AN: Note that I do not own Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, or any of the characters from either Anime. This work is a fanfiction written out of my love for the series and not in any attempt to make a profit.
Proofread by: Author
And so, the journey back to Konohagakure begins. It shouldn't be long, but you never know. I'll soon be addressing an issue I think some have been wondering about, not sure about it, but we'll see. I edited the last chapter a bit after skimming it while writing this. I was rather tired when writing it, and had apparently missed a lot of obvious typos and grammar mistakes.
has also had a lot of issues lately with people being unable to view updated stories, despite getting their e-mail alerts, I have experienced it as well. Fortunately, the uploaded chapters can still be read using the Fimfiction Application on mobile devices, which is nice. Although, if you're reading this before the issue has been resolved, you already knew that… Anyway, please enjoy this chapter.
Chapter 106: The deal of the Apprentice
For the first part of their journey back to Konohagakure, Sakura couldn't help but fidget and mess with the necklace Tsunade had given her. She had come to give up on caring about makeup and accessories by the end of the Chūnin exam, but couldn't bring herself to refuse the gift, yet it felt heavy around her neck, and Sakura couldn't put her finger on as to why.
Jiraiya had suggested retracing Sakura's steps back to Orochimaru's hideout as a detour, but considering his standing orders to bring Tsunade back as soon as possible, as well as the many patients awaiting her return, Kakashi and Sasuke specifically, he found himself outnumbered. Tsunade had no interest in possibly running into Orochimaru if they went to check out his base. It was something Jiraiya could do on his own once they got back.
Tsunade had inquired as to why Jiraiya didn't just split and check the hide-out on his own, and Jiraiya admitted that he was afraid that Tsunade would find reasons to delay, or not show up in Konoha at all if he did so. Something the council and the Third Hokage would have his head for. Tsunade did not deny the possibility that she might get cold feet, and thanked him, before nearly knocking him out, goth relieved and annoyed with him for being concerned and for not trusting her respectively.
There wasn't much talk during the rest of their travel back towards Konoha, as they could travel as Shinobi now, rather than civilians, as Jiraiya and Naruto no longer had to conceal their chakra usage in an attempt to get close to Tsunade without scaring her away with their presence. Shinobi traveling through Hi no Kuni wasn't an unusual sight after all when they wanted to move fast.
It still took them several days of travel, with stops at inns along the way where they could rest. Sakura and Heikō took these stops as moments to train their new ability to mold chakra outside of their body. It was a very inefficient method, and it required a lot more focus to control chakra outside of their body when it wasn't connected to their chakra network in any way, but the potential benefits were just too much to ignore.
Chakra-wise, the exercise was impractical and slow. Sakura and Heikō both considered it a lost cause to adapt it into some kind of technique, but it offered them something that had been worrying them for a while, an opportunity to experiment using chakra, without doing so within their own body.
With the risk of chakra burns or explosions, they could finally be creative and try out their theory of energy conversion. Something the two of them found annoyingly fruitless, as they had barely anything to go on besides their own hypothesis concerning the conversion of one energy into another.
"We know Natural energy of one type can become Natural energy of another, we've done it before. What we need now, is some way to turn Natural energy into Mental and Physical energies. Regular chakra, as well as Senjutsu chakra, can be turned into medical chakra. Our answer lies somewhere within these two abilities." Heikō decided, and Sakura nodded as she carefully kept an "eye" on the small orb of chakra floating in front of her, while she fed it Physical, Mental, and Natural energy. It was, like most types of chakra, invisible to the naked eye, too weak to really do anything before dissipating at a rate faster than Sakura could currently produce chakra on the outside of their body.
"It seems like it," Sakura responded, sighing as she stopped molding chakra, feeling her reserves of Physical energy running out. It was another reason for them to figure out a method for converting energy, as it would allow them to keep training past their current limits.
Unable to keep practicing with chakra molding outside their body, Sakura instead began working on her chakra control. While their Physical energy reserves had almost been diminished, they still had a lot of stored up chakra that had already been molded and was now ready for use. Besides, chakra control exercises didn't use that much chakra anyway. Especially the one they had come up with themselves.
It was a rather frustrating exercise as a whole, as it built on the issues they had with external chakra molding. Their control became weaker the farther the chakra extended past their body. Of course, this wasn't the case with specific techniques, but those didn't require one to remain in control of completely neutral chakra that otherwise had no kind of instructions given to it.
From what Sakura understood, it could be referred to as a change in chakra shape, the first step in inventing a new technique. For Sakura, it was so far nothing but a tool for practicing her control. The reason it was so hard, was because the exercise she had come up with together with Heikō, required a constant change in chakra shape. By releasing chakra from each one of their seven-hundred and twenty-two tenketsu points, forming a shell of chakra surrounding their body, before expanding it outwards, doing so slowly to ensure they could keep up with the increase of chakra required, without letting any of it escape and be wasted. As soon as they felt themselves begin to slip, they would reverse the direction, and begin slowly shrinking the shell back down, while bringing any excess chakra back into their body, reabsorbing the chakra so as to not waste it.
Naturally, a loss of chakra was inevitable, but the exercise had already begun to show results, as the amount had slowly begun to decrease, something off-set only by the increased range, allowing them to expand the chakra shell further away from their body, demanding even more chakra.
The idea to one day achieve perfect chakra control was very good motivation, allowing them to use every speck of chakra they could with outmost efficiency, a way to maximize their limits in chakra capacity and regeneration, even as great as they had been boosted after developing a second chakra network.
Unfortunately, as right as Sakura felt her chakra shell straining against her limits of control, a knock on the door startled her enough to lose control. Fortunately, she wasn't alone in her efforts, and Heikō effortlessly took over, before rapidly beginning to reabsorb the chakra while shrinking the shell down until it had all seeped back into them through their tenketsu.
"Just a minute," Sakura called out, letting whoever it was, know she'd be right there, while waiting for her not so inconspicuous, actually visible, chakra shell to disappear within her. With the chakra returned to their chakra network, Sakura got up, probing behind the door with her senses, finding Tsunade standing behind it, surprisingly without Shizune. "Tsunade?" Sakura asked, opening the door, wondering what the combat medic wanted with her.
"Ah, Sakura. Do you have a moment? There's something I would like to discuss with you." Tsunade tells her, and Sakura lets her inside with a shrug, sitting down on the bed, while Tsunade sits down on a chair.
"So, what is it you wanted to talk about?" Sakura asks her, looking Tsunade over critically, as she seems far calmer, more subdued than what she can remember seeing of her so far.
"It's about your apprenticeship to me. We haven't made it official yet, and you still have the choice to back out if you wish-" Tsunade began, looking resigned, much to Sakura's confusion.
"Wait, why would I back out? I'd love to learn from you, you're one of the three legendary Sannin!" Sakura pointed out in an exclamation, interrupting Tsunade.
"Don't interrupt me, brat!" Tsunade scolded Sakura, although her voice didn't hold as much bite to it as Sakura would have expected.
"I've spoken with both Shizune and Jiraiya about it, to learn about you, and consider how to train you. If your speed with learning the mystical palm technique is any indication, you have an amazing talent for chakra control, and decent reserves as well. If you're a quick reader as well, you'd likely be able to breeze through everything but the practical portions of standard medical training as my apprentice. Unfortunately, Jiraiya has pointed out that while you were apparently slated as a Genjutsu type when you graduated the academy, that's not the path you've decided to take. You're somewhat of a combatant now, and a rather terrifying one at that. If you become my apprentice, you won't be able to continue with your current path." Tsunade points out, making Sakura frown and furrowed her brows in thought.
"Why not?" She asks, confused as to why this would be the case.
"Well, because as a medic, you'd never be in the front anymore. Your job would change, and when you can, you'd have to avoid fighting. You wouldn't be able to protect people the same way. Instead, your value would lie in healing those that make it back to you, because a medic-nin just holds that much value. Until your training is complete, you wouldn't be allowed to go into any kind of fight until you've finished training." Tsunade explained, frowning now as well.
"And how long would this training be, normally? Not considering my advantages." Sakura asked, feeling put off by the sigh Tsunade gives her.
"Normally, I'd say somewhere between three to five years," Tsunade told Sakura her estimate.
Sakura couldn't help but gape at her with wide eyes for a few moments, before recovering. "No way!" She responded in a hurry, shaking her head. "I'm not going to drop everything I've done up until this point and just become a medic-nin! I want abilities to supplement my current ones, not replace them!" Sakura explains, standing up in defiance. "Can't I learn to be a medic-nin all the same, just keep doing everything else as I have until this point?" Sakura asks, frowning as Tsunade shakes her head in response.
"No, it's an iron-clad rule for those wishing to become medical-nin I'm afraid. I can't agree to train you unless you promise me to dedicate yourself to your studies as my apprentice." Sakura tells her, and Sakura sits down again with a huff.
"Right, so medical-nin is out of the question then," Sakura mutters, and Tsunade looks like she has swallowed something incredibly sour. "Is it possible you can teach me something at least? Without aiming for the title of Medical-nin?" Sakura asks. After all, healing is not her primary objective with apprenticing under Tsunade. That's not all that Tsunade was after all.
Tsunade in turn seemed to perk up at the idea. "Well, I suppose that if we ignore the medical training, there are a fair few options I could teach you. You've already learned the mystical palm technique, which is a pretty good measure of your abilities, so there shouldn't be any doubt about you learning how to enhance your strength and body using chakra… There's also…" Tsunade seemed to contemplate the idea with a large grin for a moment, before standing up and walking over to Sakura, holding out her hand towards her. "Give me your hand and channel some medical chakra through it, I wish to see just how great your chakra control is," Tsunade tells her, and Sakura obliges.
Tsunade's hand lits up with her own medical chakra, and Sakura can feel it push against her own, poking and prodding at it, while Tsunade wears an expression of contemplation, before finally smiling and letting her chakra disappear. "I don't think you'll have any issues with the Strength of a Hundred Seal." She tells her, while Sakura stares at her in confusion, unfamiliar with the name.
However, once Tsunade sits down and explains it, Sakura can't help but feel that she was right about the Sannin. All of them had found one way or another to change their bodies and overcome their limits.
Sakura can't help but agree. "That sounds great, where do we start?"
AN: And so, Sakura's apprenticeship with Tsunade officially begins, a lot earlier, and different from what we see in canon, eh? Seems we're not getting Medical prodigy Sakura this time around.
Also, I plan to bring this up in the next chapter, but have you ever wondered why Shizune, Tsunade's first apprentice never uses Chakra enhanced strength or receives the very same seal Sakura does in Canon?
