Chapter 10: Training and Time
Ser_Serendipity
Building Character
Life Goes On
It was another month before Team Seven took another C-Rank. Once more, they left the village, this time in search of a missing courtier. A servant of the Daimyo's court had gone missing, and the Land of Fire's government had been concerned he was kidnapped.
This time, the mission held no surprises.
The courtier, a portly man named Nobu, was located in short order in a small town near the southern border of the country, unbelievably drunk and raging at a dead end job that he was worried he would be trapped in for the rest of his life. Obito had been sympathetic, until the man had vomited on him. After that, he'd been immediately delivered to the capital. Team Seven returned to Konoha, and Sakura was ecstatic to share a collective sigh of relief with her teammates.
When they got back to the village, the leaves were just beginning to turn. Autumn was coming to the Village Hidden in the Leaves, bathing their home in a beautiful flurry of red, orange, and yellow.
They'd all thought, in their own quiet way, that perhaps every mission would be like their first one. But it wasn't to be. Most C-Rank missions, just like D-Ranks (which increasingly involved cleaning up the millions and millions of leaves that littered the village), were boring and routine. Few of them were even violent. And so, Team Seven fell into a familiar and comfortable pattern.
###
Thirty-five days after Sakura had retrieved Hidan's heart, Naruto snapped his fingers.
"Shoot," he said, the noodles in his mouth rendering the word garbled and barely understandable. "I totally forgot."
"Something important, Naruto?" Obito looked over, and so did Sakura. They were having lunch together at a ramen place that Naruto loved; Sakura didn't really understand why he liked the food so much, but it definitely wasn't bad. Maybe noodles just weren't her thing.
"Kinda," he said with a slurp. "My dad wanted to meet me later. He wanted to see how I was doing with the Rasengan."
"How's that going?" Sakura asked. Her teammate had carried water balloons everywhere he went for a long time now, furiously trying to pop them with his chakra. It made her feel a little bad, but after seeing all the trouble Naruto had gone through trying to learn the jutsu, the gap between them had seemed a little less impossible to breach. Even after more than two months of trying, Naruto still hadn't managed to burst the balloon.
Naruto stuck out his tongue. "Bad," he said. He was grinning through. Sakura was coming to admire that about Naruto. It didn't matter if he was frustrated or not, he always grinned. It didn't seem false to her either: her teammate was just happy, and didn't let things get him down. She hoped he'd always be that way.
"What about you?" Sasuke asked, taking a subdued slurp of his ramen, and Sakura turned to him. "How's your kenjutsu going, Sakura? I haven't seen much of it recently."
That was true, to Sakura's regret. Obito had been focusing them all on controlling their chakra with more precision since they'd gotten back from their first mission outside the village. Maybe to help Naruto learn the Rasengan, maybe just to expand their skillset and prepare them for more advanced training. It could be hard to tell with their sensei sometimes. He was friendly, and he frequently joked with them, but he seemed to prefer letting them figure things out on their own, with a little helpful prodding.
Teaching them to walk on water had been a prime example of that. Obito had met them by one of the rivers that ran through the wilderness of the village's territory, watching them with a coy grin.
"Follow me," he'd said, striding right across the water and then turning to watch them expectantly. It wasn't very far or deep, and so they'd all done as he asked, wading through the water after him and coming out on the other side.
"Well done," he'd said, and Naruto had laughed. All they'd done was walk through some water: what was he congratulating them for? Obito had just grinned, and walked back to the other side of the bank.
"Alright," he'd smirked. "Now come back across without getting your knees wet."
That had been an interesting day. It had taken all of them a couple hours to figure out how to navigate the river, with its constant current and occasional swells. Sakura, to her astonishment, had been first to manage it. She'd considered asking for help, but hadn't wanted to be the first one to do so. So instead, she'd tried to look at it as logically as possible.
The reason you sank into water is because you were denser than it, she'd thought. Really simple physics, and for that reason apparently inescapable. So, how could a ninja use chakra to escape that universal rule of density? She couldn't alter her own density. At least, she was pretty sure of that. Wasn't the henge just a physical transformation, in a similar manner? But you couldn't alter your density or weight with a henge, only your physical shape. If you turned yourself into a giant shuriken, you'd be as aerodynamic as one, but still just as heavy as yourself. Even if she turned herself into a log or something that would normally
float on water, she'd still sink.
So it couldn't be modifying her own density. The epiphany came to Sakura slowly, as she watched Sasuke pace, sending stutters of chakra into his feet and blowing small gaps in the grass of the bank. He must have picked something up with his Sharingan, she'd realized.
She couldn't alter her density, or the water's. That meant if water walking was something basic enough that Obito expected them to be able to learn it, it had to be based on a simple principle. All she had to do was use her chakra to provide a buoyant buffer, something that would push her up without actively disrupting the liquid. Like a lifeguard's buoy, but on her feet.
Sakura had gone to the bank and started experimentally dipping her foot in, feeling the play of chakra down her leg and trying to direct it as neatly as possible. Naruto had tried to walk across the river on his hands, his legs waving in the air and his head submerged, and Obito had leapt to him and pushed him over for his trouble, laughing as Naruto had come up soaked and squawking.
Up, down. Sakura had spent five minutes just pushing her foot in and out of the water, squinting and trying to control the exact amount of chakra being ejected from the bottom of her foot. Too much and it blew a hole in the water like a gust of air, too little and her foot slipped right in with a little resistance, as though the water were pushing back. But after five minutes, she'd managed to make it so that one foot would settle firmly on the surface, even if she put all of her weight on it.
So she'd done the same thing for the other, and then slowly waddled across the river, one foot barely an inch in front of the other the whole way.
That had been exciting, even exulting. The way Obito had smiled at her had made her feel unbelievably proud.
But Kenjutsu wasn't like that at all. Kenjutsu was frustrating. Even with both her sensei and her father working with her, Sakura felt like she wasn't making progress.
"Bad," she said, mimicking Naruto, and Sasuke chuckled. It wasn't mean. At least, she didn't think so. He'd always been harder to read.
"Well…" he said with a shrug. "I guess you need to spend more time with Obito."
"Sensei," Obito said with a grin, and Sasuke shot him an insolent look. "Obito-Sensei, little guy."
"Of course," Sasuke said with a tiny smirk. "And what do you think of my suggestion, sensei?"
"Actually," Obito said, "I think I might be too advanced a partner for Sakura."
Sakura looked over to him, feeling her stomach sink. Did Obito mean that she wasn't skilled enough to learn? She hadn't thought her sword skills were that bad: she'd bought a practice blade with some of the bounty money she'd earned, and Obito had been teaching her various forms and footwork. Had she been that useless with it?
"Don't get the wrong idea," he said, catching her look, and Sakura sighed in embarrassment. "You've definitely got potential. But I think you might learn a bit quicker with someone else. It's been so long since I studied the basics that I've been practically learning with you." He laughed. "It's good when that stuff becomes so second nature you barely remember it anymore, but it makes for a lousy teacher, right?"
So, he meant it when he said he was too advanced for her. It wasn't an excuse. Sakura looked down into her bowl.
"That's why," Obito continued, "I'm thinking that Sakura should start out learning with someone else." Sakura looked up at him, a little confused. "When you've got the basics down, then we can pick back up, and I can teach you some trickier stuff."
"Someone else?" Sasuke asked before Sakura could. "Who do you mean?"
"One of Gai's students," Obito said, and Sasuke winced.
"Oh!" Naruto said, almost jumping out of his seat. "The green guy?" Sakura wasn't sure who he was talking about.
"Green guy?" she asked Obito, and her sensei grinned.
"Yup," he said. "Might Gai. Konoha's premier taijutsu specialist, and a very green guy."
###
"Obito!" Might Gai shouted at the top of his lungs when they arrived at the field, before jumping into a leaping kick and driving his foot straight through their sensei's head.
Sakura and Naruto stumbled backwards, falling on their backs in shock as the lunatic in green spun and tried to kick Obito in half. The second attack was just as useless as the first; Obito just watched him in amusement, crossing his arms as the kick passed harmlessly through him. Sasuke was much the same; their teammate just sighed, taking a seat on his own and watching the show.
"Good to see you too, Gai." Obito grinned, and Sakura watched in shock as Gai attacked one last time, driving a series of punches too fast for her to see through Obito's chest.
He really was very green, she thought. Everything he wore was green; it looked like it might be some kind of jumpsuit, with a matching top and bottom. Even his sandals were a dim, grassy color.
"Hmm!" Gai declared, coming to a stop. "As ever, you are elusive, Obito!" He smiled; he must have brushed his teeth several times a day, Sakura thought, because they were blindingly white. "Your reflexes are superb as always!"
Her sensei rolled his eyes. "Like I said the other fifty-eight times, Gai, it's automatic. By now if I see you coming, I just turn the Kamui on just in case."
"Well, that is a wonderful precaution!" Gai gave the Uchiha a thumbs up, and Sakura's teacher smiled. "But even with your foresight, one day, I will strike you!"
"Looking forward to it," Obito laughed. "But I'm not here to spar today."
"If not to spar," Gai asked with a sly look, "then why?" He glanced around at Sakura and her teammates, all of whom were still on the ground. "Perhaps there is a lesson the Green Beast can teach your students that you cannot, hmm?"
"Well, something like that," Obito said, and Gai clashed his fists together in excitement.
"I knew it!" he said. "Well, we shall start with four-hundred pushups, at least; your cousin looks a little weedy." Sasuke made a vaguely offended sound, and both Naruto and Sakura snorted. "And then-!"
"Actually," Obito cut his friend off, and Gai frowned. "We're just here for Sakura today."
"Sakura?" Gai asked, and Sakura scrambled to her feet and gave a slight bow. Gai looked her up and down. "Well, she seems enthusiastic enough."
"Her taijutsu is fine," Obito said. "Right now, she's trying to learn kenjutsu."
"Ah!" Gai's eyes lit up. "You do not seek a master; you seek another student!"
"Precisely," Obito said. He chuckled. "Always get right to the heart of it, don't you?"
"I prefer to be direct!" Gai declared, before returning his attention to Sakura. Even just being watched by him was intimidating, Sakura thought. The man had so much energy it was like he was going to burst at any moment, and having all of his focus on her made her fill up with nervous jitters. "So, you intend to be a swordswoman?" he asked, and Sakura was suddenly unsure.
"I think so," she said, and Gai cocked his head. "I didn't have any interest in the academy, but I picked up a sword on our first C-Rank, and…"
"Ah…" Gai nodded. "That nasty business." He was still bursting with energy, but he grew a little more somber. Sakura could see then that he was more than just a slightly insane martial artist; there was a bit of commiseration in Gai's eyes as he looked at her. "What you find interest in while learning and what you find comforting on the battlefield can be very different. If a blade felt good in your hands while you fought, then a blade is what you should learn." He smiled again, his somber aura blown away in an instant. "After all, when should you be most comfortable, if not when fighting for your life?"
Sakura blinked. "I guess you're right," she said, and the man's grin grew wider.
"Come, then!" he said, gesturing grandly to the west. "I will introduce you to my students! I believe among them you will meet someone who will help you find that comfort!"
Team Seven walked with him. Gai occasionally threw more blows at Obito, all of which passed through him; their sensei ignored all the attacks, not even pausing when he was speaking.
"Do you ever think you're actually gonna hit him?" Naruto asked after about a minute, and Gai grinned at him.
"Of course!" he declared. "All shinobi have a weakness! Even your father, young man, as hard as that might be to believe!"
"Oh?" Sasuke asked. "And what would Obito's be then?"
"His ghostly nature is certainly a challenge," Gai said, stroking his chin, and Obito mimicked the action good-naturedly. "But it is a tiring technique, and my endurance outstrips his own. I am not called the Green Beast for nothing!"
"I'm pretty sure you are, actually," Obito said. "Didn't you come up with that name?"
"I did!" Gai said proudly. "But that is because I have the speed, strength, and stamina of a Beast! It was the only fitting appellation!" He quirked an eyebrow. "And perhaps you are simply jealous that you have not come up with an equally catchy name, "Mangekyo No Obito," hmmm?"
"Of course not!" Obito declared, and Gai laughed. Sakura grinned; her sensei was sweating.
"I recall all your failed attempts as surely as you do not, Obito," Gai said, and Team Seven found itself leaning in. "Obito 'The Phantom.' Obito 'The Killer Ghost.' Obito 'Of the Bloody Eye.' Obito-"
"Heyyyyyy!" Obito interrupted, just as Naruto began to break down laughing. "That's your team over there, right?!"
Sakura looked where Obito was looking and found three teenagers watching them approach from the trees. They were all a little older and taller than her and her team. There were two boys and one girl, the same composition as most of the teams the academy put out. One of the boys looked like a miniature version of Gai, to Sakura's surprise. They didn't have similar faces, but they had identical outfits and haircuts. The other was unmistakably a Hyuuga, his milky eyes watching them approach without any obvious emotion. He had long, flowing black hair, and his hands were covered in bandages.
The last, the girl, was a couple inches taller than her companions, and wore a simple white vest. Her hair was in a bun, and a large scroll, as big around as her, was strapped to her back.
The training ground they stood in was torn to pieces, small craters punched in the ground everywhere and shuriken, kunai, and other weapons littering the whole place. A target post had been torn him half, the bottom three feet of it sticking dismally out of the ground.
"Ah, sensei!" the boy who looked like Gai shouted. "You have returned with company!"
"Indeed, Lee!" Gai shouted back. "This is Mangekyo no Obito!"
There wasn't a lick of hesitation: Lee charged straight at Obito and tried to tackle him, soaring right through his chest. Sakura's sensei sighed.
"So, now you've got a little doppelgänger?" he asked, sounding weary, and Sakura resisted the urge to laugh. "He wasn't like this when you started out."
"I did not see Gai-sensei's wisdom, starting out!" Lee said as he finished rolling to his feet, turning to face Obito. "But he was absolutely correct; if you can strike a ghost, you can strike anything!"
He was even louder than his master. Sakura finally broke down with a laugh, and Lee glanced at her. To her astonishment, he blushed.
Had a boy ever blushed at her? Sakura froze, totally unsure of how to react, but Obito saved her from having to worry about it.
"I'm not a ghost," he said glumly. "Why don't you introduce us to your teammates?"
"Of course!" Lee said, as both his companions approached. "This is Neji!" he said, pointing to the Hyuuga. "A genius in the Gentle Fist, who I will no doubt surpass!"
Neji laughed; it sounded a little mean, Sakura thought, but his face seemed nice enough. "Not anytime soon," he said, and Lee huffed. He looked them over. "So, Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto Namikaze," he said, his voice a little low, and Sakura's teammates straightened up at the attention. "Your sensei is Mangekyo no Obito, is he?"
"Seems that way," Naruto said with a frown, and Sakura watched from the side, wondering why Neji had focused solely on her teammates and completely ignored her.
"That's good," Neji said. "It would be a shame to defeat you if you had a substandard teacher. People would consider it an excuse."
Sasuke stepped forward, an invisible charge passing between him and the Hyuuga, and Sakura blinked, wondering what was happening.
"What do you mean?" she asked, and Neji stared at her.
"I don't know you," he said, his voice curious, and Sakura blinked again.
"I'm Sakura Haruno," she said, extending her hand, and after a moment Neji took it in a firm handshake.
"It's nice to meet you, Sakura Haruno," he said, inclining his head slightly. "I have no interest in defeating you."
What a strange guy. "Well, that's fine," Sakura said, trying to dispel the tension. "I've got no interest in being defeated by you, so I guess we're on the same level."
Neji laughed. "Indeed." He released her hand. To Sakura's relief, the nascent tension was gone.
"Ah…" Lee said, some of his thunder stolen by his teammate's words. "And this is Tenten."
The tall girl stepped forward with a smile. "Nice to meet you all," she said with a wave, and Sakura smiled back. "What brings you to our little corner of the woods?"
"Tenten!" Gai shouted, and the girl jumped. "Sakura here plucked a sword from the hands of an enemy, and it sung to her!"
"Uh…" Sakura said, looking over to the man. Obito was facepalming behind him. "I wouldn't… quite put it that way, Master Gai."
"Ah!" Gai stepped back. "My apologies! How would you put it?"
Sakura's eyes went wide, and she felt her face go red. "I, uh-"
"She picked it up," Naruto said suddenly, "and whacked a shuriken right out of the air." Tenten looked surprised, nodding slowly, and Naruto glanced at Sakura. "She was good with it, and she'd been trying to get better," he said, and now Sakura was the one blushing. "I bet she could be real good, with someone to practice with."
"Ahhhh," Tenten said with an understanding tone. "You think she'd be a good training partner, sensei?"
"A wonderful one!" Gai declared. "She is young, and persistent! I believe you and she would do well to learn from one another, Tenten!" He grinned. "Not to mention, it would force Obito to spend more time around me. Eventually, he will slip up." Obito shook his head, and Sasuke patted him on the shoulder with mock compassion.
Tenten laughed. "Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt," she said, and Sakura smiled at her tone. "Besides, you guys are all obsessed with your fists anyway; it would be nice to have some practice with someone else who appreciates a sword." She looked at Sakura. "Do you appreciate a sword?"
"I don't know," Sakura said with a shrug. She gave Naruto an appreciative look, and the blond grinned and scratched the back of his head. "But I want to find out."
"Good enough for me," Tenten declared. "Let's get started."
###
Seventy-four days after her first C-Rank, Sakura knocked Tenten's sword out of her hands.
They both watched it go, equally startled, as it spun off into the air and buried itself several inches into the dirt. Tenten looked down at her and Sakura looked back, very aware, as always, of the height difference between them. Her sword, one she'd borrowed from her training partner, was still in her hand; standing there holding a naked blade with Tenten disarmed in front of her, Sakura didn't know what to do.
The older girl smiled. "Nice one," she laughed, and the tension of the moment dissolved without ceremony. It was a sunny day, approaching the afternoon, and the two of them were alone in one of Konoha's hundreds of training grounds. She turned, walking after the sword, and drew it out of the earth. "I didn't see that coming."
"You weren't gripping the sword," Sakura said. One of the first things that Tenten had taught her beyond the basics of improving her footwork and form was that it was critical for a shinobi to always keep hold of their weapon with chakra: otherwise, a strong blow would easily tear the weapon out of their hands. The only reason she wouldn't have been doing that…
"Well, I'm still going a little easy on you," Tenten said with a grin, flourishing her blade. "But now that you've disarmed me, you've proved that's not necessary anymore." She sheathed it behind her back, placing it back in the sealing scrolls she carried everywhere with her. "Here, gimme it back. We're done for now."
Sakura gingerly returned the sword, keeping the blade facing away from Tenten. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, you're a natural," Tenten said, and Sakura blushed. "Well, maybe natural is the wrong word cause you didn't pick it up right away." She turned, waving for Sakura to follow her. They walked together to the other side of the field, towards the target posts opposite the dirt pit they'd been practicing in.
"I was frustrated getting started," Sakura admitted, and Tenten chuckled.
"Yeah, that was obvious," she said, and Sakura laughed as well. "But it's only been a month and some and you've already gotten to the point where I'm going to have to start using chakra for our spars." She glanced down at her. "That's impressive. I get the feeling that you could have done whatever you put your mind to; you're smart enough, and you put the work in."
"Well…" Sakura looked south, over to the back of the Hokage Monument. "I don't know if I would have taken things this seriously."
"Yeah," Tenten grinned. "We're kinda alike, you know?"
"What?" Sakura asked, and her sparring partner shrugged. Tenten was older than her, and, though Sakura wouldn't admit this out loud for fear of being teased, she thought she was much cooler as well. She'd never considered a similarity between the two of them besides their kenjutsu.
"We both ended up on interesting teams, and it pushed us in interesting directions." They came to a stop about thirty meters from the target posts, and Tenten set down her scroll. "They both pushed us."
"I don't know about that," Sakura said quietly.
"I don't mean like forced." Tenten removed several dozen shuriken from the scroll, laying them out in neat rows. "I mean that being near that made us want to be better. So we wouldn't fall behind." She looked back at Sakura. "You're on a team with an Uchiha prodigy and the Hokage's son. You must have been worried about that."
She was still worried about that. Sakura just nodded.
"I ended up with Neji and Lee," Tenten continued. "Neji might be from the branch house, but he's a prodigy just like Sasuke. Maybe even better." She laughed. "And Lee might be complete garbage at ninjutsu and genjutsu, but he took that and made his taijutsu better than it has any right to be. He's already way beyond the average chunin there. With those guys on either side of me, I felt like I needed something of my own."
She threw seven shuriken, and scored seven direct hits on the various targets scattered across the posts, bullseyeing each one without apparent effort. Sakura smiled.
"So you made it so you'd never miss," she said, and Tenten nodded.
"I made it so I'd never miss," she said, and punctuated the point with another ten shuriken and another ten bullseyes. She wasn't kidding, Sakura thought. She and Tenten had been training their kenjutsu together for several weeks now, and whenever they finished Tenten would practice her aim. In all that time, Sakura had never once seen her miss.
Tenten threw another brace of shuriken, and two of them angled into each other, deflecting off at wild angles to score bullseyes on the sides of the posts.
"What do you mean by branch house?" Sakura asked. She hadn't heard the term before. Tenten's eyes narrowed.
"The Hyuuga aren't like the other clans," she said, hurling yet more shuriken, along with a couple kunai. Hit, hit, hit. Sakura didn't know how she managed it. "There's the main family, and the branch family. I don't know what determines it, but if you're branch family like Neji, you're basically a servant to the main family." She started walking forward to retrieve her tools, and Sakura followed, interested in hearing more. "Neji's father is the twin brother of the head of the clan right now, but he's still branch. Maybe he was born second or something. That means Neji is too."
"The head of the Hyuuga?" Sakura asked. "Wouldn't that be Hinata's father?" She hadn't seen any of her classmates, Hinata included, in several weeks, and sometimes she found herself missing them. Sakura hadn't been incredibly close to anyone in her class, even Ino or Hinata, but it had been nice to be part of the group regardless.
"Yeah," Tenten nodded. "She's Neji's closest cousin. You know, twin dads." She screwed up her face. "That must be kinda weird. They spar a lot: he always wins." She laughed. "He doesn't seem to mind; he doesn't hate her or the main branch or anything like that, but he definitely likes beating them. I guess to him fighting Hinata is like fighting the whole clan."
"Hmm." They fell into a comfortable silence, and Sakura picked up several kunai of her own. Hitting a bullseye from a hundred feet away wasn't impossible for her, but there was no way she could match Tenten there. Her first knife overshot and buried itself high on the post: the second didn't have enough power, and fell short by a foot. She huffed, and Tenten giggled.
"I don't know how you do it," she said, and Tenten shrugged.
"You'd get it, with time. I've been doing this for more than a year now," she said, proving the point with another perfectly thrown knife. "Like I said, you're smart enough to figure out just about anything, I think." She looked back, the sun shining in her eyes and making her squint. "Isn't that why you became a shinobi?"
Sakura felt a chill run down her back, and Tenten quirked her head. She'd shown something, Sakura realized, in her eyes or her body language.
"What?" Tenten asked, and Sakura frowned.
"Why did you?" she asked, and Tenten blinked. "Become a shinobi, I mean."
"Hmmm." Tenten looked away from the blinding sun, and from Sakura. "Well, I don't have a family. There wasn't anyone pushing for me to become a ninja. Though I guess a lot of orphans become ninja because it's the best option for them. But when I was young, I heard stories about the Sannin, and Tsunade." She gave a sheepish smile. "I guess that inspired me."
The Sannin. Sakura only knew the basics: three incredibly famous shinobi from the Leaf who'd been instrumental in the Second War. Jiraiya, Orochimaru, and Tsunade. She had no idea where any of them were now.
"Tsunade invented the medical division," Tenten said, and Sakura started. She hadn't known that. "And she was the strongest woman alive, supposedly. So I wanted to be a medic, and I wanted to be strong."
She chuckled. "But when I ended up with Gai-sensei, it became obvious really quickly that I didn't have the control or patience to be a medic. I kept killing everything I was given to practice on; fish and stuff. I couldn't even separate coffee from cream without blowing the cup up. I guess I have violent chakra."
Like the balloon, Sakura thought. Naruto had finally managed to pop the water balloon just two weeks before, circulating his chakra through the water so violently that the balloon burst. He'd been exuberant, until he'd come back the next day. His father had given him a rubber ball about the size of his hand upon receiving the news, apparently.
Now, he had to break an even harder material without help from the water. Sakura wondered what kind of jutsu could possibly require such precise and directed chakra control, without even an elemental affinity.
She snapped back to the present as Tenten continued. "I was heartbroken at first, but Gai-sensei told me that Tsunade probably hadn't set out to become a great medic from the start; she'd just ended up where she was best." She plucked the last of the shuriken from the post, sealing it back into her scroll. "So, I started messing around with ninja tools, and with fuinjutsu, and I ended up with this. And now, I'm going to follow it as far as it'll take me. In that way, I think I'm still following the person who inspired me."
So, Tenten had become a shinobi because someone had inspired her. That made sense to Sakura; plenty of people did things for that reason.
"Why'd you ask, anyway?" Tenten said, and Sakura sighed.
"I didn't have anything like that," she admitted. "Obito-sensei asked me, the first day, why I'd become a shinobi. And I didn't know. I didn't have an answer. I just… ended up as one."
"Well, that's probably what happens to most people," Tenten said, and Sakura blinked, her internal condemnation drying up under Tenten's frankness. "It's a hidden village, after all. If you don't know what to do, you become a ninja. Both your parents are, right?"
Sakura nodded, and Tenten smiled. "You looked worried. Relax. If you grew up with two ninja as your only example, what else could you have done? Everyone ends up where they are because of who's around them, not because they're born with a purpose or something. Have you been worried about that this whole time?"
"A little," Sakura admitted, suddenly feeling silly.
"Ah, it's alright," Tenten said, smacking her shoulder. She did that a lot. The older girl was more physical than anyone else Sakura had met. "You're figuring it out now, right? That's all you can do sometimes."
Sakura, at that moment, felt a deep and abiding appreciation for the older girl.
"Thanks," she said haltingly. "Tenten… we're friends, right?"
Tenten gave her a puzzled look. "We've been hanging out for a month and clashing swords almost every day. Did you think we weren't friends?"
"Sorry," Sakura said, mortified. "I just-"
"Forget it." Tenten smiled. "Grab another sword. We still have some sunlight." She drew her own weapon, a short glaive, and paced back from Sakura, putting about twenty feet between them. "This time, you're getting disarmed. I guarantee it."
Grateful and more than a little relieved, Sakura reached for the scroll, drew a chokuto out, and leapt back into a ready position as the sun continued to set behind her.
###
When the last of the leaves fell, over a hundred days after their first C-Rank, Naruto finished the Rasengan.
"Sakura!"
Sakura jerked and looked to her left, out her bedroom window. She found Naruto there, staring at her with an enormous grin plastered on his face. Only her teammate's head was visible, peaking around the side of the windowsill: he was standing on the side of her apartment.
"Naruto?" She set down the book she'd been reading on her bed, standing up and walking over to the window. She'd left it open to enjoy some of the cool winter air; Konoha didn't get very cold, even in December, though it had snowed once in her memory. "What are you doing?"
"I figured it out!" he declared proudly, and Sakura heard someone start to climb the stairs to her room below; her mother was the only one home right now, so it was certainly her. "I got it!"
"Got what?" she asked. "You don't mean-"
"The Rasengan!"
Sakura was taken aback. It had only been ten days before that Naruto had managed to burst the rubber ball with his chakra, and move onto what he had been told was the final step. He'd been given an empty balloon, and told to form his chakra within it without popping it; the complete reversal of the previous exercises. Had he really figured it out that quickly?
"Congratulations!" she said after a moment of hesitation, and Naruto's smile grew wider.
"C'mon," he said, and the footsteps reached the top of the stairs. "I'm gonna grab Sasuke, and show my dad: do you wanna come with?"
She blinked.
Naruto had come to her first, instead of his parents or Sasuke? Why? She must have just been closest, Sakura thought. That's what made the most sense.
"Sakura?" Her mother pushed open the door behind her, and Sakura half-turned, looking over her shoulder. "Everything alright-" She spotted Naruto over her shoulder.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Naruto, what are you doing out there?"
The blond looked sheepish. "It was the quickest way up," he said, and Sakura's mother laughed.
"Well, don't scuff the wall, alright? You'll be the one paying for it!" She was wearing a nice necklace, Sakura noticed; one of the things she'd bought with the bounty money from Hidan. Sakura had never really understood jewelry, but she had to admit the necklace with its silver chain and sapphire stone was really quite pretty. "What'd you come for?"
Sakura's family had only met Naruto a couple times, but they'd always hit it off; her teammate was infectious in his enthusiasm and good cheer, and the fact he was the Hokage's son probably helped. Naruto just shrugged in response to Mebuki's question.
"Just wanted to show Sakura something," he said. "I've got a new jutsu!"
"Well, that certainly sounds interesting," Sakura's mother said, glancing at her and wiggling her eyebrows. Sakura stared back without comprehension, and her mother laughed. "Go on then. Just close the window behind you, would you?"
Her mother closed the door, and when Sakura hopped out the window, sticking herself to the wall alongside Naruto, she gently closed the window.
They made their way to the Uchiha Compound, chattering about trivialities along the way. Konoha in the winter was always an interesting sight: the multitude of forests that peppered the village were bereft of their leaves, robbing their home of much of its color and vitality, and thick clouds frequently hung low over the village. Its citizens countered the gloominess by hanging more colorful tapestries in the streets and planting vibrant winter fruits and trees on the rooftops, but there was still more grey than green. The only exception were the grand trees planted by the First Hokage, dozens of meters tall and furnished with leaves throughout the year. No matter the weather or circumstances, the founding trees of Konoha would never wither.
Sakura had always wondered why the Uchiha's home was on the outskirts of the village, well away from any other residential districts. They'd been one of the founding clans, but they were more isolated than any of them. Had that been their decision, or someone else's?
The compound had a couple different entrances, but the largest was the southward facing, and that was the one Naruto and Sakura approached from. There was a young boy sitting outside it, maybe four or five years old, whittling something into a tree, and he watched them enter with a solemn expression. The Uchiha built differently from the rest of Konoha; they had wide, cobbled streets, and their homes were more concrete than wood.
Naruto seemed to know the way, and so Sakura followed him; she'd never seen Sasuke's home before. They passed several Uchiha, all of whom glanced at them, but no stopped to speak with them. In a little more than a minute, they came to a squat and wide house, only one story tall but still larger than Sakura's own home. Naruto knocked on the door, and then let himself inside.
"Sasuke?" he called, and in response a woman stuck her head through a doorframe at the end of the hall. Sakura had only met Mikoto Uchiha twice in all her time with her team, and just like last time, she couldn't take her eyes off the burns on the woman's otherwise beautiful face.
"Naruto?" the woman asked. "He's out back." She shifted her gaze to Sakura, her scars crinkling. "Hello, Sakura. What's this about?"
"Naruto figured out the Rasengan," Sakura said self-consciously, and Mikoto clicked her tongue in surprise. "He wanted Sasuke to be there when he shows his father."
"Well, who can blame him? That's quite the achievement." Mikoto gestured over her shoulder. "Out back, like I said. Congratulations, Naruto."
"Thanks!" Naruto bolted past her, while Sakura did her best to give Sasuke's mother a respectable distance as she made her way down the hallway. Mikoto watched her go as she did, and Sakura slowed, wondering if she'd done something wrong.
"Obito tells me your kenjutsu has improved," Mikoto said, and Sakura blinked, turning to look at the woman directly. She was watching Sakura with something she couldn't identify. "I'm a swordswoman myself. We should meet sometime."
"I…" Sakura felt a gear in her head catch. There was a cold sweat on the back of her neck. Mikoto's gaze, even without her Sharingan active, was intense. "Pardon me, ma'am?"
"Naruto and Sasuke already know this," Sasuke's mother said with a frown. "But you are on a team, more than any other, that may have to face a Sharingan one day. It would benefit you to learn how to fight it."
"I don't understand," Sakura admitted. Mikoto shook her head, the intensity vanishing.
"Don't worry about it, for now," she said with a faint smile. "Just consider my offer, if you would."
"Of course," Sakura said, trying to understand what had just happened. "Of course I will. I promise."
Mikoto shooed her away with a grin, and Sakura left, stepping into the backyard to find Sasuke and Naruto waiting for her. Her Uchiha teammate had worked up a sweat; there was a tree covered in small burns and ninja tools behind him.
"What happened?" Naruto asked, and Sakura shook her head.
"Nothing," she said, wondering if that was true. "Sorry I took a second."
"Alright," Sasuke said. "Let's go then." He grinned at Naruto. "I'd like to see this jutsu, if you've really figured it out."
They left the compound together, making their way to the Hokage's office. It was one of the tallest and most central buildings in Konoha, visible from any rooftop in the village, and Sakura had never been inside before. They made their way through one of the side doors, Naruto nodding at a watching chunin, and climbed a twisting staircase that ran through the whole building. Seven floors up, and they came to a hall, and Naruto confidently stepped down it, quietly whistling a tune to himself.
There was an ANBU outside the office, guarding the heavy double doors, and he watched them approach with a mask marked with a minimalistic hawk. When Naruto reached for the door, he shook his head.
"Meeting," he said, and Naruto frowned. "Give him a minute, kid."
Naruto stuck his tongue out, to Sakura's shock. "It'll only be a minute," he said, and the ANBU shifted. Sakura couldn't believe that her teammate was willing to talk back to a senior ninja like that; even if he was the Hokage's son, that was rude, right? She glanced at Sasuke: he wasn't showing an emotion of any kind. It was impossible to know if he felt the same way.
But the ANBU made no move to stop them when Naruto pushed the door open, so Sakura didn't say anything.
"Sensei's old students are always causing trouble," the Hokage said as they entered, looking up from his desk as they entered. There were five other people in the room with him.
Sakura only recognized two of them. The Third Hokage, who had retired before she was born but was still a man with a very imposing presence, and Kushina Uzumaki, Naruto's mother. The other three were a man and a woman with grey hair and severe expressions, and another middle-aged man with spiky black hair and deep frown lines. Two scars ran from above and below his left eye to the side of his face, ending near his ears: of all the adults in the room, he was the one who watched them with the most intensity.
The Hokage made eye contact with his son, and Sakura felt a flash of guilt. They shouldn't be here right now; they'd intruded on something important. All the adults in the room were looking at them now, all curiously, some with confusion, and the Hokage finished his thought as he pinned his son with his brilliant blue eyes.
"Until they cause an actual issue, we're inviting them," he declared, and the room relaxed. "We'll revisit the issue in May." He straightened up. "Naruto. Something wrong?"
"Who let you in?" Kushina demanded, and Naruto shrugged. "We've talked about this before, Naruto! You can't just walk into your father's office whenever you want!"
"Hawk let me in," Naruto said with a grin. How could he be so confident, with his family, a previous Kage, and other important shinobi staring at him? Sakura really couldn't understand him sometimes. "I got it!"
"You got it?" the Hokage asked, and his son nodded. He smiled faintly; Sakura couldn't remember ever seeing the Hokage smile before. The few times she'd seen him, he'd always been so serious and solemn, but he had a smile like Naruto's, one that was bright and guileless. "Well, it took longer than Obito thought it would, but that's still good to hear. Let's see it then."
Naruto stepped forward, and Sakura and Sasuke stayed back, watching him. He set himself in a concentrated stance, his feet widely planted and his posture completely upright, and held one hand out before him, the other settling into a claw over it.
As Sakura watched intently, he started channeling chakra to his hand. A lot; enough for it to be visible, a faint blue glow growing in his hand. The glow intensified, becoming a small sphere of violently rotating chakra. It wobbled, seemingly about to come apart, and Naruto's other hand came down, helping spin the chakra and directing it with small, quick motions, keeping its form.
Just several seconds later, he drew his hand back with a prideful grin. There, sitting and keening in his hand, was a small ball of bright chakra, spinning in place. Just looking at it, Sakura could tell that it was dangerous; she had no idea what would happen if it hit something, but that much chakra spinning so rapidly it almost looked like it wasn't moving would probably blow a hole through a stone wall with ease.
Naruto held the jutsu in his hand for ten seconds, luxuriating in the attention being paid to him, and then closed his fingers. The Rasengan vanished, and the sound and light with it.
The Hokage smiled. "Nicely done." Across from him, the Third Hokage grinned.
"Very good, Naruto," the older man said, and Sakura's teammate beamed. The Third had a comforting voice: he'd occasionally spoken at the Academy, and Sakura had always been compelled to listen. In a way, he was a grandfather to the entire village. "To acquire an A-Rank jutsu at your age is no easy task." He glanced at both Sasuke and Sakura. "I hope you intend to share it."
"He better," Kushina huffed, before she smiled. "Good job! Now get out of here, before I throw you out!"
"Got it!" Naruto gave her a thumbs up and beat a hasty retreat, and Sakura and Sasuke followed, not saying a word. They passed Hawk in the corridor, and the ninja inclined his head. Naruto held his hand out for a high-five, and the ANBU stared at him, leaving him hanging. Sakura's teammate just laughed.
"Yeah, that's fair," he said, and they made their way down the corridor, away from the office.
"That's an interesting technique," Sasuke said when they were nearly to the staircase. Sakura realized his Sharingan was winding away. "It's nothing but chakra control, huh?"
"Pretty much," Naruto said. "That's what all the lessons were about; putting out enough to pop the ball, but then controlling it enough that it wouldn't damage anything." He scratched his cheek, and Sakura's eyes were drawn to the whisker-like scars there. So far as she could tell, her teammate had been born with them: she'd never asked where they'd come from. "I guess if I put out too much but didn't control it, it would tear up my hand or something. That'd be nasty."
"It's pretty amazing, Naruto," Sakura agreed. She frowned. "I wondered what they were talking about."
"Whadya mean?" Naruto asked, and Sasuke nodded slowly.
"You didn't hear?" he asked, and Naruto made a helpless gesture that made Sakura laugh. "Your father said something about 'Sensei's old students.' Do you have any idea what that meant?"
"Nah," Naruto said, putting his hands behind his head in a gesture of an extravagant lack of care. "No clue. I'll ask him about it if you want me to."
"... could you?" Sakura asked, and Naruto glanced at her with a curious expression. "I didn't know the Fourth had any teammates. It would be interesting to learn about them."
Naruto made a surprised face, and Sakura realized he hadn't been looking at it that way. "Yeah," he said. "That could be interesting. I'll see about that when he's not in a meeting." He grinned. "And grumpy."
He turned, taking the first step down the staircase. "So, do you guys want ice cream or something? I could use a snack."
That, Sakura thought, sounded pretty nice. She and Sasuke followed him out into the cool winter air, and by the time they reached the end of the street, immersed in conversation and speculation about the Rasengan, Sakura had forgotten all about her question.