ARC 2: Chaos and Kick-Butt Chapter 9
Previously: It is near the end of the "timeskip", shortly before Naruto Part 2 begins. As the last step of her training under Tsunade, Sakura learned a super-secret reincarnation jutsu and remembered her previous life as someone named "Saotome Ranma." But while retraining to use Ranma's skills she learned that ki is not chakra. The two energies seem to interfere with one another – violently. Also, perhaps frustrated by her own love life problems with Sasuke, she attempted to solve other problems by connecting up Naruto and Hinata. That resulted in the Hyuga clan elders sending an assassination squad to kill her in her bed. So she's letting things cool down with a mission away from Konoha. Sakura, Hinata, and Anko have left town, but the younger girls are still waiting for Anko to give them their full briefing.
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"You're telling me, you used to be a dude?" Anko howled in laughter, almost falling into the campfire.
"It's not that funny," I grumbled.
Honestly, I hadn't even meant to tell her the story, but I needed to train up. Between doing my kata and practicing chakra manipulation, she knew something was going on. And with the way chakra kept exploding in my hands, there'd been a lot of questions. So I finally just swore her to secrecy and told her.
"What's so strange about me being a guy?" I demanded.
"Oh, I don't know. The skinny girl arms? The utter lack of strength? The way your butt moves when you walk. The way you're always mooning over that Uchiha boy. Maybe it's the pink hair!"
"For your information," I huffed, "pink is my natural color! And my arms might be a little skinny, but I'm not weak!"
I snatched up a rock from the ground.
"What are you doing now, girly-girl?" Anko asked in amusement.
"I think she's squeezing," Hinata offered, moving back slightly.
"Sure," Anko agreed in amusement. "That's how I take out my frustrations—" The rock exploded into powder. "—too."
"Not weak," I repeated, dusting my hands off. "And for your information, I don't 'moon' over Sasuke-kun. I'm just concerned about him."
Anko was still staring at my hand. I reached over and gently pushed her jaw up, closing her mouth.
"Oh, wait," she realized. "You used chakra. I've heard of that trick. A guy thing, right? Not that useful except for intimidation as for one-upmanship."
"No chakra, pure strength," I asserted.
She stared at me in disbelief. "Arm wrestle. Now!"
A moment later, as she was prying her arm out of the ground and rubbing her bicep, she mused, "Nobody can crush rocks in their hands. It's not possible! Even the most insane work-out, worse, even Gai wouldn't dream of squeezing rocks…" She blinked lids over glazed eyes once more. "Does this strength apply to everything you do?"
"We were attacked by ninjas last night," Hinata revealed. "ANBU assassins. She threw their kunai back at them."
"Yeah?"
"The kunai went through them. All the way."
"I really need to retrain," I admitted.
Then Hinata's eyes took on a fanatic gleam. "You've seen her training dances?"
"They're called kata," I corrected.
"You should have seen her take apart Neji!"
"He was holding back," I decided. "He misjudged how quickly I'd pick up the pace."
Anko's eye's narrowed and she got a smile that rather reminded me of how snakes smile. Well, how snakes would smile, if they could. In other words, creepy.
"So…" she summarized. "You've got pink hair, skinny little girl arms, absurd strength, and you remember being a guy. And now you're messed up, upstairs." She tapped her temple, to provide an emphasis that I did not need.
"Yeah," I agreed. "What's your point?"
She gave me a huge smile, which was even more creepy than her snake-smile. "I know how to solve all your problems!"
Uh oh.
"You need to get laid!"
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We probably could have made the trip in a fraction of the time it took us, but Anko was taking a modest pace. Maybe she wanted to get to know us before the mission. That didn't extend to the sleeping arrangements, though.
Anko strictly kept to her own tent, even though it was plenty big enough for two.
I had a two-person tent that I shared with Hinata. Between hidden weapons and modern chakra-powered camping gear, I was traveling in style. I remembered crossing China with little more than a ratty wool blanket!
So I should have been in a deep sleep, snuggled inside my warm bag, protected from the rocks and cold ground by a magnificent air mattress. Instead, my eyes snapped open.
Something was happening in the tent! Last time I'd woken like this, it was to discover ANBU assassins!
Not making a single move, not tensing a single muscle, not opening or twitching an eyelid, I focused my senses, probing, detecting, feeling for the disturbance that had awakened me!
There was a giggle.
"No, Naruto, it's just that your hands are so large!" Another giggle. "Alright. If you want, I'll show you."
Great. Hinata talked in her sleep.
"It's just the two of us on this mission. And I've already shown you my equipment, so…"
It was a dream about training! That was reasonable. It must be very common for shinobi to have training dreams.
"Oh my! Don't worry, I like red fur!"
I decided I didn't want to know. I rolled over, and pulled my pillow over my head, trying to drown out the sound.
"Training is important, isn't it?"
I let out a sigh of relief. Anything inappropriate had just been my own perverted imagination.
"…never done endurance training like this." She gave a gasp. "Oh MY!"
Then she began to make quiet little sounds. Squeaks and whimpers, mostly. I sighed. Maybe it hadn't been my imagination.
"Oh…oh…OH…NARUTO!"
Definitely a moaner. At least now I could go to sleep.
"What, again? Okay!"
Or not. It was going to be a long night.
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Breakfast was quiet. I glared at Anko, for planting suggestions in the mind of people who are too susceptible for their own good. I glared at Hinata, just because she was in such a perky mood.
The other girls cooked and cleaned up, while I packed equipment and stashed it away.
After erasing all traces of our camp, we sped deeper into the forest.
This was definitely not Ranma's world. The forest around Konoha stretched out for endless days, untouched and unoccupied by man. And, as with the Forest of Death, there were things that moved through those untamed wilds. Humans didn't live alone out here, not unless they were as powerful as chunin.
"What's our destination?" I called, as the three of us moved smoothly from branch to branch.
Shinobi tree travel was as fast as roof hopping. Actually, it was probably a touch faster. In a previous life, back in Japan, that hadn't been so important. Roof hopping let you avoid traffic and you could skip paying bus fare. In this world, though, it made shinobi the controlling glue that held a nation together. Nearly all travel was by foot, on simple roads created for pedestrians and carts. There were oxen, but no horses, and nothing like cars or planes. So travel, warfare and invasion, all traveled at foot speed. So did ninja, for that matter, but our "foot speed" was through the air, and a half-dozen times faster than a normal running man.
And there were a few jutsu that allowed even faster travel. The Fourth Hokage had been famous for that.
Fast long-distance communication was by bird. Between my Ranma memories and my Sakura knowledge, I realized that there were major gaps I didn't understand. We had radios. We had TV. But everything was purely local. The TV was a village channel, and radios were both expensive and short-range. Which was why the communication between villages was either by speedy ninja, like ourselves, or by bird. Or by regular merchants passing back and forth, trading gossip and rumors the same way they had done back in the time of the first samurai.
Bird-messages weren't so bad. It wasn't like a teeny rice-grain piece of paper on a pigeon leg. I'd seen that once in a movie. No, we used trained falcons that traveled between Konoha and other vital destinations – the capital, the border, other hidden villages. Since each falcon could carry a scroll, if you wanted to you could move people and equipment at the speed of flight by sending a storage scroll or summoning scroll. But you couldn't move an army.
Since most travel was limited to foot speed, it meant that shinobi reinforcements could reach any spot in the country faster than normal troops could march there. The Daimyo was the political leader, but the Hokage was a sort of prefectural shogun. Capturing the Daimyo gained you little. It was like kidnapping or assassinating a prime minister. There was panic and grief and new elections and the system quickly moved on.
On the other hand, taking the Hokage and his castle or village – that won the war. Even better, the civilians, the people in the open and public cities, they might never see that war. Orochimaru's invasion, two years ago, had been devastating for Konohagakure no Sato but it hadn't had a noticeable impact on the Land of Fire.
This was so very different from my old world, where two civilian cities had been obliterated as a tactic of war.
As I was to discover, this cultural difference was important to the layout of our destination.
"Where are we heading?" I asked again.
Anko turned her head to answer back without shouting. "Yurihonjo," she answered. "The capital. Once you see it, you'll understand why Konoha's nothing more than a village. The capital is two entire cities. Three, really. Yuzuki Castle, in the center, is a small town to itself. Don't hold your breath, girls, 'cause we're not getting anywhere near the castle. There's 'Inner Yurihonjo', which is the walled city immediately surrounding the castle. We'll spend a lot of time there, though the lodging's too high for our expense account. That's where the lords and noble clans live, and the businesses catering to them. And then there's the spillover, 'Outer Yurihonjo' or the outer city, which is probably four times as big as the inner city. We'll flop there, and move into the inner city during the day, like most everyone else."
Hinata leapt forward, asking, "They built outside the walls? Were they insane? Who would live there?"
"This isn't like Konoha," Anko explained, with a tone of fierce pride. "We're a military facility. I know, every time something serious goes down, it's like there's a handful of shinobi and about a zillion panicky civilians running around like terrified sheep. Even so, those are our sheep. Each and every one of 'em chose to work and live in a hidden village, knowing the full risks and dangers. And we need 'em. Someone's got to make the soldier pills, and craft the kunai and shuriken, and tailor our outfits with all the subtle armor and hidden pockets.
"Konoha suffers a major attack every decade or two, at least. The civilians know what they're in for. Add the forest to that – it comes right up to the village wall. And the fact that we're deep inside the forest, and that we restrict hunting within a day's travel of the village. That means you can't go out of the gate without worrying about wildlife and predators. You're both chunin, so Konoha probably seems wide open to you. But imagine a normal civilian, trapped behind walls, knowing that sooner or later someone's going to attack, and that even taking the road out of town means you'll have to face wolves or bears or who-knows-what!"
"I'm not sure I'm quite following you," Hinata admitted.
"Well, look!" Anko hollered. "I'm just talking about the rabble in the street. And I'm saying that both of you grew up in Konoha. You're warped! Even the 'normal' civilians from Konoha are warped. They're used to people racing across the roofs, and ninja-pranks like your orange-clad buddy used to pull. They're used to monsters outside the wall, and even the likelihood that they'll suffer an invasion or three during their lifetime. By outside standards, our civilians are pretty warped.
"But in the capital… there are no ninja appearing on the roofs. Everything is under the covers. There's no invasions, no monsters in the woods. Outside the city walls is more city! And outside that are farms. It's like a big, juicy target, with only one thing protecting it."
"Konoha," I guessed.
"Damn straight," Anko agreed, with a decisive nod. "In a straight shot, a chunin team can make the run in just under a day. There's always at least three ANBU squads patrolling the capital, and four more on call for scroll-summoning to the capital." She lowered her voice and continued with a tone of slight derision. "Of course, they also got a few hundred samurai hanging around. I figure that's just a delaying tactic."
"So we'll be ninja on patrol or something?" I guessed. "Is that our mission?"
Anko made a rude noise. "You want me to tell you here, in an insecure area? Not a chance. I will tell you this, though. It's not a regular mission – we'll have cover identities. I'll tell you more when we stop for lunch. Until then, try to come up with a good cover."
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Anko wouldn't allow a fire for lunch.
"The capital is only an hour west," she said quietly. "We're going to circle past, and come in on the east road, like ordinary travelers arriving from Wave Country. We'll hit Daisen and pick up any supplies, then shift to our cover identities and pretend to be coming in from Wave."
I nodded. My first big mission had been to Wave Country. I even knew some of the people there.
"So we'll have a cold camp?" Hinata asked.
It was just a lunch break. That's normally cold.
"Are you really sure you guys are chunin?" Anko demanded, forcing herself to keep the volume down.
I'd whipped up some lunch preparations, pulling things out using the hidden weapons technique. I was trying to make it look like I was pulling them out of a storage scroll, while Anko and Hinata watched for flaws. I pulled out a short table, and laid out some cheap dishes and chopsticks.
"I hate to say I picked up anything from Naruto's eating habits," I admitted, "but he had to have his ramen at least once a day. And… assuming you've got a storage scroll to cart it along, cup noodles or something like it is quick and hot, and the carbohydrates are pretty easy to digest. Unfortunately, you need hot water for it."
"I said no fire," Anko corrected. "I didn't say we couldn't have hot water."
She grabbed the teakettle off my table and handed it to Hinata. "Let's see if you learned the trickle jutsu I taught you last night."
Hinata lifted the lid off the teapot and made a series of hand seals, as she executed one of the jutsu Anko had demonstrated. The jutsu was ten signs long, and as it activated a tiny gray raincloud formed above the kettle, just five centimeters wide. The miniature cloud began dripping into the teapot.
"Trickle is one of the Traveling Ten," Anko explained. "They're a collection of ten jutsu that are really handy for anyone camping or traveling cross-country. Each takes exactly ten hand seals. They're hard to muff up and don't take much chakra, so you'll find quite a few non-shinobi who use them, too. Which is part of the reason I'm surprised that they didn't teach you these in the academy."
Hinata and I could only shrug.
"The ten include two jutsu for each element, so depending on your affinity, you may not be able to master all of them. Trickle is the first of the water jutsu – condensing water from the air."
"It seems like a lifesaver," I said, "particular in the desert or someplace without water."
"It works a lot slower in the desert," Anko warned. "Less moisture in the air. But I was moving on to others in the Traveling Ten. We're the land of fire, so I assume the academy at least taught you Match Finger?"
Hinata and I both nodded.
"Oh!" I realized. "It's ten seals long, isn't it? It's one of the Traveling Ten!"
"Right," Anko confirmed. "At the very least, I'd expect everyone from Fire Country to know both fire jutsu. The pattern with the Traveling Ten is that the first elemental jutsu is easy and useful, while the second is a bit trickier, and extremely useful."
"So…?" Hinata prompted.
"Do you know Hot Rock?"
I looked at Hinata; she looked at me. We both shrugged.
"Okay," Anko said. "Step one, find a rock."
She searched the ground for a minute, before picking up a rounded river stone that was a smooth oval perhaps three centimeters long. She poured some cold water out of the now-full tea kettle, and cleaned the stone off.
"Now watch closely – here come the seals."
Her hands flicked through a sequence of ten seals.
"I'm missing something here," I admitted. "Why is this so useful?"
Anko finished the seals and held the rock, staring at it. In seconds, the remaining water that covered it evaporated into steam. Then she dropped it into the teapot.
"Get it?" she asked. "No fire, no smoke, no smell. But we've got hot water. The stone gets hotter, depending on how much chakra you pump in. A ring of hot rocks makes a fine grill, or a natural stove to heat your pot or skillet. You can place warm stones inside your bedding to warm it up. They hold the heat for a long time, so several larger rocks around a campsite will really warm it up. You can melt snow, or carry a hand warmer, or melt fishing holes in ice. It has almost every advantage of fire, but without the smoke or flame, and you can create heat anywhere you can find a stone."
Hinata blinked. "That is more useful than match finger."
Anko grinned. "Believe me, if you've got a long, cold stakeout, Hot Rock is your friend!"
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"The last step in our disguises," Anko revealed, "is to hide those way-too-obvious Hyuga eyes."
"What's wrong with my eyes?" Hinata demanded.
"Apparently nothing," Anko answered, honestly. "Perfect vision even when you get to be an old geezer, strange powers and jutsu. You Hyuga are so lucky! Most of the dojutsu users slowly burn out their eyes as they use their powers. I heard that even the mighty sharingan does that. At top power, it throws some sort of unbeatable genjutsu. But each use wrecks your eyesight a little. And there's a technique over in Cloud that leads to cataracts. But as far as I can tell, Hyuga eyes just stay sharp forever."
Hinata said nothing, but she gave a slight nodding, while wearing that shy Hinata smile.
"On the other hand, Hyuga eyes are also about the most famous and noticeable in the Elemental Countries. Your chances of walking around anonymously are just about zip. So you're gonna disguise 'em."
"How?"
Our top-heavy leader gave a put-upon sigh. "I can't believe they let any of you kids out of the compound without teaching you a couple of dogenjutsu."
"Illusionary pupil techniques?" Hinata wondered.
"Honestly! Most other ninja just use it to change their eye color. But it'll be more useful to you. Hinata, we're going to give you completely ordinary brown eyes."
"But I like my eyes…"
"Uh huh. So does everyone else on the continent. Okay, here are the seals…"
While they did that, I decided to practice my own disguise. I already had the makings for a perfect disguise. My figure was nothing special, and my face was fairly plain. I really only have two good physical features – my hair and my eyes. If I toned my hair down to a simple light brown, I should be completely non-descript except for a pair of startlingly green eyes. And I thought I could use that to my advantage.
So while Anko taught Hinata how to apply magical contact lenses, I stepped behind a tree and retrieved a few grooming items from my hidden weapons space.
I have to say, the Amazons from Ranma's day provided more than their share of irritation, but they knew personal grooming like nobody's business. In fact, they'd created several martial arts techniques based upon them. (Part of the reason there were so few Amazon men was due to a school of unbelievably lethal beard techniques, but that's a story for another day.) In any case, I was able to use the quick change technique to dress in a plain but nice modern-cut kimono (a blue-gray fabric with a lighter blue print of a rain droplets). Then I gave myself a full shampoo and dye job. I'd learned the Hissatsu Shiatsuken from Shampoo – it specialized in grooming and massage attacks. Finally, I applied my makeup. Again I used the Amazon arts (I'd had to fight off a makeup challenger once, to save Shampoo from being forced to wear the legendary Tammy Faye eye shadow.)
The entire process, dress, style, makeup, took over ten seconds, but then again, I hadn't practiced in who knows how many thousand years.
I rounded the large tree and walked back to our campsite, deliberately changing my movements and body language to match a girl who was much shyer and less confident of herself.
"Oh my God!" I only remembered at the last second not to shout.
"Shhh!" Anko admonished. "We're – What the hell? Sakura? Nice genjutsu!"
"Hinata – you've got eyes!"
"I've always had eyes," she grumbled. "Sakura? You look so…plain."
I gave a depressed sigh, which was perfectly in character for the girl I was trying to play. "Yeah. Actually, without the whole pink hair thing, I'm really pretty plain."
"Wait a minute," Anko ordered. "Why can't I see through your genjutsu?"
Hinata concentrated, and something happened at her temples. I peered at her, knowing she was using the byakugan, but the genjutsu covered it. I made a quick hand seal and muttered, "Release!" under my breath, breaking out of her genjutsu.
And suddenly, Hinata was normal again, with those creepy bulging eye veins and everything. I gave a sigh of relief.
"It's not genjutsu, is it?" Hinata demanded. "I can't see any chakra, aside from just now when you countered my genjutsu."
"That's right." I nodded, happily.
"But…" Anko was confused. "You were only out of sight for a couple of seconds."
"Some special techniques I learned in a previous life," I reminded her.
"But…"
I smirked. "Heck, if I used the Xi Fa Xiang Gao, I could give you a shampoo, brainwash, and blow-dry in under six seconds!"
"Uh…" Hinata noted, "I'm not sure that 'brainwashing' means what you think it does."
"Try me," I challenged. "It's a special technique for cleaning hair and removing memories, all at the same time."
Anko was looking appropriately weirded out. "I… suppose that would be useful, for torturing prisoners who need to look their best."
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Before we finished our lunch break, I changed back to my normal look (I'd had to re-create the Amazon herbal dyes myself, but they could be rapidly applied and stripped without damaging the hair). Hinata used her sight to scan for eavesdroppers, while Anko also checked. Then she finally gave us the mission briefing.
First she pulled out a small scroll.
"Do you carry blank scrolls with you?"
Hinata and I both nodded.
"Do you know the scroll copy jutsu?"
"Of course!"
"What a lot of people don't know," Anko explained, "is that scroll copy leaves a trace. Once you get the original back, there's a… taint. More like a scent, only in chakra terms. You can tell that someone has copied it. That 'scent' is the same for everything that person does, so if I were to look at any of your student scrolls, they'd have a 'smell' that would be the same as the 'smell' on the copied original. Follow me, so far?"
We nodded, dutifully. I was starting to get a bad feeling.
Anko tossed the scroll and a second to Hinata. "The brown scroll was written by Shizune only. Same with the red one. They should both have her 'scent' on them. Feel it out, see if you can detect the second 'scent' on the red scroll."
While Hinata was concentrating, Anko pulled out something that was either a huge toothpick or a small dango skewer, and began picking her teeth.
"Okay, let's talk politics and reality. What do you know about the relationship between the Daimyo and the Hokage?"
"More than I want," I grumbled.
Anko grinned. "Okay, apprentice-girl, let's hear the highlights."
"Well," I took a second to organize my thinking. "We're deliberately separated. We have several rules in the Shinobi Code dealing with the Daimyo and his family. We're to protect them, never harm them, and there's even a loophole-plugging rule about not being able to stand back and allow them to be harmed through negligence or inaction. But at the same time, we don't actually have to take orders from them. We take orders from our superiors or the Hokage. The Daimyo can order the Hokage and provide missions, but can't directly give orders to any shinobi.
"At least, that's the theory. I know that if the Hokage objects to an order, she has the option to resign. She's threatened to do that often enough. Also, I know that in the real world, things aren't quite so compartmentalized at they're made to sound. The Daimyo still handles our budget. Some assignments come straight to the hidden village, but lots of others go through the Daimyo and the capital. And the Daimyo is always scrutinizing details of equipment expenditures and the like, and approving them or (usually) asking all sorts of stupid questions like, 'Why do you throw away so many kunai?' So, is that what you were asking about, Anko-san?"
"Yeah." She spit out the skewer, caught it in one hand, and began twirling it around her fingers in a dexterity exercise. "It's all part of a big political theory called 'Separation of Powers.' The Daimyo does have a force under his direct command, his samurai. They were originally supposed to be the country's main defense. They still serve as police, and a major part of our defense, just not as big a part as the hidden village. But they're the part that most people usually see. Well, except for us weirdoes who live in Konoha, were we have no samurai. Anyway, these samurai are under the direct control of the Daimyo, but in the past there have been all sorts of issues with corruption and ideology and even religion messing things up. So the Fire Country was created with 'Separation of Powers.' The shinobi are an unconnected branch, completely separated from the capital, from politics, from the clans and pressures and duties and orders that might mess up the samurai. The idea is that if one force is having trouble, the other force is there to take up the slack."
"Yes," Hinata agreed politely, "I've heard all of this from my father, and others in the clan. But how does it have anything to do with the scroll?"
Anko scowled and began flicking her skewer into the ground, like a throwing knife. She managed to bury it at least five centimeters deep, each time.
"The hidden village is supposed to be hidden. Our internal details are secret, our people anonymous, our techniques unknown."
That didn't make sense to me. "But… we've got bingo books. Hell, every hidden village keeps their own bingo books. And we track the bloodlines and major techniques of the other villages. We'd be stupid if we didn't know what Rock might use against us!"
Anko nodded, not offended in the least. "Uh huh. Part of the game. But it's a game played between the shinobi. A game between the hidden villages. A game kept to the shadows, completely hidden from the public view. And also, we do everything we can to protect our secrets and techniques and bloodlines."
Hinata and I both nodded.
"But like you said," Anko continued, "there's theory, and there's real world. Real world is, the Daimyo pays for stuff, and he gets to ask questions. And sometimes, to answer those questions, we send over details. Like, maybe, details on an espionage incursion we had from Grass, about four months back. I don't think either of you were involved. But the Daimyo wanted details on who was involved on their side, and our side. All because we need to justify the expense of repairing a part of our outer wall."
Hinata started to put it together. "So… the Hokage has to send information with details about our people and techniques over to the Daimyo. And that's written on super-confidential scrolls."
From my work with Tsunade-sama I knew the rest. "Those scrolls are only loaned to the Daimyo. He has them just long enough to read the justification and stay informed. But when we get them back, we discover—" It all came together. "—we discover that they've been copied!"
Anko nodded grimly. "Our techniques, our people, all our secrets – they're leaking out. So the Hokage has given this team the order to find the source of that leak."
She picked up the skewer again. This time, when she flung it, she buried into a tree trunk. It was just a bamboo skewer, but she through it hard enough to bury it fifteen centimeters deep into solid hardwood.
"We find the leak and stop it. Permanently."
END OF CHAPTER 9
Author's notes:
Short. Mostly an intro to the next story arc. Trust me, Anko is a wild girl, and has only given the merest hints of her lunacy so far.
The "traveling ten" were stolen, of course, from Perfect Lionheart's Chunin Exam Day.
A brief comment about power levels. Sakura just beat Neji, and it was a pretty quick take-down, too. Furthermore, there are still several Ranma techniques that she has yet to re-learn, which eventually should make her even more powerful.
But… she had advanced training against Neji, since Hinata was coaching her. And between her strength and speed, the advantages of ki, and the fact that she's an expert on many of the ninja tricks out there (she knows the book-learning part, at least), while no one has seen the stuff she can do – this all comes together to make her absolutely kick-butt.
For the moment.
It is akin to the development of any major new military technology. Or being surprised by a jutsu you've never seen before. For a while, that new development dominates the battlefield. And then the other side figures out ways to cope with it. That will come to Sakura, too.
It's tough to compare how strong characters are when you cross series, particularly when one is mostly comedy, and the other is a bit more serious. (Not that Naruto is completely serious. I mean, "Mitarashi Anko"? That's like naming a man "Clark Barr" or a child "Baby Ruth.") Yeah, Ranma falls 30 stories and smashes concrete with his face. Because it's funny. Keep in mind that Bugs Bunny survived a weapon that exploded the moon, and Daffy Duck was not only disintegrated, but survived the near-total destruction of Planet X. Does that mean that Bugs and Daffy together could easily destroy Akatsuki? Well… it depends on who's writing it, and what their intended storyline was. (For the record, in the crossover where Ranma was raised by Bugs Bunny instead of Genma, he was nearly invincible so long at his attack featured either song or dance. He also had a nearly invincible anvil attack.)
For now, let's just hope that Sakura can enjoy her moment in the spotlight. There's not much dark in this particular arc, but future arcs…
