into the three tomoe pattern before Sasuke spoke.

“How come his eye isn’t deactivated?”

“Maybe he forgot?”

“No, from what I know the Sharingan users in my clan can only keep it on only as long as the consciously channel chakra to it.”

“So…”

“Even when he’s sleeping, the eye is consuming chakra. A Fair amount too, considering that you can sort of see it wisping off.” Sure enough, there appeared to be the barest hint of steam.

“What should we do?”

“I think he’s just exhausted.” Sasuke pulled down the forehead protector to cover his eye. “I think that we should go to the location and then wait for him to recover.”

“That seems like a good course of action. Naruto! Make three clones. They’ll carry Tazuna and Kakashi. We’ll try to get there as fast as possible on foot.”

Chapter Text

There wasn’t much to do after reaching Tazuna’s residence. They got Kakashi lying down in a sleeping bag Sasuke had bought (really convenient for the purpose, too) and then checked his vitals. He was stable, for all intents and purposes (his pulse was steady and that’s all the three of them knew to check). While there was no running water, it was called the Land of Waves for a reason, meaning that there was a nearby lake where all of them could wash up. On her turn, Sakura noticed the crumbling roads, the rundown, grimy buildings, the people lying on the street. A man tried to push past her in a pathetic attempt to pickpocket her. She gently pushed him away, then handed him a few Ryo. God knew whether or not it would actually help him though, rather than simply alleviating her own conscience. She could still feel the blood on her palms from where she’d held that burnt corpse — one foot in front of the other. After freshening up, she headed back to Tazuna’s residence. His daughter, Tsunami, was kind enough to cook a meal for all three of them and offer them their living room to stay in. Sakura volunteered to keep watch. Had to do something, after all. One foot in front of the other. She probably wouldn’t be able to sleep anyways, not after the events of today.

And that was why she was sitting outside the old drunk’s doorsteps in the pitch black of night, despite rather animated offers from Tsunami to stay inside. Her son, Inari, was rather apathetic, and just shooed her away. Rude , especially since they’d almost died twice today. But it got her what she wanted, so now she was staring into the pitch black, sensing chakra as far as she possibly could. Really, it wasn’t that great. Originally, her range was about 30 meters. No doubt pathetic, but good enough for her original purposes. Over the course of this mission, she had estimated an increase of about 35 meters. Pretty fast improvement, if she said so herself. However, that still wasn’t a lot. Hell, she could only sense Naruto, Sasuke, and Kakashi inside, solely due to them being in the living room where they had been offered room.

So currently, she was trying to expand that range into something more useful. But in order to break out of the cage, one must first find the bars — that was a quote she remembered from a book. What were the bars in this case? Firstly, the “softness” of distant signals. She just couldn’t pick up on them for now, and she didn’t think there was very much she could do about it. Secondly, there was noise — all the signals from far away, meshing together into a meaningless prickle. What she needed to do was pick diamonds from coal. But how could she do that? Maybe she could make the prickles louder somehow? Let’s try it , she thought. How would she do that? She added spiritual energy to her chakra again, putting into its more pliable state. Once again, she felt the ripples in her chakra, felt Naruto and Sasuke and Kakashi, the last one weak but persistent. They’re all alive , she thought. For now — now the thing was that she needed to make it so that her chakra picked up on those movements and amplified them. How could she do that? She strained her mind and tried to figure it out, to no avail. Let’s try a different approach then, something simpler . She pulled a thread from her dress, tied it around her thumb and index, and pulled it taut. She flowed chakra along it. It immediately pulled taut. Let’s try modifying the composition . Physical chakra made the threads dig into her fingers where she had tried them. So it makes it more taut . When she added spiritual chakra, the thread slumped. Slowly, she added back the spiritual chakra. The process was slow, and painstaking, until the string started wobbling. Could it be? — she increased the spiritual composition of her own chakra and suddenly the string wobbled harder. Was it just a problem of the right composition? No, it couldn’t have been. She knew because she had tested out the composition just yesterday, and the one she used worked best on average. On average. But an average is a sum of many, many parts. Meaning that — different signals resonated with different compositions. She moved her hand away, and the string stopped wobbling. Changing the composition of her chakra, she moved up and down the amount of spiritual chakra until at a higher amount, it started violently wobbling again. Time to try this out . She felt her chakra, added spiritual energy to it until it reached the maximum, then decreased it to the minimum. She practiced that a few times, making sure the movement was smooth. She decreased the amplitude of the change until it was a slight wobble. Works for now, though I should probably practice . And then she allowed herself to pay attention to what her chakra was telling her. She could feel out in waves, incredibly far, then closer, and closer, and she could feel Tazuna and Tsunami and Inari in the same bed, and then she could feel Kakashi and Sasuke and then her felt even closer and —

“Hey,” Naruto said, holding an old-fashioned looking lamp. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“I’m keeping watch,” Sakura replied. Naruto simply looked at her doubtfully and she defended herself.

“Using my chakra I swear!”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Naruto said. “I was thinking about today, and about those guys, that creepy guy with the chain and the other huge guy with the sword and …” Sakura studied Naruto’s face. His lip was wobbling, his eyes unusually blank. “I hate those guys,” Naruto confessed. “They would’ve killed us and I’m glad we beat them up. They’d’ve killed us and you and me and Kakashi and Tazuna.” Naruto paused before continuing, burying his face in his hands. “So why am I so upset when they died?” And the dam broke. 

“...when we came across that puddle, I knew that those two shinobi were there, and I placed an explosive tag there. And as soon as I felt them rise out of the ground, I activated it. And part of me wished that I used something nonlethal, like a flashbang, and that maybe we could have found a way out where nobody died.” Sakura gulped before continuing. “And another part of me wished that I had blown them to smithereens the moment I felt those signatures.”

“When I saw that shinobi run at you with a knife, that first part died. If we had to do it again, I’d kill them. If we had to do it a thousand times, they would die in every single one.”

“It’s weird, you know. Killing is bad. Feeling bad when people die is a thing that normal people do. But for shinobi, killing just makes them a better shinobi. The fact that you feel bad when people die just means you aren't a sociopathic monster, Naruto.” He flinched at the words, and Sakura didn’t know what to make of it. “Sorry,” Sakura apologized. She didn’t know what she had done but he was probably hurt.

“No, it’s fine. I know you didn’t mean anything about it,” Naruto said. “I was thinking about that shinobi who tried to stab me,” he started. Only because I ran away to ogle a corpse . “And I … thought I’d gotten stronger, after I learned the clone jutsu and with y’all and Kakashi but …” he laughed. “I saw the kunai in his hand and … I don’t know what happened, you know? Wasn’t even my first time with something like that.”

“Wasn’t your first what ?!”

“...you know how I totally bombed the academy test, right?”

“...right.” Did someone try to kill him then or something?

“Well … after the test, Mizuki told me that there were a bunch of super powerful jutsu in the Hokage Tower, so I broke in —”

“You broke in —”

“Yeah I performed that sexy jutsu —”

“ — the sexy jutsu —”

“— where I turn into a hot naked woman —”

“—oh—”

“— and when I met him in the woods, Iruka showed up —”

“—Iruka? —”

“— to warn me that Mitsuki was using me —”

“ — to steal the scroll? —”

“ — yeah —”

“ — and then he tried to kill me —”

“ — MIZUKI TRIED TO KILL YOU?!” Sakura said it in a loud whisper, then remembered they were on watch. She listened to the rest of the story.

“ — I was really confused to and then he said that I was the nine —” and then Naruto went silent. “Sorry ignore that —”

“You. Naruto Uzumaki. Are the nine-tails. What leaves are you smoking?” Naruto protested.

“Th-the Hokage said that it was true and that when I was born the Fourth Hokage sealed it in me —”

“Okay that makes more sense, you have the nine-tails inside you . I was confused. Continue”

“So yeah Mizuki explained that I had the nine-tails in me and that was why all the shinobi looked at me funny and then him and Iruka started fighting and Iruka told me to run and make sure Mizuki didn’t get his hands on the scroll.”

“Oookay.”

“But Mizuki had gotten a surprise attack in so Iruka was getting sort of beat up and so I rushed in to help him but then Mizuki threw a giant shuriken at me and I — I froze and Iruka — he jumped in front of it.”

“...so that was why he came to school wrapped in bandages”

“Yeah I think he was hiding some of his injuries too because Mizuki got him in a lot of places.”

“...but there’s a happy ending to this story, right? Considering that Iruka is…alive and you’re a shinobi.”

“Yeah so after that I…sort of snapped out of it. And thank the Sage I’d learned the shadow clone jutsu just before because it was my first time performing it for real.”

“And then?”

“And then I beat the shit out of Mizuki and Iruka gave me his headband because apparently the jutsu was super impressive.”

Sakura took a moment to process all of that. What do I even say to that? But wait .

“Let me get this straight. Firstly, you broke into the Hokage Tower —”

“Gramps let me in!”

“You stole a scroll chock full of state secrets —”

“If you put it like that it sounds —”

“Ran into the woods, chose to perform, out of ALL of those jutsu —which include at least one technique for raising the dead —  the Multi-shadow-clone jutsu —”

“How’dya know all of that?”

“I did my research which maybe you should have done because that jutsu in the hands of literally any other shinobi is a quick and easy recipe for death by chakra exhaustion —”

“Huh?”

“But you were insanely lucky because you have unlimited chakra or some bullshit like that —”

“I do?”

“You, who couldn’t clone yourself to save your life, pulled it off within two hours.”

“The technique just made sense to me —”

Sakura held up her hand as she bored her eyes past Naruto’s, straight into his soul.

“Do. You. Know. How. LUCKY . You. Got?” Naruto just looked at the ground.

“...I don’t feel lucky.” At that, Sakura put an arm around Naruto. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do, since he seemed to need it. Poor guy .

“I know. I’m…just glad you’re alive I guess.”

“You don’t hate me?” Sakura squinted at him, confused. Why would he think she hated her? Was it the bell test? They’d already gotten over that, though. So —

“Why would I hate you?”

“You know, because of the nine-tails —”

“Firstly, no I don’t hate you because you have the nine-tails inside you. If you think about it, you’re sort of a hero, because you’re protecting everyone from it. Hell, I should probably apologize to you.”

“Why?”

“So you know how Iruka showed you a lot more attention than any other kid in the class and how you’re on a nickname basis with the rest of the class, and how you have a clan name so famous its symbol is on the side of every flak jacket in Konoha?”

“...You thought I, Naruto Uzumaki, failure-extraordinaire, was a nepo-baby?” Sakura winced.

“I’m really sorry —”

“No that sounds really reasonable. If you think about it I am basically that though, right?”

“No like I thought you had hot-shot parents or something —” Naruto burst out laughing at that “— but instead you had … more unique circumstances I guess.” Naruto just continued laughing.
“Sakura…” he trailed off.

“...who do you think my parents were?” Sakura just stared at his face blankly. “How am I even supposed to answer that question —” and then she looked at him. And she remembered the monument on the Hokage tower, and before she even knew what she was doing she blurted it out.

“Holy shit. Was your dad the Fourth Hokage ?!”

Chapter Text

Sakura stared at her palm, watching the shadows dance across it. She channeled the strange chakra into it. It flexed, then condensed into a teardrop shape. She tried to pull at the edges of that chakra, to mold the teardrop into a circle. Instead, it blinked off her hand. She closed her eyes and groaned, leaning back into the rickety chair she was currently sitting on. Tsunami, Naruto, and Sasuke looked at her.

“Is there something wrong?” Sakura remembered that they were there and looked at them. The three looked awfully worried. The rest (Tazuna and Inari) were sitting on the opposite side of the room next to each other, staring at the boards covering the windows, right above the heads of Naruto and Sasuke. Tsunami was sitting closer to the door, on an ancient-looking rocking chair right next to it. The sole source of illumination was a glass bottle filled with water stuck into the roof. Directly below it was Kakashi, the reason they were all stuck here in the first place.

“Of course there’s something wrong,” Tazuna snapped. “We’ve been stuck here for the past three days because —”
“—Because the only one who’s actually qualified to deal with this whole thing is currently in a coma,” Sasuke interrupted, gesturing to Kakashi. “After that guy? That Gato —” Inari clenched his fists, Tsunami flinched, and Gato squeezed his eyes shut “— could easily kill us.”

“But why can’t we open the windows?”

“We’ve been over this. A window would be child's play for a shinobi to exploit. Besides, we want to make sure that nobody knows you’re here. That’s why we did the whole thing where we faked packing up and leaving, remember? Even now, Sakura is working to maintain an illusion around the house 24-7 to keep this place looking empty.” Oh right , Sakura realized. She’d probably have to take an hour to refill the energy on the seal in the evening. Sasuke sighed. “I know that it’s exhausting, but please bear with it until our master awakes. He’ll know what to do from here.”

Kakashi will know. That had been the mantra since yesterday. Kakashi would know how to guard Tazuna. Kakashi would know how to deal with the psycho shinobi Gato might send after them. Kakashi would tell Naruto if the Fourth Hokage was actually his dad. You’d have thought he was some sort of deity, instead of the unconscious man currently stuck in a sleeping back on the floor.

“...I need to work on the bridge.” and at that, Naruto exploded. “Why are you so fixated on the damn bridge?! That’s all you’ve talked about for the past two weeks. Bridge this bridge that bridge bridge bridge bridge —”

“BECAUSE IT’S THE ONLY THING THAT CAN SAVE US!” Tazuna roared. Silence fell over the room. Inari simply buried his head in his hands, while Tsunami closed her eyes, letting the rocking chair move back and forth. Sakura looked at him in confusion, as did Naruto and Sasuke. Tazuna saw the looks and started talking.

“...Our island wasn’t always like this. We used to be a well-off area, especially because of our fishing industry and as a port for trading.”

“What happened?”

“Gato came along.” Tsunami flinched again. “It was supposed to be a trade deal, one that would turn us from just well-off into a real powerhouse among the nations. What we got instead was this.” he gestured to the closed windows, but they all knew what was on the other side of them.

“It was just ships, then hired thugs, then actual ninja. He used them to take over the ports and overthrow the local government, demanding absurd tax rates. The people initially resisted, so he went door to door, killing people at random. When he was done, he made the tax rate even higher. Nobody resisted, so by the time winter came, more people died from starvation than his swords.”

“Five years. That’s how long I think we’ll last before he kills us all. I’m sorry for bringing you three here. I had no idea you’d be so … young. But this is our only chance. Either we finish the bridge and open it to trade with the rest of the Land of Fire, or we die. There is no in-between.” It was silent again, and Sakura took a moment to process what she had gotten into.

“Just go home,” Inari helpfully added. “If you stay here he’ll kill you.” The fact that it was worded as fact, rather than as an insult, made it incredibly unsettling. Sasuke’s eyes reflected the same worry pressing on her. Not to Naruto though, who began arguing with the younger boy. Eventually, Inari just stormed out of the room. Tsunami took the opportunity to explain that they weren’t the first shinobi to try and liberate the Land of Waves. The one who got that award, Inari’s father, had his arms ripped off in public. Fantastic.

She didn’t really know what else to do, so she went back to what she was doing. The worst thing about this whole arrangement, besides the possibility of sudden, painful death at the hands of some billionaire, was the boredom. After Sakura made the brilliant move to spend the early morning counting the digits of pi, much to Naruto’s confusion (he was like Ino in that way) and Sasuke’s impressed looks, she realized that this was the perfect opportunity to learn more about Yin chakra. She’d brought her handbook along, and had skipped past some of the theoretical stuff and straight to the instructions on how to produce it, and within an hour had figured it out. The thing was that it first involved folding it into a sort of capsule using handsigns, and then squeezing out the Yin chakra. She had figured out how to do it without the handsigns after another hour, so she had grabbed the handbook for actual techniques to perform and … the rest of it was filled with references. Sakura didn’t throw it at a wall, and instead resealed it. Then, she regretted her decision but was too lazy to summon it again. The theoretical stuff didn’t really make sense the first time she read them, and it probably wouldn’t make sense now. So now she instead decided to screw around with the Yin chakra and see where it could take her.

The problem was that she didn’t know what she was doing. Adding more chakra, which would be a perfectly safe move when performing any normal jutsu, seemed to completely cause the initial amount of Yin chakra to completely repulse. Which was a problem, because she needed to be able to adjust the size of the shadow.

“What’re you doing?” Naruto asked, munching on a ration bar. That was all they had been eating: ration bars, ration bars, and more ration bars. Sasuke explained that his family had forced him to carry a bunch with him. Thank the Sage for overprotective families . But that was a thought for another time.

“I’m trying out some stuff with Yin chakra.”

“Like that stuff you were reading about on the last day of class?”

“...you remember that?”

“Gramps says I’ve a good memory” The Sandaime . 

“Huh. So yeah, I’m working with Yin chakra. Problem is that I don’t know what I’m doing or any techniques to go with it.” she frowned. “You know the shadow clone technique, right? What’s it like?”

Naruto fumbled.  “I-I can’t teach you the technique —”

“I know you can’t. I’m glad you remember yesterday because the technique would actually kill me. What is it like performing the technique?” Naruto’s voice became more confused.

“What’s it like? I uh sort of fold it into the shape and then I smash it together over and over again until uh like my chakra sort of peels off of me like an onion.”

“How do you position the clones?” Naruto looked confused again.

“I don’t. They just sort of…push away from each other I guess. Sort of like magnets?” And with that, Sakura had an idea.

“Thanks Naruto! I’m going to try something.” Naruto looked like he wanted to say more, but he simply walked away. Probably because Sasuke was there. Poor guy, holding such a huge secret. And he couldn’t even talk about it, not with Sasuke there. Should I have blurted it out yesterday? He deserves to know, right? Did I do the right — she focused on her previous task.

Magnets, huh? So maybe the Yin chakra repels itself. She tested it out. First, she created a dot of the stuff, resting on her hands. She had already learned she couldn’t really move it after making it so for now it was stuck there like an ink blot. She created another one. The original Yin chakra repelled from the new one, so now there was one dot near her forearm and another right under her middle finger. It moved! She tried to move it again, as she would ordinary chakra. The blot over her forearm ran to her pinky, and the one under her middle finger ran to her thumb. Damn it, now I’ll have to create more of the chakra — wait . With her right hand, she created a blot of Yin chakra, using it to repel the two dots back to their original positions. Then, she tried something else. If I move the two dots at the same time… this time, they spun in a tight circle. As soon as she lost focus though, they careened off. Collecting them at the center of her palm, she noticed them squishing away from each other. Wait a minute. That’s definitely a larger area than they were covering before . So she tried something. This time, she let go of one of the blots, letting it disappear into existence. Focusing on one of them, she squished it from the top, like clay. The blot spread out onto her whole hand. 

“Naruto! Sasuke! Look!”

“...Are you sick?”

“Did you dip your hand in ink? I can get a towel for you —”

“No, Sasuke, look at this!” and then the shadow disappeared. “I can make Yin chakra!”

Naruto and Sasuke looked underwhelmed, and she felt a little indignant.

“That’s really cool!” Then she remembered that she was talking to one twelve year old who could make several hundreds of copies of himself, and another who could probably beat both of them up with his eyes closed. What could she actually do? It’s not like it really meant anything. She waved them away. “Nevermind it’s fine.”

Sasuke spoke up. “Oh no! Learning elemental jutsu is really impressive.” Naruto nodded along. “I just think …”

“I said it’s fine.” They were too nice, trying to humor her. She went back to working with the Yin chakra. It was sort of like a watercolor, she observed. It needed to be spread and constantly prodded, lest it collapse into a ball. Meaning that in order to give it shape, she needed to constantly focus. With 30 minutes, she eventually figured out how to make it into a snake, though the head, essentially just a ball, would make an artist cry. Five minutes later, she could move it across her body. Up her arm and neck, around her head and across her eyes — she could still see through it! — and to her other arm. Sasuke and Naruto, as well as Tsunami and Tazuna and Inari were watching, definitely interested. She would love to continue, but chakra exhaustion was wearing on her. She was about to call it a day when she remembered something from the book — something about Yin chakra having weight. However, the chakra in her hand didn’t feel like anything. Perhaps it was something she could change?

Taking a breath, she wrapped her Yin chakra around her arm. How do I transfer weight to it? Take it from something else? The thought was a joke, but it became less of one as she thought about it. Perhaps I can use the chakra to saturate my arm, see what happens. It was a Yin, right? What’s the worst it could do? She spread it across her arm inside of it too. Her arm felt slightly lighter. Success! She tried increasing the saturation of the Yin chakra, letting it flow like a river. It went from slightly lighter to practically weightless.

“Naruto, Sasuke, look at this.” She extended it to her entire body, moving the Yin chakra throughout. Weightlessness really does feel like freefall , she absently observed.

“ — A— Are you floating?!” Naruto asked with what looked like shock. Inari, Tsunami, and Tazuna shared the same expression. Sasuke looked really impressed.

“How’re you doing that?” She released the jutsu to explain.

“Basically, I just —” and then a weight wrapped around her, pushing her down to her knees and then all the way to the dirt floor, crushing the air out of her like a tin can, her vision turning to grey and then to black. She barely heard her teammates rushing towards her in panic, yelling her name. Damn-it. Who’ll fill the illusion seals now?

Chapter Text

When she awoke, Kakashi was standing over her, his palms glowing green. “Youuu knowww meddicallll nninnnjutssssu?”

“Go back to sleep”

She did, not even bothering to question the fact that Kakashi was up before her.

When she woke up again, it was night. She pushed herself up slowly. It was pitch black inside, so Sakura tried to use her sensing to find where her teammates were when Kakashi spoke quietly. “Give it about ten minutes before using your chakra. I promise, you’ll thank me.”

“How long was I out?” she whispered. Kakashi gestured to the door. “Let’s go outside.” She noticed one of the windows was unboarded as Kakashi slipped himself through it. She did the same. Ugh. There were bugs stuck in the windowsill. She clambered to her feet.

“You were out for nine hours” Shit .

“The seals?! —”

“I refilled them with chakra. They were quite well made, by the way. You’ve improved a lot since graduating.”

“Thank you —”

“I want to talk to you about something else. How long have you been experimenting with Yin release?”

“...I learned about it a little before  graduation, but I haven’t really had the time to actually try it out until now.” Kakashi sighed. Did I do something wrong?

“Okay, firstly, I’m not trying to reprimand you, merely warn you. What you did was extremely dangerous. Any elemental technique has the potential to kill you if you perform it wrong. Experimenting with chakra is practically a death sentence if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“But Sasuke —”

“Probably learned his fireball jutsu from his family under the supervision of some of the strongest ninja in the world . It’s an Uchiha tradition too, and most likely the only fire technique he knows precisely because of how risky elemental chakra is to manipulate. What you did in comparison was … how would I describe it? It was like setting yourself on fire. The only reason you’re even alive is because you were using shadow , which doesn’t have such drastic physical properties.”

“So it’s not so bad, right?” And then she saw Kakashi’s eye boring into her.

“Do you know what I treated you for?” Sakura was silent, and he continued.

“Firstly, chakra exhaustion. Saturating your entire body with shadow is no mean feat, meaning it also required a disgustingly large portion of your reserves. You still haven’t fully recovered from it.” So that’s why he told me not to use chakra .

“But that’s not it. Based on what Naruto and Sasuke told me had happened, along with the impression that you made in the ground — I made an impression in the ground? — I estimate that you experienced 100 times your body weight in that instant. If the period you had experienced it for had been slightly longer or the weight slightly higher, you would have experienced brain damage and then died.”

Sakura’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry —”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Kakashi insisted. “I should have warned all of you about the risks beforehand.”

“Okay,” Sakura said. She didn’t know what else to say. Kakashi didn’t either, because he patted his knees.

“Get some sleep. We’ll start training tomorrow.” Training? Here? But Sakura suddenly realized how tired she was, and turned around to climb through the window again.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Kakashi started. She looked back at Kakashi. He spoke again. “Manipulation of elemental chakra to the degree you performed it usually takes several months in the best case. Good … job.”

They were standing outside, in the forest. It was 5:00 AM. All of them would’ve been incredibly annoyed at the fact that they were up so early if it wasn’t for the fact that it was the first time they were outside in days .

“Why’re we training now ?” Naruto yawned out. Sasuke answered for him. “A good shinobi practices discipline.” Personally, Sakura thought that wasn’t a great answer considering that the disciplined thing to do was to protect Tazuna’s family. Naruto must have thought the answer was lame too because he stuck his tongue out and squinted at Sasuke. 

“While Sasuke’s thought is nice and discipline is indeed vital for a shinobi, these are extraordinary circumstances,” Kakashi started answered. “Normally, you wouldn’t be training during missions. However, let me make two things clear.”

“Firstly, these are not normal circumstances. Each of you are years too early to take on a mission like this. I do not need to tell you that this mission could have ended with all of you dead. It still can.”

Naruto, for all his pride, could only clench his fists. We were all so weak . Sasuke simply rubbed his forehead.

“This is why for the foreseeable future, you will receive intense training.”

Sasuke immediately spoke. “But haven’t we already been receiving training? I’ve talked to other new teams and they haven’t been doing anything like us —”

“What I’ve been doing so far is reinforcing your fundamentals. However, what you need now is strength — enough to give you a fighting chance against Zabuza and his partner.”

“ZABUZA? PARTNER?” It was Naruto who exclaimed it, but the surprise was the same for all of them.
“That was the second thing. I have reason to believe he is still alive. Furthermore, the mist shinobi who appeared to kill him was a conspirator in his escape. Both are incredibly strong, and if worst comes to worst, you may be involved in combat with one of them.”

No doubt all of them had questions — Sakura certainly did — but Kakashi simply continued. 

“The first part of your training will involve fully accessing your chakra.” And just like that, he walked to a tree. And then he put one foot on it, and then another, and walked up its vertical surface . When he spoke again, his voice was somehow as loud.

“In order to perform this exercise, you will need to precisely control and fully access your chakra. Theory lesson. What is chakra?”

Sakura blurted at the same time as Naruto. “It’s the stuff that you use for jutsus — the aggregate of physical and spiritual energy — and you mash it with handsigns — that you can manipulate into —”

“One at a time,” Kakashi said. “Sakura?”

“It’s the aggregate of physical and spiritual energy in the body. By changing the concentrations and shapes of the energy, it can be used to perform jutsus, or converted into elemental chakra.”

“Good. Now Naruto?”

“...what she said.”

“Yes. So chakra is the energy that you use to make jutsus. You learned to tap onto your chakra in order to do so in the Academy. What you didn’t learn, however, was how to properly direct that chakra. If you can perform this jutsu, it will be the first step towards directing your chakra outside your body —”

“Like this?” Sakura asked, walking up the tree. Kakashi simply watched as she took careful steps towards him at first, then looser and more comfortable ones.

“...Yep! Sakura, good job. We’ll move on to the next phase of your training. Naruto, Sasuke, you’ll be working until you can replicate what Sakura did just now.”

And with that, she followed him down the tree. Flicking handsigns (how did he do them so fast ?) he left behind two shadow clones.

He beckoned to a lake. “I want you to try water-walking now. I’ll demonstrate.” And sure enough, he stepped onto the water and walked away from her.

“Considering that you mastered tree-walking as soon as I showed it to you, water-walking shouldn’t be too difficult.” And with that, he walked back, climbed up a tree, and opened his book. “Don’t mind me.” Huh. I wonder what he’s reading. Maybe I’ll ask Sasuke and Naruto about it.

She turned her attention to the water. This was an entirely different beast from tree-walking. Hell, if she thought about it she was doing the opposite of what she used to move her sealing tags across her body: instead of the object moving across her, she was moving across the object. That was that. Case closed. Now for water-walking. The problem , she reasoned, is the way that water reacts to force . By stepping on the water, she would exert a force on it. All matter can respond to forces a combination of two ways:

1. It can move around.
2. It can resist.

Normal ground moves a little and resists a lot. Sand, an easy middle between the two. Water, though? It doesn’t do any resisting. And that exactly was the problem. She needed the water to only resist.

Now there were a couple of ways she could get around that. Firstly, water can actually exert forces. Two immediately came to mind: buoyant force and surface tension.

Of the two, surface tension she immediately discounted for pretty obvious reasons. The surface tension across a body of water, for obvious reasons, had to be constant, which in turn meant that the larger the surface tension was, the more chakra-intensive increasing the surface tension of the water to support a human weight had to be. Considering that Kakashi had just demonstrated it on a lake without even breaking a sweat, that wasn’t possible.

After careful consideration, she also dismissed buoyant force, for less obvious reasons. Firstly, buoyant force is exerted upwards by the weight of displaced water. Upwards and only upwards. That would be great for floating purposes. However, walking was not floating. In order to push off of the surface, it would require an opposing horizontal force against the foot. Normally, this was provided by friction. Since water is quite obviously smooth, that friction was not supplied by it. Therefore, it had to come from the chakra.

All in all, this gave her three constraints. Firstly, the technique was not chakra intensive. Secondly, the technique used chakra to provide a horizontal force. Thirdly, the water had to provide the vertical force. She reasoned this because the chakra was connected to her, meaning that it couldn’t actually apply any force. Unless she ejected it like a rocket? She shook the ridiculous thought out of her head. There were simpler ways to kill herself using chakra exhaustion.

Rigidity. Horizontal force. Moving. Sticking. Friction. Friction . And suddenly, she came to her answer. The answer to her problems. If the water had (greater) friction between itself, it would both stay in place (at least temporarily) and it would exert an opposite frictional force on her feet. Now, all was left to do was test it out. Without stepping in the water, of course. She wasn’t an idiot. She walked to the edge of the lake and dipped a finger in it. Her goal was to prevent the water itself from moving, so she minimized the amount of spiritual energy in the chakra she channeled through that finger into the water. Friction , she thought. She imagined the water as a stack of sheets, and her chakra as glue to hold them together as she extended her chakra downward from her finger. And then she tried moving it. A little bit of resistance. Definitely unnatural, meaning she was on the right track. But still not enough. Playing around with the chakra composition, she found that a slightly larger amount of spiritual energy made the water nearly impossible to move her finger in. Who knew? Now for a test. She punched the water. Instead of her hand going through it, it stopped dead at the water’s surface. Success. Now for the final part.

Remembering the composition of chakra, she channeled it to her foot. If she was to describe it, it would be like walking on honey. Feeling her sandal starting to sink in, she took a series of hurried steps forward. She stopped in the middle of the lake, hopping between feet. Kakashi appeared to put down his book and was now looking at her. Wait a minute . What if I just … she sent out tiny pulses of chakra, temporarily solidifying the water. Now, she was standing perfectly still on the surface. A lot of things occurred to her then.

Firstly, this was the fastest she had ever learned a jutsu. The tree-walking didn’t count because it was reverse-engineered from a technique she already knew. How long had it been? 15 minutes? And she was already standing on the surface of a lake.

Secondly, the technique could be used in incredibly versatile ways. If she wanted to, she could turn a puddle into a glue trap. Would the meeting with the Mist shinobi brothers have gone differently if she had known this jutsu? Too little, too late . She would never neglect her training like that again. But that was another thought. 

Thirdly, all that was required was the right composition of chakra. Meaning all the work she was doing right now could be outsourced to a seal.

Walking back, she saw Kakashi looking at her from across the bank, his hands in his pocket. “Eighteen minutes,” he said. “Fastest I’ve seen anyone learn water-walking.” He handed her a food pill. “For your chakra.”

“Thank you.” Sakura said with a shrug of embarrassment, while accepting the pill and choking it down.

“I’ll give you a twenty-minute break before we resume.” Five minutes were enough to draw the seal. Kakashi saw her draw it, but didn’t say anything, not even when she stuck them to the bottoms of her shoes and used them to walk across the water. Not that I’ll actually need them . With every step, she was thinking less and less about what she was actually doing. For this particular purpose, all the seals were was a chakra drain. But if they were autonomously activated? It opened up a whole realm of possibilities.

She was still contemplating them when Kakashi came to her, 20 minutes having come to an end.

“This next phase of training will be the most difficult. You’ve been training in sensing?”

“I learned it just before we left for this mission. I can’t sense that far, though. Maybe only 30 feet?” Kakashi raised an eyebrow.

“Interesting. What I’ll teach you now is a technique for precise, long-distance sensing. Do you know the basic principle?”

“You emit ripples in chakra, and based on the ripples that come back you can sense objects. Sort of like echolocation for bats.”

“Precisely. I’m sure that you’ve found that by varying the composition of your chakra, you can sense further or shorter distances.”

“Yeah, I’ve found that spiritual chakra makes it so you can sense further distances.”

“That is in fact true. However, what I’m going to teach you is a technique which uses a different type of chakra for a greater effect. You’ve already learned how to create and manipulate shadow chakra, so —”

“Wait. You’re teaching me how to use it already ? After you warned me about how dangerous it was?”

“First, I’m here. Secondly, I don’t think this specific technique is all that dangerous, though I can’t quite use it myself.”

“...Okay.” Can’t use it himself. Wonderful.

“First, you’ll …”

Yang Chakra on its own isn’t actually that hard to manipulate. It simply acts in the exact opposite to Yin chakra, meaning it naturally disperses. Fortunately, Sakura is a very focused individual, meaning that on its own, it only disperses when she needs it too. The problem is that she needs to move it at the same time as the Yin chakra. Yin counterclockwise, Yang clockwise. Simple, right? Wrong.

Firstly, it’s borderline impossible to create two elemental chakras at the same time. Technically, it was possible , but not something she had any clue how to do. The solution was to produce them one after the other, which, while possible, produced a whole host of problems. Like the fact that circulating Yin and Yang chakra required two completely different methods of manipulation. Picture writing two different novels with each hand at the same time. And if that wasn’t hard enough, both of the chakras needed to move at precisely the same speed to slide past each other but not actually collide. And, for the cherry on top, Kakashi didn’t even demonstrate it for her. Can’t do it , the Master of a Thousand Jutsus had said. Great indicator for her own odds.

She had been fruitlessly mashing Yin against Yang chakra for the past 30 minutes. Naruto would probably have taken that as a sign to go for five times as long. However, Sakura was not an idiot. Because of this, she decided to take a break. Her father always said taking a step back from a problem was the best way to solve it, after all. She wasn’t giving up, of course. Not when their lives depended on her learning this. Was this even safe? Who knew. But at this point, she was through with thinking and was wandering aimlessly through the clearing when she found Naruto and Sasuke. 

Sasuke was making steady headway up the tree. There were long rakes in in it where he had scraped his kunai into it, to break his fall. As soon as she entered the clearing they were training in, he noticed and called out to her. It was at this point that Naruto looked over at her, becoming aware of her presence.

“Hi Sakura! Taking a break!” Naruto was panting. 

“...yeah, I guess.” Rest or resignation? She didn’t want to know the answer.

Sasuke ran up the tree. His feet were slightly slipping against the bark, but as he stabbed his kunai into the tree, a rake mark higher than the others was forming, about ten meters. Steady progress, then. Wish I could say the same .

“...How’s your training going?” she asked. To respond, Naruto ran towards the tree and jumped. Bark exploded off the tree and he stumbled back. “Great! I’ll get this anytime now.”

“Like that?” she asked incredulously. “You’d be here for a lifetime at this rate.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she immediately regretted it, and then regretted it more when she saw Naruto’s face. He was trying to look neutral, but she could see his hurt with her eyes closed.

“Sorry. What I meant was…your chakra. It’s the wrong consistency. Put your hand against the bark?”

“How will that —”

“It’ll help, trust me.” he slowly complied, resting his palm against the bark of the tree. It looked like a Spruce. Or what a spruce would look like if bits and pieces of it were torn out at the base.

“Put chakra into your hand. It’ll help you figure out what you need for walking.” Golden energy built up between the bark and his palm and it was suddenly blown back. There was now a roughly hand-shaped area of exposed bark on the poor tree.

“Okay. So now what do you think happened there?”

“...Too much chakra?” Sakura personally thought that it was a problem with composition, but that also seemed like a good guess. Could only help, too.

“Let’s try that out.” And Naruto did, putting less chakra into his palm. “It should stick, righ?”

“...It’s not doing that.”

“So what do you think is happening?”

“...I’m not cut out for the shinobi life?”

“That’s a bit of a leap. Let’s try something else. Personally, I’m thinking about the specific type of chakra. Isn’t it a bit explodey for walking?” Naruto focused and tried again, to the same result. “You’re right,” he conceded. We’re making headway. That’s good.

“What sort of chakra do you think you need?”

“Sticky? Like glue.”

“Sure. How do you think that you can do that?”

“...”

“...Naruto?...”

“...I’m thinking!...”

“Let’s see. I personally think that you need more spiritual chakra.” And to that, Naruto gave her a blank look.

“What’re you talking about?”

“...Spiritual chakra?”

“...yeah”

“...Iruka spent an entire month going on about it before we even started learning jutsus.”

“ That stuff? It’s useless! I asked Kiba about it and he said that nobody actually uses it and then Shikimaru and Shino agreed with him. And both of them were better at theory than I was.”

“It’s true,” Sasuke interjected. “I don’t think we actually used it outside of that month and I’m not actually sure why we went over it for a whole month .”

And at that, Sakura ground her teeth together. “Okay. Maybe you don’t need to know about chakra compositions to do jutsu. But learning a jutsu without them is like running an obstacle course while blind. How in the hell did you two do it?”

“Intuition?” Sasuke guessed.

“TRIAL AND ERROR!” Naruto yelled. “BECAUSE I NEVER GIVE UP.”

“HOW MUCH TRIAL AND ERROR?”

“I TRIED EACH JUTSU A THOUSAND TIMES EVERY DAY UNTIL I COULD DO THEM.”

“Right. Sometimes I forget you can do things like that. Point is, you’ll learn faster if you understand a few things about physical and spiritual chakra.”

Naruto and Sasuke were listening. Sakura tried not to think about the fact that Naruto could perform a jutsu a thousand times in a single day when most kids in the academy could only perform twenty failed attempts. That sort of limit was why so many civilian kids had to drop out of the academy. Even her father had refused to help her in this respect, telling her that if she couldn’t keep up with the academy curriculum on her own it would be suicide to become a ninja. Not that she needed his help for this. The longest she ever took to learn a jutsu was a week when most kids needed a month, and that was only because she was a perfectionist.

“Naruto. In order to stick to a surface, your chakra needs to slot into the imperfections in the tree. Right now, all you’re doing is pushing a puck of your chakra into that tree until it explodes. What you need to do is make it sink into the tree.”

“...so he needs more spiritual chakra,” Sasuke concluded, obviously straining to recall the academy lessons.

“Yes. More spiritual chakra. Sasuke, you have the opposite problem. Your chakra is dispersing into the tree to the point that it’s diminishing its adhesive properties. Got it?”

“...yeah.” It was Naruto who spoke up. “How do I increase my spiritual chakra?”

“They never went over it at the Academy, either,” Sasuke added. That was true. It was something she had precisely tuned purely through trial and error. But precise tuning wasn’t what they needed.

“Naruto, focus more. Sasuke, focus less.”

“That’s it?”

“How do I focus less ?”

“Focus on something else or something. I don’t know. You have to figure it out.”

And at that, Naruto scrunched up his face, and ran up the tree. He made it a grand ten feet before he decided to celebrate, lost focus and started plummeting. Sakura was barely able to catch him. Sasuke, meanwhile, was somehow doing worse. Gingerly taking steps, he suddenly slid down. He was pumping large amounts of chakra into his legs, but it only served to slow him down. By the time he got down, he was panting, sweat dripping down his face. Probably not from exhaustion. Noticing his hands shaking, Sakura realised something.

“Sasuke. Are you afraid of heights?”

“I-I’m not scared it’s just a vertical drop and at that height I don’t know what would happen” Naruto started saying something, only for Sakura to glare at him. “So that’s the problem. You’re hyper-focused because you don’t want to fall, but in order to avoid falling you need to focus less.” She thought about it. “Naruto. Go over to Sasuke’s tree.”

“What? Why?”

“So neither of you get yourselves killed. Sasuke, if Naruto falls, you’ll catch him. Naruto, if Sasuke falls, you’ll catch him.” The two boys looked at each other doubtfully. Sasuke nodded.

“...Okay.”

“...Don’t worry! I’ll save his sorry ass every time he falls!” Sakura smiled and started walking back. She had taken a rest to solve her own problem, but had ended up helping out with theirs. She was just about to exit the clearing when Narutos voice rang out.

“Sakura! What were you doing before this?”

“Uhh…I was working on a sensory jutsu.”

“How’s that going?”

“Uhh…” she thought about it. “Not good,” she admitted.

“What’s happening?”

“Well… basically for the technique I’m learning I have to rotate Yin and Yang chakra against each other around myself. Problem is, I can’t really do it since every time I try the Yin and Yang chakra just collide against each other and cancel themselves to oblivion”

Sasuke spoke. “So like the Hyuuga technique?”

“What?”

“The technique you’re trying to do is a Hyuuga sensory technique, I’m pretty sure.” Sakura looked at him blankly. Am I done for?  

Sasuke stroked his chin, an amusing sight since he was exactly 90º sideways on the tree. “I’m not exactly sure how helpful this is, but according to my brother they usually take a lump of their chakra and then spin it so it sort of falls into the proper shape.”

“Sasuke?”
“Yes?”

“Six-paths bless you.”

Chapter Text

Kakashi was speaking. “...It’s your choice to…”

Sakura entered the clearing. Naruto looked over. His face, clouded over with an unreadable expression, broke into a beaming smile. “Sakura! You’re here!” Oh, were they talking about his situation? That makes sense .

“Hello Naruto!” she spoke. “Doing alright?” concern in her voice. “I’m fine!” Kakashi spoke.

“I see you figured the jutsu out?”

“Yeah, it took me a while to figure out the timing for it.”

“This, and the sensory technique…should help. Ah, there’s Sasuke. You and Sakura will be working together for the final phase of training. Naruto, make 30 shadow clones. 15 of them will head that way towards my clone” he pointed to his left “and the rest, including your original body, will stay with me.”

The clones sauntered off, and Kakashi looked at the three of them, a frightening intensity in his gaze. Sasuke, Sakura. You’ll be attacking me.

“What will I be doing?” Naruto asked.

“You’ll be trying to avoid me.” And with that Kakashi lunged towards his original body with a kunai. Naruto just barely rolled out of the way, and Sasuke jumped in, blocking the blow with a kunai. Was it just her or was he even faster than before?

“WHAT THE HELL?” Sasuke exclaimed. Sakura agreed.

“This is the reality of what you’re up against. If you want to go home,” Kakashi said while flickering directly behind Naruto, “you’ll most likely have to fight that hunter-nin. I am adjusting my own speed to his.” Naruto was thrown towards Sasuke, who managed to catch him.

And then Sakura was staring down the blade of a kunai. “We won’t stop until all of you can avoid me for at least five minutes.”

This training was going to be hell .

They were on the bridge, Hunter-nin and Zabuza next to each other. Zabuza’s hand was on his sword. The hunter-nin, with a shake of his arm, was suddenly holding a number of thin needles. And then the hunter-nin and Sasuke disappeared. They met at the center of the bridge, the clash of metal ringing out. Sakura yelled. “Naruto!”

30 clones, just as they planned. Fifteen off the bridge and into the water. They scampered off into the distance. Fifteen, including the original, grabbed the workers and Tazuna, getting them well out of harm’s way, much to the chagrin of Zabuza and his accomplice. They would’ve followed the Narutos too, if not for the fact that they were each focused on their individual battles: Zabuza with Kakashi, the Hunter-nin with Sasuke, Sakura backing him up with mirages of Sasuke and the projectiles she was carefully aiming at the Hunter-nin.

The match with Zabuza was going fine. Kakashi beat him last time, he would do it again most likely. Sakura wasn’t focused on that. However, Sasuke and the Hunter-nin seemed to be matched evenly, far too much so for Sakura’s taste. The match was taijutsu so far, only taijutsu, likely because neither of them could afford to try anything else. But where Sasuke had trained for this battle for a mere day Hunter-nin probably won them every day. And the difference was showing. Sasuke was getting pushed back, towards the metal railing on the bridge. Sakura tried to create an illusion of Sasuke stabbing at the Hunter-nin, but the masked boy(?) merely walked through it.

“The mist disappears at the ends of the illusions,” he said. Sakura would’ve been grateful it it didn’t mean Sasuke was going to die. And then Haku threw a volley of needles at Sasuke.

“SASUKE!” Sakura yelled, vainly throwing kunai at the nin. But as she was reeling from Sasuke’s impending death, the Hunter-nin flew back, and then Sasuke was besides her. His black eyes were now red, black tomoe surrounding it.

A group of 15 Narutos had run off the bridge. Kakashi had already had him memorize the map, so they knew which landmarks to look for. That road, this tree with a deep gouge in it, where to run, which rock to squat behind so his clones could hide from patrolling samurai. Naruto really wasn’t sure he could memorize all of it, but Kakashi had drilled it into his head through about two hours of repetition across many, many shadow clones. There was no way he’d get it wrong now.

He made his way to a tower. All that money, to make … this . Even Naruto thought it looked stupid. And easy to climb. Thanks, Sakura. According to Kakashi, the Gato-guy was usually in the top floor. If he wasn’t, he just had to know Gato was in the building. Three clones creeped up the window. Two clones went and attacked straight through the front door. Almost immediately, they were dispelled, but not before letting off the small explosives they were carrying. Kakashi explained that this would create a diversion, so that more of his men would rush outside. It would also mean that some of the men would move to Gato. Naruto was supposed to watch out for them. Sure enough through the window he was standing above, he saw some of them running in the opposite direction of the explosion. He quickly disguised himself as one of men, running towards them. Normally in the Academy, transformation jutsus were graded based on faithfulness to the original subject. Fortunately, even if his disguise was pathetic, nobody would notice in the commotion. Two clones took off after that group, for good measure. The rest sprang out of the bushes they were hiding in, joining the frontal assault.

Eventually, the men made their way to Gato, who was in turn escorted to the basement. They finally took the opportunity to engage the two Naruto clones in front of them. But as they did, they didn’t notice the odd-looking samurai who wrapped his arms around Gato. Gato himself barely felt his skin melt off as the exploding tag detonated. Naruto hadn’t spent three days pouring chakra into it for nothing.

This was Naruto’s choice.

“I thought I was dead there.” Was that the plan that Kakashi was talking about? She was going to cut his throat, strongest shinobi in Konoha or not. But before she could vocalize that thought, Sasuke cut in.

“Don’t worry about hitting me. I can dodge it.” And then he was back to clashing with the Hunter-nin.

During her training, Sakura had learned two jutsu. The first was a long-range sensory jutsu, and was how the team knew Zabuza and his accomplice were approaching. The second was technically half a jutsu. The body flicker ties a tether at an object to replace with it, incredibly fast. However, timed correctly, that replacement can instead be used to fling at objects at incredibly high velocities. Velocities which could only be dodged by someone with a Sharingan.

From there on, the battle was one-sided. The hunter-nin was getting progressively more bloody, Sasuke landing more and more hits. We might actually win —

“I didn’t want to use this, you know. You’ll die.” And then Sasuke was in a mirrored dome. What the FUCK is that technique? She ran towards it. She could see Sasuke inside, and an image — the hunter-nin — jumping from panel to panel. He didn’t look good, getting studded with needles. Bit by bit, he was getting as bloody as the hunter-nin was. That wasn’t good at all. She scraped the panel with a kunai and slammed her fist into it. All she got for her efforts was a sore hand, not a scratch in the panel. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Sasuke was going to die, and there was nothing she could do about it. Unless…

She grabbed a concrete block with both hands and slammed it against the panel. “It’s no use,” the hunter-nin responded. “Your teammate is going to die.” Going to? Couldn’t he have already done it? She ignored the thought though as another idea came into her head, an incredibly stupid one. She focused the Yin Chakra into her left palm, as much as she could physically muster. The Hunter-nin must have thought she was simply going for another round with the block, because he didn’t say anything. This has to work . And then, she did two things at once. Firstly, she let go with her right hand, bringing to concrete block down. Secondly, she forced all of the Yin Chakra into the block at once. The block went through the panels like a hammer through toilet paper. With her right arm, she grabbed Sasuke by the leg and dragged him out. She ignored the exploding pain in her left arm, and the needles now sinking into her good arm. There wasn’t much she could do, honestly. She created an illusion of them running away from him. The nin went after them. Thank the Sage for his valuable criticism . She used the opportunity to run in the opposite direction, hoisting Sasuke onto her back with her one good arm. But she didn’t get very far before she was knocked on her back, and she was staring down the hunter-nin, the blank mask on his face never looking more sinister. She was out of options, and she knew it. The technique with the concrete block had handily exhausted all her chakra. She couldn’t run, the hunter-nin could turn her into a pincushion before she could so much as draw a kunai. With her sensing, she could tell Sasuke was alive. He was the only one who had a chance of surviving here. She would serve as a distraction.

“Please don’t kill me please don’t kill me I just got my headband please don’t kill me I’m too young for this I have a family and they’ll be really —” she pushed one of the needles in Sasuke’s thigh deeper in. Hopefully that would wake him up. “Sad I’m actually really good friend with the Hokage and he’ll give you a lot of money if you spare my life —” why wasn’t Sasuke moving? “Please —”

“If your intention is to buy time so that your teammate can escape, I’m afraid it’s impossible,” the Hunter-nin interjected. “He’s paralyzed from the neck down. Soon, he will suffocate and die.”

An explosion rang out in the distance. The plan worked! Sakura spoke again, with renewed confidence.

“Your employer, Gato, is dead now. My third teammate killed him.” And then the Hunter-nin laughed . “Your third teammate? I saw him. He isn’t very much, you know.” Oh God he doesn’t believe me . “He has the nine-tailed fox inside him and —”

“I’m the Six Paths, of course!” the Hunter-nin laughed, a beautiful, angelic laugh. Why was she noticing that now? “You’re still going to die, you know. And we’ll be paid by the employer you pretended to kill.” And then he was swept to his side, and Sakura felt something she could only describe as bloodlust in the air, her eyes watering so much from the sulfurous odor around her that she could barely make out Naruto, with sharpened claws and teeth and red, slitted, eyes.

Naruto was late. What was supposed to be a quick evacuation turned into an all-out war, Gato’s men on one side and him on the other. He had been forced to use all thousand of his clones, to get the civilians out of harms way and to overpower the thugs. Who knew a sword could take out five people in one go? Naruto did, but he learned from his mistakes as the memories of his extinguished clones flowed into him, and managed to snatch a victory at the cost of his first ever bout with chakra exhaustion. It was in that state, wiped of chakra, that he saw Sakura holding Sasuke’s body, the Hunter-nin from back then standing over them. One of his teammates was dead. The other was going to die.

Naruto had just killed a building full of people. What was one more? The Fox inside him was happy to help. 

The Fox let him sprint when his knees were about to collapse in, punch the hunter-nin so hard the concrete in the bridge cracked where the hunter-nin smashed into it, showed him where to kick, where to dodge, where to claw the hunter-nin’s mask off, where to tear his throat open. He had seen the boy’s face from the forest. He wanted to meet him again, he remembered. 

But not like this.

Sakura realized something.

Haku would die for his master. He was a tool, and he had failed. At least he would buy time for Zabuza by fighting to the end. Wouldn’t want this monster to chase after him. That made him happy.

The mission was pointless. There was no point for him, the Demon of the Hidden Mist, or Haku to be here. Their employer was dead, and judging by the explosion in the distance, it seemed very likely that Gato was dead. But what could he do? Kakashi of the Sharingan was going to push a ball of lightning through his chest and there was nothing he could do about it, not with both of his arms hanging so uselessly. At least he could go down fighting.

Naruto was going to do it when Sakura stopped him. “Sasuke is alive.” The Fox was telling him to kill Haku. It was the logical thing to do. Sasuke wasn’t moving.

“Sasuke is paralyzed. The Hunter-nin is the only one who knows how to remove the needles without killing him. If you kill him, Sasuke dies.” Naruto's hand stretched towards Haku’s throat, the skin burning off and growing back at the same time under the toxic orange chakra roaring out of it. Sakura’s hand grabbed it. She didn’t let go, even as her own skin began flaking off.

“Please.”

“Once you kill me…please let Haku live.”

“Haku?”

“My apprentice.”

“I am Zabuza’s tool. I would rather be broken than be turned against him.”

Kakashi lowered his kunai. “I’ll let you and your apprentice live if you order your apprentice to stand down.”

The chakra stopped flowing from Naruto’s hand. His face was scrunched in concentration. “Heal Sasuke. I’ll let you live, but please heal him.” He saw Zabuza’s head hung in resignation. “Haku. Do it.”

“But —”

“—Your life is worth more than this.”

The needles were removed.

Sasuke lived.

End of Waves

Chapter Text

“Your parentage is not one you’re ready to handle, Naruto. Not now.”

“But —”

“What do you know about your father?” Naruto answered without hesitation.

“He was the hero who ended the third Shinobi war and an incredibly powerful Kage and he saved the village from the” Naruto looked down at his stomach “Fox. I read everything I could about him once I learned the truth. Which you didn’t tell me.” Naruto glared at the Sandaime.

“Do you know how your father ended the Third Shinobi War?” Naruto shook his head. The old man looked at him pointedly.

“Sunagakure.  Iwagakure. Kumogakure. Kirigakure. During the War, we fought with every single one of them.”

“But that’s —”

“Every single one of the Five Great Villages, yes.” Naruto buried into his bowl of ramen.

“If we were fighting everyone, how did we end the war?”

“We sent a message to the others. Iwagakure. We stuck seals on their shinobi, over the course of a few months. Only your father and I knew of the plan. Shinobi in different positions, different branches of Iwagakure command.”

“And did we blow them up?” Hiruzen laughed at that.

“No, actually. Bombing is Iwagakure’s specialty, meaning that they’re also incredibly skilled at sensing exploding seals. They have bomb checks at their gates.”

“So…”

“The flying raijin.”

“Oh, one of the books mentioned that.”

“It was your fathers trademark jutsu. Technically the second Hokages, but he revived it. It allows the user to teleport to wherever they leave a specific seal.”

“Oh.” Naruto made the horrifying realization as the Sandaime confirmed it.

“We killed 50% of all the active shinobi in Iwagakure in one night. Then we gave them a peace treaty, which they signed. The other villages followed soon.”

“Did we do that to all of them?”

“No. They saw what happened to Iwagakure and decided not to follow suit.” The Sandaime had finished his meal a while ago, a bowl of rice. “Now. Let’s say that I reveal you’re the Fourth Hokage’s son. His enemies will stop at nothing , and I mean nothing to get you.” Naruto didn’t know what to say.

“Even the act of knowing this is dangerous. By finding this out, you have placed yourself at huge risk.” Naruto snorted. “It’s not like I can tell anyone anyways. What’re they going to do, read my…mind?” Then Naruto realized the answer to his question.

“Exactly. Who other than you knows about this?”

“Sakura asked, but Sasuke doesn’t know.”

“You can tell Sasuke if you want.”

“But you just told me that —”

“Some things shouldn’t be left out between teammates, believe me. And it’s not like you don’t want to tell him, do you?” Naruto rubbed his hands together, grinning.

“I’ll show him he isn’t the only one with a super awesome family!”

“How did I not notice before?” Sasuke asked, squinting at Naruto.

“Exactly what I thought,” agreed Sakura.

“Huh?” Naruto asked. Sasuke and Sakura looked at him. Then, they looked at the Hokage Monument. And then back to Naruto.

They were standing in Training Ground 3, their first day back from the mission. A week had passed. Immediately after the mission, Kakashi took her to the hospital. It was a bit terrifying, the way her arm was inked up with seals. And to say that having said seals pumped with chakra, shifting and breaking and fusing the bone and muscle and flesh in her pulverized arm was painful was an understatement. Her father never told her about this. He probably never managed to get hurt this badly, though. So from this experience she came out with a new appreciation for the wonders of medical ninjutsu. Shame it took years of study to even begin practicing, though.

It didn’t stop her from signing up for first-aid classes, though. It probably wouldn’t have helped for what happened during the Wave mission, but it would during similar situations.

But now, they were standing here, waiting on Kakashi after they each received a message to meet here at 7:00. It was 7:15. And exactly one minute later, Kakashi sauntered in front of them.

“Did you get lost on the road of life again?” Naruto asked.

“Have to help an old lady to her house?” Sakura volunteered.

“Have a quick talk with the Sage of Six Paths?” Sasuke proposed.

“I was in a meeting with the Hokage, actually. I apologize for being late.” Him, apologizing for being late? “Especially since this is a fairly serious discussion.”

What is this about? “This is about the Chunin exams.” Oh. I know we’re on the Jounin-track but…isn’t this a bit fast? “Personally I think all of you are years too early.”

“WHAT?” Of course Naruto would be offended by that.

“However,” Kakashi said while ignoring Naruto, “you do not have a choice. Due to various political reasons —” he looked at Naruto “— all three of you will have to enter.”

“Political reasons?” Sasuke was confused.

“Sunagakure is entering into this year’s Chunin exams. They have submitted their jinchuurichi. Their Kazekage has asked that we do the same, as a gesture of good will.”

“Couldn’t we just refuse?” Naruto asked this question, and Sakura was thinking the same. But Sasuke shook his head.

“The Chunin exams aren’t really exams. They’ve been part of the village system since the establishment of all the major villages, and serve as a way to deter attacks through a show of strength and a way to monitor the military capabilities of other villages.”

“Huh?” Sasuke thought about it. “Basically, they’re a way for the villages to show off.”

“Yes, and especially since the end of the Third Shinobi War, these exams can decide whether the villages go to war with one another or not.” Sasuke pushed his head into his hands. “Maybe I can talk to Father about this —”

“I tried it, but it didn't work,” Kakashi interrupted. “He is willing to go forward with this with or without your Father’s blessing.” Kakashi stroked his chin. “Speaking of your Father, I also just spoke to him. You’ll be alternating between training with your clan and me.”

“When was this decided —”

“Earlier this morning, actually. Your Father actually brought it up, to help with your lightning affinity.”

“Lightning affinity?”

“You know, when you channeled your chakra into a little slip of paper and it crumpled up?”

“I thought Shisui was screwing with me. Wait. How do you know about —”

“I asked him to do it.”

“Can’t trust anyone in that house,” he muttered. Kakashi ignored that and continued speaking. “You’ll also need to train your Sharingan,” he explained. Sasuke looked at the ground. “Right.”

“Naruto, you’ll be training with a friend of mine to properly channel the Nine-tails.”

“You have friends?” Perhaps the most insulting part of that statement was Naruto’s genuinely confused face.

“I will gracefully ignore the insulting connotations of that question, but yes, I have friends. Lots of them, actually.” Finally, he turned to Sakura. “You will be focusing on your taijutsu.”

Sakura was a little confused. “Isn’t that a little narrow in scope?”

“Normally, I would agree. However, that technique of yours —” he gestured to her previously pulverized arm “— probably requires physical training to withstand.”

“How can taijutsu help with that ? Scratch that. Who can help with that?” Kakashi’s one eye crinkled. “I know just the guy.”

Kakashi must hate her. That was the conclusion that she came to as she ran another lap with the Green Man, as the Green Boy sprinted ahead of her once again. Might Guy and Rock Lee. Those were their names. They could be comic characters, she was certain. Comical in the way they dressed (in identical green skintight jumpsuits, the way they walked (sprinted, really) , talked (every sentence they made was exclamatory), and  fought (in the same ferocious style that Sakura saw in her nightmares). At least she hadn’t met their teammates. Apparently one of them, Ten-Ten, was working on custom weapons in preparation for the Chunin exams. The other, Neji, was likewise at his clan compound training for it. Wonder what sort of characters they would be.

For the brutality of the conditioning, the results were worth it. She was faster, she could kick and punch harder, she could respond to threats by biting back instead of running away. Best of all, she was somewhat on her way to controlling Yin Release.

“If you can handle these weights, you should be able to handle the larger strains your technique exerts,” Guy explained.
“Is that physically possible?”

“OF COURSE IT IS!” Lee exclaimed, sweeping her into the ground with an expertly timed move.

“I admire your certainty.” Sakura attempted to punch at him, only to hit air.

“Progress, progress. The best part of youth.” And Guy wept a completely real tear.

Sakura would’ve thought she was dreaming.

Sasuke was playing with fire, quite literally. The flame wrapping around his hand flickered a warm orange. Problem was, they weren’t supposed to do either of those things. As Itachi was currently demonstrating, the flames were supposed to be blue and static.

“Turn off your sharingan for a second,” Itachi ordered. Sasuke complied.

“I still don’t understand why we’re doing this,” Sasuke complained. “Fire isn’t even my affinity, and it’s not really like I can use this jutsu in combat.” Itachi sighed.

“As we’ve already established, this is a Sharingan exercise. You should be able to perceive the flow of heat and oxygen, and based on that, supply fire chakra accordingly. To do this —” Itachi held up his blue, flaming, hand “— requires a sharingan-chakra coordination you are currently building. The fact that fire is not your primary affinity makes this exercise even more effective in that respect.”

“How?”

“If you can do this with one element, you can do this with any. It essentially gives you mastery over any sort of chakra shaping.”

“But why fire specifically? You didn’t answer my second question.” And at that, Itachi picked up a leaf this size of his head. It went up in flames.

“How much chakra do you think I used?” As Itachi’s point slowly dawned on Sasuke, Itachi continued speaking.

“Those of the Uchiha clan all learn fire techniques because, with the power of the sharingan, we can freely manipulate it with fairly low chakra expenditure — regardless of elemental affinity. A spark can light a wildfire, where a lake is simply a drop in the ocean. Our sharingan allow us to harness this awesome power without risk to ourselves.”

“Do all the members of the Uchiha clan have to do this?”

“I invented this exercise, actually.”

“Why though?”

“Perhaps the most terrifying part of being a shinobi isn’t the possibility of death, but that of living while those you love don’t. I’ve watched too many of my comrades perish because of their subpar command of the shinobi arts. I won’t let it happen to you, Sasuke.”

“THAT FUCKING FOX TOLD ME TO KILL MYSELF,” Naruto yowled at Yamato. He also grimaced. “And also everything smells bad in there.”

“ THIS IS WHAT I EXPERIENCE EVERY SINGLE DAY. BE LUCKY YOU SPEND YOURS OUTSIDE, RATHER THAN IN A PUTRID BOX HALF YOUR SIZE. ” Despite himself, Naruto did feel the tiniest pang of sympathy for the Fox. But he deserved it, didn’t he? Since he was the reason his life as so difficult. If the Fox hadn’t done all of those things, he would’ve still had his parents, and everyone would love him and …

“ DO YOU THINK I WAS IMPRISONED IN THREE GENERATIONS OF UZUMAKIS FOR KILLING YOUR PARENTS? I WAS HATED AND FEARED LONG BEFORE I STOPPED CONSIDERING THE LIVES OF YOU ANT-LIKE PARASITES MEANINGFUL.”

“Don’t call my —”

“YOUR FRIENDS? YOUR COMRADES?” The Foxes voice was entirely in Naruto’s mind, but he made sure to enunciate the sneer in the last word.

“ THEY WOULD BETRAY YOU AT YOUR FIRST SIGN OF DISOBEDIENCE. SHINOBI ARE TOOLS BEFORE THEY ARE PEOPLE. LIVING INSIDE THREE GENERATIONS OF THEM HAS TAUGHT ME THAT.”

“But —”

“ THEY DO IT FOR A GREATER GOOD? PERHAPS IF YOU CONSIDER MONEY IN THAT WAY. BUT I WILL NOT BE KONOHA’S CASH COW.” The worst part of that reply was that the Fox knew Naruto had never read a history book, meaning he couldn’t refute it.

And so the communication between Naruto and the Nine-Tails ended, and Yamato relaxed, but no progress was made.

Until he met Gaara.

Chapter Text

Gaara, it turned out, had two siblings. One of them was a girl with a giant fan strapped to her back and four ponytails. The other was a boy with black, full-body suit and purple makeup. Is the make-up hiding something? Who knows. Speaking of hiding, the two siblings were an arms length away from Gaara, though they looked like they wanted to be even further. Naruto had plenty of experience to know what that was like.

The more pressing problem was that the guy in make-up was holding Konohamoru and shaking him for whatever reason. They were all right inside the village gates. Naruto was not a political savant, but the Sunagakure headband, along with Konohamoru being the Sandaimes son, suggested that this could start something nasty.

“WHAT’RE YOU DOING?” Naruto yelled. “THAT’S THE HOKAGE’S GRANDSON.”

“That’s nice, I’m the Kazekage’s son,” make-up boy drawled nonchalantly. “And also he bumped into me. I’m just teaching him some … manners.” Even though there was no change in expression, he could hear amusement in a way he did not like.

Naruto tried diplomacy, so now he’d try action. He ran at the boy, only to be kicked back by the girl. She was just bored.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“What do you think you’re doing?” demanded Sasuke. Sakura was right next to him, leaning on his shoulder.

“Yeah!” Sakura yelled way too enthusiastically. “Sto’ doin’ that.” She shook her head. “Sorry. Just got back from training…” she looked at what was happening and her eyes suddenly focused. “Huh? What’re you doing with the Hokage’s grandson?”

“Temari, Kankuro, Gaara, honored children of the Kazekage. I know not how this child has offended you but please forgive him for his rudeness and enjoy your stay in Konoha for the Chunin exams.” That was the first time Naruto ever heard Sasuke talk to anyone that way and he was totally going to make fun of him for that.

“Alright, alright,” Kankuro said, sighing. “But I’d really like a proper apology —”

“Are we done here?” That was Gaara, the one with red hair and green eyes surrounded by black eyeliner. Naruto was wondering why he was carrying a gourd on his back when sand lifted out of it. Naruto watched, amazed as the sand wrapped around a nearby piece of concrete the size of his head, and then imploded. Gray dust rained down. The two other siblings shuddered.

“Let’s go,” the one with pigtails — Temari? muttered. And the three of them went off, leaving Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, and Konohamoru. Two more faces popped up out of the bushes nearby: Konohamoru’s friends, if he was correct.

“THANKS FOR SAVING US!” Konohamoru yelled, hugging Naruto.

“You’re such a baby,” Naruto said back, snickering.

“Were those really the Kazekage’s children?” Sakura asked, shuddering. “They seem like jerks.” Naruto agreed. Brilliant as usual, Sakura. She turned to Sasuke. “Is this just something you learn in the Uchiha clan or something?”

“Yes actually, though it moreso has to do with the fact that I’m in line to the Clan Head’s position. After Itachi, of course.”

“Is that why you were talking weird?” Naruto asked.

“Yes, actually. Political training and such.”

“I know not how this child —”

“HEY!” protested Konohamoru, but Naruto kept snickering.

“That’s not very nice, Naruto.” Sasuke said, quite seriously.

“Yeah, Naruto,” Sakura said with equal gravity. They both stared at him, unblinking, before they both cracked up and hunched over laughing. Naruto joined in, as well. It was nice, he thought, to be laughing with someone, rather than being laughed at. It was enough to forget about the murderous-looking redhead they had just encountered. Naruto was the first to bring it up.

“Is it just me, or did the red-haired guy seem really angry? Wonder what that was about.” Sasuke looked uncomfortably at the ground.

“He’s…a jinchurichi as well.” Sakura frowned and asked the same question he was thinking.

“What’s his deal though? He seemed really pissed.” She thought about it some more. “Maybe he’s just annoyed at being outside his village? Or maybe he just doesn’t like conversation.”

Sasuke piped up. “For a Kage’s child, we don’t actually know very much about him. Which is quite strange.”

“...huh.” Just then, Naruto heard an idea from the Fox. That was the best way he could describe it — usually, the Fox verbalized its thoughts with a command of language that made Naruto envious. This, in comparison, would be closer to a thought. Perhaps it was a sentiment? He closed his eyes and felt towards the seal in his mind.

“Did you say something?”

…

“ LET’S TALK TOMORROW, BRAT. ”

Sakura was eating dinner with her family. It was mostly silent, though courtesies were exchanged. As she rose to wash her plate, her father spoke up.
“I’d like to talk with you about something, downstairs.”

Their basement would be better described as a bunker. A long flight of stairs, hidden by three floorboards and a concerningly large drop from the living room, went down to a small room about 10 by 10 meters. The walls were lined with seals to block out sound. Kizashi Haruno had spent a small fortune on this bunker out of concern for his family. This concern was what now led him to this conversation, one he desperately wanted to avoid.

“You should transfer out of your team.”

“W-why?” Sakura was genuinely stunned. This was the first time that her dad had ever said anything remotely like that.

“You know better than I do. The Chunin exams. There’s going to be a jinchuurichi participating. I don’t know how to begin to explain how dangerous it’s going to be.”

“But Naruto is —”

“— relatively normal thanks because the Fourth Hokage and his wife were two of the best seal-masters in the world. Suna’s jinchurichi — he’s dangerous, incredibly dangerous.”

“I’m not that weak —”

“This isn’t about strong or weak, Sakura. This is about risks. You are strong, stronger than I was at your age. But I haven’t lived this long because I’m a strong ninja. I’ve lived this long because I avoided risks. For every bold ninja, there are a hundred other dead ones. If you get caught in the cross-fire between two tailed-beast carriers, you will die.”

Sakura only looked at the ground.

“Me and Mebuki’s greatest nightmare is outliving you. Please don’t make it come true.”

“Sasuke. Do not fight Suna’s jinchuurichi. He will kill you.”

“Wasn’t planning to.”

“ YOU HAVE TO FIND THAT RED-HAIRED BOY.”

“Are you crazy?! He’ll kill me!”

“Is that really such a bad thing?”

“If I die you die,” Naruto asked confidently.

“ DEATH ISN’T SO…FINAL FOR US TAILED BEASTS. WE ARE OF NATURE, SO WHEN WE RETURN TO NATURE WE FORM ONCE AGAIN. ”

“Why don’t normal people do that?”

“ BECAUSE YOU HAVE PRIED YOURSELF OUT OF NATURE’S HAND. ”

“Huh?”

“ NUANCE IS LOST ON YOU. ”

“Okay okay so you get to respawn forever and I don’t. This isn’t fair.”

“ MY BEING ENSLAVED BY YOUR KIND FOR MORE THAN HUNDRED YEARS ISN’T FAIR EITHER. ”

“My point is, I can’t just walk up to Gaara. I’ll die and that’ll be it. Why do you want to do it anyways?” The Fox thought about it.

“ A JINCHUURICHI IS BOTH HUMAN AND TAILED-BEAST. IF I ENGAGE SHUKAKU, THE HUMAN PART WON’T BE ABLE TO BORROW HIS STRENGTH. ”

“Wait a minute. Borrow strength? You can do that? Also who’s Shukaku?”

“ SHUKAKU IS MY BROTHER. DO YOU NOT REMEMBER THE FIGHT ON THE BRIDGE? ” Naruto’s hand clenched so hard his knuckles turned white.

“Never do that again.”

“ YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN KILLED. ”

“For the first time.”

“...are you scared of death?”

“ I FIND THE PROSPECT OF DYING TO A HUMAN DEEPLY EMBARRASSING. ” Naruto pondered it.

“I didn’t realize that the Tailed Beasts had names…kind of obvious now that I think about it. What’s yours?”

“ I GIVE MY NAME TO THOSE I RESPECT. ”

“Rude.”

“ DON’T LECTURE ME ON POLITENESS. YOUR MANNERS ARE AN INSULT TO EVERY SENTIENT CREATURE ALIVE. ”

“Okay but that still sounds incredibly dangerous.”

“ IF YOU HELP ME, I WILL RECONSIDER THE NATURE OF THIS…ARRANGEMENT. ”

“Arrangement?”

“ YOU ARE A VALUABLE WEAPON BECAUSE OF MY STRENGTH. BUT YOU ONLY RECEIVE WHAT STRENGTH I CHOOSE TO GIVE YOU. ”

“So you’ll give me strength if I do this? Because I don’t want your strength.”

“ MY STRENGTH IS THE REASON YOU AND YOUR TEAMMATES DON’T HAVE A SHALLOW GRAVE BACK IN WAVE. SECONDLY, THE THOUGHT OF FREELY GIVING YOU MY STRENGTH DISGUSTS ME FAR MORE THAN IT DOES ME. I AM GIVING YOU AN OPPORTUNITY YOUR PREDECESSORS WOULD HAVE BEGGED ON THEIR KNEES FOR, YOU STUPID BRAT. ”

“ Definitely feels like you’re trying to trick me.”

“ THEN LETS HAVE THIS MEETING WITH YOUR KAGE. ” Naruto scruched his face in concentration. While it killed him to admit he couldn’t do something, he couldn’t deny that Gramps would know what to do.

“Alright, tomorrow.”

Leave it to Naruto to decide the Hokage’s schedule before the man himself knew it.

“No deal.”

“ THEN IT SHALL BE THE LAST ONE I OFFER. ”

“Even as Hokage, I cannot honor such a deal. I cannot imagine who will be the Kage when Naruto dies, but I cannot imagine they would simply let you leave.”

“ THEN I WILL WAIT UNTIL YOU LOT DIE OFF FOR A MORE REASONABLE GENERATION .”

“We will never have a generation stupid enough to have a repeat-performance of that day.”

And Naruto felt something. Indignation? But it quickly vanished.

“This meeting is over.” He and Yamato left quickly. But Naruto couldn’t stop mulling it over in his head. That reaction. That twinge of emotion from the Fox.

Naruto had always been an optimist. He had graduated where everyone was certain he would fail, he had come back from Wave alive when everyone around him told him to give up. His belief in the better option had never failed him.

“ I IMPALED BOTH YOUR PARENTS ON THE SAME CLAW. DO NOT GET THE WRONG IDEA. ”

He believed that the Fox inside him wasn’t the one who killed his parents.

“If you tell me what you want with Gaara, I’ll help you. Deal?”

“ YOU IMBECILE .”

“Rude.”

Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura were standing together outside of Ichiraku’s. The idea was Naruto’s. He began to speak.

“Are all of you p-planning to take the Chunin exams? I mean it’s fine if not, but …”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Of COURSE I’m planning to take the Chunin exams! I’ll be the best ninja ever and show everyone it’s true.”

“Interesting.”

“Don’t say it like I’m crazy, Sasuke! I’ll definitely do it!”

“...sure.”

“WELL SCREW YOU YOU —”

“Naruto, I believe in you. Sasuke, stop bullying Naruto.”

“That jerk could never bully me —”

“Naruto. This wasn’t the only reason you called us here.” And she saw Naruto’s expression flicker for a brief moment. Right on the money. Naruto knew there was no getting out of this one, so he started.

“You know that Gaara person, right?”

“Yeah. Hope we don’t run into him anytime soon —”

“I’m going to try and get close to him during the exam.”

“Naruto.” Sakura chuckled, but Naruto wasn’t laughing. She remembered her father’s warning. If you get caught in the cross-fire between two tailed-beast carriers, you will die. “No. Why the hell would you even want to do that?” Naruto’s expression struggled between worry and ultimately resignation.

“The Fox asked me to.”

“You’re listening to the Nine-tails —”

“I know I know. But according to it, Gaara holds the One-Tail and —”

“One-Tail as in…”

“There’s nine Tailed-Beasts, and the One-Tail is…”

“I see. Thanks, Naruto.”

“Yeah but the One-tail is apparently in a really weird state and that might be why Gaara is like … that”

“How is the Nine-tailed supposed to help?”

“So apparently the Fox can do this thing where he can share a mental space with the other Jinchuurichi. Hopefully, that should allow him to help the One-tail and Gaara.”

“And how does this mental space thing work?”

“Oh. I have to link chakra with Gaara.”

“So. If the Nine-tails isn’t screwing with you and if he can fix whatever’s going on with Gaara and if you manage to do the whole linkage thing, then it should be fine. Why do you even want to do this?”

“Naruto?”

“Sakura?”

“That’s absurdly dangerous.”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to —”

“You think I’d let you do that alone? Are you fucking stupid?”

“I’m with Sakura on this one.”

“B-but it’ll be really risky —”

“I think I’d rather kill myself out of shame than let you face that alone. Besides, my ancestor is famous for capturing the tailed beasts.”

“ DON’T YOU DARE SPEAK OF THAT MAN — ”

“The Fox is angry,” Naruto stated.

“Oh. Sorry,” Sasuke said. “Wait. Why am I even apologizing?”

Sakura interrupted. “Either way, you’re not doing this alone. Besides. Do you even know how to link chakra?” Naruto’s face told her everything. “Thought so.”

Chapter Text

She was going to learn medical ninjutsu in a week. That was the middle ground she had struck between risk and reason. If she could learn medical ninjutsu in a week, then she hopefully wouldn’t get killed immediately.

A week was left until the Chunin exams. Sakura could punch through a tree without breaking her hand. Her training had now evolved into conditioning, then sparring against Lee and losing. But she was getting better. She’d learned to substitute like she could breathe, and now, the matches lasted for minutes at a time. In addition, she’d used her seals for water walking in new and creative ways. The principle was simple: by using chakra to increase the friction between water molecules, she had turned it essentially into glue. When she explained the principle to Naruto, she could’ve sworn to seeing the possibilities open in his eyes.

“Thank you,” he said, uncharacteristically serious. “Six Paths bless you.” Sakura was dead curious about what he was going to do with the information, but she had more important things to do.

Like finishing the entire thousand page anatomy textbook she pulled out from one of the civilian libraries. According to another medical student at the local hospital she had relentlessly hounded until he broke, in order to even begin learning medical ninjutsu, she needed to know it by heart. At least the information was in one place.

And so when she exhausted herself during the day physically, at night, she exhausted herself mentally, memorizing each page and organizing it until she could remember every bone, every muscle, every chemical pathway the human body could offer in every organ, how they repaired themselves, how the body heals itself and how the doctors of old could cut and stitch and inject a person to recovery. By the time she was done, there were three days left to the exam’s start, two and a half if you included the fact that Sakura pulled an all-nighter to finish the book.

But memorizing a medical textbook and applying that knowledge are two different things. Learning medical ninjutsu was strictly out of the question. Too difficult to get chakra anywhere near the necessary properties for medical use, and far too dangerous if anything but perfect. Maybe later she could, but right now she needed other options.

Namely, she was thinking of using thread saturated with chakra. This was an attractive option for two reasons. 

Firstly, it would allow her to quickly close and heal wounds on the fly. Sure, they would probably have to be checked out eventually, but in the short run, it could save lives. And secondly, it wasn’t actually that hard to use chakra for healing purposes. Apparently, large amounts of raw chakra could be used to heal wounds automatically. But she could circumvent the large amounts necessary by using a needle and thread: the thread would only have contact with a small number of cells, meaning that she could get the benefits for none of the effort or expenditure.

Problem was keeping the chakra in the thread. Even with the thread, using it for healing would require significant chakra expenditure. In addition, preloading the thread with chakra proved to be difficult no matter the composition. Too much spiritual chakra and it dissipated straight from the thread. Too much physical, however, and it peeled right off. This meant the process had to be more involved than that.

Dyeing. If Sakura thought about it, she was essentially dying thread in chakra. So she decided to try essentially the same thing, this time taking silk thread and dyeing it in chakra saturated (non-toxic dye). It did take notably longer than usual to finish dyeing, but the end result was usable. She tested it by making a slight cut on her finger. Though it was slightly discomforting to sew through her own flesh, the wound ultimately steamed shut, meaning that Sakura could easily extract the now chakra-less thread. Perfect.

She was sitting at the dinner table. She hadn’t spoken to her Father since she announced her intent to take the Chunin exams against his wishes. And now, they were eating. The warm lights above them felt strangely cold, and she braved a glance at her father, who seemed a little too intent on her plate.

“I’m not going to die,” she announced. Her mother flinched, and her father stared at her. She would have preferred him yelling to the blank stare she got.

“Fight me,” he said. “If you’re really so serious about this, fight me.”

“Are you sure?” she was bewildered. This man, who’d never touch a kunai outside of his job, was now challenging his daughter to combat.

“If I’m going to send my own daughter on a suicide mission, I want her to at least be able to beat me.” he deadpanned. Sakura’s head spun. He was being serious.

“...when?” she asked, still not quite believing it.

“After you finish dinner.” What the hell?

“...let me get my ninja gear.”

They were standing in training ground 42, Sakura under a large oak tree. The punching bag was safely put away, and her father was at the opposite end. He had adopted a fighting stance.

“Are you sure you want to —”  an explosion rang out and her father disappeared in the smoke. She sensed for him, right behind —

She spun at him with a kick and he blocked it, getting knocked back, retaliating by swiping at her with a kunai. But at that point, he had already lost. All Sakura had to do was grab his arm and pin him to the ground, his twisted behind his chest.

“Do we have to do this?” she asked. “You haven’t practiced fighting in years —” and then she noticed him making hand signs for a substitution. A rush of air, and suddenly he was right above her. She barely rolled out of the way.

“That sort of overconfidence will get you killed —” he said as thread started wrapping around his feet. Sakura pulled on them, knocking him to the ground. She unraveled the thread in her sleeve, using it to bind his hands.

“I win.” She disarmed her Father, untying him. As soon as he did, he hugged her, sobbing.

“...don’t die, alright? Please don’t die. Whatever you do, come back. Please.”

“I will.” She gave him a shaky smile.

“...if you’re really going to go, I should tell you everything I can about the Exams.”

Chapter Text

The exams arrived. All three entered into a rather dull administrative building.

“What do you think the test’ll be?” Naruto asked. “Do you think we’ll have to fight?”

“I don’t think we’d be fighting in an office,” Sasuke replied. “Even when my family conducts special training for indoor combat situations, the buildings themselves are constructed from scratch in dedicated training grounds. It’ll stick to the previously established pattern to the Chunin exams.”

“...What was that again?”

“Written, field, then combat exam. Well not a written exam, actually. In my fathers years, the test was an escape room of sorts,” Sakura explained.

“...okay. We’ll KICK this tests ass! Especially with you here.” Naruto grinned, and Sakura felt her previous apprehension disappear.

A sign pointed to a stairwell. “CHUNIN EXAMS,” it read. Naruto and Sasuke were about to start up the stairs, but Sakura held them back. 

“Wait.” using her sensing, she expanded her reach to the entire building. She wouldn’t want to walk in unaware. She couldn’t be the only person with the same idea so she probably wouldn’t be singled out either.

“There appears to be some sort of jutsu on the third floor,” she recognised. “Based on how thin it is…genjutsu? And two people seem to be maintaining it. And a lot of people seem to be behind them. Trying to get through the door?”

“Should we go there?” Sasuke asked. All three of them considered it. Then, Naruto spoke.

“I’ll send shadow clones to each floor to figure out what’s going on.”

“That’s a good idea. You should disguise them as the three of us each so they aren’t given away. And so four different triplets of Naruto disguised as Team 7 ascended the stairs. After a while, Naruto spoke. 

“The third floor is just a distraction to fool test-takers into thinking the test is being held there. Also, a guy in green skinsuit challenged Sasuke to a duel and kicked it so hard it cracked the ground before dispelling.”

“... that was Rock Lee,” Sakura muttered. “Guys. Do not fight that guy.”

“I could beat him —”

“— no, Sasuke.”

“— I said no. You don’t want to.”

“...okay.”

“No seriously. Even if you do win, it’ll be a huge waste of energy. We need to focus on the exams.”

And so they went up to the fourth floor. Immediately, they were met by Rock Lee.

“SASUKE UCHIHA! I PREVIOUSLY CHALLENGED A MAN MASQUERADING AS YOU. NOW, AS THE GENUINE ARTICLE, I CHALLENGE YOU TO A SPAR!”

“...No thanks,” Sasuke said. “How about after the test? Or maybe during. I’ve heard that there’s a combat portion.”

“VERY WELL!” Rock Lee yelled. The three watched him go off.

“Was that …” Sasuke asked.

“Yes. He is incredibly strong.”

“He looks stupid.”

“It’s quite intimidating when he’s kicking your face in.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Naruto said.

“SAKURA!!!” This time, it was Ino. She was flanked by Choji and Shikimaru. “YOU BETTER GET TO THE FINAL ROUND, BECAUSE I’M DEFINITELY GOING TO BEAT YOU THEN!”

“...sure,” Sakura said, rolling her eyes and smirking at her. “I’m sure you will.” Looking around, she saw the rest of her graduating class gathered around someone. On further inspection, he appeared to be a fellow Konoha shinobi: silver hair, a gray sleeved shirt under a blue garment, wrapped with a belt. He seemed well-prepared too: a weapons pouch, presumably containing weapons. There seemed to be no supplies for a long-term field exercise, but he could be carrying a sealing tag, just as Sakura was currently. She turned her attention to the cards in his hand. It appeared to have Kiba’s face on it, with information printed under.

“43 D-ranks! I knew the number, but it looks even more impressive when its all printed out.” Kiba leaned back on a nearby desk, a self-satisfied grin on his face. Akamaru, who was wrapped around his neck, barked in agreement.

“You should look at mine next! Naruto yelled.”

“42 D-ranks —”

“— take that, Naruto —”

“— and one A-rank.”

“Wait.” Kiba sat up, staring at the members of Team 7. “So that time when you came back with Sasuke covered in bandages and Sakura’s arm in the cast was —”

“— Our first C-rank, which got upgraded to an A-rank midway,” Sasuke explained.

“Some rich business tycoon guy wanted our client dead,” Naruto added.

“And y’all just … skipped the C-ranks.”

“That was supposed to be a C-rank, so we did technically meet the requirement,” Sakura added.

“Six Paths,” Kiba muttered, and then went back to leaning on the desk. Ino was staring at Sakura with concern.

“—I’m fine now, so there’s really no need to worry,” Sakura said, correctly interpreting the look on Ino’s face. “And we’ve talked about this —”

“— But it’s still scary every time you say it,” Ino protested.

“...you? Future winner of the Chunin exams? Scared?” Sakura mocked? “Can’t even imagine it.”

“You shouldn’t say that so loudly,” the gray-haired genin said. “The other teams might take offense to it —”

And with that, a fist flew towards his face. Kabuto just barely dodged it.

“So that’s why you’re still a genin,” the masked man in a fur jacket suddenly standing above Kabuto’s retching figure said. Didn’t Kabuto get out of the way though? The man looked at all of them, and then at her. What’s his deal? She noticed the music note headband he was wearing. Sound, a minor village near Konohagure. Does he have a grudge or something? And then he scoffed.

“I’ll enjoy killing all of you.” He walked back to the other side of the room, and the nine Konoha rookies looked at him, stunned. Kiba snarled, along with Akamaru. “Let’s rip him apart.”

“No, not now,” Sakura said. “We can consider it if he attacks again. Right now, we shouldn’t waste energy fighting, though. Kabuto, are you alright?”

“Yeah, just got really nauseous.”

“Did he poison you —”

“No, he just did something with my auditory senses.” Sakura did remember her medical textbook talking about how the ears regulated balance. “Are you sure though?”

“I’m a medic nin, so I’m pretty sure.”

“...you’re the first genin medic-nin I’ve met.”

“That’s true. Usually, medic-nin rankings are based off of seniority and working knowledge.”

“So you’re here because…”

“I want to become a chunin based purely off my own combat skills.” That’s pretty admirable, actually.

“That’s cool! I haven’t ever seen you in the academy, though. When did you graduate?”

“Seven years.”

“Isn’t that a bit long?” Naruto blurted. Sakura was about to object, but it was true. Her dad, for example, held off on taking the exam for more than a decade before finally taking time off to train and complete it, first try. Seven times in a row seemed a little … 

“Absurd, I suppose. But I’ll pass eventually.” Kabuto said, smiling. He changed the subject, “Do you want to see any information on the candidates?”

“Gaara of the Sand,” Sasuke said immediately.

“Four A-ranks, two B-ranks, no C or D-Ranks.”

“How did you get this information?” Ino asked. Strange, if the daughter of the Head of T&I doesn’t even know this information.

“I asked them,” Kabuto said smoothly. HUH?

“Did you… ask everyone?” Ino asked, bewildered.

“No, the rest are from Sunagakure, Amegakure, Kusagakure, Takigakure, and Otogakure.”

“But wasn’t the whole point of the Chunin exams to see the strength of the other villages? Why are there only two major villages?” Naruto asked.

“Good question. The official justification is the distance. However, the fact is that Sunagakure is the only village that has good enough relations with Konohagure to warrant sending their shinobi here,” Kabuto explained.

Sasuke started. “But what about the whole surveillance of military might —”

“— the minor villages serve as proxies,” Sakura realized. “They don’t have dedicated loyalty to one village or one nation, so they can be used to extract intelligence from the other Great Villages.”

“...why did you ask them though?” Ino asked. Sakura wanted to know.

“Because the worst they could have said is no.” With Ino’s doubtful look, he kept explaining. “We’re in Konoha. If that team breathes funny, it would start a Suna-Konoha war. And they would be the first casualties.”

Naruto nodded seriously, and then his eyes focused. “I wanna see Green boy’s —”

“— Rock Lee’s.” Sakura corrected. Kabuto riffled through his cards and then frowned.

“He’s definitely an interesting case. His team’s completed 200 D-ranks, 50 C-ranks, 3 B-Ranks, 2 A-ranks. Apparently he’s making a name for himself by only using taijutsu.” Sasuke looked utterly stunned.

“No wonder he beat Naruto up,” he said seriously. “Naruto of all people couldn’t hold a candle to that.”

“WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN? —” Naruto yelled —

“— SHUT THE FUCK UP RIGHT NOW OR I WILL DISQUALIFY YOU. NAMES WILL APPEAR ON THE DESKS IN FRONT OF YOU. YOU WILL SIT AT THOSE DESKS AND NOWHERE ELSE OR YOU WILL BE DISQUALIFIED. IF YOU SPEAK, YOU WILL BE DISQUALIFIED.”

Everyone sat down. The scarred man at the front, in a large coat, flak jacket (indicating he was at least chunin), and a cloth around his head (pinned with his head band) started speaking. Sakura noticed Ino’s posture was relaxed. She internally cheered. It meant she already knew the purpose of this exam: intelligence gathering. Then, she thought about it some more. She didn’t know how Naruto or Sasuke would fare, honestly. Naruto was clever, she would give him that. But Sasuke — he was definitely straight-laced in some ways. Then, she shook those thoughts out of her head. They would be fine. All of them would find a way, because if they could survive fighting two different A-ranked nin, then they could survive an office building.

“There are 60 of you in this room right now. The other 93 have been moved to alternate locations on this floor. Consider yourself unlucky that this location has me.” At that, a chill washed over Sakura. Genjutsu. She couldn’t even dispel it because it was applied and released so quickly. Intimidation is a means to an end, she remembered Ino telling her. And that end is getting whoever to spill their guts.

“Each team will start the test with 100 points. This number will be distributed between each of your three team members. You will see the number of points you personally have on the paper —” he clapped his hands — “on your desk.” Huh. Sakura had three points. Wonderful. That meant that Naruto and Sasuke, combined, had 97 points. A total of 48 possible score pairs for them, then.

“The aim of this test is to end with the least number of points. However, if your team ends with a total score of 0 points or below, you will be disqualified.” The scarred man slammed his hand against the blackboard, and a seating chart formed.

“On your test, each of you may transfer any number of points to another person in this room by writing their name of the paper. The only thing that matters is your teams final total score, so you may transfer 50 points to another person even if you only have 10.”

“So the final score = 100 - the total amount we transfer + the amount transferred to us?” a Taki nin asked.

“DID I ASK YOU TO FUCKING SPEAK?” The man thundered. Is this part of the act? Or is he just always like this? But the nin had already summed up what Sakura had thought. The object of the exam is to know how much we’ll gain and then to remove an amount so that we end up with the smallest amount possible. The better we can predict how much we’ll lose, then we’ll be able to predict how much we should each give away.

“Additionally, there are a few restrictions. Consider this like any test you took during the academy. If we find that you attempted to communicate with others in the room or that you attempted to view another examinee’s paper, you will be struck for cheating. Five strikes and you will be asked to leave the exam hall.” The scarred man's eyes shone with glee as Sakura looked around. Six proctors, chunin by the looks of their jackets. They all had really mean expressions on their faces.

“The test begins… now.”

She took three seconds to memorize the seating chart. The fact that it took her this long would mean others had already done it. Fuck. No matter. Someone else had the bright idea of throwing an explosive tag at the blackboard. Good. She was going to do that anyways. Finally, she scratched out the name on her own desk with her kunai. Naruto and Sasuke, looking at her, had already done the same. Bit dramatic for a written test, but whatever. Next, was the problem of communicating with Naruto and Sasuke. Sakura was mostly fine in that respect, since she could move ink to form messages on Naruto’s and Sasuke’s paper. However, communicating back would be a problem. That was until Sasuke banged on a desk, signalling everyone in the class, including Naruto and Sasuke, to look at him. When they did, they were immediately sucked into his sharingan patterns.

“I think that we can communicate more effectively here,” Sasuke explained. They were standing in a world of red, black smooth grounds and white clouds.
“HOW’D YOU DO THAT?!” Naruto yelled.

“Itachi taught me. Even at my development, genjutsu is one of the more chakra-efficient uses of the sharingan.” Sakura looked at him in confusion. This was the first time she’d ever seen a genjutsu like this.

“Ah, the illusions that you make are a different type. I asked Itachi and apparently there’s two types of genjutsu: received and interpreted. The type you do is received, meaning that you create illusions in the environment around you. Interpreted, which is apparently what the sharingan is really good at, allows me to manipulate chakra directly to your nerves in order to change what you sense.” So that was what Kakashi had done on the exam day. No wonder she couldn’t block it. Sasuke winced.

“Can’t hold it for very long though, because it’ll give us all splitting headaches. Sakura, what do you think we should do?”

There’s two ways we can go about this. Either predict the number of points we get, or influence the others into choosing what we want. The first one would be nearly impossible, considering the sheer number of factors to take into account. Villages, alliances, strategies… she simply couldn’t predict what the others would choose.

“I think that we should find a way to make the others choose people that aren’t us, preferably from a different village.”

“YEAH!” Naruto agreed. “Like those Sound jerks. I hope they fail.” Sasuke nodded along. They definitely seemed like trouble for the exam. He stroked his chin, deep in thought.

“How do we convince them to do that?” Naruto had a good question. Sasuke and Sakura thought about it, and then she had a brilliant idea.

“We take away their choice.” And that’s how every non-Konoha team, spare Gaara’s because they really didn’t want to piss him off, found black ink creeping up and soaking into their paper. The ink manipulation really was just a gift that kept on giving. Of course she nominated that damn sound team. Dosu, it seemed, was the guy who attacked Kabuto. She had fun writing his name down and giving him 90 points. Naruto and Sasuke, of course, didn’t have to do anything and they knew as much.

When time was called, the scarred man finally introduced himself as Morino Ibiki. All four Leaf teams, plus Gaara’s, had passed. The rest were nominated through a random lottery system, since most of the other teams had tied at 0 points. It seemed that every Leaf Ninja in the room had the mind to nominate Sound to receive points, hence the large number of equal scores.

“WE PASSED!” Naruto whooped. His declaration prompted more cheering from the rest of the room, as well the other teams that made it through. There were quite a few dirty looks aimed at Team 7, though. The Sound  team specifically looked murderous. Thank the Six Paths we eliminated them. Whether cheering or cursing their luck, all of that was interrupted by someone crashing through the door. The hinges fell off and everything, so quite literally. Naruto yelled, along with the rest of the room. Sasuke’s eyebrows shot up. Ibiki rubbed his head, probably in frustration.

“Stop doing that,” he muttered.

“I’ll pay for it!” the woman announced. She was wearing a beige trench coat over chainmail, with an orange skirt and blue belt.

“No you won’t,” Ibiki countered.

“You will? THANKS!” Anko yelled. 

“Anyways, I’ll be your proctor for this section.” She shoved a handful of forms to Ibiki.

“Make sure all of you fill this out?”

“What is this?” one of the Waterfall genin asked.

“It’s a waiver of liability in case you die,” Anko grinned. “On that topic, the location of our next test is actually called the ‘Forest of Death. You can fill those out on the way there.’”

Chapter Text

The rules were simple. Some teams had scrolls of Heaven. Some had scrolls of Earth. To pass, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura had to have a scroll of Heaven and Earth. A team with an Earth scroll tried to take their Heaven scroll. The first member punched at Sasuke, only to find air, a projection of an illusion-seal. Then, the real Sasuke hit him in the back of the head with a kunai. Before the poor genin hit the floor, a three-man team of Naruto had taken the other two members. With their Heaven and the other team’s Earth, they focused on their more pressing tasks: finding Gaara and passing the exam.

Ideally, Naruto was the best choice to hold the scroll. However, he would be the one doing the chakra transfer with Gaara. Speaking of chakra transfers…

They had practiced it, right before the Chunin exams. However, what they found was Naruto took hours to properly synchronize with Sasuke or Sakura the first time he tried. Gaara would be a completely different case. Therefore, Sakura had to act as a conduit. Naruto could synchronize with Sakura, Sakura with Gaara. And hopefully that would work. It had to work. If not … 

She tried not to think about it too much. Naruto and Sakura made their way towards Gaara’s team. Sakura’s sensing wasn’t necessary, this time. Apparently, the Nine-tails could sense where they were. Naruto was relaying that to her and Sasuke. Wonderful. Follow the leader with a homicidal fox. On the way, they ran into two other teams. These ones had more interesting jutsus. One of them could throw needles. Another could stretch his tongue. Fascinating stuff. Luckily they had both the heaven and earth scrolls. Good to keep, for insurance. It was their fault for going after Team 7, after all. And at last, they came to the redhead himself, standing with his two siblings.

“We come in Peace,” Naruto said, putting down a Heaven and Earth scroll. Heavy emphasis on the word piece. Gaara just stared at him. Sakura looked at the three siblings pleadingly. Temari spoke up.

“Do you think we need your help to pass the exams?” No, actually, Sakura did not.

“Uhhh actually…this is about the thing…” Naruto stuttered. Well anyone would have trouble speaking in this …situation. Thankfully, Sasuke took the initiative.

“Naruto here is the vessel for the Nine-tails. According to him, the Fox wishes to communicate with the One-tail inside Gaara. Kankuro raised his hands in a claw position, and Temari opened her fan.

“Leave.”

“It’ll help —”

“I asked once. Do we have to cut off your arms before you listen?”

“WAIT,” the redhead suddenly murmured. His two siblings turned to him, shocked. 

“G-gaara I don’t think this is a good idea —” Kankuro stuttered out.

“IF YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT MY SAFETY, YOU SHOULDN’T. I’LL BE AT MY MOST VULNERABLE, SO IF SHUKAKU DOES GET OUT YOU CAN CUT ME TO PIECES.”

“You’ll die,” Temari whispered.

“AND YOU’D ACHIEVE WHAT FATHER HAS FAILED TO DO FOR THE FIRST 12 YEARS OF MY LIFE. DON’T ACT LIKE YOU CARE.” Temari looked like she wanted to protest, but Gaara didn’t look like he was in the mood for debate, to put it lightly.

“Alright,” she said. “You three. Try anything funny and I. Will. Cut. You. Down. Understand?” All three of them nodded.

“Good. How is this going to work?”

Sakura grabbed Naruto’s hand, and held a shaky one out to Gaara. He accepted it. To her surprise, it felt incredibly rough. Is his entire skin covered with Sand? That’s incredible. Then, the sand parted, and she felt his smooth skin underneath. This was arguably the hardest part. Now, she shared chakra with Naruto. They had practiced this. It was easy. She felt her chakra mingle with his. It was warm. Now for Gaara. She focused on the flow of chakra through his hand, and poured the smallest amount she could. Slowly, she added more, letting it flow through Gaara. His chakra was cool, which was a weird feeling for chakra to have. And then she felt something else. There was no temperature to it: instead, Sakura would describe it as incredibly dry. And then she blacked out.

She was standing on some sort of liquid surface. She looked around.

“HELLO!” she whirled around. Naruto was there. He looked awfully composed.

“Have you been here before?”

“No, actually,” Naruto replied. But I knew this place existed, if that makes sense.”

“... Okay.” Sakura didn’t understand, but Naruto did, and that was enough for her.

“So do you know what this is?”

“MY CAGE,” a voice said. There was no direction to the voice, but she immediately knew where to look. A cage, behind it a giant, reddish-orange, fox. Red slitted eyes, just like Naruto’s on the bridge.

“You’re…the Nine-tails,” she said. Sakura did not know how to feel about this, so she just stared.

“Thank you for your astute observation.” Sakura decided on anger but bit it back as another thought formed in her head.

“If you’re here, where’s Gaara and the One — no, Shukaku?” they should be here. She felt both of their chakras, and unless something was horribly wrong, they should be here somewhere.

“Here…” She looked down and saw a thing. It was Gaara, but he looked wrong. His face looked like it was stretched like putty, bones and a second face jutting out from it like a tumor. Blue veins of chakra ran along it. Currently, he was gasping for breath, which was truly bizarre because Sakura was pretty sure this was a mindscape. Maybe it was a reflection of something else?

She looked back at Naruto. He looked horrified.

“WHO DID THIS TO YOU?”

“They thought…that by chaining me directly to the boy’s spirit … that they could bring me to heel. But now …” the Gaara-Shukaku hybrid gasped “I am an … abomination.”

And the Fox let out a growl. “I SHOULD HAVE KILLED MORE OF YOU WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE.” Naruto flinched, but he dared not say a word. Shinobi or tailed beast, the disgust at those who did this to Gaara and Shukaku was mutual.

The Fox looked at Naruto, and then spat up a gob of his chakra onto the ground. It rolled towards Naruto. “IF YOU TRULY WISH FOR MY COOPERATION IN USING MY POWER, THEN GIVE THIS TO SHUKAKU.”

“Huh?” Naruto asked.

“MY CHAKRA CONTAINS THE PROPERTY OF EMPATHY. EVEN IF IT DOES NOT COMPLETELY HELP, IT SHOULD TEMPORARILY GIVE MY BROTHER THE ABILITY TO DISTINGUISH HIMSELF FROM GAARA.”

Sakura spoke up. “But won’t that kill Gaara? Your chakra is probably poisonous to him.” She remembered her own hand, how the skin flaked off at the Foxes' mere touch. But the Fox snorted.

“YOU’LL SIMPLY NEED TO SUPPLY THE CHAKRA TO SHUKAKU INSTEAD OF GAARA.”

“Wouldn’t that be…difficult…for Naruto?” Sakura winced. As much as she cared for Naruto, she knew that this would require finesse he simply didn’t have at the moment.

“WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO IT?” the Fox sneered. Sakura thought about it.

“Sure.”

“Y-you’re joking, right?” Naruto laughed nervously, then stopped.

“...It’s not enough to kill me, even if I was directly exposed to it.” Sakura said. “Besides, I think I can do it without exposing myself to the chakra.”

“Are you sure?” Naruto exclaimed. “I’m not. But it’s worth the risk. They…” she looked at Gaara and Shukaku, wheezing.

“They deserve better.” Naruto didn’t protest. Sakura coated her hands in chakra before reaching to the gob that the Fox spit up. It sizzled against her chakra, but it didn’t hurt. Not yet, at least. She transferred it to her left hand. She needed as much control as possible for this, after all. She walked over to the Shukaku-Gaara hybrid, now laying down on top of the water.

And then she pushed the chakra into the tumor that was growing out of Gaara. The chakra coating her hand went up in steam and it took all her willpower not to let go of the Foxes power, even as it scorched her hand. She moved it back, ignoring the pain. Shukaku yowled.

“TRANSFER IT TO THE CHAKRA PATHS, IDIOT CHILD.” Right. Chakra paths. She needed to transfer to the paths. But the gob wasn’t the best way to do this. Instead…

With her other hand, she drew out the chakra into a wire, then pushed that into the blue vein pulsing out of Gaara. He let out a growl, but didn’t seem to be in extreme pain as before. That was good. She pushed it, infinitely slowly.

“GOOD,” the Fox said. It was excruciating work. She had to simultaneously focus on pushing the chakra through as a wire and on not burning herself with it. More than once she felt her palms burning from lapses in attention. Would the injuries translate to real life? She couldn’t think about it, because she had more important things to focus on. And at last, the chakra in her hands was gone. She was panting from the exertion. Who knew feeding chakra to a tailed beast would be this hard, she thought. She looked over at Shukaku. The tumor seemed to be growing out of Gaara.

“Is…that a good thing?” asked Naruto.

“IT SHOULD HELP THEM DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN EACH OTHER,” replied Kurama. “WHILE THEY WON’T BE COMPLETELY APART, IT SHOULD ALLOW THEM TO LIVE MORE AS INDIVIDUALS THAN A FORCIBLY CONJOINED ABOMINATION OF YOUR KIND AND TAILED BEAST.”

“How long will the treatment take?” asked Sakura. She couldn’t imagine it would be immediate —

“IT SHOULD START TAKING EFFECT ALMOST IMMEDIATELY.” the Fox said.

“Great! So we’re done here?” asked Naruto.

“Wait. What are we getting in return?” asked Sakura. If they went through all of this, they’d better get something out of it at least. She, for one, probably lost a decade from the stress alone.

“...VERY WELL. I SHALL COOPERATE WHEN YOU NEED MY POWER AND COUNSEL,” the Fox replied.

“TO BE CLEAR, THIS IS TENTATIVE. I WILL NEVER RESPECT A SHINOBI.”

“Wasn’t counting on it,” muttered Naruto. And then they were both out of the seal-space. Sasuke was shaking them. “I think there’s a shinobi nearby,” he was saying. And then there was a gust of wind, far too strong to be natural, and Team 7 was separated.

One second, Sakura was slammed into a tree. She was in a separate clearing. She saw Naruto and Sasuke and Gaara’s team, they seemed to be fighting something —

And then there was a searing pain across her face. And her hands, and legs, and nose, and when she looked down, she only saw blood.

Need to stop the bleeding…

Thank god for the thread. She stepped into the clearing. Was it okay to do that? She didn’t know. But the choice was to die from the enemy, or to die from her injuries. If she was going to die anyways, she might as well make sure Naruto and Sasuke lived.

There was a ninja. Grass attire. But he turned around, and she realized he was no Grass shinobi. Orochimaru. A shinobi they taught lessons about was staring into her with yellow, snake-like eyes. There were flaps of was that skin she was going to die here wasn’t she and —

“You’re alive.” It was an observation, not a statement. He was looking at her, but she got the sense he didn’t see her. Should she run? No, she needed to find —

“Your teammates are fine,” he purred. “Especially Sasuke.” The lust in his voice made her hair stand on end. I need to get them and run.

“Do you see that sand dome over there? Your two little jinchuurichi friends are in there. Not before I got the little Uchiha, though. Relax, he’ll be fine. Even better than before.” He stroked his chin. “Oh yes, the Sasori-copycat. It was as nostalgic as it was amusing to see a … novice imitate a master.” His head tilted back towards her.

“Did you stitch yourself up?” he asked. How did he know? “Such a funny technique. They used to do that, before Tsunade — no, Lady Tsunade formally invented medical ninjutsu. Not very refined, though. Are you planning to attack me? I suppose I’m defending myself, then.” It hurts…

“Normally, the blades go straight through. You should be diced by now! Do you have some sort of body strengthening jutsu?” I need to go for the neck.

“You can certainly try, not that it’ll make much of a difference. Here, I’ll show you.” Is he even human?

“Human? Me? I don’t know. But I am better, if that’s what you want to know.”

“I’m glad you’re alive. I only wanted to get a more … personal fight with dear Sasuke, but I suppose you’ll have to take him back to the tower. Ah…it’s good that you survived. You can put that kunai down, I suppose. It didn’t work the first time, after all. Unless you want to end up like that.” He gestured to the severed arm next to the mound.

“I don’t think I killed him…ahh where was I? Yes. You’ll need to bring Sasuke to the tower. I will look forward to seeing how he blooms.” And then the S-ranked missing nin was gone.

She stumbled over to the Sand dome, and it parted to reveal Gaara, holding Kankuro. Naruto and Sasuke were next to them, lying down. Temari was holding a piece of cloth taut around the stub that used to be Kankuro’s arm. Fuck. She looked up at her.

“Did. you lead that thing here?” she hissed. Gaara didn’t stop looking at Kankuro. He seemed to be hyperventilating.

“N-no he just —”

“My brother lost his arm because of you. You’re lucky I won’t kill your team where they stand.” The words were vicious, but Temari also appeared to be pale, panting heavily. Meeting an S-ranked missing-nin who nearly murdered your family probably did that. 

 She started hoisting up her two brother when Sakura spoke.

“He used the wind jutsu…right?”

“...yes.”

“I might be able to reattach your brother’s arm, since the cuts were clean. He’ll still need to get it checked out, but he’ll still…have it.”

“Why should I trust you?” Good question. But…

“You can kill me where I stand if I think I’m doing something else.” That was the best she could say, honestly.

Sakura went over and grabbed the arm. She tried not to think too much about it. She aligned it as best she could against the stump. Little drops of blood trickled away. Was this hygienic? Who knows. She took her thread. She actually brought quite a lot of it. Then, she split it, and split it again. She would need extremely fine control to stitch the vessels and such together. And then began her first ever surgical operation.

It was difficult, she’d have to admit. More difficult than anything she’d ever sewn in her life. But she wasn’t about to back out, not after she said she’d do it. Why was she in the first place? She didn’t know. She finished up the work. Her hands were stained with blood. Temari’s eyes didn’t move from Kankuro’s arm.

“Thank you,” was all she said. Then, she picked up the two scrolls, and with Gaara and Kabuto, she flicked open her fan, riding into the air with all three of them. I wish I could do that. Now, she was left with Naruto and Sasuke.

“We need to get out of here,” she said to no one in particular. But how do I do that?

Chapter Text

“...I thought you were supposed to be disqualified.”

“Orochimaru’ll kill us anyways if we don’t give him Sasuke. So hand him over. We know you have him. If you don’t, we’ll kill you,” the girl said. The bells in her hand jingled as she talked. How do I get out of this?

“Not going to talk?” she said, voice dripping with condescension. “I’ll make you.” Fuck it. Objectively, running at the three Sound ninja was a stupid idea. She didn’t know their abilities. Objectively, the fact was she only knew the ability of one of them: the bandaged one, who produced a sound that somehow made people vomit. Maybe. She didn’t really know the details. And that was exactly the problem. She didn’t have a good grasp of their abilities. Outmanned, outgunned, outwitted. There was no way she was going to walk out of this alive on her own. Meaning … she needed help, unfortunately. The problem lied in getting help quick enough, though. The name of the game was stalling, then.

“Fine, Fine! I’ll show you then,” she said. “... please don’t kill me,” she added for good measure. For what it was worth, she really meant it. The second part, at least. And the first, to an extent. She would certainly show them. The question was how.

Sakura led them to a tree with a hollow inside. Currently, an illusion seal was there, projecting Naruto and Sasuke. Now, if even one of them would just walk over —

“— Go and wake up Sasuke. We want to fight him.” 

Fuck. That meant the explosion seal plan was out of the question. Worse, it meant that when they realized she had deceived them, she would be finished. What to do? What would Kakashi do? He’d probably turn their faces into mush before they could do anything. But she wasn’t Kakashi. She didn’t have an A-rank listing in the Bingo book. If she were Naruto or Sasuke or someone relevant, then maybe she could actually do something. Someone relevant. They thought she was weak, not worth their attention.

Their attention. What she needed to do was get their attention off of her and onto something else. While they were distracted, she could run like hell. One of the benefits of her training, along with her shadow techniques, meant that she could reduce the weight of Naruto and Sasuke to manageable amounts and still get away. Would it probably aggravate the wounds she wasn’t able to heal? Probably. But that was a problem for the medics.

Getting away. That was the plan, she told herself gingerly as she walked over to “Naruto” and “Sasuke.”

“Hurry the fuck up, the sound-nin with a happuri snapped.
“A-alright,” Sakura stammered. Thank the Sage they hadn’t noticed the seals on the ground. They were disguised, but still. She didn’t know what to expect. Her heart was pounding. She took shaky steps towards the tree. Fly or die, it was.

The bandaged one was the fast one, she knew. He also seemed like the leader of the group, the way the other two looked at him for guidance. Which was why when he noticed the blur of movement towards him, he was the first to react, jumping back towards a tree. A tree with her explosion tag on it. As the other two Sound-nin ran towards the sound, she ran.

She barely had any chakra left, meaning she had to ration it out. A significant portion of it was going to go towards carrying Naruto and Sasuke. As she flung them over her shoulder at their real location, she used her sensing technique. Two smaller, and one larger shape with an even larger amount of chakra. Team 10.

She was sprinting when it first happened. A pain in her side, and then feeling gave out in her legs. It took everything she had to put Naruto and Sasuke down gently. And then the nausea hit, in a wave so strong it took her to her knees, vomit clawing its way out of her throat and onto the ground. Even with her vision blurring, the amount of red in it was concerning.

“You were right, Dosu,” the female Sound-nin said. Did they … plan for this?

“I’m always right, Kin,” replied the bandaged one. Sakura tried to move, but there was no feeling in her body.

“That was really clever, you know.”

“Yeah. Bait, distract, run. Textbook-perfect strategy,” Zaku said.

“So easy to read, too. You really outdid yourself.” That was Kin. Or was it Dosu? It was really hard to keep track of. Her eyes began to close, against her will.

“Now, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to wake Sasuke up. And if you do a reaaaaally good job at it, we might even let you and the orange live.” What do they want with Sasuke? Could it have something to do with Orochimaru? If they wanted to kill him, they would’ve done it by now. She was lucky in that way. No, they wanted him awake for something.

What was obvious was that there was no way she could get out of this now. She needed to get help, soon. Ino’s team was close. If she could just get to them —

“Nobody’ll come save you ~” Kin sang. Her mind wandered. When she collapsed, it felt like two different techniques. Her intuition told her it couldn’t have been the one with the hapuri — her intuition told her that the two holes in his hand would likely be used for more physical attacks. That left Kin and Dosu. The nausea attack was obviously Dosu, leaving Kin, who was probably using genjutsu. The bell. It’s through the bell.

The three ninja were inching closer to Sasuke. Why were they so damn slow? And why am I still here? It’s embarrassing. But what could she do? She had barely any chakra left. They had every advantage. But that’s not important. She needed to get Naruto and Sasuke out of here, there was no other way. Every other option was too risky. All the options are too risky though. An utterly insane idea began to form in her head. I’d lose. Dosu was standing over Sasuke, now. But that’s a problem for the future.

A kunai with an illusion seal attached to it flew towards Dosu. He raised an eyebrow, almost in disappointment.

“An exploding tag? Do you care so little for your teammate?” He mocked. But Sakura used a substitution with the kunai, another in her hand directly at his throat. Dosu however, didn’t respond. He saw Sakura, a  few feet away, stabbing at the air like some sort of moron.

In any fight, distance and time are the two most important factors. Distance, so the knife is at your opponent's throat. Time, so when your opponent's fist is in your face, you move back to avoid it slamming into you. Acting is about having the right distance at the right time, and responding is about having the right time to move the right distance. 

But our perception of distance is controlled by our eyes, which in turn receive light. And this sense is fallible. Even the most incompetent academy student can manipulate light to some extent through the transformation jutsu, which uses chakra to reflect the light in otherwise impossible ways. Sakura, however, was no incompetent academy student. She took her illusion seal, and altered it — not to give off light, but to bend it, specifically in the way a convex lens does.

Any self-respecting shinobi usually learns to rely on multiple senses for combat. Dosu respected himself perhaps a little too much, but still could navigate and fight with only sound, almost as well as with his own sight. But not at the same time.

And that sort of negligence was why Dosu was expendable to Orochimaru, what separated him from a shinobi like Kakashi who could not only use all his senses in combat but decide which ones to trust on the fly. That sort of negligence was why, as Dosu attempted to use his wind technique to knock down the image of Sakura, he instead impaled his throat on the real Sakura’s kunai. An embarrassing end to a prideful shinobi without the skills to match it up.

Kin and Zaku stared in shock as Dosu’s body hit the ground. Sakura did too, in a less voluntary fashion than she might have liked. But Kin and Zaku didn’t exploit the weakness, however: they were too distracted by the image of Sakuke rising up, both Sharingan blazing, a ball of lightning in his hand.

“Who wants to die next?” he asked nonchalantly. Kin and Zaku looked at each other and fled. Maybe they should have wondered why the lightning jutsu didn’t have any sound, or why he chose now to get up, just when his pink-haired teammate had just collapsed. Sakura was incredibly lucky.

In fact, she was so lucky that as her vision faded into darkness and she blessed her skills in ventriloquism, it was Ino crouching over her in desperation. What a wonderful hallucination.

Ino was not enjoying her day in that forest. Shikimaru and Choji were complaining about the various ways the forest lacked amenities (seriously), and she personally was on edge, surveilling the teams around her through her sensing. After Sakura asked about it, Ino decided to pick up the subject herself. Turns out, she had a knack for it. Her own dad said that she was better than most people her age — she was able to “see” about a mile, and could pick out chakra signatures on top of that.

It was this ability that first set her on edge, when she sensed two things: firstly, Sakura(!) and her two teammates, blissfully unconscious: secondly, three ninja who should NOT have been in the exam. Ino personally had memorized the signature of every shinobi in that exam room (Sakura couldn’t be the only one with a good memory) and those three were the Sound ninja. The Sound ninja who were super-ultra disqualified. This set off alarm bells in her head.

“Choji. Shikimaru. We need to find Sakura.” Shikimaru and Choji turned towards her.

“Where?” Shikimaru asked. He probably would have complained, but the look in Ino’s eyes probably told him better. She pointed the direction they all sprinted in. As they ran, Ino’s sensing was telling her concerning things. The way that Sasuke’s and Naruto’s signatures weren’t quite moving indicated that they were unconscious. Secondly — HOLY SHIT DID SAKURA KILL THAT GUY? — the answer was probably yes, which Ino knew from the way the signature was fading out. Thirdly, she heard a really stupid impression of Sasuke coming from Sakura. She knew it wasn’t Sasuke because she was in his class, and he did not sound like that. Also, she was the one who talk Sakura to imitate voices and she was doing a stupidly bad job. But whatever she was doing seemed to work, seeing as the two other shinobi ran off. She smiled, despite the situation. Of course Sakura would find a way to beat three shinobi at once, outmanned and barely conscious. Her smile faded as she actually saw Sakura.

Ino was, in a word, gifted. That’s what everyone said: her mother, her father, the teachers at the academy, the many kids who surrounded her, the old clan members who instructed her, the adults at the social gatherings she was forced to attend as a clan heir. She would smile and talk and say the polite thing, the correct answer, throw the kunai and hit the target, kick and punch at the training dummy the way the textbook said to, and they would praise her. It didn’t really matter though, since the Akimichis could punch and kick and fight better, and Naras could do all of the strategy work. She was relevant only for her clan name and for the techniques it held. Her effort never mattered because there would always be some clan out there who could do what she could spend her whole life training to do, but better. And that was why, two years into the Academy, she stopped trying.

Nothing happened. The Academy was stupid, made so easy anyone could pass without trying. The adults still praised her. Nothing changed at all, except her eyes finally started to glaze over with boredom. She finally began to understand Shikimaru a little. Shinobi didn’t work with skills; they were born with them, given them with the clan they were from. No matter what this stupid academy tried to teach, those came from clans which could punch and kick would always punch and kick better than everyone else.  Shikimaru had come to that realization earlier than she had. That was why he was the way he was. Ino sometimes wondered how much she would have in common with Nara if she hadn’t met Sakura.

She had the same eyes as Ino, green eyes dull and glazed as she stared at the back of Iruka-sensei’s head. That was the word she would use to describe Sakura. That and also pretty, but the latter was obvious to anyone with a brain. Which spelled bad news for the bullies who jeered at her, but it also meant Ino could gain Sakura’s friendship by protecting her from them. That would have been it. Ino would have a new friend, and pink would disappear into the blacks and browns and reds and blues and whites, just like all the other friends she had.

But instead of mixing in, she stood out, demanding something from her. Their shared boredom over the Academy turned into a rivalry: over petty things at first, like who could get to class the fastest (and that meant sitting in the seat first, despite what Sakura might say) — who could get the largest number of consecutive 100%’s (because one was too easy, they both agreed) who could beat who in a sparring match, who could do the best Hokage impression, who could breathe the fastest.

No, rather than fading into darkness, Sakura brought color into her life. Even if the girl had the biggest inferiority complex she had seen in anyone, she was also obsessive and driven to a ridiculous degree. And even if Sakura didn’t see it, Ino could, clear as day: she left the clan kids in the dust, just barely behind Sasuke Uchiha (but he was exceptional, so he didn’t count) and herself (they were rivals, so it was really uncertain.)

And now that color was fading, pink turning into red turning into nothing, as Sakura lay in her arms, dress soaked in blood and spitting up some more. It was then, cursing her own uselessness, she vowed to become a medic nin. 

But before that, she would find one in this forest. She needed to apologize to Sakura, after all. 

Chapter Text

When Sakura woke up, the first thing she saw was Kabuto standing over Sasuke. The other two are fine then? She sat up, groggily.

“How are the other two?” she tried to say, but it only came out as a whisper. A wave of exhaustion washed over her, and she never heard Kabuto’s reply.

When she woke again, it was Ino she saw first.

“Kabuto told me you woke up for a little, but by the time I got here you were already asleep,” Ino said in a low voice. “I’d be more enthusiastic about you waking up but we don’t want to draw any enemy shinobi near here so I’m being quiet but I really don’t want to.” Ino said. She opened her mouth to say something else but Sakura interrupted her.

“Thanks…for saving us —” she started, but Ino rather aggressively waved it off.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get you sooner,” she said.

“I was with my team, though. You didn’t have to worry.” Ino’s eyes just bored into her skull, and she instantly regretted the words.

“When I found you, you were nearly half-dead having taken on three shinobi at once. If I hadn’t found Kabuto, you’d have died.”

“It’s true,” Kabuto said. She turned around, looking at the spectacled man. He pushed up his glasses a little. “Your threadwork was rather remarkable, but wasn’t enough for the deeper injuries, or the ones that you failed to stitch together.” When he spoke again, Sakura noticed his voice seemed strangely neutral.

“Speaking of your injuries…it appeared that you were cut all over your entire body with an extremely sharp blade.” Sakura had never seen Ino make that face before.

 “Even with medical jutsu, combined with the scale of the injury, it’ll take you a week to fully recover  from my estimate. Try to avoid excessive movement and simply rest for the time being.” Kabuto stroked his chin for a moment.

“Though I suppose that’ll be a bit difficult, seeing as this is an active combat situation and all.” Ino’s face hardened, and then she seemed to reach a resolution.

“We’ll take Team 7 with us,” Ino declared. Shikimaru and Choji sighed, but they didn’t challenge it, probably because they didn’t want to argue with them. Sakura opened her mouth to argue, but Ino stopped her.

“Two of your teammates seem to have suffered attacks from unknown jutsus, and you’re currently injured. Leaving all of you alone would be suicide. Do you have your scrolls? We can get them for you —”

“— We have the scrolls,” Sakura interrupted. “...thank you.” Ino snorted.

“I’m not leaving you alone here. You would do the same for us. Choji, Shikimaru, grab Naruto and Sasuke. I’ll help Sakura out. We’ll get to the tower as quickly as possible.”

“W-wait,” Sakura said, suddenly thinking about the other two. Should have thought about them earlier. She turned to Kabuto.

“Naruto, Sasuke. Are they alright?” At that, Sakura once again noticed Kabuto’s neutral expression. Did something happen to them?

“The short answer is that they’ll be fine for now, but I don’t know about the future. Both of them have seals on them, far beyond my expertise. I suggest you lot get to the tower quickly to get them checked out.” This is my fault. I wasn’t there, and now they’re like this. But what could she have done? Too weak. I was too weak to do anything. And now anything could happen to them. Ino interrupted her thoughts.

“Do you want to come with us to the tower?” Ino asked. Kabuto simply shook his head, smiling.

“I diverged from my team to ensure I could treat my fellow Konoha-nin. Now that’s done, I’ll reconvene with them.” And with that, he was gone. Funny guy.

They all got to the tower on time. Naruto woke up midway, as … Naruto-like as ever. Sasuke, however, seemed to still be unconscious. That was concerning. After Iruka-sensei popped out of the heaven and earth scrolls and Sakura and Naruto rushed to Kakashi, he too seemed concerned, judging by the way his eyebrow shot up.

He apologized to Naruto and Sasuke, then, picking Sasuke up surprisingly tenderly, he took him to another room of the tower. Sakura and Naruto watched as Itachi Uchiha(!), and the head of the Police Force and his wife followed.

“Is Sasuke going to be all right?” Naruto asked, his voice trembling. Truthfully, Sakura didn’t know. She did hold hope in the fact that if there was anyone who could help Sasuke, it’d be a sealing expert.

“I hope so —”

“Naruto, Sakura.” Both of them whirled around to look at the Third Hokage, dragging smoke from the pipe in his hand.

“I’d like to ask you both a few questions.”

“So…you claim that Orochimaru separated you and…”

“HE CUT SAKURA UP, DID SOMETHING WEIRD TO MY SEAL —” Naruto gestured to his stomach “— AND BIT SASUKE ON THE NECK.”

“I’m fine, the medics checked me out and said I just needed to recover, but Naruto and Sasuke…” Sakura trailed off. The Hokage stroked his chin.

“Naruto. Can I examine the seal?” Naruto lifted up his shirt.

“Try moving your chakra a little,” the Hokage suggested. Naruto complied, channeling it to his feet, and immediately Sakura saw the mess of squiggling, concentric black lines cut across him like scars. They did that to a child? She looked at the Hokage again, eyebrows raised. Funny how that kept happening.

“This amateurish sealwork…is indeed the work of my former student,” he murmured.

“Can you do anything about it?” Naruto said, hopeful. “It feels weird and I don’t like it.” The Hokage’s frown deepened, and Naruto’s face dropped.

“I… will contact Jiraiya — My only active student and Konoha’s resident sealmaster — to remove it.”

“So…Naruto’ll be fine?” Sakura asked, hopeful.

“Yes, he should, though this incident will likely alter his chakra flow. I personally fought a seal-using opponent once and received a similar impediment…though he should be able to adjust to it through training.”

A voice called out, ordering all the Chunin exam participants to gather.

“Please cough draw cough cough cough lots from this box.” Naruto got 3. Sakura got 7. Sasuke, whose number was the one that wasn’t chosen, was 5.

“In a moment, we will begin calling numbers in pairs. Those with those numbers, please go to the center stage” he gestured “and fight one another. Killing is discouraged but not forbidden. The winners, who will be announced by me, will cough progress to the final round of the Chuunin exam. UP FIRST WILL BE NINE AND EIGHTEEN.” Hayate took a long, long swig of whatever was in his pouch afterwards.

Gaara and Temari looked at each other. Neither looked pleased. Temari looked utterly bewildered, while Gaara wore an utterly unreadable expression on his face. Gaara began walking down the steps to the stage, while Temari, after a moment, hopped down.

“Please move to the opposite side of your opponent. If one contestant dies, forfeits, or is unable to continue fighting, the other contestant will win.” Temari was directly under Sakura, so she was able to get a clear view of Gaara. It must be difficult to have a sibling. Everyone she knew with one seemed to complain about them. Well maybe not Sasuke, but he, like always, was different from everyone else.

“THREE. TWO. ONE.” Gaara and Temari were unmoving. Gaara’s eyes seemed to bore into Temari’s shaking figure. She thought back to their time in the forest, about Gaara’s words. Don’t act like you care. What sort of parent tries to kill their own child? She couldn’t wrap her head around it. Would the Fourth Hokage have been the same? Sakura was very close to getting lost in this thought when Temari began to speak.

“I …” she whispered.

Family.

Families are supposed to love each other. He knew that much. Love. He painted that word on his head. It was a pleasant one, in its strokes and in its feel. He painted it on his forehead every morning, when he could. That would be the closest he got to ever feeling love. He didn’t think too much about it. Thinking was a privilege he didn’t always have. It’s not easy, having two minds in one body. They interfere with each other, thoughts clashing until there’s nothing left but chaos. Sometimes, it happened for months at a time, when Shukaku couldn’t sleep. Gaara wasn’t supposed to sleep either, because that would let the beast out. Who cares? They get what they asked for. They wanted a monster? They’d get one. It was one of the few things that he and Shukaku agreed on. Hurting shinobi felt good. Giving them the violence they reaped … it felt like justice. He didn’t understand why his siblings looked at him like that afterwards.

Ah yes. He was thinking about family. His mind tended to wander sometimes. He wasn’t used to that. He used to be able to focus when he was cogent with a single-minded intensity. But ever since he had separated from Shukaku, it was different. It was like his eyes were opened for the first time. He didn’t have any better words to describe it, so the cliche would have to do. Thinking was fun.

He wished he wouldn’t get so distracted though. When they were walking the remainder of the way to the tower, an Ame-nin ran towards them, clearly desperate from the way he was waving his knife. Gaara’s sand had reached out, wrapping around his arm and tearing it off. But as he was preparing to crush him into sludge, there was something about the Ame-nin’s screams that twisted his stomach. He’s so pathetic, he couldn’t help but think. He was so distracted by his tear-stained face, the blood pouring to the ground and staining all over his clothes, he barely noticed when the one-armed man lunged at him, knife in hand. In less than a second, the man resembled a puzzle box, pieces of his flesh separating from one another. The feeling didn’t go away. Temari’s face was twisted into a snarl. Why was she so angry? Why did he feel this way? Why didn’t it feel good? He was a shinobi. He deserved it.

Oh yes, family. The people who saw him for what he was: a monster in human skin. Sure, they created him. Maybe they felt pity, but what was done was done. All that was left was a defective weapon, one that needed to be disposed of. They were tired of his maintenance.

For the first time in his life, Gaara could think. And he was tired too. He was tired of killing, he was tired of being feared, tired of being a monster. Temari had opened her mouth to speak, but Gaara beat her to the punch.

“I forfeit,” Gaara announced. He didn’t feel like killing today.

That’s one complicated sibling relationship. Sakura didn’t have time to dwell on it though, because the next two numbers were called.

“5 and 10.” She saw Kiba’s head shoot up. Could be worse honestly. If she was going to lose, it was good it’d be to a Konoha shinobi at least.

Both of them took the steps to the opposite sides of the stage in silence. Truthfully, Sakura didn’t know what would happen. She hadn’t really interacted with Kiba, but he always had much, much better taijutsu than she did. Not even a few weeks of training with Gai could even that out. And…there were her injuries. Sure, she could move around, but she certainly couldn’t display her full ability. Her options were as follows:

1. Forfeit. This was the easiest and likely the most logical option. But…she got this far and honestly…she didn’t want to quit.
2. Fight and lose to Kiba in a battle of strength. Basically a longer and more painful method of forfeiting.

She wasn’t able to come up with option 3 since she reached her side of the stage then.

“THREE. TWO. ONE.”

Neither she nor Kiba moved. Then, he charged with a kunai. With a millisecond of hesitation, she charged towards him, her own kunai pointed straight at him. But right as they were about to clash…

She vanished. Kiba, however, knew exactly where she was: directly behind him. It was a move she had perfected against Lee, forming a tether and ducking with exact timing to slip past an enemy. It didn’t work on Lee, due to his absurd reflexes and speed. And, due to Kiba’s sense of smell, he’d be able to smell it from a mile away.

And he did, spinning to block the blow and attempting to sweep her off her feet. She stepped back in the nick of time, only to trip over Akamaru. She cursed and rolled out of the way of Kiba’s fist. Honestly, she had only fought him about three times during their time at the Academy. Perhaps it was disheartening that this was her best performance against him so far.

Nope! She wouldn’t think about that. She considered her options. She currently had two opponents: Kiba and his dog. To counter, she had three different techniques: her illusion and explosion seals, weight manipulation through Yin release, and thread manipulation. Yin release was out of the question. The strain it would but on her body, even if it would allow her to match Kiba in taijutsu, was inadvisable. The illusions…they might work as a distraction but nothing more. If he could see (or smell, actually) through that body flicker so fast, he’d definitely be able to tell an illusion. Also, she was not going to use the explosion seals. All of them were lethal grade and she was not going to kill her classmate over a test. That left using her Thread control…what could she even do with that? It was just too weak.

That meant her current strategy was running as far away from Kiba and Akamaru as she could, which wasn’t very far unfortunately. Dogs are surprisingly fast, she was quickly learning. And then she was up against a wall, and Akamaru was leaping at her. She watched his feet leave contact with the ground, and something clicked in her head.

Akamaru, for his speed, simply wasn’t that heavy. That meant…

She caught Akamaru in the air. She couldn’t let him collide with the wall, or be near any surface. That would defeat the entire point of the plan. She thought back to the time she first used Yin release. She had negated her own weight. It wasn’t a technique she had used again, honestly. The recoil from the weight simply wasn’t tactical in battle. There were three reasons she was using it now.

1. The target wasn’t herself.
2. Whatever the recoil there was, it would be less due to Akamaru’s lesser weight.
3. She’d be using it for a comparatively short duration.

That was why Kiba, while he was distracted by the sight of Akamaru floating in the air, flickered in and delivered an uppercut. The victory didn’t feel like one, though. Firstly, the thing about this technique was that it was constantly draining, both in her chakra and in the fact that she was currently feeling Akamaru’s weight herself. Whatever observation could be made there wasn’t one she had time for because while Akamaru wasn’t as heavy as a person, he certainly wasn’t light.

Also, Kiba was getting up, like nothing had happened. She cursed. Kiba simply smirked.

“HERE I COME!” she internally groaned. He sounded so much like Naruto. But instead of charging at her, he dug a bottle out of his sleeves. As he lifted it to his mouth, warning signals flashed in her head. If I let him eat that, I am screwed. Which was why she threw caltrops at him. It was a tactic Iruka had explained in the academy. According to him, he’d found it to be an incredibly effective method of stopping handseal usage, provided he was fast enough with throwing them.

It did not achieve the desired effect of forcing him to drop the vial, but it did delay long enough for Sakura to move in herself and attempt to snatch the vial out of his hand. That did not work, but it did mean Kiba kicked at a Sakura… who wasn’t there.

The technique itself was a gamble, relying on Kiba’s accuracy in smell and her own mastery of ninjutsu. Scent was something that traveled through the air. Seeing as it was all around her, she couldn’t exactly stop having a scent. She’d have to figure that out later.

However, she could do a substitution. The body flicker was a substitution with air instead of an object. Kiba could easily call her illusions based on their scent.

Thus, her strategy was as follows:

1. Run towards Kiba, at the last minute flickering behind him but leaving an illusion seal with her running up to him.
2. Attempting a substitution jutsu once behind him. However, instead of substituting herself with air, she would substitute the air around her with clean air. This, in her eyes, made it a completely bullshit technique. She would be very shocked if it worked.

 Kiba didn’t realize as he took the butt of a kunai to the back of his head. As he slumped to the ground, the proctor called out.

“WINNER. HARUNO SAKURA!” Unfortunately, she was more concerned with her vision growing spotty, as she lost strength in her limbs. She used way too much chakra. 

Kabuto was probably so pissed off right now. 

Chapter Text

When Sasuke woke up, someone was tickling his nose with a feather and immediately knew it was Shisui. He sneezed.

“He’s awaaaake!” he yelled. Sasuke heard a snort. When he turned his head, he saw Itachi, shaking his head. The fact that he awoke audibly meant he didn’t mean to go to sleep. It was something all Uchiha shinobi were taught not to do from a young age. An audible shinobi is a target, he remembered his dad telling him. It wasn’t Itachi’s fault, though. The illness meant that he was constantly tired, and thus fell asleep more easily. He remembered that about a year ago, Itachi had come home from a mission and promptly slumped unconscious on the dinner table. When he woke up, he asked Sasuke to pass the rice.

Shisui heard it too, but he just smiled. “You’re probably wondering what happened after you fell unconscious.” Sasuke was in fact wondering what happened, but the way Shisui said it annoyed him so he kept silent.

“He is,” Itachi said. “He’s just pouty because you said it before he could. Shisui ruffled Sasuke’s hair.

“Well —” Shisui started, but it was then that Fugaku, followed by Mikoto Uchiha, ran into the room. Sasuke was genuinely surprised.

“Hello, Father, Mother —” he was wrapped in a hug. He didn’t even notice he was tensed up, and relaxed a little.

“We heard you were hurt and we came over as soon as we could,” his mother said. His father was simply standing behind her, looking worried.

“I —”

“Don’t tell us about it,” his father said. Sasuke looked at him, surprised. “You’ve been through an ordeal and we’ve already interviewed your friends about it. We will ask you about what happened in great detail, but I suggest you take the time now to rest.”

“You’ll need it,” Itachi said. “These sorts of interviews are incredibly tedious. More importantly, you probably want to know what happened after you fell unconscious.”

Sasuke furrowed his brow. “...yeah.”

“First thing you need to know is that your team is safe. Sakura managed to get both you and Naruto back to the tower. Spare your injuries, all three of you are doing well.”

“Well as in all three of you are alive and not in a coma,” Itachi interjected. “The fact that you ran into Orochimaru spells absolutely nothing good.” He was looking at the ground.

“FOUR AND - cough - FIVE!”

“What was that?” Sasuke asked.

“Oh, this is the next round of the Chunin exams. They’ve been calling people up in pairs and having them fight,” Itachi explained.

“That’s your round. I think you should sit this one out, honestly — ”

“No,” Sasuke argued. “I feel fine. I think I should be able to fight —”

“— there’s something else we haven’t told you,” his mother told him, looking uncomfortable.

“That mark on your neck? It’s woven into your chakra system. If you use your chakra, something will happen. I know it feels terrible to go out like this, but…”

“I can still fight.” Sasuke said. Shisui just stared at him.

“I know it’s a bad idea to sedate shinobi, but can we knock him out?” Sasuke ignored that comment, digging through the ninja gear he was still wearing and pulling out a small scroll.

“Can you unseal this?” His father obliged, and a —

“A yo-yo,” his father deadpanned. “You packed a yo-yo for the Chunin exams. Shisui, I agree with you —”

Sasuke plucked it out of his father’s hand, and pulled himself out of the bed. “If I use chakra or think for a second that I’ll need to, you can pull me out of the match.”

“... Sasuke —” his father said, but Itachi interrupted.

“I think we should let him try. Shisui’s here, so he can intervene if anything happens.”

And then Sasuke was standing on the stage, a man with circular sunglasses and a cloth mask on the other side. He was dressed similar to Kabuto. Sasuke reasoned that if Kabuto was the medic, then he must have some sort of offensive ability. The start of the match was called, and the man — Yoroi — was reaching towards Sasuke. Bare-handed. Either he was an idiot, or he had some sort of technique that relied on contact. Poison, perhaps? But then he went for Sasuke’s arm. Sasuke backed away and struck the possibility out of his head. If he had a poison ability, he would likely go for his hand, neck, or head. Still, Sasuke did not want this guy close to him, whatever his technique was.

So, as Yoroi swiped at Sasuke again, he jumped away again. Honestly, this strategy wasn’t very sustainable. Firstly, as much as Sasuke hated to admit it, he was slow. While he was still able to move, he also felt sluggish and that was translating to both his timing and technique. And then, as Yoroi made handsigns, it went from unsustainable to downright impossible.

Where there was one of him before, now there were three he had to dodge. Shadow clones, judging from the way their steps thudded on the ground. Caltrops, then. But as he threw them, one of the clones swiped a piece of cloth, catching all of them and throwing them to the side. Well, that didn’t work.

The good news was that it stopped the clones from advancing, allowing Sasuke to pull out the yoyo along with a spool of ninja wire. Throwing it down, it started spinning rapidly.

After the disastrous wave mission, Sasuke realized a few things. Firstly, the Sharingan helped with close-range combat. However, it did absolutely nothing for when he was trapped in the ice dome and turned into a pincushion.

Secondly, the Sharingan was great with predicting trajectories. Thus, if he so wished, he could use it for long-range combat. The problem with that was any ninja worth their salt could dodge a kunai or virtually anything moving in a straight line.

His answer came in the form of a yo-yo.  Using the ninja wire, he could add range to his attacks, but also alter its trajectory. (It also helped that it was one of his few hobbies.)

Unfortunately, he couldn’t use the Sharingan right now, meaning its use was severely limited. However, what he could do was use the trajectories he had already memorized with the Sharingan. 

Which was why he was now running at the first clone with a kunai. He jumped back, trying to aim a punch at Sasuke. He rolled under, and kicked himself off from the stage at the second one, just barely dodging him.  He threw the yo-yo into the air and twisted his arm, brandishing a kunai from his sleeve. That left the third one. Sasuke knew touching him would be a bad idea, but who cared. He would face the consequences after he one.

And then, charging in at the third one, he caught him with an uppercut, as hard as he physically could. Yoroi tried to back up, but all he found behind him was wire, leaving him no room to escape. The other clones weren’t much better off. They were bound by the wire and then got to experience a yo-yo smashing into their heads, dissipating them. Thank the Sage they were clones. Sasuke caught the yo-yo in his hands as his name was announced.

He barely heard the gasps of concern as black tendrils spread from his neck and across his face. The last thing he remembered was being grabbed by Shisui and being rushed into a dark room.

Naruto saw Sasuke being rushed down a corridor and ran after him, but he was stopped by Asuma-sensei.

“I know you’re worried, but he’s in good hands.”

“But —”

“Right now, what you need to do is focus on the exam. You’ll see Sasuke afterwards. If you go after him now, you’ll miss your own fight and he’ll feel worse because you failed the exam because of him. Is that what you want?”

“...fine,” muttered Naruto. Sakura gently held his hand from the chair she was in. “The Hokage and Kakashi are with him. If they know what’s going on, it’s going to be them,” she said. But the worry in her eyes didn’t quite match her smile, and Naruto wasn’t quite sure if she believed the words herself.

But his attention was turned to the next match, Neji fighting Hinata. Naruto felt physically ill watching the match.

From the way that he told Hinata to give up right off the bat, insulted her and told her she would never be a good ninja, to the time he had to be physically restrained from killing her, to the sheer hatred that contorted his face, Naruto was split between rage at watching his classmate get humiliated and beaten into the ground and confusion at how someone could look at their cousin like that. He wanted a family, more than anything in the world. How could someone just throw that away?

“It was fate,” he heard Neji say, that Hinata would lose. But if fate could cause something so horrible to happen, Naruto refused to believe in it. He remembered yelling something at Neji, running at him, only to be blocked by Lee. Fine. He’d save it for the exams. Then, he’d beat the crap out of Neji.

But suddenly, it was him and Kankuro. Much to his displeasure, Naruto won by default due to Kankuro forfeiting. While it pissed him off that he couldn’t earn his place in the exams, he couldn’t object, not when Kankuro was a puppetmaster who’d recently had his arm cut off.

The following matches were mostly quick. Kabuto, like Kankuro, forfeited his match. Perhaps the idea of getting stabbed by the scroll full of sharp objects in the scroll Tenten was unfurling didn’t appeal to him.

Ino’s match, Naruto didn’t understand at all. One second, the arena was filled with bubbles. The next, her opponent had announced he was forfeiting. He then pointed to Sakura.

“See that, forehead?” Oh. It was a possession jutsu, it seemed. That was scary. Naruto hoped he’d never be on the end of one of those. Sakura’s eyebrow quirked up, but Naruto could see her hand shake a little.

Shikimaru, the lazy jerk, forfeited before Lee could kick him in the face. Smart decision, Naruto had to admit. Even if his shadow clone had experienced it, that would not have been pleasant.

Shino and Choji’s match was painful to watch. By the end of it, Choji was covered in what appeared to be hundreds upon hundreds of insect bites. His eyelids had swelled, and he was struggling to breathe. That was why it was such a surprise when he ran towards Shino with a ferocity both Shikimaru and Ino looked stunned to see, grabbed him by the chest, and smashed him into the side of the stage so hard that the concrete crumbled.

And with that … the first part of the Chunin exams came to a close. The final exams, the proctor explained, would take place in Konoha’s largest stadium. He also showed the competition bracket. 

Paste. Naruto would turn Neji’s face into paste. That’s what he decided that day. 

Chapter Text

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This is a phrase Sakura firmly believed in. Time and time again, Lee had beat her face into the ground, a smile on his. Which was quite nice of him, mind you. She’d gotten so much better at taijutsu because of him. The problem was that even going at him with everything in her arsenal — substitutions, illusions, seals, anything — he still won. All while using taijutsu. The only thing that would separate those losses from the next one would be a month.

Not all was lost though. Apparently, she didn’t have to win her match to become a chuunin. The proctors decided that based on whether sufficient skill was demonstrated. Not that it mattered, since they would undoubtedly think she was incompetent if someone beat her into the ground only using taijutsu — even if it was Lee.

Wonderful.

Naruto was sitting with the Hokage, inside his office. That was strange. It wasn’t like he had talked to the Hokage before, but this was the first time he was in here: without Kakashi or one of the attendants, too.

“How have the Exams gone so far?” the man asked. Naruto frowned. Pretty badly, was the obvious answer. Both of them knew that. Naruto just looked at the Hokage in confusion, and he sighed.

“I suppose —”

“I met Gaara,” Naruto said, his hands stiffening around the seat of the chair.

“... I see.” The Hokage didn’t say anything else.

“I … entered the space in his seal …” Naruto swallowed.

“He was drowning there. And apparently his own dad tried to kill him —”

“— Naruto —”

“ — Someone did that to him, to me —”

“— why —”

“Naruto.” There was something to the Hokage’s tone which made him snap out of his thoughts and look at the man. What was there on it? Guilt? Desperation?

“The circumstances between you and Gaara are completely different —”

“Why? Because someone else decided we were better off as weapons? —”

“— Listen to me —”

“— In what world does anyone do that to their family? —”

“ — If he hadn’t done it, You and Every. Single. Person. In this village would be dead.” Naruto paused, and the Hokage continued speaking.

“What happened to you was a tragedy. It was also a last-minute resort to keep the Nine-Tails contained after your parent’s deaths.”

“My parents?” The Hokage took a breath.

“Your mother, Kushina Uzumaki, was the second jinchuurichi of the Nine-Tails and the most powerful of her time. On the night you were born, Konoha was attacked.” Naruto didn’t say anything. This was the most the Hokage had ever told him about his parents or the circumstances surrounding … him.

“A man released the Nine-Tails onto Konoha, using a sharingan jutsu to control it. Both the removal and sealing of a tailed beast into a host are incredibly strenuous. Your mother, miraculously, had survived the removal. To reseal it in her, however, would kill her.”

“Wasn’t there anyone else though?” Naruto asked. I didn’t choose this.

“Yes…and no,” the Hokage said. “Not anyone can serve as a host for a tailed beast. Do you know why your last name is Uzumaki?” the Hokage asked.

“To prevent people from finding out that I was the 4th Hokage’s son?” Naruto replied.

“While that was a benefit, it also has to do with the fact that your father had secretly married into the Uzumaki clan, and thus took their name. You would still be Naruto Uzumaki if your parents were here with us.” The Hokage sighed.

“I got side-tracked. The point is that the Uzumaki clan had developed and mastered a unique style of sealing jutsu. One of those, the Four Symbols Seal from the Eight Trigrams Sealing Discipline, was used to seal the Nine-Tails into your body.” The Hokage explained. Seeing Naruto’s blank look, he continued.

“The reason the Nine-Tails was sealed into you was your heritage as part of the Uzumaki clan. This granted you large chakra reserves, large enough to safely hold the Nine-Tails. In addition, mastery of your forefathers sealing jutsu would give you unparalleled mastery over it.”

“... I was chosen for this because of my clan? That I didn’t meet, that isn’t even mentioned in the library?” The kids at the Academy used to joke that Naruto was illiterate, which simply wasn’t true. It was true, however, that he wasn’t interested in reading anything besides botanical manuals for the most part. When Sakura had mentioned he was part of a clan, the two of them had both spent the day looking through the library for any mention of it. Forget a family register, like the Uchiha clan published and distributed yearly: they weren’t mentioned outside of a “historic” alliance with Konoha. Sasuke said he would look through the Uchiha clan archives for something, but no luck as of yet.

The Hokage clasped his hands together. “The Uzumaki clan was incredibly private but also incredibly illustrious. While there are none left in Konoha, it cannot be stated how important they were and still are to Konoha’s history.” He scratched his chin.

“Actually, that isn’t quite true. There is a girl — Karin, I believe? — from Kusagakure. She is currently here in Konoha. I was wondering if you could talk to her.” Naruto’s head was spinning from the information.

“Ah…one more thing.” He bent down, and with the click of a lock pulled something out of his desk. A series of books. He handed them to Naruto. They were bound in what appeared to be leather, five of them to be exact. Naruto took them, confused. Then, he yelped as black ink seeped from the pages onto his hand, crawling down his throat.

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!” Naruto yelled, fumbling for a kunai, but the Hokage grabbed his hand.

“Relax, it’s a storage seal. I want you to focus chakra onto the seal on one of the books.” Hesitantly, Naruto complied. Instantly, all five books disappeared. “Now feel for the seal, and focus chakra there.” It took a little time, but Naruto focused his chakra at the back of the throat and the books appeared again.

“That would be cool, if it wasn’t so freaky,” Naruto said. Then, a thought occurred to him.

“I’m grateful and all, but…what are these?”

“They’re the fundamentals of Uzumaki sealing jutsu,” the Hokage said. “You have the chakra to safely start using them, and you’re a ninja now, so it wouldn’t be right of me to keep your heritage from you.”

Naruto was stunned. This was the first time the Hokage just…gave him jutsu. The Hokage saw the look on his face and chuckled.

“Don’t look at me like that, it’s your history,” he said. “Your mother…she would have been the one to give this to you.” Tears slid down Naruto’s face as he hugged the books.

“Would they have been proud of me?” Naruto asked. The Hokage replied without hesitation.

“They are.”

“What do you mean he can’t use his Sharingan?” Fugaku asked, enraged.

“The seal has been surgically tied into his chakra system, and practically melded with the chakra lines leading to his eyes. If he even tries to activate the sharingan, it’ll require chakra from the seal,” Dr. Takashi said. “I know this is difficult news —”

“— Is there anything else?” Fugaku interrupted. His knuckles were white in the chair arms he was sitting in.

“— No, that will be all.” Dr. Takashi turned to exit.  

“Thank you,” Fugaku spoke quietly as the door closed behind Dr. Takashi with a click. He looked back at his son. Sasuke, in turn, was looking at Fugaku nervously.

“It’s alright,” Fugaku said. Neither he nor Sasuke was convinced. They sat in silence.

“Good job on getting to the finals in the Chunin exams. Very few get this far on their first attempt.” It was a sad attempt at lightening the mood, given that both Fugaku and Itachi had been jounin when they were his age. But Sasuke smiled anyways.

“I won’t let Orochimaru ruin my life,” Sasuke said. He tried to make it a declaration like Naruto might, but it was difficult, given the fact that his head was still swimming from the seal that Kakashi had added around the mark. His inner Naruto was strangely absent today, unfortunately.

“DAMN RIGHT YOU WON’T!” a voice yelled from the door, suddenly slammed open.

“Who allowed you into the Uchiha residence?” Fugaku snapped.

“Hokage’s orders,” Anko replied. “Besides, I know about Sasuke’s … condition,” she said, lifting her own collar down to reveal a mark similar to Sasuke’s.

“You’re… Anko, the second proctor,” Sasuke sputtered.

“Yep. I’ll be your instructor for the next month,” Anko declared.

“W-who —” Fugaku made out, finally finding words out of his speechlessness.

“— I did. Besides, I know what Sasuke’s going through. This mark is a bitch to manage —” Fugaku winced at the language “— and he’ll have one hell of an easier time if I can show him how to do it.” Anko stroked her chin.

“Does that sound good, kid?” She said, turning to Sasuke.

“...It does,” he said.

“I want to introduce you to Konoha’s resident genjutsu master,” Kakashi said. Sakura, vividly remembering the time Lee got her into a headlock blindfolded, refused.

“I don’t feel like that would work, honestly. He’ll very likely anticipate genjutsu, and then …” Kakashi snorted. She frowned at that.

“I think you should meet her. I know you haven’t seen very much of it, but genjutsu isn’t quite what you think.”

Sakura wasn’t convinced.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kurenai, in Sakura’s opinion, was an incredibly pretty woman. Black, slightly curled hair, red eyes, and a vest with fingerless gloves, one would have thought she was an Uchiha if not for her family name.

Speaking of Uchihas…

“Isn’t a non-Uchiha genjutsu specialist a bit of a joke?” Kurenai asked. Sakura’s gaze snapped back to her, startled.

“What? No, I don’t think — of course that’s not —” she stammered out the words, desperately scratching for some way to refute the claim.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s what many of my colleagues think too,” Kurenai said smoothly.

“I-I’m sorry —”

“Fight me.”

“What?”

“I want you to fight me and see for yourself.”

“O-okay. Now?”

“Now.” 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They were in a training ground, Kurenai standing opposite to Sakura.

“You can start whenever,” she said, tossing her hair out with one hand and readying a kunai with the other. Why not tie her hair back? Sakura pushed the thought out of her head and ran towards her.

I want to catch her off-guard. She threw a kunai at Kurenai’s side, which narrowly missed to the right. She raised her eyebrow, unimpressed.

Even when Sakura substituted with it, swinging that blade into Kurenai’s side, that look didn’t change.

“You’ve certainly got technique,” she said, deflecting the kunai with her own. Sakura tried to parry, but her timing was off.

“But you rely too much on it,” Kurenai continued. Sakura noticed her hair again. It seemed a little reddish? No, there was something to it, the way it sparkled … and a knee made its way into Sakura’s stomach. She was on the ground now, staring down at the grass. She rolled, accepting Kurenai’s outstretched hand to pull herself up.

“Do you want to get lunch?”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They were in a dark hole-in-the-wall sandwich place. She had taste, Sakura had to admit, as she bit into her own bread and olive one (the man taking the order did judge her for it but who cared). She looked at Kurenai. She swallowed before she spoke again.

“Do you know why you lost?”

“I got distracted,” she said.

“Do you know why?”

“...I’m sorry …”

“No, it’s fine, just try to answer.”

“Y-your hair…” Sakura put her head in her hands, cringing at the memory. How could she have done that? During a fight, no less.

“Let me guess. You noticed something odd about the way it shined, or the way it moved, and you just couldn’t stop thinking about it, right?”

“Yea —” Sakura stopped, and she looked at Kurenai in bewilderment.

“Was that … a genjutsu?!” Kurenai was smiling.

“A shinobi’s greatest strength is their mind, but leveraged properly, it also becomes their greatest weakness. Ninjutsu, taijutsu … they’re wonderful things to learn, but they become useful if you don’t know how to use them.”

Kurenai dusted off her hands and then turned a pointed gaze to Sakura. “I think that you’ve got somewhat of an understanding of what I can teach you. Now, you need to decide whether or not it's what you need. Genjutsu is a powerful, but nuanced skill, but not everyone has the discipline to learn it or the capacity to learn it.”

Sakura’s brow was furrowed. “I … want to learn,” she said.

Kurenai smiled.

Chapter Text

Talking to Karin, in Naruto’s opinion, felt less like talking and more like interrogating. To be fair though, Naruto wasn’t used to this type of conversation either. Usually, Naruto would be the one talking off Sasuke or Sakura’s ear. But this time, he wanted to learn more about Karin, meaning that he needed her to do the talking. Which was a shame, because their conversations went something like this:

“So, you’re like my cousin, huh?”

“... I am …” Karin looked down at her lap.

Silence.

“What’s it like in another village? I’ve never been outside of Konoha, so I don’t really know.”

“... I traveled with my mother when I was younger.” she replied.

“Really? What was it like?”

“... I don’t really remember much, since I was young. I lived in Grass for as long as I can remember.”

“Oh! What’s Grass like? Hey, why is it called Grass? Is there just a bunch of grass —” And then Naruto noticed Karin’s expression go blank. Fear? Naruto knew it was fear, don’t ask how.

“Sorry, bad topic choice. I just … I grew up without any family — well I have Iruka-sensei and Sasuke and Sakura and Kakashi-sensei — but you know, I never had a mom or dad … and suddenly you come along and you’re my cousin …” Naruto’s smile was hopeful, but reflected in Karin’s eyes was genuine confusion.

“Kakashi of the Sharingan… are those your teammates?”

“Yeah! We’re teammates…”

“You consider your teammates family?”

“Of course I do!” Naruto nearly yelled. Karin flinched back and Naruto immediately regretted it.

“Sorry, it’s just that … one of my teammates just dragged me through that entire forest and faced down three guys right after while tired and injured to hell and passed the exams for us to boot and … we’d die for each other. I’d consider that family.”

“... My teammate threw me in front of a bear to act as a diversion so they could run away from it,” Karin said quietly. Naruto made a noise that somehow mixed rage, horror, and disgust all in one. “I guess you could say we were more individualistic.”

“Those people … your village wouldn’t have —”

“They would have been annoyed,” Karin said blandly. “I was serving as a healer of sorts for the team, Grass royalty of sorts” Naruto observed the particular way Karin said ‘serving’.

“Where are they? If Grass won’t do anything, I certainly will,” Naruto actually yelled, standing up. People looked at Naruto with a mixture of fear, surprise, and annoyance. Karin looked horrified, dragging him out of the restaurant they were in and into the street.

“I appreciate the sentiment, but they’re dead, very dead.”

“Huh?”

“They got dismembered, quite thoroughly too.” Orochimaru.

“If I go back to Grass, they’ll kill me for living where they died and I have no intentions of becoming a lab animal. If you’ve come to recruit me, you’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m already Konoha’s,” Karin said dryly.

“T-that’s not —”

“That wasn’t? All the talk about family, your teammates being your family, you being my family, Konoha’s just one big family —” she spat the last word out. “— let me make one thing clear. I will serve Konoha because I have nothing else. However, my village, my family, my mother — they are dead. And don’t you dare think you can replace them with your stupid propaganda-speak, even if you somehow believe it.”

Karin turned on her heel and marched away. Naruto watched dumbly.

Anko was a surprisingly thorough teacher, especially compared to Kakashi. The very first day of their training, she showed up with scrolls upon scrolls of material for Sasuke: charts of tenketsu, to explain which nodes the curse mark had attached to and which ones were fine to use, medical records to explain how exactly the curse mark affected the body and why Sasuke would slowly feel more and more exhausted.

“I’ve found that making this tea helps,” Anko said while pushing a bag of leaves into Sasuke’s hands. He looked at it too long, and his eyes started watering. “Stop doing that. You’ll need it eventually. And it tastes good.” Sasuke prayed for Anko’s taste buds in the afterlife.

“Now, let’s get into the meat of this.” Anko looked at Sasuke with an intensity he hadn’t seen even in the Forest of Death.

“Do not. Ever. use the curse mark.”

“...okay.”

“No, I don’t think you understand.” And then Anko threw a snake at him. It flopped at him and immediately, Sasuke jumped back, reaching into his chakra to —”

“STOP!” Anko yelled. The snake slithered back to her, and she marched over to Sasuke.

“Were you trying to kill me?—”

“You tried to use the curse mark, didn’t you?”

“I wasn’t —” and Sasuke realised. “Sorry,” he muttered. But Anko waved it off.

“Don’t you think it’s odd that your first reaction was to reach for your chakra?” she asked. Sasuke hadn’t even thought to ask, but it was certainly odd. Even in clan training, Uchiha were taught to immediately dodge out of the way before doing anything, let alone use chakra.

“The curse mark is messing with your head,” she said, her voice low. “I know because I experienced it too. It will make you dumber because then you will need its power, do you understand?” Sasuke nodded.

“And for the record, that snake was non-venomous, so even if it had bitten you, you’d be fine. That being said, you shouldn’t use the mark even if your life is threatened.”

“...what should I do then?”

“Try to run away, and if you can’t, just die.” Sasuke’s mouth gaped but Anko continued. 

“It’s either that or falling under Orochimaru’s influence. I’ve seen his guinea pigs. Compared to that, death is a pleasant alternative.”

Sakura was not having fun, actually. You’d think the first thing you’d learn in genjutsu would be how to cast them, right? Wrong.

“Genjutsu users who can’t find themselves out of one tend to get themselves killed,” Kurenai said matter-of-factly. “If you cannot fight under genjutsu, you cannot fight with genjutsu.”

And that was why Sakura was spending more time peeling herself off the padded floor of the training ground they were in. Which was actually quite nice of Kurenai, because she insisted on an indoor training room.

“You’ll be falling a lot, so we wouldn’t want to make the experience any rougher.”

And fall a lot. A straight punch? Suddenly, she was off-balance, having extended her arm too far in the wrong direction. Dodging backwards to defend? No luck, because she was going sideways now and straight into a fist. The problem wasn’t that Sakura couldn’t respond to Kurenai’s techniques on their own. The taijutsu was nothing like what Kakashi had put her through, and she could easily dispel the genjutsu placed on her if she wished.

The fundamental problem lied in dispelling a genjutsu, which required her to disrupt her chakra flow. Every academy student knew that chakra was a mix of physical and mental energy, which in turn meant that to break out of a genjutsu one would have to disrupt their physical energy, mental energy, or both. Which meant either standing still or breaking a bone, or concentrating entirely on breaking the genjutsu, all stupid options for obvious reasons.

Thus, her options were now limited to either fighting under genjutsu or avoiding them entirely. Avoiding a genjutsu entirely was a non-option, due to the fact that it was an attack by sense. Thus, to avoid a visual genjutsu for example, one would have to to avoid seeing, a tactic practically begging for a kunai to the throat.

“There are some ways to selectively sense without avoiding genjutsu,” Kurenai said. They had just finished another round that ended with Sakura lying face down.
“Really?” Sakura asked, practically somersaulting to her feet.

“Yeah. Now, I want you to look at this kunai without looking at this kunai.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Language. Exactly, which is why it isn’t ever mentioned in any jutsu manuals, classified or not. I only know two people who can perform the technique, and both of them are monks.”

“Maybe it’s just part of their mental training?”

“Yes, probably the result of years and years of discipline.”

“I…don’t have that.”

“Exactly. Hopefully, I’ve made it clear what you have to do?” Kurenai asked.

“I have to fight while in genjutsu,” Sakura said, sighing heavily.

But four hours in, when Sakura finally lost it and ran in screaming, they both called it a day.

“You should rest,” Kurenai said firmly, catching an especially sloppy punch from Sakura.

“I can still —” and then she realized she couldn’t keep going. “...you’re right,” she said. She was surprised when Kurenai patted her shoulder.

“You’re doing good,” she said. Sakura just blinked and stared. No, she wasn’t. Kurenai just smiled.

“You should do something nice for yourself, think about something that isn’t training. You’re clearly very dedicated,” she said gently.

“But —”

“You won’t become a great shinobi overnight. Take some rest, and then when you come back tomorrow you can throw yourself at training.” And with that, Sakura was steered out of the training ground. 

Sakura considered not following those instructions, but then, as a sense of relief washed over her, she disregarded that consideration. Food, sleep, both of those sounded good. What about both… she started the admittedly short trudge back to her home when she saw Naruto.

He was wandering around on the street, which was very uncharacteristic of him. Naruto never wandered anywhere, in Sakura’s experience. Firstly because he was physically incapable of it, having energy comparable to a rabid hamster, but also because he was one of the most purposeful people Sakura knew. He always had training to do, or her and Sasuke to talk their ears off, or ramen to eat.

Which was why Sakura ran up to Naruto when she saw him in that state and gave him a good shake.

“What’s wrong?” she practically yelled. Naruto looked at her, startled.

“Oh! Nothing.” Sakura gave him a dead stare, and he rubbed the back of his head.

“Well, I met my … cousin,” he muttered. Sakura did calculations in her head.

“You…have a cousin.”

“Yeah, from the Uzumaki clan,” he said. “Gramps told me she was here for the Chunin exams. He also gave me a bunch of my clan techniques.” Sakura blinked and filed that information away for later.

“Aren’t those … good things?” she asked.

“Well … she thinks I’m just there to recruit her to the village,” he said.

“That’s — oh,” Sakura realized. Even if it wasn’t Naruto’s intention, it certainly was the Hokage’s. 

“That’s not —” She was about to say something bad about the Hokage, but then realized that might be inappropriate smack-dab in the middle of Konoha.

“... I just wish … she didn’t have to be so suspicious of me, you know?” He wrung out his hands.

“And now she hates me and she’ll probably never talk to me again,” he said, burying his face in them. Sakura blinked.

“Firstly, if she was immediately suspicious of you, she probably doesn’t hate you,” she said.

“But —” Naruto started.

“Hate is an invested emotion, and it doesn’t seem she’s done much of that,” Sakura said, praying her words were true.

“And who said this’ll be the last time she’s talking to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“We can get you and Sasuke, and also invite her,” she said. “Even if she hates your guts —” she said “— and she doesn’t—” she added hastily “— she probably won’t miss out on the chance to meet with other people in the village. It definitely can’t hurt her.”

“You’ll do that?” Naruto asked, trying to look neutral but eyes screaming hope. Sakura smirked.

“Yes, I’ll do that. Do you have a date in mind?” she asked.

“...Friday sounds good.”