Chapter Nine: Unearthing Secrets
Traveling to the training site Kakashi had chosen took until mid-afternoon on the same day they left Outpost Hoizumi. A rocky plateau jutted up from the surrounding forest. Small streams trickled down the sides.
They set up camp in the shelter of a cluster of boulders on the eastern rim of the plateau. Here, they took the time to build a proper fire pit and shelters, recalling their Academy training. Once Kakashi was satisfied with their preparations, he called them together.
He looked excited, which was never a good sign. "Here's what we're going to do…"
o-o-o-o-o
The first thing they would do, it turned out, were a lot of tactical exercises. This was pretty standard, and something they had done all the time in the Academy.
Of course, because Kakashi was a cheating bastard they had to answer while doing handstands. And if they managed to balance for too long he started throwing sticks and rocks at them.
Some of the situations were fairly straightforward, others were complex and challenging. They had worked through about a dozen or so when Kakashi's latest scenario took a turn for the bizarre.
"Why the hell does this noble we're trying to protect from the Kirigakure shinobi have a pet turtle-monkey?" Naruto demanded, flailing his legs. "What even is a turtle-monkey anyway, and why is it so critical that it survive?" He fell, raising a small cloud of dust.
"What I want to know is how the enemy chunin got his hands on the stupid creature," Sasuke complained, briefly balancing on one hand to avoid the stick - more like a full branch, really - that Kakashi threw at him. "If this thing is so important, one of us would have obviously been keeping an eye on it."
"Nope," Kakashi informed him smugly, watching Naruto struggle to lift himself back into place, "you forgot. And the turtle-monkey is a sacred animal in the noble's homeland. If it dies while in his care, he's disgraced, can't inherit, and so you'd fail the mission."
Sakura huffed. "How about I declare that the turtle-monkey must be some sort of absurd genjutsu, an illusion created by an enemy shinobi with an overactive imagination, and we go about saving the client as if the world behaves according to reasonable logic?"
"How dare you consign Kawaii-chan to a cruel fate at the hands of the Kiri-nin!" Kakashi proclaimed, flicking pebbles at her face. "Shame, shame on you!"
Naruto relented before their sensei's insistence. "Okay. I create a bunch of shadow clones, and one of them surreptitiously henges into a copy of this… turtle-monkey, and substitutes himself with the real Kawaii-chan. Really? The thing's named Kawaii-chan?"
"Kawaii-chan," Kakashi agreed. "And that's a pretty decent idea. You surprise the Kiri-nin and succeed. Now what?"
Sasuke grinned. "If they think that chunin is holding the real monkey, they're still standing there like idiots. I fry the lot of them with a grand fireball."
"I watch with the Museigen to see if any of them dodge or block it somehow," Sakura added, "and if they do I shunshin in close and stab them."
"Eh," Kakashi said, waving a hand. "That probably wouldn't work perfectly in real life, but I'm getting bored with this and I'll say it's fine." He pulled out his book and started to read. "Sasuke gets almost all of them with the fireball, and the one who survives because he's got some kind of water armor gets stabbed in the eye. Good job, mission success. You can take a break now," he added, and they all collapsed with groans of relief.
"Okay, now that we're done with that, you have to tell us," Naruto said a minute later. "Where did you get the idea for the turtle-monkey?"
"From my sensei," Kakashi admitted, "who always maintained that it had been a real mission his genin team was sent on. He also insisted it wasn't even the weirdest thing that happened to them."
"What did they actually do?" Sakura asked, fascinated.
Kakashi rubbed a hand through his hair. "Well, sensei and the others came up with a similar plan to yours, using hand signs to communicate. Of course, because none of them were all that proficient with hand signs yet, and they were signing to each other rather quickly behind their backs to prevent anyone from noticing…"
"Oh, no."
"…There's a spectacular miscommunication where sensei thought the plan was that they'd pretend to switch the turtle-monkey with an illusion. Then the Kiri-nin would ignore the real one, thinking it was fake, and they'd just have a regular fight. So he fakes the switch, well enough that everybody but him thinks he's got the real turtle-monkey, and then his teammates promptly hit the enemies - still holding the real Kawaii-chan - with a brutal combination of lightning and fire jutsu. The turtle-monkey gets fried and there's a lot of finger pointing and yelling afterward. Thankfully the dumb thing somehow manages to survive and they spend the rest of the trip carefully treating its burns with aloe and feeding it mushed bananas."
"Wow," Naruto commented, scratching his head, "it's so utterly implausible it might really be true. I think I believe you."
o-o-o-o-o
After they all had a drink of water and some trail mix to recover, Kakashi grilled them on formation tactics. "It's very important to consider," he said. "Most of your time in missions is spent traveling, so that's usually when you find yourself under attack. Defending a campsite is easy; you've planned out the approaches and where everyone will be. You have to do the same with your traveling formation. Who's going to be in front? How will you alert the others when you notice something?"
And so they talked through various possibilities. Sakura, since she had the fastest reflexes of the three of them, would go in front. She could easily alert the others with hand signs. If Naruto or Sasuke saw something, it got a little more complicated.
"The sounds you make while just traveling can be easily silenced or disguised," Kakashi pointed out, "but voices are immediately recognizable."
"Yeah," Naruto agreed, "yelling would be okay if someone was about to attack us, but it'd be bad if we were trying to stay hidden."
"You say that now," Sasuke observed dourly, "but I will bet the first time it happens you will be loud enough to alert anyone and everyone within a kilometer."
"I will not! In fact, I'll bet you do it before I do!"
"The only one who's yelling right now is you."
"Teme! I can be quiet if I want to!"
As their squabble descended into an impromptu spar, Sakura away turned to Kakashi, who was watching with barely disguised amusement. "What's the 'standard' way to deal with that problem, sensei?"
"Hmm?" He turned towards her, absently ducking under a flying shadow clone. "Oh. Fastest method is to flicker your chakra. It's sort of like an underpowered kai, pretty close to the variant you use on somebody else. I'll teach you and Sasuke how to sense it later. We need to start working on your chakra sensitivity anyways."
"Not Naruto?"
Kakashi shrugged lightly. "Too much chakra. I guess I'll show him as well, though he won't get it until his control improves. The 'standard' method, then, is for the leader to pause slightly in between every few jumps, just enough so that the person behind them can tap their shoulder or elbow."
"Sounds simple enough."
Kakashi turned his hand in a so-so gesture. "You need to get the timing down, and you have to pick spots where there's room for all three of you to land without bumping into each other. Takes a bit of coordination and practice."
To the side, Naruto and Sasuke finished roughing each other up, exchanged grins, and agreed that whoever first messed up and alerted an opponent by being loud would forfeit their right to eat ramen (Naruto) or tomatoes (Sasuke) for a week.
Kakashi explained to Naruto and Sasuke what he and Sakura had just discussed, and showed all three of them how to properly flicker their chakra. Making undirected pulses was easy. Directing them took more control, but wasn't anywhere near as complicated as any of the Academy Three. "It's a good thing I remembered to teach you this while we're away from the village," he commented, "because if we practiced there you'd probably set off a bunch of alarms. ANBU often uses coded chakra pulses like these to communicate, and they get really pissed off when people do that a lot."
"What'll they do, haul us off to T&I?" Naruto asked.
"Nah. They'll use you as a practice dummy for training trap and sabotage specialists. And they won't tell you about it first." All three genin shuddered. Because they had trained so often in Sakura's backyard during the Academy years, Fujiko had taken the time to explain the basics of the trap setup she had in place so they wouldn't set any of it off by accident. Having things like that done to your house without your permission or awareness would be… unpleasant.
"It's not like they'll care if you do it a little bit," Kakashi assured them, "and directed pulses are almost always okay; most of the midlevel chunin and above do it all the time. There are big lecture classes held once a year that teach chakra senses to new chunin. There's a basic language common to it. Exchanging one directed pulse is sort of a greeting, like, 'hello, I'm here, this is me,' because chakra signatures are unique, like fingerprints (though it's possible to mimic another person's, if you train extremely fine control or have the right kekkei genkai). Sending out a strong, wide-area pulse is asking everyone around you to respond. Doing that a lot is what makes the black ops agents mad, because it clutters everyone else's conversations and makes sensing difficult. Two pulses is 'I want to talk to you,' and three means 'stop doing that.' A lot of uniform fast pulses in a row means 'I need help or backup.' ANBU's got a whole lot more codes I can't tell you. Also, you should remember that most of the Hyuuga can listen in on everyone in the village, using the Byakugan to cheat - and even without that, nothing you do with chakra pulses is private. I'm forgetting something. Oh yeah, never do chakra pulses around a Hyuuga using the Byakugan without warning them first; it's incredibly rude, like shining a flashlight in their eyes."
Sasuke frowned. "Does the same apply to the Sharingan?" he asked, gesturing towards his own eyes. "It must bother them a lot, if shinobi do it all the time."
Kakashi rubbed his chin. "Well, the Hyuuga built their compound away from the other clans' areas for that reason, and there's supposed to be some sort of fuuinjutsu barrier around the it that prevents excess chakra signals from getting in, built by the Uzumaki. Or there used to be; I'm not certain if anyone knew how to fix it after the Nine-Tails smashed up part of the perimeter." Naruto flinched. "And don't worry about the Sharingan - it's much less sensitive to chakra than the Byakugan." He adjusted his headband. "Normally I find that really annoying, but in this case it's a good thing. It's never bothered me.
"Okay, anyways: chakra senses. This is an exercise that relies on a lot of chakra control, so unfortunately, Naruto, I doubt you'll be able to do it for several years at least."
Naruto hmphed, crossing his arms.
"Kakashi-sensei? Kaa-chan taught me how to feel an opponent's chakra when I was learning genjutsu. Are you talking about the same thing?"
"No. I'll try to explain the difference, let me think for a minute. Okay. Shinobi use a lot of different metaphors to describe chakra senses, and none of them are all that great. Imagine you are trapped in a dark room, or in a sensory deprivation tank. The chakra control taught in the Academy is like learning to feel your own body, always knowing where your limbs are in relation to one another. Feeling an opponent's chakra, like you do for genjutsu, is like reaching out to touch the walls - it's interactive; you're sensing the other person's chakra only by how it pushes back at your own. Chakra senses are like realizing that you've been humming to yourself the whole time, and that if you make yourself still and silent you can hear your surroundings a little bit - it's passive. The Byakugan and Sharingan in this metaphor are kind of like being given a bright lantern or a dim flashlight, respectively. Eh, the metaphor kind of breaks down when you think about it too much."
"I think I get it," Naruto said, "but why can't I learn to stop 'humming' as well?"
"You can," Kakashi stressed, "but it will take much more time and effort than it will for Sakura, say, because you have so much more chakra. What I'm describing as the 'hum' is the small fraction of your total chakra that anyone with developed coils emits constantly unless they deliberately suppress it. You have to get your 'hum' below a certain threshold before you can sense anything outside yourself. For you that's a much smaller fraction of your constant chakra output than it is for Sasuke, or anybody else. Your control has to be much better, in relative terms, because in absolute terms your chakra output is so much larger."
They had their eyes closed, sitting in the lotus position in a triangle with Kakashi standing in the center. "It'll feel somewhat disorienting when you get it," he warned, "because you're accustomed to always feeling your own chakra. It's startling when that sensation vanishes for the first time. Civilians feel like this all the time, but for anyone who grew up with activated chakra coils it's a novel experience.
"Now, let's begin the meditation exercise. Breathe normally, at a comfortable pace, but keep the timing consistent. Focus the smallest amount of chakra you can, and hold it within your center. Feel it pulse in time with your breathing. It's like a tiny whirlpool of light, sending eddies throughout your entire chakra network. Reach out to the rest of your body. Feel the ripples in your chakra and slowly, gently, make them still."
Sakura breathed smoothly, in, two, three, four, five; hold, two; out, two, three, four, five; in… It's the same type of manipulation as starting the Museigen, she realized. That's a twist in my chakra, an acceleration of the flow. This is a smoothing, a decrease in turbulence.
It took her about an hour to get it the first time. Whoa. The sensation was somewhere in between vertigo and numbness, all over her body. Startled, she lost control immediately. "I think I had it, just a little bit. I could feel Naruto clearly, at least. Sasuke, just barely, it was incredibly faint. I couldn't feel you at all." It was much easier the second time, and she got it back within a minute or two. "Yeah. I have it now. It's like feeling sunlight on my skin, sort of." She pointed to Kakashi. "I still can't sense you at all, though."
"Of course not," Kakashi agreed. She heard him shift a little bit and then - ping - for a moment there he was, like a brief wave of static washing over her whole body.
"Hmm," Sasuke commented. "I felt that."
"Then you've almost got it," Kakashi encouraged him. "Sakura, try sending out a pulse of your own."
She did. "Feel it?"
"Nothing," Sasuke reported.
"Do it again," Kakashi ordered, "you have to make it much stronger than that. Remember that Naruto's huge chakra reserves make his 'hum' very loud, and little pulses get lost in the noise."
Sasuke got it after a another half-hour of effort. Naruto struggled to get anywhere, getting more and more frustrated. They practiced for about another hour before Kakashi sent the two of them out to practice, while he stayed behind with Naruto to work on chakra control. "Now that you can easily do it sitting still, it only takes a little more control to maintain it while moving. Pick any direction you like," he suggested, "and go off for an hour or so, then turn sharply, head on for another hour, and then turn and come back. That'll give you a chance to practice dead reckoning. Let me know if you find anything interesting," he added, "and be sure not to die. That would be bad."
They fished a map and compass out of their packs and noted the position of the sun. Marking their starting location and direction, they headed off through the trees. It was fun playing around with their newfound skills as they ran. They made a game of it by trading off the position in front and having the person in the rear try to distract the other into slipping with a well-timed chakra pulse.
They'd chosen a course that avoided the few small towns in the area, wanting to see more of the wilderness. They crossed a couple streams and wagon tracks, the only person they saw a lone, elderly fisherman, casting into a stream at the bottom of a hill. A solitary wooden hut was nestled into a grove of white birch trees behind him, one thin curl of gray smoke wafting into the blue sky. There were no paths other than the one between the hut and the stream, and Sakura wondered how he had come to live there. As they passed by, the man turned to watch them go, revealing blank grey eyes under the brim of his straw hat. How did he notice us? Despite the warmth of the afternoon sun, in the wrong part of the sky to have cast their shadows towards the fisherman, she shivered. Afterwards, she and Sasuke exchanged a meaningful glance, and, upon their return, both of them omitted the man from their report to Kakashi.
They came across a pair of bears, brown and shaggy, lumbering along through the undergrowth below. Shortly thereafter, they stumbled upon a woodpecker, marveling at the sound it made as it drilled its red-crested head against a dead tree. Woodpeckers were rare in Konoha, where shinobi quickly removed dead trees to preserve the canopy highway. This one had a long, piping call that echoed through the leaves, laughing and mournful.
Later, they passed several herds of deer, similar in appearance to those tended by the Nara clan, but far wilder. Those had allowed the curious Academy students to approach and touch them, but these bolted away through the woods when Sakura's shadow passed over them.
They stopped after the hour was up to rest before they went on. Running and jumping through the canopy wasn't particularly grueling - they had maintained a faster pace for far longer on the trek from Konoha to the outpost - but the tighter chakra control necessary to test their newfound senses made everything harder.
"I wish I had Naruto's stamina," Sakura confessed to Sasuke as they gulped water from their canteens.
"You and me both," the Uchiha grumbled. He paused. "What do you think is up with that? In the Academy, I used to think he just had reserves at the top of the natural range, but Kakashi described them as much larger."
Sakura thought. "I'm not sure. Kaa-chan sort of gave me an explanation, back when I first met him. Actually, that was more about why people don't like him," she corrected herself, "and she avoided saying anything definite. She implied he had some kind of dangerous kekkei genkai, though that wasn't quite right."
"Naruto? I know the Uzumaki were amazing users of fuuinjutsu, but I don't think it's that. The Shodaime married Uzumaki Mito-sama, and everybody loved her."
"Maybe through his other parent?" She frowned. "Remember the affinity tests? Kakashi-sensei didn't seem surprised that Naruto's element was wind. I think he knows who Naruto's parents were." Though why hasn't he told Naruto? He used to complain about not knowing who they were pretty regularly.
Sasuke considered that. "That would make sense. So we're assuming that Naruto's… special thing came from whichever parent wasn't an Uzumaki?" He frowned. "My mother was friends with a jounin kunoichi named Uzumaki Kushina."
Now that was interesting. "What happened to her?" Sakura asked.
"I think she died in the Nine-Tails' attack."
Sakura frowned. "Do you think it's possible she was Naruto's mother?"
"I don't think so. His birthday is on October 10th. If she were his mother, Kushina would have been in the maternity ward, not fighting the Kyuubi. It's not like she'd be sent out to fight if she'd just given birth, and the hospital wasn't hit, as far as I know."
"So much for that idea, I guess."
They sat in silence for a few minutes. "Well, there's little use worrying about it now," Sakura declared, "and we should probably get going." They pulled out the map, estimating the distance traveled. "Which way do you want to head?"
Sasuke picked a direction, and they noted it on the map and jumped back into the trees. Sakura thought hard as they continued onward. I feel like I have all the pieces to the puzzle. I just can't see how they all fit together yet.
But revelations would have to wait for another day.
They'd stopped playing with chakra pulses, neither in the mood to continue, but kept practicing their chakra sense. As they approached the camp, they checked how far off their map had been. "A little over a kilometer," Sasuke declared, judging the distance to the plateau. "Not great; we only traveled about fifty in total." Still, it was decent for their first real attempt in the field. Dead reckoning was notoriously difficult, which was why all good maps included thousands of landmarks for shinobi to reference while traveling.
A few Narutos were sitting around the camp when they returned, Kakashi nowhere in sight. One of them shouted and waved. "Hey guys! I've got something funny to show you, over here!"
"What is it?"
"This way!" They followed him up a few trees. He grinned, pointing to something on the branch above them. Sakura and Sasuke looked along his finger to see -
A storage scroll?
"Boom."
Sakura twisted into the Museigen, watching as what looked like several gallons of orange paint sprayed out from the seal, and used a quick shunshin to escape the worst of it. Sasuke was not so lucky.
o-o-o-o-o
"I hate you," Sasuke informed Naruto as he tried to scrub paint out of his shirt. His entire upper body had been liberally coated in the orange liquid, and Naruto's clone had laughed so hard it dispelled itself. Now, the Uchiha was doggedly trying to undo the impromptu dye job his black shirt had received. It wasn't working very well - their main source of water was a tiny stream, and whatever paint Naruto had used clearly wasn't water-soluble.
Sakura had only gotten a few spots, mostly in her hair and on the shoulders of her vest. This is why I'm glad I have short hair. She pictured Ino, with her long, blonde hair, trying to make herself presentable during the Academy camping trip after the Yamanaka had run into one of Naruto's orange surprises. She frowned. This was a bit much for a prank, really. Naruto's not usually so blatant.
"Come on, Sasuke, you should have seen your face! It was just a bit of fun."
"You ruined my favorite shirt," the Uchiha insisted.
Naruto stared at him for a moment. "You have six more just like it." Shinobi tended to wear the same outfit all the time, rotating through several sets of identical clothes.
Sasuke paused, thinking of a retort. "…This one is the nicest."
Naruto flopped on to his back. "I don't believe this. That shirt is the crappiest of the bunch. You've mended it at least a dozen times! It was just a joke, okay?"
"No, it's not okay! You're not allowed to prank me with orange paint bombs, that was the rule. Maybe I should tell-"
Four shadow clones jumped him, along with the real Naruto, who clapped a hand over Sasuke's mouth. "Nononono! Teme! You promised you wouldn't talk about-"
Sasuke must have licked Naruto's hand or something, because the blond shrieked and let him go. "The deal, Naruto, was that I wouldn't talk to certain people about that thing, and you would stop pranking me with orange paint! I like dark colors, okay?"
They were up in each other's faces and it looked like somebody was going to start throwing punches pretty soon, and not in a friendly way.
Enough. "Guys!" Sakura called sternly, doing her best Fujiko impression. "Stop it."
Sasuke backed up, giving the blond some space. She sighed. "Naruto, why'd you do it? You've pranked us with stuff before, even paint, but you just led us right under it. It's not like you."
"I'm sorry, okay?" Naruto muttered. "It just really got me upset, this last day. I mean, I've always been behind you two." He ticked points off on his fingers. "I'm the worst in taijutsu, chakra control, academic scores, kawarimi, bunshin, and weapons skills. Mitsuhara-san and Iruka-sensei worked really hard to try to help me improve, but I never beat you guys. Then Kakashi-sensei taught me how to do shadow clones - and he said I learned it amazingly fast - and I thought I finally had gotten ahead. But you guys learned cool jutsu of your own, just as quickly.
"And this is our first mission together outside the village, and we're supposed to be a team, and then you guys get this awesome chakra sensing thing that all the competent ninja know how to do, in like an hour or two. I can't do it at all, and you get to go off on your own for the rest of the afternoon. I was feeling hurt and left out, and Kakashi-sensei tried to cheer me up, only he's not that great at dealing with people and I just felt worse. He realized it, and said if it would make me feel better I could you prank guys when you came back. I had only brought orange paint 'cause when I packed I thought if I was making traps it'd be for other people, not you." He pointed to Sasuke and sniffled, wiping his eyes. "I was angry and not thinking great, and I'm sorry. We're under a lot of pressure, and everyone expects me to be happy all the time when I feel like I'm the one holding us back. I hate that. I hate being left behind."
He looked up at them. Sakura was standing frozen, ashamed. Sasuke stared down at his feet. Naruto flinched, and turned to walk away.
Not so fast. With a moment in the Museigen and a quick shunshin, Sakura was in front of him. Then she hugged him, hard. "No, I'm the one who should be sorry," Sakura told him, holding him tightly. "I never realized how all this affected you. We were so competitive when we first met, and I thought we both had fun with it then. I never stopped to consider how unfair it was, because I liked being the best. It was just the way things were, and I wasn't paying attention to your problems." Over his shoulder, she glared at Sasuke. Get over here.
The Uchiha obeyed, standing kind of awkwardly beside them and putting a hand on Naruto's shoulder. "You know," he told the blond, "I was really upset at first when Sakura beat me in things at the Academy. But eventually I realized that looking worse in comparison to others didn't make me any less of a shinobi. You have ridiculous levels of stamina that make both of us jealous, and you're really good with traps and pranks. So maybe you'll never get chakra sensing down - Sakura and I will never be able to make more than a few shadow clones at a time even if we master the jutsu. There'll be other things."
"Look at it this way," Sakura urged, "in absolute terms, yes, your chakra control sucks. But in relative terms, it's probably better than mine. You're just that powerful that it still seems terrible. When you start mastering more advanced ninjutsu, you'll be the one beating us every time. You'll be able to do things Sasuke and I could never dream of."
"And while I think you're annoying all the time, I haven't thought that you hold us back in years," Sasuke added.
"And we are not going to leave you behind," Sakura informed him tartly. "I don't know where you got that crazy idea from. We're a team, you big dummy, and even if we weren't we'd still be best friends."
Naruto sniffed. "Thanks, guys. Really." He grinned, somewhat shakily, but it was a real smile. He hugged her back, and then they both let go.
"C'mon," Sakura said, "enough moping. I know you've got plenty of instant ramen packed away somewhere; let's all go have some."
o-o-o-o-o
"All right," Sakura said, as they chowed down on miso cup ramen, "spill. How do you know what Sasuke's face looked like? Only your shadow clone was there with us."
Naruto gestured vaguely with his hands, which were busy transferring the contents of his fifth packet of ramen from the cup to his mouth. "Ah et e own's emries en ay is'el," he mumbled through the noodles. He slurped the last of them up and drained the remaining broth with a single gulp, then moved on to number six.
He gets the clone's…
"You get the memories of your clones when they dispel?" she demanded. "How does that possibly work?" Naruto scratched his head.
"Eh, Kakashi-sensei could explain it better. It's like, the clones have a bunch of chakra inside them from when I make them, and they use that up by existing and doing jutsu and stuff. When they dispel, it puts an imprint of their memories into whatever chakra is left, and that part travels back to wherever the original me is, using up more of the chakra as it goes along. So if you do it right, with enough chakra, and not too far away, you get nearly all the memories." He shrugged, turning back to his food.
"Utterly broken," Sasuke declared. He turned to Kakashi, who was lounging nearby reading his book. "Why doesn't the village exploit this?" He pointed to Naruto. "You could have him make a couple clones every day, with ridiculous amounts of chakra, and send them out to all the different outposts. Then you could send secure real-time reports from wherever you wanted."
Kakashi closed his book with a snap. "It's not that simple," he said. "The memory transfer only works at all if the chakra can return to the user mostly intact. Over large distances, it disperses, losing much of its shape and getting corrupted by other chakra sources it passes by. The same thing can happen if the clone is forcibly dispelled, rather than releasing itself. A clone within a few dozen meters? Perfect recall, as if they were your own memories from moments before. Within a kilometer or two it takes focus, like remembering minor details from yesterday. More than five kilometers? Disjointed images that take time and training to process. Tens of kilometers? Vague impressions or nothing at all. Worse, the memories only transfer back to the original user of the jutsu, not the other clones, so you can't create a communication network. If the first clone makes a second shadow clone, when the second clone dispels, its memories only transfer back to the first clone, and if the first clone dispels before the second the second clone's connection to the original is lost and it can't transfer anything; you can't get around the limitation that way. Finally, the headaches you get from the additional memories are awful, and the village already has ways to transfer information quickly over long distances."
"Ah, e edays ar illy ad," Naruto agreed.
"What are those ways?" Sakura asked when Kakashi didn't elaborate.
"Classified," Kakashi replied blandly, back to reading his book. "You'll learn about them after you get a chunin security clearance. Anyways, shadow clone make great short-range spies, but the technique's not as easily abused as it first seems. Don't get me wrong, it's fantastically useful, but we've had the jutsu for decades and all the applications have probably been considered."
"Can you use it to decrease training time?" Sakura asked, picturing a vast sea of Narutos mastering dozens of techniques in a single afternoon.
"Again, kind of. It depends on what you're doing. The sets of memories are parallel, not consecutive. They tend to overlap. Your ability to remember a specific clone's memories from that time period gets harder the more clones you used. If Naruto makes ten clones, and they all work on a chakra control exercise for one hour, it's not going to be anywhere near as useful as if he did ten hours of practice himself. When doing it himself, he can build on the experience gained in the early hours as he goes. The clones all start from the same point, and they probably go about doing it the same way. Where it is helpful is when you need a breakthrough in technique, where there's a trick you have to figure out. If you can get the clones to try it differently, your chance of success increases geometrically with the number of clones. If you just need practice, it's not as helpful. The biggest advantage is the ability to do multiple things at the same time." Kakashi shrugged. "It's used that way by pretty much every shinobi who knows the technique. Even if you can only make one clone, they can do all your shopping, cleaning, cooking, and paperwork while you train all day."
Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "If you can get a shadow clone to do so much stuff for you, why are you always late?"
Kakashi pouted. "Maa, my cute students have no respect for their hardworking sensei." He went back to his book, sulking and pointedly ignoring them.
o-o-o-o-o
Over the next few days, the three of them continued to train. In the mornings, Kakashi ran them through more workouts and tactics problems. Sometimes he put them in mock combat scenarios against one another. Naruto's team always won unless Sakura was against him and could take him out in the opening seconds of the fight. Once he started to pump out the clones, they couldn't keep track of which one was the original. These victories seemed to finish of the lingering remnants of his depression, and he was soon even more cheerful than before.
In the afternoons, Kakashi sent the three of them out into the wilderness. Sometimes he'd randomly appear and ambush them with kunai or shuriken volleys, and often they had to avoid traps and pitfalls laid for them. At first, this was accomplished by the liberal use of more shadow clones, which traveled ahead of them to provide early warning. Then Kakashi told them they had to try to avoid setting off any of the traps, and things got a lot harder. Several times, Sakura was forced to use her combination of Museigen and shunshin to escape nets and snares that caught the others. While she could save herself, it didn't help her teammates, and so Kakashi began teaching her a variant shunshin that could be used to bring other people along with the user.
Sometimes, Kakashi sent them off individually. He gave them a destination on the map, and the three of them had to plot and coordinate different routes so that they arrived nearly simultaneously. Kakashi always arrived at the same time, even when their estimates were badly off.
"I give up," Sasuke told him, throwing his hands in the air. "You're always showing up hours late to anything we do in the village, but out here you're always on time."
"No," Kakashi told him, "out here you're always just that late as well." He vanished with a shunshin just as Sasuke set the tree he'd been sitting in on fire. Kakashi made them spend the rest of that afternoon climbing trees with their hands. They weren't allowed to grab anything, and they could only use chakra to stick their open palms to the bark. It was fantastic strength training, even if it was awful.
When evening fell, Kakashi would vanish into his bedroll, always leaving them to divide that night's watch however they wanted. It quickly became routine, and the first four nights went by without incident. The fifth got a little more exciting.
It seemed like Sakura had just gone to sleep after her first watch when an eerie howling awakened her. She and Sasuke bolted upright, joining Naruto as they ran to wake Kakashi. Their sensei ignored them, mumbling dire threats at them for disturbing his rest and pulling his blanket around his ears.
"Typical," Sakura snorted. "Can your clones find anything, Naruto?"
The blond shook his head. "No."
"I can hear at least six different wolves," Sasuke offered.
The three of them exchanged glances. When they went out beyond the camp, they found a shadow clone of Kakashi's sitting at the base of a nearby tree. He cupped his hands to his mouth and let out another echoing howl.
"Not a terrible reaction time," he told them, "but Naruto's clones walked right past me. Also, you shouldn't spend so much time trying to wake me up. I need my beauty sleep."
"You definitely weren't sitting there a minute ago!" Naruto objected. "Besides, they were looking for wolves, not people."
"Are you going to pull this shit every night?" Sakura demanded crossly. "And can we go back to sleep now?"
"I haven't decided yet," Kakashi's shadow clone told them. "And no you can't, you still have five more of me to find," he added as more howling arose in the distance. Sakura growled and stabbed him with a kunai, waving away the burst of smoke as the clone dispelled.
The next morning, Kakashi ended the mock combat scenarios and instead pitted the three of them in a full-contact spar with one of his clones. "Go for the kill," he ordered. "If I think you're not being vicious enough I'll be even more annoying tonight." They weren't able to get him that day, but on the next morning, the seventh day of the trip, they managed it. Naruto blanketed the area with shadow clones, pinning Kakashi to one location while Sakura used a group shunshin to put Sasuke within centimeters of Kakashi, close enough that the clone couldn't dodge away before the Uchiha's chidori blew him apart.
o-o-o-o-o
The return to Konoha was anticlimactic. They left the trees a few kilometers out from the village and joined the foot traffic streaming in and out of the village. The gate guard carefully inspected Kakashi's mission pass and noted their names and numbers in a ledger.
"Hey, Kakashi," one of the other guards - a chunin with spiky black hair and a bandage across his nose - greeted him, "messenger hawk came by a couple hours ago - left a letter for you." He tossed a scroll to their sensei, who caught it and scanned it briefly.
"What's that, sensei?" Naruto asked.
"Nothing you need to be concerned about."
"Huh," Sakura commented as they walked down the main thoroughfare, "there's an awful lot of repair work going on." She could see at least ten different genin teams working on various buildings, repairing or repainting. Many of the stalls had been moved out of the corners of the marketplace to make room for neat groves of Hashirama trees, and more had been planted along the sides of the road.
"It's only five weeks until the official start of the Chunin Exams," Kakashi reminded them. "Preparations are starting to gear up, and security will be tighter. The village has to look its best to impress all the foreigners. We'll be quite busy in a few days. For now, take the weekend off. We'll meet up three days from now in our usual spot." He snagged Naruto's shoulder. "Naruto and I have some business to take care of with the Hokage. He'll catch up with you two later." They vanished, leaving a few swirling leaves behind him.
Sakura glanced at Sasuke. "I'm going to head home, unpack, and grab a bottle of solvent from somewhere to get the last bits of paint out of my hair. Want to meet for a spar later?"
"Sure," the Uchiha agreed. "Meet you by the bridge in three hours."
o-o-o-o-o
"Sakura, we need to talk."
"Now?" It wasn't a great time. Though she'd finished unpacking and was just killing time until she met Sasuke for sparring practice, she was pretty deep into some technical reading.
"Please."
Well, it wasn't like she couldn't pick this up later, and Fujiko didn't bother her in her room unless it was significant. "Okay, kaa-chan. What's up?"
Fujiko didn't smile. "I'd rather have this discussion sitting down. Can we?"
"Sure." Sakura noted her place in the cryptography manual for later and set it aside. They sat in their usual places in the dining room. "What's this about?"
Fujiko licked her lips and then pursed them, thinking for a moment. "A secret, and one I probably should have told you a long time ago. I know we've never really talked about your father. Well, either of your parents, actually."
Wait, what?
"I've been thinking about this for a fair amount of time, and I decided there's no good reason to keep it hidden. There's no easy way to say this, Sakura. I'm not your biological mother; she died soon after giving birth. I adopted you very shortly after you were born, and-"
"How did she die?" That wasn't the important question, but it was something factual, something to focus on while she tried to regain her mental footing in a world that had lost all balance.
Fujiko was speaking rapidly, her thin face tightly lined with worry and discomfort. "It happened quickly after childbirth - her civilian chakra system could barely handle the stress of carrying a baby with your kekkei genkai and more developed chakra network to term, and once you were born her body shut down rapidly. I'm not enough of a medic to understand the technical details." As Sakura sat silently, she went on, "I'm not sure what became of your father. He was told you died as well, and I think he left the village soon after."
For a moment, she just sat there, processing. All the words made sense, in that order, but…
I'm adopted?
It was horrible. It didn't matter. This changed everything. This changed nothing.
"Why am I only finding out about this now?" Sakura asked in a small voice, feeling helpless and exposed.
Fujiko winced. "It was supposed to be kept a secret. I certainly wasn't allowed to tell you until you were old enough to understand you couldn't tell anyone. Then, I wanted so badly for you to be my daughter. I loved you and didn't want to risk losing you. Eventually, I realized I had to be honest, and I argued with Hiruzen over it. He wanted me to wait until after you became a chunin, but I decided you needed to know sooner. But then, you were about to leave with Kakashi, so I waited until you came back. I'm sorry."
Sakura stood. "I can't hear this right now," she said thickly, struggling over the words, "I, I have to… I need…"
I have to think about this? I need… what? I don't know what to do! She stared at her mother's - Fujiko's - face, struggling with the words roiling in her chest.
"I've got to go," Sakura managed, and shunshined desperately away.
Behind her, Fujiko waited motionlessly until her adopted daughter was too far away to sense - and burst into tears.
o-o-o-o-o
He found her in one of the little parks along the bank of the Naka River. She sat on a boulder jutting out over the water, letting her legs dangle over the rushing current.
"Hey Sasuke."
"Hey." He sat down next to her. "You didn't show up for our spar, so I went to your house. Mitsuhara-san just said you had gotten some bad news. Do you want to talk about it?"
"No! Yes!" Sakura shouted. "I don't know?"
Sasuke waited silently. They sat quietly shoulder-to-shoulder for several minutes, watching puffy clouds drift across the sky.
"Okay," she began, feeling him shift slightly against her. "So Fujiko's not my m- not my biological mother. I'm adopted." Secret out in the open, she turned to look at him, green eyes challenging.
"Oh." He blinked rapidly a few times, surprised. "…I'm sorry?"
She let out a short, bitter laugh, looked away from his face to the hands clenched in her lap. "It's not your fault."
"No, it's not," he agreed, "but I can still be sorry. You just found out today?"
Sakura slumped. "Yeah. It's, I don't know, a mess. I'm not sure what to think. I mean, on the one hand, so what? She loves me, she raised me, held me as a baby - isn't that all that matters? But on the other hand…"
"You've been lied to your whole life," Sasuke said softly.
"Right."
"Did she tell you why?"
"Because of my kekkei genkai. My biological mother died giving birth to me, from complications because I had developed chakra pathways like a baby from a shinobi clan would. After, they wanted to put me with a ninja family and Fujiko volunteered. She's not sure what happened to my father, but he was told I was dead too."
"Hmm."
"I mean, what should I do? Just accept it and move on? Should I be furious about this? Move out or something?"
Sasuke tensed. "I'm not… I'm not a good person to ask that," he muttered, staring at the ground. He ran both hands through his hair. "Naruto and I- I mean, I lost my parents, and he never knew any. I'd, well; I'd kill to get my mother back. He'd probably do the same. You've got a pretty good reason to be mad, I get that… but your mom's really awesome, and still around. Mitsuhara-san, I mean. I don't… want you to lose that."
Sakura sighed, leaning against him and resting her head on his shoulder. "It's not that simple."
"Isn't it?"
She stared up at him. He stared back, black eyes meeting green. "She loves you. You love her. Why does it need to be more complicated?"
Sakura looked away, across the river. "I don't know. I just feel like that's letting it go too easily." She chewed her lip, thinking. "On the one hand, I can see that making a big deal of this is just going to hurt both of us. On the other… what sort of precedent would it set, if I let a lie like this pass? My whole life… I mean, I never got out much as a kid. I wasn't allowed to, in case I lost control of the Museigen and somebody found out. Naruto was my first real friend, and that was barely before the Academy started. It was always just the two of us, except for when Sarutobi-jiji- ah, I mean, the Hokage, would visit. She was constantly there for me, always dependable and caring, and to find out now that something so fundamental to our relationship was false…"
Sasuke fidgeted, not speaking for a minute. "Can I tell you a story?" he asked finally. Taking her silence as permission, he continued. "You remember when we started training together - just a few months after the Massacre. Everyone was still walking on eggshells around me. Even before that, everyone treated me differently because I was Itachi's brother and the son of the Uchiha clan head. After, it got even worse. The instructors would barely criticize me. I hated it. Made me want to just lash out at the world, like those days I challenged you to sparring matches. I think I smashed pretty much every vase in the Uchiha district. I know I broke all the ancient ornamental ones that only the Elders were allowed to touch. I kept pestering you in the Academy, day after day until you finally agreed to let me join you. And we got to your house, and Mitsuhara-san was waiting to train you and Naruto and didn't know I was coming. She really didn't blink an eye, just sent you two off to do some exercise and proceeded to matter-of-factly dissect everything I was doing wrong with taijutsu. And in all the lessons that followed - I don't think she ever cared who my father was, or who my brother was, or that I was the last Uchiha."
"I never realized you felt that way."
Sasuke waved a hand. "I didn't make a big deal of it at the time. I mean - I was an arrogant little shit back then, I can see that now. Probably would have stayed that way forever if you and Naruto hadn't pushed me out of it. Don't ever tell him I said so," he snapped, eyes narrowed.
Sakura giggled. "You boys and your stupid pride. I won't."
Sasuke hmphed. "Good. It would just go to his head."
Sure. "Whatever. Anyways, where are you going with this? It's not like you to share."
He looked away uncomfortably and then forced himself to turn back. "Yeah. I guess - family issues just really push my buttons. I watched my father and brother spend months not talking to each other about all the problems that mattered, even if I only realized it later. This is important. So, my point is, that woman - who didn't care too much about the Last Uchiha or the out-of-control demon kid, but did care about Sasuke and Naruto - that woman, you can talk to about this. She'll listen. Tell her how you feel betrayed, how it's messing up your relationship."
Wow, Sakura thought, surprised by his vehemence. That's quite a bit to take in.
"You can work it out. I believe in you. Both of you." He was blushing a little bit.
"Channeling your inner Naruto there."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Sasuke drawled sarcastically. "That should have been 'I believe in you, dattebayo.'" His delivery was flat, almost monotone.
"Perfect. If you don't watch out, you'll wake up and find realize you have an irrational love for orange."
They stared at each other for a moment, then both burst out laughing.
"Ah, I needed that," Sakura sighed. "You're right. I'll figure it out eventually."
"Of course I'm right." He leaned away from her joking swat.
"What a week, huh?"
"What a week."
They stood, brushing dirt off. She stared at him for a moment, considering. Why not? Sakura stepped forward, enveloping him in a hug.
He stiffened, but didn't run away. After a moment, he put his arms around her, hesitantly. "Thanks, Sasuke," she muttered.
"That's what friends are for."
o-o-o-o-o
Ten meters. That's all it would take. Two and a half steps to the edge of the road and onto the grass. Skip over the flowerbed, toes skimming the petals, and then a short dash between the two cherry trees, maybe running her hand through the branches if she was feeling happy. Five more steps up to the end of the grass, a quick hop up to the door, a soft thump as she landed. Press the door in the right spot so it wouldn't squeak and slide it open. Move inside and unless she was on a mission Fujiko would be there as the door finished closing, ready to welcome her home. She had done it thousands of times, at least once a day for more than six years. So why was it such a yawning gulf now?
You know why. Indecisive, Sakura stood poised, one foot lifted just off the ground. Am I ready to face this? Her toe tapped down, then lifted again. You can do this. Because Sasuke was right, they could work this out. They could put this behind them.
As her feet flew over the ground, she could imagine him standing behind her, smirking slightly in approval. Naruto, of course, would smile that ear-splitting grin and give her a big thumbs up. And suddenly she couldn't wait to get there, the scant time until she reached the door an eternity. What if Fujiko wasn't happy to see her? What if it all went horribly wrong?
Jump, land, pull the door open. Step inside, turn and close. Turn back to the entry, wondering, fearing, will she be there?
And there Fujiko stood. Black workout clothes, short messy brown hair and thin face sweaty from whatever exercise she had just been doing, one hand with hastily bandaged knuckles leaning on the wall. Her blue eyes were lit with hope and apprehension.
Sakura stepped forward.
"Kaa-chan, I'm home."
A/N: A bit of angst in this chapter; not too much, I don't think, but more than you'll see elsewhere in the fic. Bet you never thought you'd see a fic where Sasuke had the fewest problems.
The turtle-monkey mission is dedicated to all those ridiculous plots in the Naruto anime (most of which I never watched, but have become familiar with through millions of words of fanfic).
I see Naruto's miniature breakdown as the result of a lot of extra stressors that didn't occur in canon. If you think this (or any of the other scenes) is OOC, please send me a PM or a review detailing your thoughts so I can respond or make edits as necessary.
If you've never had the chance to hear a pileated woodpecker in the wild, you're missing out.
Chakra sensing: I think it makes sense. I've done enough math to figure it all out, e.g., how far away person X can sense person Y. I'm not going to make a big deal about precisely calculating chakra reserves in this fic; I plan to use it mostly behind the scenes to maintain internal consistency.
Shadow clones: If you couldn't get Naruto's mumbling from the context, it's "I get the clone's memories when they dispel," and "Yeah, the headaches are really bad." The nerf is to prevent the sorts of shenanigans seen in 'A Drop of Poison' and other similar fics. I want to keep everyone's power levels as low as reasonably possible, and shadow clones as seen in canon make that really hard to do without liberal use of the idiot ball. There's nothing wrong with munchkining; it's just not what I want to do here.