Hey readers! I am currently changing this to third person and fixing some spelling and grammar mistakes. So part of the story is in third person and the rest is in first. Please just bear with me.
Disclaimer: Do you think I own Naruto? That's what I thought.
Irony
Chapter One: The bet
Haruno Sakura was strong now. She was no longer the weak pathetic kunoichi of team seven. She hadn't deserved the title of Kunoichi before but, now she could smash through walls with a just a flick of her finger and bring someone from the brink of death securely into the land of the living. The thing was no one knew except Tsunade, who was the fifth Hokage, and her former teacher. It was no good to Sakura she had the abilities but, lacked the field knowledge to effectively utilize them. It was all kind of ironic, Sakura had spent 3 years trying to prove she was strong, but after her first encounter with Uchiha Sasuke after he left for the twisted Snake Sannin, Orochimaru, she realized that she was still too weak and that made the rapidly maturing teen angry.
When Sakura came back to Konoha after her mission she stepped into the hokage's office. She had been into the Hokage's office many times before, so the scenery was familiar. She didn't have to look to know that Tsunade had hidden sake bottles everywhere, that the book selves were filled with books of medical techniques and Konoha's laws, and that the paperwork on the desk was at least three weeks behind. Only once before had Sakura ever come into the office this resolute, and that had been the first time she had decided she was going to apprentice under the greatest medical ninja at the time, Tsunade herself. She made a deal with Tsunade. She asked the Godaime to give her six complete months off to reach ANBU level and if she could manage to make it that far then she would work as a medic in the hospital on weekdays and work anonymously for Konoha as an ANBU operative in the evenings and on weekends. Tsunade didn't believe that her apprentice could drastically improve in only six months.
It was impossible and Tsunade was about to refuse Sakura's request, when her medical prodigy raised the stakes. She challenged her mentor to a bet, something Sakura knew she wouldn't be able to able to refuse, her sensei loved to gamble. However, she has the longest losing streak in all five hidden villages. She wasn't called the Legendary Sucker for nothing. The terms of the bet were that if Sakura passed the ANBU exams after her six months of self instructed training then the Godaime would agree to agree to her proposal, but if Sakura lost she would take over Tsunade's hospital duties in addition to her own, as well as keeping the Hokage's paperwork up-to-date for a year. Tsunade thought that there was no way she could lose this bet so she cackled madly and shook on it. However, Sakura knew something she didn't at the time. She had a kekkai genkai and activated it for the first time the day before.
Sakura spent the next six months training extensively alone. In the first month she worked 14 hours a day only stopping to only rest and eat to perfect her kekkai genkai. Her medical training helped with this, with it she was able to fully discover the intricacies and capabilities of her doujutsu in a single day. All she had to do was send a tendril of chakra through the nerve pathways into her activated eye technique and decipher the information gathered. Sakura worked extensively to perfect it for the next month, until she was satisfied with the result. During that month she also decided to work on her lacking stamina, so she began running multiple laps around Konoha first thing after breakfast each morning.
The second month the kunoichi worked on ninjutsu, her weakest style of fighting. She decided to work on stealthier jutsus as well as boosting the over-all repertoire of her jutsus. Luckily for her, her new bloodline limit and natural chakra control allowed her to be able to master ninjutsus the first or second time through them. Another aspect that was improved was her overall speed and the rate at which she could form the combinations of hand seals. During the second month she continued to work to strengthen her physical and spiritual energy. She learned over a hundred new jutsus that month. Not really comparable to the her former sensei, the copy nin but, she didn't have the sharingan. Some of the jutsu were powerful enough to kill an opponent if the jutsu merely touched the skin others were just helpful defensive tactics.
The third month Sakura worked on weapons skills. She went to her parents' old abandoned house. In the attic Sakura found her grandfathers old weapons. Her Grandfather was supposedly the last Haruno that possessed the kekkai genkai. The weapons set included an old Katana. It was wrapped carefully in red satin that was tied with a silky matching cord. Sakura unwrapped it and smirked, the sword was still in perfect condition. The silver was untarnished and gleamed brightly in the sun that shone through the small window at the end of the small room and contrasted the dark of the hilt.
The hilt itself was adorned with twisting silver as decoration and protection from enemy attacks. The short sword and dagger that accompanied the Katana were similarly adorned. Working with weapons was probably going to be the hardest part of training, because Sakura knew absolutely nothing about them, so she picked up scrolls about proper sword training and various instructions of many Katas from the library. It took extensive training to be adept enough in weapons that Sakura felt confident enough that she could beat even Sasuke's lightening blade, without the lighting of course that would be just dumb. Even though the kunoichi had no previous experience with weapons it seemed that swordplay came natural to her. Sakura continued to work all her previously learned techniques into everyday practice.
In the next month her stamina training really helped since she started brushing up on her taijutsu (the training with Tsunade was mostly taijutsu, so Sakura didn't have as much room for improvement). Sakura was able to practice for longer and her speed was greatly increased, meaning she could flick an enemy through a tree before they knew she had moved. She wasn't sure if her newly gained speed was because she had tapped into a kekkai genkai or if it was the stamina and speed training she had opted for. Either way Sakura was certain Tsunade was going to lose, especially since she had opted to learn advanced Taijutsus as well. Attacks only Gai and Rock Lee, the Taijutsu specialists of Konoha, had used or bothered to learn.
It was also important for her to learn to channel that monstrous strength to her feet so that she could crack up the ground by tapping her heel. Since, it was apparent that taijutsu didn't warrant an entire month to excel in Sakura started on improving in medical jutsus. This was the one subject she excelled at before her self-enforced improvement. Her medical jutsu was at the same level of Tsunade herself. Then Sakura saw the values of incorporating medical jutsus with Taijutsu, because now medical jutsu could also be offensive. It might not possible to see where each individual chakra point was without the byakugan of the Hyuuga clan, but that didn't mean that those points couldn't be memorized That wasn't the only thing medical chakra was good for either, it also could sever body parts and send bodily systems into chaos.
Genjutsu was the final battle tactic to perfect. Sakura made up several new genjutsu, and learned many that were useful for different scenarios. She trained with a shadow clone to help recognize common genjutsus and develop a new technique to break out of layered or powerful genjutsus, that otherwise wouldn't be possible to break out of in a single motion.
The final month had originally been planned on working to combine all the diverse fighting styles the she had mastered. However, she added a twist at the last minute, an idea she had been toying with, she decided that not only would she combine her skills, but would do it by wearing a blindfold during the training and morning runs. The first few days Sakura had to heal many wounds, but halfway through the month she became as good with the blindfold as she was with normal vision, and by the end preferred fighting that way because it honed the senses and created fewer distractions. For instance color or light didn't bother her, and it was easier to spot a genjutsu if she knew she wasn't supposed to be seeing anything. Besides with her sensitive senses, it was simple to detect the slight change of atmosphere when a genjutsu was cast.
So, six months to the day after the bet, Sakura showed up in Tsunade's office dressed in her standard pink skirt, black shorts, gloves, and red top, along with her newly acquired swords and blindfold, tucked away in a back pocket. "Konichiwa, Tsunade, I am ready to take the test now."
