A/N: Still my author's note. Have you got yours yet?
Chapter Three
A Passing Grade
There are four steps to casting jutsu: Formation, Investiture, Signature, and Incantation. While Signature and Incantation can be bypassed at a cost, without Formation and Investiture, the results will always be negative. However, we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Line Break
Naruto lay in the corner of infinity, curled into a tight ball, eyes closed against the white void. He breathed in, exhaling desire.
The nightmare had shifted. He had come back to reality briefly, in time to see Kakashi's smug ass face. The man had made a gesture and then the once mottled gray room had bled of color, transforming into a never ending and pure landscape. There was no visual trace of where the walls had been but a few years ago – or had it only been a few days? No, years… Time had lost all meaning.
He had tried staring at his blood and sweat stained pants, keeping the bleeding white in his periphery until the consuming color bled into him as well. After that, he'd closed his eyes and retreated into the darkness his lids afforded him.
Now he just lay in silence, wishing it was less violent. There was no longer any distraction to mask what was real. He was the Kyuubi's Jinchuuriki. That fact had been pounded into him for who knew how long. He could still hear Mizuki whispering to him, an echo etched into the back of his skull.
Left alone with his thoughts, he found his mind slipping – fading. He wanted to fight, but he couldn't contest Kakashi's words. He couldn't pretend away his problems. He had drawn on the power, even when he hadn't a clue how.
It had been intoxicating beyond belief. Even as Kakashi was tossing him around, he felt that he was just on the cusp of victory, if only he had pushed just a little bit harder.
He was human, of that he was unequivocally sure. He also had a demon in him, as recent evidence confirmed. Through the haze his thoughts were becoming, he suffered from a rare burst of introspection. In that moment, he realized that made him different, and for a moment, he understood the harsh looks he'd received throughout his life. Like a rabid dog, you pitied it, and at the same time kept it far away from you and those you loved as possible. Ignorance bred fear, and rumors fueled a fire of mistrust, kept alive by laws of silence he hadn't been aware of.
White was slowly creeping in from the side of his vision, piercing through the protection closed eyes once offered.
Sensory deprivation and Mizuki's taunting words were slowly driving him insane. The inability to truly hear anything besides his own incessant heartbeat – somehow Hatake had drained any sound he tried to make from the room.
A sudden smile sprang to life on his lips and his eyes flew open. Thrusting his hand up, he gazed at it until the white drained it of color and it vanished too. He laughed wildly, though he couldn't hear the sound.
It was time for one last bow - a resolution with himself. Moody Naruto's time was over. It was time for a new Naruto to take the stage.
It was just that easy, all the baggage he'd been carrying vanished, like breath on a mirror.
Line Break
Resolution came upon him, in purple. Before now, he hadn't been aware emotion could be a color, but there it was. Setting his teeth, Sasuke steeled himself. He was still hanging with his arms bound behind him. Knowledge as clear as crystal had set in his mind, and time was running out. His count had reset several times, when their interrogator had brought them food that bolstered his strength.
The man hadn't lowered them, instead forcing them to suffer from the indignity of being force-fed.
It was time.
"Sakura, I'm going to need your help." He said.
Behind him, he could hear her lift her head in silent acknowledgement. She was the weak link in his plan. She wasn't as strong as he was. Quite frankly, he wasn't entirely sure how she had lasted this long to begin with. But at this point he had no other choice. If she failed, then he wasn't going to live long enough to regret it. Either way, rescue seemed unlikely.
"I'm going to lift you up. When I do, get yourself free and get me down if you can."
"How are you going to-"
Sasuke didn't give her the chance to finish. Every second was just another opportunity for him to talk himself out of the idea.
Slamming what little available chakra he had into his arms and shoulders, he thrust his back up, rocking his body towards the ceiling. The force of his movement sent him into a pendulum like movement as he came crashing back down. Pain erupted in his shoulders, but he grit his teeth and timed his next move.
As he hit the arc of his swing, he thrust himself up once again. This time when he came down the added momentum was too much and his arms popped from their sockets making a sound a bit like a cup surfacing from a pond. Now he was hanging by muscle and twisted skin. He only had seconds before his own weight would rip his arms from his shoulders.
He thrust himself up again, this time from the hips, praying he hadn't miscalculated. His legs made contact with something long and thin. He wrapped them around Sakura's rope and pulled himself in, angling his body so that a leg stuck out. By doing so, he formed a sort of bridge with his body that Sakura could lift herself up by and use for leverage to undo her own restraints. The problem with this was that he had to turn in such a way that he was now laying on the twisted flesh of his dislocated arm pressing against his windpipe. He was, in essence, hanging himself.
He felt Sakura bobbing, twisting and writhing on his leg, pulling at her restraints, even as the darkness crept in on his vision. Just as his legs were beginning to go limp with ingratitude at his lack of providing a sufficient amount of oxygen, he felt Sakura's weight vanish as she fell towards the floor.
His body went slack and he gasped in great lungfuls of air, the pain in his shoulders temporarily forgotten.
It took only a few moments of fumbling in the dark for Sakura to find, lift, and untie him. Only now that they were both standing - albeit a bit shakily - on the ground, Sasuke allow himself a brief smile of victory. His sense of elation was quickly shattered, when his right arm was rudely and bruskly taken and swiveled around. He'd barely had enough time to turn to look at his fellow cellmate before she had quite literally punched his arm back into place.
In the weeks to follow, Sasuke would never admit the scream that accompanied his arm reunion with it's joint was anything but manly.
"Keep quiet." Sakura hissed.
This, Sasuke felt, was a horrendously unfair statement to make. He'd been the one keeping quiet for almost two weeks now, all the while having to suffer through her wailing for half of it.
"Stay still, I'm going to do your other one."
Sasuke whimpered. This did nothing to forestall the blinding pain at the hands of this new tormentor.
Once he'd regained his composure, he set about testing his arms. They were weak and the shoulders were already swelling. He doubted he could do anything with them if it came to fighting his way out of here. He was going to have to rely on Sakura for that. The prospect didn't excite him.
"We need to get moving." He said in as quiet a voice as he could manage.
It was an awkward few minutes as they attempted to locate the door. In that time, Sasuke had been formulating plans on how to break it down, such as using the rope to leverage the knob and snap the lock.
There was a click, a surprised intake a breath, and light flooded the room. Sasuke had to raise a hand to shield his eyes against the sudden illumination. He'd been in the dark for so long, the weak recessed light in the hall seemed like a bonfire.
"The door was unlocked," Sakura said, surprised. "Why didn't he lock it?"
Sasuke could venture an answer. It would be perfectly reasonable considering what he'd seen of the man to be taunting them with the prospect of freedom. Right before they were free, when the light of the sun was glimmering overhead, he'd swoop in.
For an instant, he considered not even trying. He quickly crushed this thought, however. It was better to try and fail than admit defeat at the starting line.
"Guess he finally slipped up." Sasuke said, pressing forward and crouched down on the other side of the doorframe across from where Sakura was hunkered down and peering out through the crack in the door.
In the light, Sasuke could see that Sakura's once annoyingly immaculate hair was now a nest of snarls matted down by dried blood. Her face was painted a dull gray with dirt. Her clothes hung in tatters from her frame like creeping vines.
"It could be a trap." She whispered.
Sasuke grunted. He reached forward and pushed the all the way open to expose the long hallway lined with empty shelves and half open doors. He couldn't see anyone, but that didn't mean that they weren't there.
Tentatively, Sasuke began to move forward. Sakura surprised him when she took up a defensive position behind and slightly to the right of him. They progressed down the hallway and were almost to the far door when Sakura suddenly pulled up short, stopping to stare at a closed door. There was a strange symbol of twisting lines written on the door in black ink.
Sasuke slowed to a stop. "What's going on?" He whispered.
"It's strange, isn't it? I mean… now that I think about it, why only the two of us?" Sakura's brows furrowed as she stepped forward and pressed her hand flat against the door over the symbol. It flashed briefly and there was a click. With a push, it swung open.
"What are you talking about?" Sasuke asked, eyeing where the symbol.
"Come and help me." Sakura called from where she had stepped into the room.
With a grunt of annoyance, Sasuke backtracked to the door and stepped inside. The square concrete room was completely gray. The uniform color was broken only by him, Sakura, and –
"Is that Naruto?"
Sakura was kneeling by where a blond-haired boy in tattered clothes that may have once been orange was sitting slumped beneath a crater smashed in the wall. She had one hand pressed against his chest and had lifted his head with the other to inspect his face. His eyes were closed and didn't seem to be responding to her touch.
"He isn't dead." She said.
"Slap him awake." Sasuke suggested.
"I'm not sure it'll work," Sakura said slowly. "I think he's in a genjutsu. We need to disrupt his chakra."
Sasuke clicked his teeth in annoyance. He knew that they couldn't leave Naruto here, but carrying him would slow them down. So he followed through on his own advice.
He bent down and slapped Naruto clean across the face. It was surprisingly satisfying. Something about Naruto's rounded features seemed to cry out for a hand across it.
Naruto's eyes shot open, a stark blue against the gray dust that had settled over his face, obscuring the three whisker marks on each of his cheeks.
"You awake now, dobe?" Sasuke asked tersely. He had expected anger, and heated rebuke before complying and falling to heel behind them.
Naruto grinned. "What took you so long, bastard? Getting your hair done?"
Sasuke couldn't help the short, stilted bark of laughter that escaped from him. He could practically picture his blood and sweat encrusted hair sticking up at odd angles.
"Hey Sakura? How's life going?" Naruto asked, turning his head to look Sakura who'd been watching the scene with a half bemused and half exasperated look on her face. "Have you seen Sasuke's hair? I think he got it done by a weed wacker. He really should get a refund."
"Hello, Naruto, nice to see you to." Sakura replied with a weak smile.
"Let's get going." Sasuke said, standing.
Naruto nodded and tried to stand. He got about halfway up before his knees betrayed him and fell back.
"Damn." He cursed. "How long has that Kakashi asshole left me here?"
"Who?" Sakura asked.
"White hair, one eye, looks a bit like a scarecrow that's been left out too long."
'A name for the corpse, at last.' Sasuke thought. For some reason, the name seemed had a creeping sense of familiarity, as though he'd heard it somewhere before.
"Sasuke, help me lift him." Sakura said, reaching out and grabbing Naruto by the arm.
"Nah, I'll be fine." Naruto said, waving her back.
The blond placed his hands back against the wall and slowly worked his way to a standing position. "See?" he said, grinning. "Told you."
"Brilliant," Sakura quipped. "Now walk."
The grin on Naruto's face wavered only for an instant before reattaching to his face like plaster. "Little miracles, Sakura. Little miracles."
He took a shaky step, then another. With a frown, he cracked his neck, swore something unintelligible under his breath. Then he slapped himself on the stomach with a muttered, "get on it, fuzz ball."
Sasuke frowned, quite confused. His confusion grew when Naruto's next step was much steadier, if still a bit wobbly. It was as if he'd recovered several days worth of abuse in the span of one palm to the belly.
"Alright, we're good to go." Naruto said cheerfully, running a thumb under his nose.
Sasuke nodded, pushing the problem from his mind. They had to get out of here. So what if the blond had lost his mind? Sasuke was fairly sure they'd all have a few bolts rattling loose after these past… however the hell long they'd been in there. All that mattered at the moment was escaping in one piece. Naruto being able to walk was one less thing holding them back.
The three of them made their retreat from the cell, pushing out into the corridor and making for the far door. Sasuke reached for the doorknob, prepared to carefully and quietly open the door to peek in and get a handle on the situation, when Naruto twisted the handle and blew through the door with all the unstop-ability of a bolder in full tumble.
Sasuke cringed, suddenly acutely aware of the second reason why he didn't want to bring Naruto along. Subtly and a grasp of the situation stuck to his former classmate like a gold bricks.
When Naruto came to a sudden stop on the other side of the doorway, his shoulders tensing in preparation, Sasuke knew that the jig was up. He pressed through, Sakura close behind.
The man Naruto identified as Kakashi stood in the middle of the room, his arms folded over his chest, black robe hanging like an oncoming storm. Their tormenter's face, what little he could see of it, was taught with suppressed anger. Behind him there was a door hanging slightly ajar. It was most probably the exit.
The only thing that stood between them and freedom was a man they had no hope of defeating. Sasuke prepared himself to die.
I commend my soul to any god that can find it.
"You pass." Kakashi said, resentment filling his voice like a limp balloon.
The phrase hung in the air, drifting back and forth waiting for someone to pick it up.
"What?" Sakura asked, making the attempt.
The man sighed deeply, unfolding his arms and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You pass. Congratulations, you're all genin now. I have, unfortunately, been assigned as your jounin instructor."
Sakura's eyes wavered dangerously in her skull. "What the hell are you talking about?" She asked, a brittle edge to her voice.
"It seems rather obvious, don't you think?" The one-eyed man drawled. "But I can spell it out for you. I understand that you've been through some tough times lately." He shifted, black robes sliding like water.
"It's not obvious to me," Naruto blurted, looking as though he were on the verge of attacking. He was leaning forward, eyes narrowed, fingers twitching. It was only the memory of how things last played out and a sense of self-preservation that held him back.
For Sasuke, the pieces of the puzzle were sliding into place. And he wasn't too sure he liked the result.
Kakashi spoke first. "When a prospective genin graduates from the academy, they are assigned a jounin to instruct them and see them through until they are Chuunin. I was assigned you three."
"And that gives you the right to torture us!" Sakura fairly screeched.
"Yes." Kakashi replied simply. "I could do whatever I wanted so long as you three came to no permanent harm. Against my expectations, you have passed the test. You worked together and escaped your cell, even rescuing a fellow prisoner who couldn't help himself along the way. We are, as of now, Team Seven. Once again, congratulations." He nodded curtly.
"I don't want you as our sensei." Sakura hissed, eyes wild. "I don't want to ever see you again."
Sasuke did not miss the sudden flair of triumph in the jounin's eye.
"The choice is yours." Kakashi said flatly, tilting his head to one side. "I will be at training ground seven for the next three days. Come there when you are ready to begin your instruction."
Kakashi vanished, leaving nothing but a faint gust and the scent of green leaves.
The three of them stood there, standing awkwardly now that the object of each of their focus had left them.
Sakura broke the silence first. "Like hell I'm going anywhere near there." With that, she bolted for the door, flinging it all the way open so that it banged against the wall, and darted through it in a flurry of dirty pink hair.
"Well, this sucks." Naruto commented lightly.
Sasuke shot a look at the blond from the corner of his eye. Now that Kakashi was gone, Naruto seemed to have relaxed, standing loosely with his hands at his sides. He was staring at the door Sakura had vanished through.
Sasuke grunted in affirmation, shaking his own shoulders to try and loosen the tension that was steadily building up there. His arms felt like molten lead.
"Are you going?" Sasuke asked, as he started for the door, not really caring if he got an answer.
Naruto snorted incredulously, "You kidding?" He asked.
Sasuke nodded, not really expecting a different answer. The exchange settled he pass through the door as well, his mind set on getting home.
Line Break
Naruto was once again alone in the room, but not truly alone. He had never really been alone, even when there was no one around. Whatever barrier had been between him and the demon mentally had crumbled.
"What are you going to do?" Came the deep rumbling voice inside his head.
"No idea." Naruto responded flippantly out loud, walking over to one of the tables that lined the walls and inspecting the rather crude looking spike resting on it.
"He seems powerful, for a human." The demon spoke.
Naruto reached out and fingered the weapon, pricking his finger on the edge of the sharp metal. The cut vanished a few seconds later.
"You know the rules of our deal." The demon continued, "You have access to as much of my chakra as you think you can control. However -"
"Yes," Naruto cut across smoothly. "But every time I draw on your chakra it brings you that much closer to breaking free. You were quite plain on that point - and I was paying attention the first time."
"Surprising, given your history." The demon shot back.
Naruto scowled. He knew perfectly well he wasn't that smart, there was no need to rub it in. That was like rubbing salt in an open crevice, or something along those lines.
"What do you think I should do?" Naruto asked. He realized that asking the demon who attacked his homeland what he should do didn't rank highly on 'clever things to do today' meter, but he was kind of at a loss for the moment. Besides, whatever the demon suggested, he could do the opposite. No one ever saw that one coming.
"I don't care what you do." Said the demon.
Well, it was worth a try. The best laid plans of mice and shinobi and all of that.
"Use my chakra now, use my chakra later; it is all the same to me. Eventually, though, I will have my freedom. What does it matter to me what year or decade it comes in?"
Naruto hefted the spike, weighing the weapon in one hand. He could respect the demon for its opinion, if nothing else. He now knew what it was like to be caged in a cell that he couldn't escape from, with nothing more than a single color to keep him occupied. One could easily go mad that way.
He considered the demon's words for a moment. Naruto could best describe their relationship as a working animosity. The demon resting comfortably in his head hated everything equally. With untold centuries at his disposal to enact his one-sided revenge against all of creation, he was in little hurry on when and how his anger was to be carried out. There was a balance to it all, Naruto supposed.
"I don't suppose there is a third option?" He asked, hopefully.
The demon chuckled, a hollow reverberating sound that echoed in the empty places in Naruto's head - of which there were more than he was entirely comfortable with. "None that I can see," It said. "And I've had a very long time to think about it."
"Ah, well," Naruto said, dropping the spike back on the table with a clang. "It was worth asking. Now, I think its time for some breakfast. I'm starved."
Line Break
Kakashi stood leaning against one of the several posts planted in the clearing of training ground seven. His eyes were moving across the pages of his porn, but he wasn't comprehending a word on it; his mind was elsewhere.
He was now responsible for three children that he hadn't a clue how to deal with. For most of his life, he had trained soldiers, men and women already nearing the peak of their combat prowess. People whose instincts for battle was only rivaled by their desire to see Konoha survive their lifetime, however short that may be. His job had been to give them that hard push that brought out their full potential.
He would have to read a book on how to raise teenagers; he'd be damned before asking any of his new fellow sensei for tips.
Sighing forlornly, Kakashi tucked his porno back into his vest pocket. He was getting ahead of himself. None of them had shown up yet. And he didn't really expect any of them to show up in the first day, but one of the two males would certainly be here by the second.
His freedom rested on how much lasting fear he managed in instill in Sakura, the pink haired midget. He rather liked his chances with that one. He had managed to shatter her worldview while simultaneously destroying her resolve. A voice in the back of his head warned that maybe he had gone to far. He crushed that niggling doubt with pragmatism. The Hokage had known what he was doing assigning him this team and letting him go as far as he did. The worst that would happen is that he'd have to pay for her counseling and maybe make a few remunerations to the family.
He glanced at his watch only to scold himself. A few hours into waiting and he was already impatient. Waiting on stakeouts was one thing; in that there was purpose, stalking the prey waiting for a mistake. But this? It itched as his very soul. There was nothing to do but wait for the pieces to fall where they may.
He found his mind drifting back to the children. Really, they'd have to be crazy to come here. He'd tortured them for nearly a month, passing through almost every non-permanent event he could think of, each tailored to chisel away at their weak points.
Sasuke had his pride, his belief that he was superior to everything that passed into his line of site. And so Kakashi had belittled him, showing the Uchiha time and again how weak he really was. He'd drop the boy from the ceiling, hand him a weapon, and then beat him into the ground. He'd give the boy some hope, always letting him think he was about to get lucky and strike and escape, only to easily dance around his attack and disarm him.
Kakashi had it on good authority that hope was the greatest of all gifts.
With Sakura, he had to take a different approach. Her false veneer of self-confidence that was reported in the academy was easy enough to see through. She doubted herself, but pretended that she didn't, lying convincingly enough that she'd even convinced herself. All Kakashi had to do was strip away her lies and present their corpses to her.
The task was simple enough: shake the beliefs she'd built up about the world, force her into situations that contradicted those beliefs, and sprinkle in a bit of genjutsu to give her the final push. He'd be ashamed of himself if he weren't proud about how clever a job it had been.
Naruto had been a bit trickier. The boy was already a self-confidence fiasco and mental neurosis that Kakashi gave him a few years on the outside before he broke all on his own. That, coupled with the demon shoved into the boy's psyche made the boy a landmine for what he wanted to do. He needed to push, but not push too much.
Genjutsu had been the obvious answer. Reports claimed that the boy had no aptitude for the subject. Pulling a line from one of the instructors, "If Naruto even realizes that he is placed under the simplest of illusions, I'll quit my job." While Kakashi usually gave as much credit to academy instructors as he gave the dirt on the bottom of his shoes, the bravado alone merited note.
Kakashi leaned back and closed his eyes, breaking from his musing as boredom overtook him. Speculations were useless. He done the best he could with the limitations given. All he could do was wait.
Line Break
With ramen gurgling pleasantly in his stomach, Naruto wandered out from the foliage of trees and into the clearing of training ground seven. Against the leftmost of the three posts in the center of the clearing, there leaned his new sensei. He wasn't wearing the robes anymore. Instead he was dressed in a green flak jacket over a black shirt. His black pants were held up by a cord of ninja wire wrapped several times around his waist, white bandages held the flare of the pants to his ankles. He was holding an orange covered book in one hand, his eyes scanning the pages. In his other hand he spun a kunai on one finger by the loop in the metal. By the jounin's feet, there was a brown, wrapped package.
Naruto had to resist the urge to draw a kunai from his pouch and throw it, just in the extremely off chance it worked.
"I must say that I didn't expect anyone to show up, much less on the same day and wearing the same clothes that they were released in."
Naruto forced a grin, looping his hands behind his head. "Ah, that's what you get for holding a guy for three weeks in prison. It makes it very difficult to pay rent."
"And yet you could afford ramen?" Kakashi asked, raising an eyebrow, though his eyes never left his book.
"How could you tell?" Naruto sniffed.
"You reek of it, even over the smell of imprisonment."
Naruto chuckled, this time it came more naturally. "Ah, you've got a good nose too, Kakashi-sensei."
Kakashi hummed in agreement. Looking up over the top of his book he said, "you might as well make yourself comfortable. The clock is still ticking and if the other two don't show up in the next three days, you all fail by default."
"That's pretty dirty. Sakura looked pretty messed up. I'm gonna go talk to her." Naruto said, turning around and heading for the tree line again.
"No, you won't." Kakashi said, spearing him to the spot with his words. "You will remain in this training ground until the team either passes or fails."
Naruto turned to glare at the jounin. "What am I going to do for food?" He demanded.
Kakashi returned his gaze to his book, but pushed the brown package forward slightly. "You can hunt so long as you don't leave the clearing. There are vegetables and spices in there. As for water?" The jounin shrugged. "Figure it out."
Naruto eyed the package suspiciously. Vegetables were a mystery on par with his understanding of space. There had always been something faintly menacing about them. Turnips, for example: anything that you had to boil for eight hours and then bang off the concrete just to soften them up just didn't want to be food. And broccoli always seemed to be judging him with their green, implacable stalks.
"Three days?" He asked, hoping that a large amount of time had somehow slipped by him.
"Two days, twenty-one hours and sixteen minutes."
Line Break
The Uchiha estate was a haunted hall of memories and half-covered bloodstains. Which was one of the many reasons Sasuke didn't live there. Instead, he opted to live in a two-room apartment on the other side of the village, so that even if the intervening village between them toppled down in a single afternoon, there wouldn't be much chance of him being able to lay eyes on his ancestral home.
Though the Uchiha's property tax alone cost him enough to bankrupt a minor noble house each year, he maintained ownership of the land for the express purpose that one day, when Itachi was six feet under, he could lay the place to rest himself. Baptized by fire, if you will.
He had changed into a fresh blue shirt and white shorts after a shower that may or may not have lasted the better part of a day. The dirt, blood, and grime of the cellblock had been as stubborn as the fan girls that paraded behind him at the academy. He sat in what served as his kitchenette, his elbows resting on the table, hands supporting his chin contemplating his next move as the kettle simmered just behind him on the stove.
The issue he was currently wrestling with was that he no longer had a direction to charge at. His brother was the ultimate goal, but that was at the end of a long passageway of accomplishments that no longer had doors. He had finished the academy, that door was shut firmly behind him and there was no desire to go back. That only left forward, into an abyss of uncertainty.
His eyes roamed the plaster wall as though defying it to give him the answers he sought. He could petition for another sensei, as the last Uchiha he could probably get away with it. But that would be after a virtual sea of red tape and struggle. He had never met the Hokage, but there were enough rumors that ascertain that he did not go back on his decisions lightly.
That meant training on his own or accepting Kakashi as his mentor. Kakashi, the man who'd shown his temperament to be along the lines of his brother's, with enough apparent skill shown to maybe be in the same league as his brother. In Sasuke's twisted world, that was enough cause for consideration.
Kakashi was a parallel to his brother. They were both apparently cold, efficient, and undoubtedly powerful. Sasuke desired strength, and before a few weeks ago he'd have been willing to pay any price to achieve it. But in struggling against the pain inside the cell, and watching Sakura slowly unravel under pressure, he'd realized something: Power twisted you.
Already he didn't sleep well at night, and Kakashi's accusation that he was already his brother had lingered with him. So, there was an experiment he could conduct. Could he retain a shred of humanity and still defeat his brother?
He had seen things that no genin his age could understand, and was already warped beyond recognition for a twelve year old. So, he shouldn't have found it strange when he discovered himself striding towards the door.
He passed outside and into Konoha's midafternoon heat. A brisk series of leaps across the roofs of Konoha's buildings brought him to one of the sections cordoned off from the public and designated for shinobi training grounds.
Training ground seven was at the top of a large hill covered in trees. He pressed through the dense forestry and entered a clearing, almost tripping over where Naruto was lounging by a tree. The blond was playing with a leaf in his hands, tossing it back and forth, following its flight with his eyes.
"So, that makes two."
The familiar voice of his past tormentor came from a canopy of leaves just above him. Looking up, he spied Kakashi hanging upside down from a branch looking down at him with a level gaze. "And what has the great Uchiha come here for, hmm?"
Sasuke walked over to the center of the clearing where there were three posts about a meter and a half tall speared into the ground. With a light leap, he seated himself on the center one.
"I'm here for revenge, on you and my brother." Sasuke said in a voice devoid of passion. "But I'm also here to see if I can avoid becoming like him. That start is here. I will use you up until I kill you."
Line Break
The air was roasting. It could have been anything else; this was a shinobi village after all. It could have been raining acid and Sakura suspected that the citizens of Konoha would still have gone about their shopping. There was something unstoppable about the commerce of teenage girls that defied reason.
Only this time it felt hollow for her.
A hand wrapped around hers and tugged her forward, through the bustling crowd.
"Come on, Sakura! You're being slow." Ino shouted over her shoulder.
Sakura did her best to follow the streak of blond hair and purple clothes that darted through the crowd with a desperate intensity. The only thing that connected them was Ino's grip on Sakura's hand.
"What's gotten into you? First you disappear for almost three weeks and now you're acting like you've had your soul sucked out. It can't be that bad, being on a team with Naruto. After all, you've got Sasuke on your team."
Sakura didn't know how to respond. Ino assumed that because Sasuke was placed on a team with her, it was guaranteed success. But she didn't know. She couldn't know how Sasuke had failed; in every respect had he failed. He wasn't unbeatable. He wasn't all knowing. He hadn't been able to stop the pain.
Would Ino even believe her if she told her what happened? Probably not. She most certainly wouldn't have if she had been in her shoes.
The shop she was dragged into smelled intensely of linen and new leather. Immediately her grip on Ino's hand tightened, fear and bile rising at the back of her throat. Memories of that hated place came swarming back to her like locus. She could almost feel the whip on her back and in her hand, hear Kakashi's voice telling her to use it on Sasuke.
She blinked and the illusion was shattered. Brightly colored cloths hung from racks and wrist bangles hung from hooks stuck in shelves. Behind the counter there was a woman with green hair done up in a bun and a smile so broad it appeared plastered there permanently.
The scared rule had been broken. She had made eye contact; there was no longer any hope of escape.
"Can I help you find anything?" The saleslady asked, her voice as sickly sweet as the perfume she wore.
"No, but thanks for asking." Ino replied cheerfully as she skipped over to a shelf that held an assortment of multicolored stones.
"I'm sure I can help you find something." The saleslady pressed with all the relentless fake enthusiasm only people paid just above minimum wage could muster.
Sakura, left standing in the doorway, found her eyes lingering on the little hooks that the leather bracelets hung from. If she were careful and had enough of them, she could probably suspend the saleslady by the skin of her back.
She shook her head, horrified by her own thoughts. With a mental kick, she forced herself forward, picking up a bracelet and staring at it with a desperate intensity. She had escaped that place. Those kinds of thoughts had no place in proper society.
Her self-recriminations were shattered when somebody bumped into her from behind. She started, and before she could stop herself, she'd grabbed one of the brushes in the deal bin at the end of the isle by the head and spun around, prepared to use the haft of the impromptu weapon that tapered out to a point.
"Whoa!" The boy civilian boy exclaimed, throwing up his hands in the air in a sign of surrender. He had a face that seemed straight out of boy band magazine, all chiseled lines and a narrow brow. His brown hair was swept back with his bangs swept up like an oncoming wave. "Sorry about that, miss." His eyes appeared honest enough, but so had Kakashi's, even as he ran currents of electricity through her body.
Sakura's eyes narrowed in suspicion. What was he doing in a shop clearly aimed at girls? Was he looking for his next target? She wouldn't let him. She'd gouge his eyes out right now.
She was about to act out on her thoughts when she spotted the small wrapped gift in his right hand, pressed between thumb and index finger. From the package a tag dangled with a small inscription that read: To my dear girlfriend, with love, Chazz.
This man was good. His excuse for being in there was almost plausible. A girlfriend? He was what, seventeen? The chances of him getting a girlfriend were astronomical. He was so young. The fact that she was only thirteen herself never entered into her equations.
"Sakura?" Ino's confused voice drew her attention.
Ino was standing a few feet away, a stuffed plushy in her arms, regarding her with a quizzical expression over the bear's head. "What's going on?"
Sakura's eyes lowered to where the point of her weapon was poised over the space between the boy's fourth and fifth rib, her left arm pinning the boy against the shelves with a chakra fueled strength that no civilian could match. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the boy's pale, terror stricken features.
Slowly, she lowered the make-shift weapon, never taking her eyes off of her perfectly steady hand as she did so. She realized suddenly, with painstaking clarity, that the boy's fear was nowhere near the level of her own. She had been terrified that the boy was going to hurt somebody - or worse, herself.
She released the boy, who backpedaled wildly, almost dropping his gift in the effort to escape. Like an Inuzuka pup running from his first bath, the boy catapulted from the shop as though his life depended on it. Which, Sakura supposed, in this case it almost had.
Ino moved up to stand behind her. "You okay?" She asked, offering the plush toy for Sakura to hold.
Sakura didn't respond at first. She only stared at the impromptu weapon in her hand. The realization that she was dangerous to those around her had settled over her shoulders like an ill-fitting coat.
She was against herself on this one. Her own mind and memories had become the enemy. She could feel the fear coming from her bones, sinking into her muscles and brain, a black taint.
"I'm fine, Ino. Don't worry." The words bled from her mouth like quicksilver.
"You didn't seem right. Did you know him?" Ino pressed.
Sakura tossed the brush back into the bin and turned around, shoving her hands into her pockets lest they get her into trouble again. "Yeah, he was a bully." She lied. The lie left her feeling dirty. She shouldn't have to lie to her friend. It wasn't what nice people did.
"Oh," Said Ino, limply, though it was written all over her face that she didn't buy it for a second. "Well that's okay, then. He deserved it."
"How's your team?" Sakura asked, deflecting the subject, as she pressed deeper into the shop, passing shelves packed with spinning hoops and bangles.
"Too many boys," Ino groaned. "Shikamaru's a lazy ass and sensei's almost as bad. Choji would be all right if he stopped eating. Oh," Ino exclaimed, brightening up. "I meant to ask, did your sensei give you some stupid test when he came and got you?"
Sakura almost tripped. It seemed that no matter where she turned, she couldn't escape that cell. It drew her back like a moth to the flame.
"Yeah," She said, stuttering slightly.
"Was it as boring as ours? All sensei did was ask us a couple of questions, spar with each of us, and then told us we passed. I didn't even know we were taking a test for heaven sake!"
Sakura snorted. Boring? Her test? More like hellish, with an extra helping of pain on the side. It had left her on the verge of a panic whenever something so much as jumped at her.
"I take that as a no? What did you guys do?" Ino asked.
"We were locked in a room for a while until we worked together to get out." She wasn't lying this time, not really.
"That sounds like a lot more fun than what we did. At least you got to spend some time with Sasuke." Ino bubbled. "It's so not fair that you got on a team with him and I got lazy Shikamaru and boring Choji."
Sakura wasn't quite sure how she could intimate to her old friend just how much she wished their roles could have been similar. What would it have been like to take a test that hadn't pushed her past the brink of sanity, where she was ready to skewer a boy just for being clumsy.
She couldn't get free. Her heart was overruling her mind. There were other options, if she took the time to look, there had to be. But it was there, in the back of her mind, a coiled serpent waiting to strike when next triggered. She needed to get a handle on it before she hurt someone, perhaps Ino.
Ino was a fellow shinobi and so was perfectly capable of defending herself if the need arose, but she shouldn't have to be on guard from her allies just because they were afraid and couldn't handle their fear. Sakura knew now, more than ever, what it was to be a shinobi. Kakashi had shown her just what was expected in the shinobi world. With that knowledge came a resolution.
She would never be afraid again.
A few hours later, once she'd disentangled herself from her friend and the endless horizon of shopping, she was making her way up the hill to training ground seven. There, she found Naruto reclining against a tree, his eyes closed and a leaf dangling from his lips. Sasuke was sitting on one of the three posts in the middle of the clearing. He was holding what looked like a small puzzle-box in his hands.
Then there was Kakashi. He had appeared like a wraith from the wind to hang on her left shoulder. He was eyeing her with something akin to interest with his one visible eye. He obviously expected her to flee at being caught off guard and appearing in such close proximity.
She steeled herself against the expected panic, only to find it hadn't come. There was pain; her heart was slammed in her chest like an over-excited drum. But there was pleasure too. She wasn't quivering, and she was able to meet his gaze without flinching or hesitation.
She was a shinobi, and fear was their occupation.
End of Chapter
Omake
It was eleven o-clock. Team Seven had been officially formed for nine hours and Kakashi and Anko had been drinking solidly for three of them. They sat opposite of each other in the T&I division headquarters lounge.
Kakashi had dropped by for nostalgia's sake. After all, this was the place he'd been last been free. It did the soul good to bask in the memories.
Occasionally, a dark and serious shinobi dressed in flowing black robes and smelling of disinfectant would come by, spot him, and walk up to question why he was here when he had no business to be. Kakashi would nod and smile, respond with a drunken wave, blather an excuse, and meet the shinobi's eyes with his one. The ninja would then go away. And they'd never come back.
Just because you were drunk didn't mean you have to be sloppy with genjutsu.
The table between the two of them was covered with bottles.
"The idea of the hokage – of the hokage - was invented by the enemy. Bettcha didn't know that, did ja?" Kakashi slurred, waving his mostly empty bottle of Sake wildly.
"The first hokage?" Said Anko.
"No, no, the other one," Kakashi said, shaking a finger.
"Oh, that one," Anko responded cheerily, trying to remember what a Hokage was.
Kakashi's brow furrowed, "The point is – the point you – the point I'm trying to make is," he tried to focus on one of the three Ankos, "is that they're bloody stupid." He finished quickly.
"Bloody stupid," Anko agreed, staring into her drink moodily. She'd experienced an emotional swing recently and need more alcohol to cheer her up.
Kakashi thumped his bottle on the table. "S'not fair. I mean; they sit way up high in their little tower doing treework when they can break mountains with just their teeth and not a drop of sweat. What's the point of that, huh? They coulda be out there doing stuff and all."
"Mmm," Anko hummed, eyeing Kakashi's partially empty drink with a blurry if surprisingly discerning eye.
"Hokage's strong enough to make an ocean and they just sit there, giving orders when they could be teaching brains."
"Whole damn village full of brains, take it from me." Anko volunteered.
"Exactly," Said Kakashi, triumphantly. "Great big brains, little towers, no one giving a damn. And now I've got to get a few of my own."
"Brains?" Anko asked, giving him the long, steady look that usually came from when she'd had a building dropped in front of the metaphorical train of thought.
"Hokages." Kakashi corrected her. He glanced down at his empty hands and wondered where his banana went.
"Makes sense to me," Anko burbled, trying to fill her empty glass and missed. She eventually managed it on the third go.
"M'banana's gone," Kakashi mumbled sadly before rallying himself. He set his hands on the table, partially to give his words emphasis, but mostly to steady himself. "It's all about how you get there in the end. When you've got there, there's no going back."
"Could use a space ship." Anko suggested.
Kakashi gave this the due consideration it deserved. "Wouldn't work, stupid brains are to small to fit." He said, after a lengthy internal debate.
"Shame."
"But I've got to do it anyway," Kakashi insisted, "brains too small to fit in a can of soup, bananas gone, and still the treework expects me to have it all big in the end."
There was a moment of drunken silence.
"Seems like a lot of effort just to feed a gorilla." Anko commented.
"But I've got to do it!" Kakashi pressed on relentlessly.
"Look-"
"I have no choice."
"Listen-"
"The hokage has no taste! There is no good in men!"
"You can-"
A look of pain crossed Kakashi's suddenly very serious face. "I can't deal with this drunk." He announced. "I'm going to sober up."
"Me too."
They both winced as the alcohol fled their bloodstreams on tidal wave of chakra, and sat up a bit more neatly.
"I can't avoid teaching them." Kakashi said miserably, eyeing the drink resting in front of Anko speculatively. It looked very familiar for some reason. "Am I right?"
"Mostly," Anko said, downing her glass before Kakashi could reclaim it. "What if you just make them Chuunin as soon as you can? They've got the genetics."
"Don't you bring genetics into this." Kakashi said snidely." What have they got to do with anything? I mean, one of them has got a chakra monstrosity resting somewhere in his body. His father certainly didn't have that in him. No, upbringing is everything, you take it from me."
"But what have you to lose?" Anko reasoned amiably. "Just beat some skill into them and then you're done."
Kakashi made a face that closely resembled having recently swallowed a whole factory of lemons.
"Nine months of misery." He said plaintively. "But who knows? Maybe I'll get lucky and they all get bored and quit."
A/N: All hail the king of dunces. Everyone watch out, I'm opening up my mouth.
I must say, Sakura has been far more interesting to write than I thought she'd be. I hope you've enjoyed her developments as much as I have.
On a note, I'm quite intimidated by the length this story is going to have to be.