Super Ninja Science Team Show
A Naruto voodoosharkcrackbunny
By
EvilFuzzy9
A peppy, extremely nineties melody blared from overhead speakers. Spotlights shined down on a garishly colorful TV recording stage that could only belong to a public access "edutainment" show. Simple equations adorned cartoonishly scientific-looking set pieces, and a title done in a borderline schizophrenic assortment of highly inappropriate fonts blazed across the screen in an archaic slow dissolve.
Three female figures wearing lab coats burst onto the scene. Except that only the middle one could be really described as bursting in any manner apart from bust-size (where she was perfectly average, thankyouverymuch). The ones on either side of her looked considerably less enthusiastic.
"Good evening, boys and girls!" chirped the dark-haired Shizune in an almost uncharacteristically bubbly manner. Her voice sounded unbearably saccharine, and the smile on her face was so over the top enthusiastic that it actually sort of ruined what look she had going for her.
...not to say that she was unattractive, per se, even sandwiched between the two extremes of appeal represented by her extremely talented kouhai Sakura Haruno and her extremely buxom mentor Tsunade most-fans-readily-assume-that-it's-Senju-but-it's- technically-yet-to-be-canonically-given-as-such-so -instead-she-gets-this-over-hyphenated-monstrosity -for-now. But that ear to ear rictus was rather more threatening than endearing.
"Good evening, Shizune-neechan," chorused a less than enthusiastic studio audience consisting primarily of Inari, Konohamaru, Moegi, Udon, and Kurenai with her yet-unnamed baby.
Shizune beamed cheerfully at this response, as though it hadn't been monotonously droned back at her, the words completely drained of all life and meaning by the sheer unenthusiasm of the studio audience.
"I hope you're all having a fantabulously scienterrific day!" she cheered at the audience. "Because we have another episode coming your way today, jam packed full of knowledge for your precious little brains!" She spun to face her pink-haired co-host, who glowered darkly at her. "Sakuwa-tan!" she said in a sickeningly babyish manner. "Are you ready?!"
"Hiii, Sakura this is," droned Sakura, voice and face completely devoid of any human warmth or emotion. Listlessly, weakly she pumped one half-clenched fist into the air. "Yay. Science. Woo."
Shizune's smile widened, seemingly defying all known laws of anatomy and physics. Bubbly as ever, completely unperturbed by Sakura's monotone, she spun to face the Fifth Hokage, her other co-host.
"Tsunade-sama!" she cheered almost respectfully, or at least when compared to how she had just addressed Sakura. "Are you ready?!"
"Hiii, Tsunade this is," droned Tsunade in an identically lifeless and wooden manner as Sakura. "Woo. Learning. Yay."
Shizune giggled cheerfully, and she spun on the balls of her feet to face the studio audience.
"Kids!" she said. "Are you ready?!"
There was complete silence, except for Udon's allergenic sniffling.
Undeterred, Shizune continued on without missing a bit. "Well, then! It's time for the one, the only, the absolutely inimitable! Super Ninja Science Team Show!" She punched one fist enthusiastically into the air. "LET'S GOOOOO!"
The cheesy theme song reached the unwanted climax of its mediocre track, and the lights briefly dimmed. Naruto shadow clones began bustling across the darkened stage, quickly setting up for the next scene, quietly muttering and cursing under their breath every time one of them bumped and elbow or stubbed a toe, thus dispelling and dropping whatever it was they had been carrying at the time.
After a couple short minutes of this, a projection screen was lowered at the back of the set, and numbers appeared, flickering as they counted down to the start of the film.
A short educational picture began to play.
Cutesy caricatures of Katsuyu, Manda, and Gamabunta appeared on the screen. They looked to be doing a crude walk cycle through a blatantly repeating forest backdrop.
"Boy, thisss sure isss a niccce day," said Manda the snake in Sasuke Uchiha's voice. For all the world, it sounded like the infamous shinobi was being forced to hiss out his lines at gunpoint. The sentences were stilted, and every word spoken in that cartoonish snake accent sounded like it was physically painful for him to enunciate.
"Ribbit!" said an overenthusiastic Naruto, his words several decibel levels higher than Sasuke's, and filled with far too much energy for this relatively sedate piece. "I sure hope nothing bad happens, today! Ribbit!" His acting was also (though it goes almost without saying) absolutely horrendous.
"Don't be silly, Gamabunta," this was Sakura, and like Sasuke it sounded like she was reading these lines out only under the threat of bodily harm. "What could possibly go wrong on a day like today." Despite the obviously interrogative nature of the sentence, there was no indication of a question in the tone Sakura used.
The moment this sentence left the cartoon Katsuyu's mouth-equivalent orifice, there was a puff of smoke, and cutsey versions of the Legendary Sannin appeared.
"We need your power," said Tsunade in her own voice, though there was no emotion in her words.
"A terrible enemy is ravaging the ninja world!" exclaimed Jiraiya, who was noticeably being voiced by an actual professional in a performance that was par excellence for what was otherwise such a sub par production.
"We need senjutsu to defeat them," said Orochimaru, who was being voiced by Karin of all people.
"Okay!" said the three summons in blatantly stilted speech. "We will lend you our power."
Another cartoonish puff of smoke, and Orochimaru, Tsunade, and Jiraiya were now all drawn in sage mode.
"We have the power!" the Sannin proclaimed in a very poor reproduction of actual human speech. Then they exited stage left, and the video cut off.
The lights came back on, revealing Shizune, Sakura, and Tsunade, as well as a visibly harried Naruto.
"That's right, kids!" said Shizune. "Today we'll be talking about sage mode!"
She clapped her hands, and the phrase SAGE CHAKRA flashed across the bottom of the screen in a bubbly, garish yellow font. On cue, Sakura turned to Shizune, uncaringly affecting a half-assed curiosity.
"Sage mode? What's that?" she said, sounding distinctly as though she were blandly reading her lines straight from a teleprompter without any attempt to add flavor or inflection.
Shizune laughed. "Oh, silly Sakura!" she declared. "Don't you know anything?" She playfully wrapped her knuckles on the pinkette's head, producing a loud, wooden noise that was obviously dubbed in later by an underpaid foley artist.
Sakura glowered at Shizune with undisguised rancor.
"No, I guess I don't," she said through gritted teeth, a vein visibly throbbing on her forehead. She made the smallest un-effort at striking a faux girlish pose, sticking her tongue out and bopping herself on the side of her head (sound artists dubbing in an identical wooden knocking). "Tee hee." The giggle was blatantly forced, and it sounded disturbingly unnatural and malicious.
Shizune didn't seem to notice, though. She threw an arm over Sakura's shoulder and pulled the younger chuunin into her side.
"Well!" she said cheerfully. "Sage mode is a very special kind of ninja art, tied directly to the teachings of three particular clans of summoned beasts."
"Only three?" droned Sakura. "But aren't there hundreds of summoned beast clans?"
"There are," said Tsunade, stepping forward. She looked somewhat more comfortable, now, arms crossed under her bountiful chest as she spoke. "The summoned beast clans are numerous and diverse, but only a small fraction have active contracts with live shinobi. Whether the contract scrolls were kept within clans that have died out over time, or were maintained through teaching lines that ended a long time ago, or were simply lost or destroyed in some accident or battle, very few clans of summoned beasts have living representatives in the human world."
"Human world?" said Sakura, looking decidedly annoyed at having to play the fool for this discussion. "What do you mean by that?"
"Summoning is a kind of jikuukan ninjutsu, a space-time technique," explained Shizune cheerfully. "Summoned beasts actually live in another dimension from us humans, and they are only able to come here by being summoned. That's why we call them summoned beasts, don't you know~!" She giggled.
"Another dimension, huh," said Sakura, all but sighing and rolling her eyes as she read out her dialogue. "Do you mean, like, they live on another planet?" One could tell that she was biting back a scowl, obviously disgusted at having to say something so utterly inane.
"Not exactly" said Tsunade, frowning. "but the actual details are pretty complicated, so we'll save that for another show. For the purposes of this discussion, though, yes. They do live on another planet, basically."
"And the summoning jutsu lets them come here at the cost of chakra, and some blood, from the summoner. Right?" said Sakura.
Shizune nodded energetically. "Precisely!" she said, clapping her hands together and hopping up and down in over-the-top delight.
"Oh, okay then," said Sakura, words still quite stilted. She looked strangely exhausted. "But, then, if there are so many different kinds of summoned beasts, why are there only three clans with sage mode?"
"No-bo-dy knows~!" singsonged Shizune gaily, smiling at the studio audience. "It's a se-c-ret~!"
Sakura audibly groaned at this.
"Okay," she said, clearly irritable. "So what clans do have sage mode, then?"
"The Slug, Toad, and Snake clans," said Tsunade.
"You mean... like the ones Sasuke, Naruto, and I have contracts with?"
"Exactly the ones," Tsunade said with a nod. "Shikkotsu Forest, Mount Myouboku, and Ryuuchi Cave are three of the most sacred sites in the summon world, where the concentrations of natural energy are extremely high. They are also where the slugs, toads, and snakes all make their homes."
"Metal Ge—?" said Sakura, before she caught what she was saying and corrected herself. "—I mean, natural energy? Does that have something to do with sage mode?"
"It has everything to do with it!" chirruped Shizune.
Immediately, she produced a diagram showing the classic silhouette of a ninja with the traditional tao-shaped depiction of chakra, with one half labeled "身" – for shin or body, from shintai energy – and the other with "精" – for sei or spirit, from seishin energy – and the two halves were colored red and blue, respectively.
"You see," she said, taking a pointer and indicating the split circle in the stomach region of the silhouette, "while normal chakra is produced naturally and automatically within a ninja's system, from a combination of physical and spiritual energy, senjutsu, or the sage arts, need a little something more."
She flipped the diagram over, revealing the same image as the first side, except that the two part split in the circle was now divided into thirds instead, the parts colored red, blue, and green. And the green part was labeled with "自" – for shi or self, which put into a compound with "然" would make shizen, or natural, as in 自然エネルギー, shizen enerugii (natural energy).
"You see," Shizune continued, "while normal chakra is a mixture of physical and spiritual energies that can be found within the average person, sage mode and senjutsu include natural energy into that equation."
"That doesn't sound that hard," said Sakura, reading her lines from the prompt cards. "I bet I could do that without any problem. You just need to get some natural energy, right?"
"Yes, and no," said Tsunade blandly. "Natural energy exists in the world around us – it's the energy in nature, and that can be found anywhere. However..." she drawled, yawning slightly. "...human bodies normally can't access it. Gathering natural energy is a very difficult art, and it requires perfect stillness. You have to make yourself at one with nature, basically, and that takes a lot of meditation."
"Oh? But I can meditate just fine," replied Sakura, her words stilted and weirdly inflected because she was distracted with squinting her eyes to make out the prompter's sub par handwriting. "I bet I'll be using sage mode in no time."
"Not so fast, Sakura!" chimed in Naruto, who had almost faded in background he had been so still and quiet. "There's motto spaghetti thin juicy mayonnaise!" he said brightly and energetically.
"It's 'more to sage mode than just meditating'!" hissed Sakura through the side of her mouth.
Naruto blinked.
"Oh! Okay, that makes more sense," he said. Then he laughed nervously. "Well, yeah." He scratched the back of his neck, sheepish. "Um, well, it's really tricky to do," he said after a moment of silence. "Like, you have to get the proportions right, you know? And that's really hard. Sage chakra isn't something people are really meant to use, I guess, 'cause getting the ratio wrong is dangerous. See, if you get a little too much natural energy, then your body starts to, um, change, and it's really tricky to mix it just right.
"It's kinda like adding a swirl of mint to marble ice cream. If you don't use enough, then the mint gets lost in the vanilla and chocolate, and if you use too much, then the mint will totally overpower the other flavors and mess it up. But do it just right, and you've added a whole other level of flavor to your chakra! Otherwise, you'll turn into a toad statue."
He paused, a thoughtful expression on his face.
"Or... maybe a slug or snake statue, if you're learning from those guys? Hm. I don't know, I've never thought about that... it would make sense though, wouldn't it...?"
Sakura, Tsunade, and especially Shizune were visibly thrown off by the blond's sudden off-script ramble, and it took them a couple of moments to regain their equilibrium.
"Uh, that's... very well put, Naruto..." said Shizune, her smile faltering slightly. "Now, how about you go back stage and get things ready for the next segment?" she said through grit teeth, her smile steering straight into the uncanny valley.
"Wha...? But there's no..." said Naruto as the brunette began shoving him bodily off screen.
"If you would please be so kind!" Shizune insisted in a frightfully pseudo-saccharine tone, her words sounding truthfully rather quite sharp and icy.
Naruto gulped fearfully, catching the allegedly under-tone. Whimpering, he stopped resisting as Shizune pushed him offstage.
There was a pregnant pause as Sakura and Tsunade stood on-screen, visibly awkward. Shizune was, by now, nowhere to be seen. She could be faintly heard grunting and muttering, darkly, as she forcefully escorted Naruto Uzumaki off of the set.
A moment passed, and even that noise soon disappeared.
Sakura coughed awkwardly into a cupped fist.
"Well..." she said. "I guess that's it for today's show."
Tsunade sighed, looking relieved.
"Good," she muttered, shaking her head. Turning, she started to walk off-set. "Remind me to never agree to help Shizune with anything," she said dryly.
"Will do," replied Sakura, walking off after her mentor. "Sheesh, that was just insulting... I think I'd feel less degraded acting in an Icha Icha movie."
"Ugh, tell me about it," groaned Tsunade. "At least money shots bring in the money, right? I mean, what is this 'non-profit edutainment' crap, anyway...?" She snorted.
"And this script is utter tripe..." grumbled Sakura, her voice fading off into the distance. "Who is this even targeted at? Kids? Teens? Civilians? Academy students? I mean, really..."
The set was dead silent. The few people actually in the studio audience glanced at one another, equal points annoyed and perplexed.
"What kind of garbage was that?" said Konohamaru.
"I have no idea," said Kurenai, sitting a few rows behind him and his teammates. "But that's the last time I accept an invitation to watch the filming of anything."
"Is it over...?" said Udon blearily, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
Moegi yawned. "I really hope so. That was boring."
Muttering in general consensus as to the incredibly poor quality of this performance, the audience members proceeded to get up and leave. Disgruntled, each one would demand their money back from the producers. Never mind that this was a non-profit production.
The Super Ninja Science Team Show show would be permanently cancelled three days later.
Shizune would be the only one to miss it.
A/N: I can't really say where the idea for this came from, save that it is complete crack, and was actually started several weeks before being finally finished, today. Partly, I think I just wanted to write something that was a change from my recent string of sexploitation fics. Thus, this.
As a little trivia note, "Hiii, Sakura this is," is a sentence that makes me giggle more than it should, because I purposely constructed it to sound like "Hai, Sakura desu," because that is just how much of a freaking dork I am. XD
Updated: 11-29-13
TTFN and R&R!
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