Notes: No Sasuke in this chapter – which, by the way, goes a little slower – but trust me, it's necessary. Parts of it kind of are, anyway.
Chapter 7: In which Sakura-sensei almost always gets the last word.
Disclaimer: If I owned it, I'd know what the blue-haired woman's name was. (Edit: Just read chapter 368. Whoa.)
-----------------------------------------------
"Team! Come over here for a minute."
Makoto and Kurei had been doing their very best to pummel each other senseless. When I had finished my own assigned chakra control exercise, I had started to flick weapons at my teammates. Surprisingly, Sakura-sensei had overruled Kurei's protests, saying that both he and Makoto had a natural talent for sensing changes in their environment and should take the opportunity to hone it. Makoto's dodging became a part of his fluid movements, but Kurei was forced to make several awkward jumps to avoid them.
Our sensei's voice put an end to the fight. My teammates withdrew and I fell in step behind them as they walked towards the three posts where Sakura-sensei waited. It wasn't unusual for her to critique our individual progress – despite the fact that she sometimes looked absorbed in her paperwork, she was always watching – but today as she stood up, she held only one scroll in her hand. So either it was a technique she wanted us to learn as a group, or something completely different.
One week after the flower viewing festival, I still had trouble meeting my sensei's eyes. She didn't treat me any different, so Ino had not ratted on me, but still... I had nightmares about the day she would find out.
"Remember all the fun you had recapturing the hutch of rabbits last time?"
Kurei and I groaned. Makoto kind of sagged in resignation. That was a mission scroll, then.
"Well, I'm sorry to say this, but we're not going to do that again tomorrow."
I saw Kurei's head snap up so quickly that it must have given him a crick in the neck. "Say what? What's our mission, Sakura-sensei?"
"We are going –" She unrolled the scroll with a dramatic flourish, "to the Land of the Sound!"
"That's great, Sakura-sensei!"
She raised her eyebrows at my eager exclamation. Kurei, that hypocrite, gave me a weird look. I was overcompensating. I decided to shut up.
"The Village of the Sound has sent our Hokage a request to form an alliance. We will be bringing Konoha's reply to them. It's a four-day trip to and from the village. You have a question, Makoto?"
I still can't figure out how she knows, because Makoto never looks like he has questions about anything. "Sakura-sensei, I heard that shinobi of the Sound have attended the chuunin exams in Konoha before. But it's not one of the five great Hidden Villages, is it?"
"No, it's not. A few decades ago, a former Leaf-nin by the name of Orochimaru went to the Land of the Sound and tried to establish himself as the Otokage. It's not recognized as a Shinobi Country."
Makoto nodded. Kurei interjected, "Hey, isn't that one of the Sannin people? I've heard his name before."
A wry smile touched Sakura-sensei's lips. "You heard right. The Fifth is one of the Sannin, and the other one is Jiraiya, whom Yukina in particular should avoid when she's older."
"The Hermit Pervert! I thought our Hokage was kidding," said Kurei. He seemed elated by his own in-depth knowledge.
I was still kind of afraid (read: totally ashamed) about what I had witnessed a week ago, but curiosity gave me courage. "Jiraiya and the Hokage are alive and here in Konoha…what happened to Orochimaru?"
A slight frown passed over my sensei's face. "He was killed by Uchiha Sasuke. Not that he didn't have it coming to him," she said breezily, and then changed the subject. "Tomorrow I expect you to have packed everything you think will be needed for the journey. Be at the northern gate by six-forty. We will set off at seven-sharp."
Kurei smirked at me. "Hear that, Yukina?" I stuck out my tongue at him.
"Right, team…a little maturity from you all…" We stopped at our sensei's dry tone. "Any more questions? No? Then you're dismissed."
-----------------------------------------------
Excitement is kind of hard to sustain when one has been trotting through a forest all morning. Makoto, Kurei, and I made an attempt to look lively whenever Sakura-sensei glanced back to check on our progress, but each time our chipper answers got a little less sincere. After her latest check on us, I started glaring at the trees ahead, which seemed to go on forever.
"Yukina."
I looked at Makoto. "What?"
"Don't strain yourself. We have another day of this."
"I'm not beat," I snapped. "I just prefer to sprint over short distances."
With surprising wisdom, Kurei did not comment.
We halted at a copse around noontime. Sakura-sensei supervised us as we set up traps with wire, tags, and strategically placed kunai, securing the area before we settled down to eat. My ration bar was warm and lumpy.
"Not what you expected, hm?" said Sakura-sensei. We shook our heads. "We're not even out of Fire Country yet. I think it'll take half a day longer than I estimated…"
"No." Kurei flushed as his involuntary pronouncement drew her calm green stare to him. "I mean, we can make it in two days, sensei."
"I'd rather travel at a speed that's comfortable for everyone." I hoped she wasn't thinking of me when she said that. "It's important to pace yourselves. This isn't an urgent mission, and the only reason why it's B-class is because it goes into Sound Country."
"Would it be B-class if we were to go to River Country or Wave Country?"
The subtle approval in my sensei's eyes used to make me glow. Now my insides just squirmed. It felt as though I had stolen it dishonorably. "Not necessarily, Yukina. But Konoha and Oto have a history."
Technically, I figured, every shinobi village had some "history" with each other after the Third Secret War and all. So Konoha's history with the Land of the Sound just meant a slightly more emphatic warning to keep an eye out for enemy ninja.
When night fell, we were still just within the borders of Fire Country. It was the farthest I had ever been from home. I wondered whether Eiji was treating his cat right, or if Ayame had worked out something with Kurei. I glanced over to the left, but Kurei's gormless sleeping face told me only that if I woke him for anything less than life-threatening danger, there would be life-threatening danger. Makoto, on the far right, was turned away from me in his bedroll. I sat up, letting the blanket slide to my lap. The fire was plenty warm enough. Across from me and on the other side of the inconstant, orange flames, sat my sensei, the only one of my team who was awake. Barring me, obviously.
"You should get some sleep, Yukina-chan."
But I couldn't. "Sakura-sensei, have you been here with your team before?"
Nothing that is green in the daytime looks green at night – not the forest, not the grass, and not my sensei's eyes. Her eyes were dark and kind, capturing something of the firelight. They also looked a little confused. "I'm just curious," I said. Plus, I couldn't sleep. Not that that was her job by any stretch to deal with either of these "problems." God, I was such a stinking brat.
"You could say so." She paused. "One of my teammates was already there. He'd been there for two years at the time."
It must have been that freaky psycho, Sasuke. I still did hate him for hurting Sakura-sensei, but the fight I had witnessed had mellowed out the feeling a little. I mean, I was glad he had stopped that Hyuuga from…you know….and my sensei from doing other stuff while she was drunk.
"…So there are still probably a handful of ninja who remember him in the Sound." She gave me a small, patient smile. "Now I've answered your question for the night. Even if you can't fall asleep at once, you should lie down. It does help."
"Thanks, Sakura-sensei." I flopped onto my back with a faint whump, and in his own bedroll, Kurei stirred and wrinkled his nose in annoyance.
"Goodnight, Yukina-chan," she said.
-----------------------------------------------
The next day was just all-out plodding. If it sounds monotonous, believe me, that's nothing compared to how it was. I was determined to prove myself a competent ninja after the night before, and so refused to snipe at Kurei. I'm pretty sure, though, that competent ninja don't actually take such boring missions. Well, Sakura-sensei was with us, but she was our instructor.
The change in scenery wasn't much to marvel at, either. The trees grew sparser until the sky opened before us on a wide, grassy field. Then the grass thinned like the hair bordering the forehead of Iruka-sensei back at the Academy. We entered a weird-looking valley with high, bare walls of rock. Maybe even a really old, gigantic statue and an adjacent body of water. For reasons that will become clear later, I don't remember much about the Valley of the End even with the return journey, and I haven't gone on another mission into the Land of the Sound. Kurei, though, swears that two ninja armies must have met up for a beat-down day in the valley, because that's the way it looked to him.
Once we were out of the eerie rock formations, we were well shot of Fire Country. "It's half a day further to the village," Sakura-sensei told us. At once, I stopped my ever-so-subtle lag and picked up speed.
"Oi, Kurei, looking forward to sleeping indoors?" The local bugs had favored his arm in particular last night.
He opened his mouth, but our sensei cut in. "We may not stay the night, Yukina, if it can at all be avoided."
"Why not?"
"It may not be officially recognized as a shinobi village, but there are still shinobi who live there."
I vowed, for the thirtieth time, that I would not whine.
-----------------------------------------------
We arrived at the first rice paddies in the early evening. All this time I had been expecting the kind of walls that Konoha had, bristling with fortifications and the odd sentry or two. Maybe something that looked just a bit more military.
I could only blink at the total anticlimax that greeted my eyes: neatly arranged rectangular sections of earth and shallow water, where rows upon rows of little green, sprouty heads poked above the surface. A few slowly-working farmers wearing traditional, wide-brimmed hats and the sound of slightly opaque water sliding down the irrigation canals completed the idyllic scene.
"Wow…" Kurei, too, seemed to struggle to voice his thoughts. "Rice fields."
Sakura-sensei didn't turn, but her voice drifted back to us as we followed her on the simple dirt path. "Before Orochimaru renamed it, this was actually called the Land of the Rice Fields."
Very creative, these founders of countries.
Field succeeded field as we walked further into the Land of the Sound. Eventually, we came to the gate of an enclosure that didn't look like it'd stand up to one of Kurei's gentle taps. Even so, Sakura-sensei made us wait until a villager admitted us. He gave me, Makoto, and Kurei a look that made me think he'd agree with the woman who ran the poultry-and-dairy store.
People stopped to watch us pass. I was used to being invisible, mainly because I was either just a kid or just a genin – either way, not very tall. Their attention made me uncomfortable. Twice – when they didn't look away fast enough – I was surprised by the latent, hostile wariness on their faces.
"Eh…Makoto?"
His dark eyes flicked once to me to indicate that he was listening.
"Why do they look like they hate us?"
His shoulders raised and lowered in a tiny shrug. "History."
I took more interest in our surroundings. There weren't any of the well-kept, attractive shop fronts that I would expect to line the main street. The villagers, who walked faster when they noticed me watching, wore plain clothes of solid, earthy colors interspersed with the occasional faded red or dull green. I glanced down at their feet. Dusty, thin sandals with the soles almost worn away. The hems of their pants were as high above their ankles as mine, but while mine were tailored that way, theirs looked frayed and often stained. I saw a narrow alley behind a vendor of cheap rice snacks, shadowed and narrow and stuffed full of bags and crates of refuse.
These people…they were incredibly poor.
I rubbed the hem of my long shirt between two fingers. It was like we were parading in front of these people with whom we shared a "history." There was a history, all right, in every dirty glare they shot at us, most of all at Sakura-sensei, who ignored them. Look at us, we're from a rich country that fought yours long ago, and look how you ended up. Funny, eh?
Not.
I was glad we weren't spending the night.
-----------------------------------------------
Everything in this village was different, but Sound and Fire were so close that the stars looked basically the same. Sakura-sensei let us stop for onigiri after delivering the message. The rice stuck in my throat; for some reason, it was kind of hard to wash down. Didn't taste exactly great, either.
"Yukina, you need to eat one more," said Makoto.
I glanced at Kurei, who had been acting just as subdued as I was. "Kurei, there's another riceball. Eat it."
"It's yours," he argued. "We each had two. You need to eat one more."
Sakura-sensei didn't say anything. She was letting us sort this out on our own.
"I know."
And then I was crying. Not an all-out sob-fest, because I could see Kurei's horrified dismay quite clearly. "Ah…Yukina? You're not angry, right? So…just eat it. Or I'll eat it. I don't care, really."
"Sorry." I swiped the back of my hand across my eyes. It was already over. "It's not a problem, I was going to eat it."
It was a little hard to polish off the riceball when even Makoto was observing me with a tense expression. Even when I was done, my teammates didn't relax. "You can stop staring now," I said. "I was just feeling depressed about the villagers."
"Sometimes," muttered Kurei, "I forget that you're a girl. Ow!" His stare changed from concern to indignant anger as he rubbed his ankle. I grinned; he looked much improved already.
After Sakura-sensei paid for us, we slid off the stools and started for the road. As I made to go after Kurei, she put a hand on my shoulder.
"You have a good heart, Yukina-chan, but don't try to pity these people. They have their pride." When I glanced up, there was an odd smile on her face. "Ready to go?"
I nodded fervently, not knowing that the next time my sensei said this, she would be coughing out blood.
-----------------------------------------------
TBC: Old, unfamiliar enemies.
