Sakura trudged into the bunkroom. An hour of mopping, drying, and then another shower to get clean later, she was finally done for the night. Nevermind that it had taken Sakura an extra fifteen minutes to find the bedrooms, nevermind that the beds weren't even made up yet, and that all the bedding was that scratchy, military-surplus type of hard blankets and thin sheets.
Nevermind any of it. What mattered was that here, now, was a cot, some blankets, and enough stolen pillows to smother an elephant. Sakura had robbed the entire row of beds for them and she felt zero remorse for her actions.
She peeled off her nylon shirt and had half a mind to throw the thing across the room, but instead she just tossed it onto the next bed over. Sakura had found some actual nice hospital gowns during her search of the tower and had cut one right above the hip into a rough pajama top for the night. It felt worlds better than the nylon, and mostly protected her from the world's scratchiest blanket.
That, along with the pillows, made the cot serviceable. When Sakura slid under the sheets she instantly fell in love, despite the bedspring poking her in the back. An actual bead was heavenly after so much cleaning and training. It felt like she hadn't put her head on an actual pillow in forever.
If this is the first time I've slept in this body, does that mean I haven't been to sleep in a year? She snuggled deeper into the mound of pillows and thought about it. She'd been in a fake body, right? This body was a genetic clone of her original. So, technically, Haruno Sakura the body hadn't been to sleep since the Academy.
It was a bit of a scary thought. It had been years and years since she'd needed anyone to sing her to sleep, but Sakura wouldn't have minded her mother appearing with her soothing, off-key voice. Just this once.
"I swear to the gods you've gained weight."
Sakura went still as Anko approached. Oh, that old hag. Sakura owed her a return favor for that mop trick! Maybe she could sneak out of bed and surprise her in the hallway? Or if she came in to check, Sakura could jump up out of the bed and give her a real scare? She could -
"If you're huffing and puffing this much just holding me up, maybe you're the one who needs some extra training, Anko-sensei?"
Any thoughts of a trick went out the window the second Ino opened her big mouth. They were getting closer, Sakura could hear their footsteps, and she guessed Anko was going to dump the blond in this bunkroom.
Ruined my shower, ruined my face, and now she's going to ruin my sleep? Sakura sat up, looking around the room with the aid of the light out in the hall. She'd stripped all the beds of their pillows, so Sakura grabbed two from her stash and flung them at the bunk across the room. It was a good thing her aim was so good because Anko's shadow spilled across the door a moment after Sakura's head hit her own pillow again.
She didn't open her eyes, but Sakura heard the woman pause. Had she heard something? "Come oooon, I'm so tired. Just dump me in one of the beds," Ino urged.
A heartbeat. And then another. Sakura kept her breathing even, but mixed in a louder sigh or two for good measure to really sell the deception. It seemed to work because Sakura heard the shuffle of sandals move once again.
"She took all the pillows!" Ino complained, not even trying to be quiet. it looked like nothing had changed with the girl over the years. When they were little, and Ino would come over, she would never be considerate when she had to get up.
"She would always take my pillow when she slept over," Ino continued, surprising Sakura. She hadn't thought the other girl remembered. "And my blankets. And she'd kick me and talk in her sleep all the time. And drool in my hair."
I never drooled in my sleep, you Pig! And you snored worse than one of Kiba's dogs!
"You said you don't have enough energy to crawl back here on your own, but you find some to complain?" At least Anko's voice was a lower octave than her usual 'loud'. "Look, there's a bed with pillows right there. Satisfied, Princess?"
The springs creaked all at once; Ino had probably thrown herself down on it, like she always did. Sakura was proven right when she heard Ino mutter, "Blankets," like her face was covered.
Sakura fought down a smile when she heard Anko snort at the blond. "Hell no. I still have work to do before I can pass out for a few hours. They're blankets around here somewhere, because Sakura is wrapped up like a caterpillar. Go find them."
"Mmmhf," Ino angrily grunted.
"Yeah, whatever. You're welcome, by the way. Tenzo was going to let you sleep in the training room all night. He wanted me to tell you that he's going to wake you up at five."
Another unintelligible noise from Ino. Sakura heard the ANBU scoff again, but then went still when the woman shuffled a little closer to her bed. Had she messed up? Had her breathing broken rhythm?
"I wanted you to train me."
That… didn't sound quite like Ino's normal whining. The girl actually meant it. If Anko could read Ino that well yet or not, though, she kept to herself because Sakura could hear the teasing in her voice when she replied, "I'm getting pretty popular these days."
"I mean it. You're supposed to be my teacher. Tenzo didn't want me, remember?"
What in the hell was Ino talking about? Sakura knew for a fact that Tenzo had specifically taken her because she was just oh-so-better with that stupid little ball of hers. Sakura was the one Tenzo didn't want!
Anko sighed. She sounded a little farther away now. "What is with you two? You're mad because I'm not teaching you and she's mad that she's not with Tenzo. Have you forgotten why we're here, instead of on the frontlines helping to take back our village?"
"I just-"
"No, I think you forgot. There are a dozen ANBU here, not counting Tenzo and me, watching you two and this forest so that you can get some kind of handle on those weird jutsu before whatever the thing Suna was messing with down there in the sewer shows up to destroy the world, or something like that." She heard a rustle of cloth, which Sakura imagined was Anko literally throwing her hands up. The woman was animated like that. "Come on. Keep your eyes on what really matters here. You want to beat the shit out of each other later? Fine. I'll even convince the Hokage to let you use the stadium if you want. Right here and right now, though? You're ours. You're going to work yourself to the bone because if you don't it could be the end of all of us."
Silence. Even Ino wasn't so much of a brat that she could say anything to that.
"Well, you know. If you two weren't just having fever dreams about gods and demons and shit. I dunno."
"Way to spoil your moment," Ino grumbled, but Sakura could hear how subdued she was when she said it, and it wasn't just from being tired.
"Yeah, well. Never liked being an adult, but here we all are. Get some sleep and don't kill each other," Anko said as her footfalls retreated. "Or, if you do, wake Tenzo up instead of me. I'm too damn tired to deal with it tonight. And tell Sakura she sucks at playing at being asleep if she doesn't hear me."
Caught. Sakura winced as the door to the bunkroom slammed shut, sending the room into darkness. Maybe Ino wouldn't push it? Maybe she wasn't listening to Anko in the first place?
"You never were good at faking being asleep."
Maybe not. Sakura sighed and sat up. It was pitch black, but she knew right where Ino was and felt like the blond was staring back at her as well.
Things felt… awkward. Not at all like any of their other post-fight talks had gone, because they hadn't settled anything this time. Ino had just decked her and left. No explanations, no shouting, no screaming - just laid her out and ran.
Not even a gloat.
"Ino," Sakura called out. "Can we stop being weird?"
"You're the one being weird," Ino shot back.
Even though she knew Ino couldn't see her in the dark, Sakura still rolled her eyes. "Really? I'm the one being weird? You beat me up in the shower, Ino!"
"So we had a fight. We always fight, Forehead! You punched me in the mouth the last time you slept over at my house!"
Sakura shot up, ready to catch Ino in the lie, until she thought back to their last fight. Ino was right. Sakura had swung first, but only after Ino had said some nasty things about Hinata. It was annoying that the blond was right about that, though.
"You hit me with a lamp," Sakura reminded her. "I had to get stitches."
"And you chipped one of my teeth." Had she? Sakura wished she'd looked closer at the blond now. "And who did those stitches for you, huh?"
Silence, because Sakura didn't have much to say to that. Instead, "I really chipped one of your teeth? Was it permanent?"
"One of my canines," Ino hissed. "And yes, permanent. I had to get it filled. And don't think I don't know you're smiling about that."
It was so dark that Sakura didn't bother trying not to. Chipped one of her permanent teeth. She's going to have to think about that for the rest of her life. Sakura didn't know why that made her feel so giddy, but it did.
Still, she felt around in her own mouth for her missing premolar. "You know, when you hit me in the showers I lost one of my baby teeth. The first one of my new body."
Something popped across the room and a blue light suddenly blossomed. Sakura shielded her eyes for a moment, and soon she saw Ino holding a small hand lamp. How in the world had she lit it, though?
"Did I really?" Ino asked. She sounded… well, not sorry, but not crowing about it either. Sakura opened her mouth wide and tilted her head while Ino crawled to the foot of her bed, holding out the lamp.
"It hurt," Sakura muttered, because she couldn't think of anything else to say with the blond staring at her like that.
Ino flopped back on her bed after an uncomfortable moment, taking pains to keep the lamp upright. "Do you actually want to talk, Sakura? We haven't talked in years. All we do is fight." Her head craned up and her frown caught in the lamplight. "We're good at fighting. Not so good at talking."
"I'm not really good at the fighting thing right now." Not that it didn't hurt to talk, too - she'd cracked her jaw after Ino's sucker-punch - but talking seemed to be the responsible thing to do. "We have to work together to beat that Tobi creature."
Ino let out a loud groan that came out half little girl, half-wild boar. Sakura knew that sound; it meant the girl knew what the right thing to do was, but really, really didn't want to do it.
"When did you start thinking like an adult?" Ino muttered, sidestepping the bigger issue for a moment. "You've always been a stick in the mud, but lately you sound just like my dad or Asuma-sensei. I thought I could, like, still act like a kid with you. We're eleven, Sakura."
"This body is actually ten, so you're going to get old first." Sakura smiled in the dark when she heard Ino's breath hitch. "Ino-basan."
The blond shot up and threw one of her precious pillows at Sakura's head, which did nothing to stop the younger girl's giggles. "You're such a pain!" Ino groaned. The lamplight flickered and moved as Ino sat back down on her bed. Her face was pensive. Sakura saw her pale eyes flick to her. "I'm not going to promise I won't slug you again if you say something dumb."
"And I won't promise I won't try and hit you first. Deal?"
"Fine. We both reserve rights to punch each other first," Ino declared, with all the seriousness of a princess. "But I want my pillow back before we start. You stole every pillow in this bunkroom, you pillow hog."
Sakura aimed right at Ino's face, but the blond was annoyingly prepared for such a thing because her hand was already coming up before the fluffy missile even cleared the foot of her bed. With that stupid smirk Ino always had when she got something over on someone, the blond stacked her pillows and leaned back on them, contentment showing in the lamplight.
"So," she cooed, "to recap - we both reserve the right to slug each other. Anything else?"
"No lying," Sakura instantly shot back. "And no going out of our way to insult each other."
Ino lazily waved her hand. "Fine, no lying and no insults." The wave became a finger held up. "But, it's late and I want to get some sleep tonight, so why don't we do this. Three questions each. And they can be about anything we want."
Wait, anything? Sakura didn't know how she felt about that because there was a lot Ino could ask about that the younger girl really didn't want to go into. But, just as she was about to tell Ino no, she caught Ino's victorious smirk in the lamplight, which, really, decided it for her.
"Deal."
Ino's face soured at her bluff being called. "Are you serious? You were supposed to say no!"
Sakura scoffed. "Which is why I said yes." Now it was her turn to smirk. "Are you saying you want to back out?"
And just like clockwork, the girl got right back up, back ramrod straight, mouth twisted in a competitive frown that slowly, so very slowly, settled back into a suspicious thin line.
"You're trying to bait me," she said, voice even with only a tiny twinge of a growl.
Okay. Sakura hadn't thought the blond saw through it because Ino hadn't noticed for the last few years. Apparently Ino was getting a bit cagier. Was Tenzo teaching her stuff like that, too, or was it just because they hadn't spent this much time together in years?
Either way, it made Sakura fight back a smile. "You're the one that brought up the three question rule in the first place," she said, trying to sound exasperated. "All I said was that I agreed, but now you don't want to? It just seems like you're not taking this seriously."
Oh, it was a lot more fun to watch Ino squirm when she knew she was being verbally led by the nose. Sakura resolved to do this much more frequently, at least until she got back up to the place she needed to be to fight Ino fairly. It was almost as much fun as punching the blond.
"I'm asking all my questions first," Ino demanded through clenched teeth, which suited Sakura just fine. Ino was mad, so she'd go right for something personal, like what happened out in the desert, because that's what Ino did when she smelled blood and Sakura was ready for it.
"Question number one: Do you want to come back to the village?"
The cockiness drained out of Sakura. "You're going with that first?" she blanched. She'd been emotionally ready to talk about Hinata, but this was hitting far too close to a sore spot. Sakura didn't even know what she wanted to do yet and now Ino was nodding back at her with all the seriousness she could muster.
Sakura bit her lip. She could lie. Ino might be more on her guard, might be getting a bit emotionally clever, but Sakura had been lying and pretending to be someone else for the last year and no amount of body swaps could take that experience away from her. She knew just how to keep her breathing even, how to keep her heart rate down, which way to look during an answer so that she could fool interrogation.
Hell, If Sakura just got up and tried to hit Ino right now, the blond would probably forget all about the questions. Ino looked tired and if she'd been doing extra training ever since getting out of the showers then she probably didn't have much left in the tank. It might even be a close fight this time.
But...that defeated the whole purpose of her wanting to talk, didn't it? And Ino wasn't being an ass about it, either. She was just sitting there, waiting.
"...I don't know." Her eyes flicked up to Ino's, holding her gaze at her in the lamplight, then looked past her, focusing on the wall. The blond had gotten better with her poker face, which annoyed Sakura to no end. "I want to? The Hokage… he told me that Konoha would help, if I wanted to come back. So did Anko. But she said I wouldn't ever advance if I did. That the village would never trust me."
Ino sighed. "I didn't ask what would be good for your career, Sakura. I asked if you wanted to come back. It's 'yes' or 'no'."
"It's not 'yes' or 'no'!" Sakura snapped. "The village has hidden so much from everyone! Did you know that I met Danzo months ago?! He was talking to Orochimaru for almost a whole year, back and forth, about a civil war, Ino! And everyone told me Kabuto was dead! Everyone! And then he… he just…" Sakura thought back to the way the teen's hand had slid into her head, yanking and twisting, and felt sick. She hugged her stomach.
"I don't feel safe here."
Ino laughed. It wasn't a friendly one, either. "You don't feel safe in a village you spied on for a year? Oh, I feel real sorry for you, Sakura."
"You asked me how I felt!"
"I thought you had an actual reason for not wanting to immediately come back to Konoha! Not just because you're mad that we won't roll out the red carpet for you!"
Sakura saw red. "I had two choices back then! Die or not betray the village!" Sakura threw her arms wide, knocking her pillows away. "Which one, Ino? Die? You wanted me to die?"
The blond was actually shaking, she was so mad. Sakura didn't care if Ino wanted to fight, because right now she felt so angry that anything the other girl could do to her wouldn't be enough to put her down.
Ino tensed. "Second question!" she snarled, surprising Sakura. "Did you have anything to do with my dad getting hurt?!"
Sakura rocked back on her knees. "What? No! No, Ino! Your dad was practically my dad growing up! I lived half of my life at your house for, like, three years!"
"You lived in the village for ten years and it didn't stop you from betraying that!" Ino shot back. "Did you know anything about Shikamaru's house?! Did you know they were going to burn it down?!"
That was… that…
"We will continue to take targets of opportunity."
Baki's words flashed in Sakura's mind from when she had met the Suna-nin in their hotel a week ago. The ROOT ANBU had gotten angry at him for burning the Nara storehouse the first time, but Baki hadn't promised to stop. In fact, he'd said he'd keep taking 'targets of opportunity' before the invasion. Sakura hadn't bothered to say anything to Shikaku when she'd moved in with him because there had been so much more on her mind at the time, but what if she could have warned him?
Ino saw the realization in her eyes and her face went slack. Quickly, Sakura held up her hands. "I just knew that Suna was going to keep sabotaging the village! There was an ANBU there too! I thought he'd said something to someone! It was after your dad got hurt, Ino! I swear it!"
The blond was quiet, which for Ino was usually the terrible calm before the storm. The worst part was, Sakura didn't even feel the urge to protect herself. If she had told Shikaku everything about Suna, and Baki, would he have done something more? Moved more people out of the compound? Put up better defenses?
Sakura had no idea, but that was almost as bad. She would never know what he would do because his home had already been burnt to the ground and his family killed off by the dozens.
But Ino didn't lunge at her, nor did she start screaming again. She actually seemed too shocked to do anything other than just… lay down. Which she did, curled up into a little ball on her covers, after snuffing out the lamp.
And, to Sakura, that felt worse than a hundred sucker-punches because she'd done the impossible - She'd broken Yamanaka Ino, the indestructible girl, with her stupid need to talk. Everything was in ruins now.
Sakura crawled under her blanket and clutched a pillow to her chest, praying that the sleeping medicine she took earlier would kick in.
The next morning wasn't a pleasant wakeup. Anko had to come and get her, which was strike one, and then spend more than a few minutes shaking and threatening to get her moving, which was strike two. In between rushing to get her clothes on, Sakura snuck a look at Ino's bed. It was already made and Ino was nowhere to be seen, so that meant Sakura had also slept through Tenzo coming in.
Worse than all the griping, though, was that Anko stole her sleeping pills. "These aren't meant for kids like you," she said, pocketing the whole bottle. "Don't go digging through the medical supplies."
Sakura didn't bother mentioning she'd already squirreled away another few bottles, along with antiseptic medicine, bandages, field stitches, and everything else she'd need for a field medic kit. It would be better to ask for forgiveness from her teacher in the future than permission right now, in case the tower had to be evacuated in a hurry.
She wanted to ask how Ino was as they ate a quick breakfast of dry cereal and a glass of that powdered orange juice that had hit the village a few months ago. It wasn't real juice, and it tasted horrible, but apparently you could mix it easily with vitamin supplements and it lasted forever, so the village had a lot of it stored up. Powdered eggs, too, but Anko told her that since she'd slept in so late they didn't have time to cook any.
What they did have time for, though, was Anko spending ten minutes looking for a clipboard. "Not just any clipboard," Anko snapped as she flipped the mattress in her little private room, "your training schedule. Tenzo made it up last night and he'll murder me if I've lost it!"
Truthfully, Sakura had found the thing a few minutes after walking into the pig-sty that was Anko's bedroom, but she let the woman sweat it out for a bit. Anko had looked at her with more than a little suspicion when Sakura "found" it under one of her shirts, but the woman couldn't prove anything and Sakura didn't feel much like gloating after the night she'd had. Her little prank on Anko hadn't even made her feel better.
The day's training started with laps around the tower, which Sakura did without complaint. Laps were easy - she didn't have to think with laps. Her brain just switched off and took all the crappy thoughts about Ino with it.
The blond had been a ghost this morning. She was off with Tenzo, doing whatever it was her training boiled down to, and Sakura hadn't gotten so much as a glimpse of the girl. It felt weird, being the offending party in their relationship for once. Usually it was Ino who said, or did, something that made Sakura want to avoid the blond, not the other way around.
Sakura discovered that she really didn't enjoy the switch too much.
On Sakura's last lap, Anko had tossed her a water bottle. Sakura had prepared herself for more of the bitter, grainy supplement powder that had become synonymous with drinking at the forest tower, but she was visibly surprised when it was normal water.
Anko was fixing her canteen as well, and Sakura watched her dump some powder in and give it a hard shake before taking a drink. Sakura didn't really want to take supplements, but she was also curious. Eventually, the curiosity won out.
"No supplements in the bottled water anymore?"
Anko shook her head. She frowned at her canteen and shoved it back into the messenger bag she was using to hold all her training stuff. "I hate that damn powder," she muttered. Louder, she said, "You don't need them today because we're doing something different. Trust me, you're going to get all the vitamins you can stand in just a few minutes."
That was ominous, but no matter how much Sakura prodded her, the woman wouldn't say what she had planned; given how much Anko seemed to be enjoying her secrecy there probably wouldn't be any further hints, either.
Things were even more curious when Anko finally did bring them back inside. The main training area was clear of Tenzo and Ino, thankfully, but the balconies were decidedly not unoccupied.
ANBU. Dozens of ANBU. Every shape and size and every conceivable mask were represented in the two-dozen or so hunter-nin lining the room. Sakura had never seen that many in one place before and given the last time she'd even seen more than a handful at once had been during her interrogation a few weeks ago, Sakura had some serious reservations.
Anko was nonplussed by the new audience. In fact, she might have waved to one or two of the masked observers. She went out to the center of the ring and impatiently motioned for Sakura to join her, which the girl did only reluctantly. "They're not going to bite," Anko told her when she was close enough to hear.
It wasn't their teeth Sakura was worried about; her teeth ached just looking at them. "What are they doing here?"
"Observing. I don't think you realize it, but ANBU are some of the best minds in the village when it comes to identifying jutsu. It's part of their job as investigators, you know? Today, we're going to find out what that push thing of yours actually is."
That… didn't sound too bad. Sakura would be lying if she said she wasn't a little bit curious about the Shinra Tensei as well. But, a thought occurred to her: "Isn't that why we wrote the Fire Temple?"
Anko rolled her eyes. "You want to wait on some monks to tell you a bunch of old superstitions?" she asked. "We have something called the 'scientific method' these days!"
Sakura would never, ever say it out loud, but maybe years of being Orochimaru's student had rubbed off on the woman after all. The way her eyes got a weird sheen when she said 'scientific method' didn't make Sakura feel all that secure.
Instead, she asked, "How is this going to work? Do they just want me to start shooting?" That didn't seem like the smartest thing, given they were currently inside. Sakura didn't want to test just how sturdy this tower was with so much of it stacked overhead.
Anko flicked her thumb over her shoulder. Sakura looked past her and saw, at the very back of the room, a stuffed scarecrow target stuck in the floor.
"You're going to get some control practice in at the same time."
That was all well and fine, but the woman was overlooking one very crucial detail. "I can only fire one shot before I'm out of chakra."
"Such little faith you have in your sensei!" Anko said. She reached into her coat and pulled out a small black bag, which she tossed to Sakura. "Open it and tell me what you see."
Well, the bag wasn't hissing or ticking, so Sakura tipped out its contents into her hand. Three little black pills rolled out, completely without symbol or marking. Anko was looking at her smugly, which didn't sit well with Sakura at all, so she started eliminating possible things in her head. After she'd tossed out all the dangerous drugs she could think of, there was only one thing that they could possibly be.
"Soldier pills?"
Anko's victorious face quickly turned into a pout. "I thought I finally stumped you," she grumbled.
Sakura rolled one of the pills around. She'd never seen hyorogan, soldier pills, before, but their reputation preceded them. Supposedly they would let someone fight for days without rest, food, or water.
"Aren't these a controlled substance?" Sakura asked. "You're only supposed to use them in an emergency."
"And what do you call an active war?"
Touche'. Sakura carefully put them back in their bag. When she went to hand them back to Anko, though, the woman shook her head. "They're yours. You know how they can stop fatigue, right? They do that because they can speed up your body's natural chakra replenishment. The ANBU medics say that with your body and conditioning, three is your limit."
"So I can use the Shinra Tensei four times a day?" Sakura asked. Once without the pills, and then three times afterwards. That still wasn't amazing by any stretch of the imagination, but four shots was better than nothing.
Anko visibly blanched at the question. "Uh, I mean, you could use them all up in one day, but the day after you wouldn't be good for anything. You've never taken one, so you don't know, but all those positives come with a huge negative. The withdrawals are a bitch to deal with."
But that wasn't all. Sakura would never claim to be an expert in anything 'Anko', but she'd spent enough time with the woman to tell when she was holding something back. "What aren't you telling me?"
Her eyes darted around; a clear Mitarashi tell. Sakura pinned the woman with a look until she broke down (just like Naruto would). "I don't… I mean... there might only be three of them?" Anko rubbed her neck. "In, like, the whole tower? Maybe?"
Suddenly the little bag felt much heavier. "How do you only have three left?"
"Because the clan that keeps all the raw materials for these things burnt to the ground? We can't store them forever, since they're made from natural ingredients. All of the main stock is being used for the war."
Now Sakura understood why Shikaku had put so much importance on keeping the Nara clan's medical storage guarded and intact, and it served to make her feel that much more guilty about her talk with Ino the night before.
There were bigger issues right now, though. Anko motioned to the training dummy. "So yeah, treat those things like they're precious, but the important thing right now is that you show the ANBU exactly what you can do. I want you to hit that target like normal for the first shot."
Sakura held up her hand. The scarecrow was a long way away and Sakura honestly didn't know what her blast would do from this distance. She glanced nervously at Anko, who thankfully took the hint and edged behind her.
She rotated her wrist and aimed in the space between her middle and ring fingers. A familiar tingle of chakra pooled in the upper half of her body, focusing right behind her eyes as she locked on to the dummy. "Shinra Tensei!"
The recoil nearly knocked the girl over, but Anko put a helpful hand on her back. Whatever the force was, it had exploded out from Sakura at speed and plowed into the dummy a heartbeat later, snapping it right off its pole and throwing it against the far wall. The shockwave that had been carrying it hit much harder, seeming to shake the whole tower.
Anko whistled. "I didn't know you could make them that strong," she admitted. "How do you feel?"
Sakura wobbled unsteadily on her feet, which was enough of an answer for Anko. With surprising care she lowered the girl to the ground. "Sit tight," she said.
"Sure," Sakura grunted. She didn't feel like doing much other than sitting right now anyway. It was incredibly annoying how much energy this jutsu took from her, even if it was pretty impressive.
She saw Anko appear up on the balcony, and a few of the ANBU huddled around her. She assumed they were discussing their findings. As scary as they were, she really hoped they could tell her something about her gift; they probably already knew everything about Ino's because how mysterious was a black ball of chakra that ate everything it touched?
Anko was back in a moment. She didn't look happy. "Okay, so they want you to try and make the next one less powerful. They think you should be able to control its output, if it's anything like Onoki's rock-lightening jutsu."
"They know what it is?" Sakura asked, surprised.
"Well, I wouldn't go that far. They have an idea that it might be gravity related, because they just confirmed you're not using air pressure or wind manipulation. There's only so many things it could be after that."
To Sakura, that was still a pretty massive leap in understanding. Eager to learn a bit more, Sakura asked, "Would it help if I told them where the chakra was pooling before I activated it?"
Anko scratched her neck again, which she always did when she was agitated. "Maybe? I-I don't… lemme ask." And then she was gone again.
When she returned she wasn't alone. A thin, lanky ANBU wearing an eagle mask was there as well. He reminded Sakura a little of Kakashi-sensei, in the way he carried himself, but the similarities ended at his appearance. When he spoke to her, his voice was even and professional.
"Where is the chakra originating?" he asked, without even introducing himself.
Sakura frowned slightly, but she pointed to her chest. "It starts here," she said, hand hovering over her heart and lungs. That's typically where most chakra began, but then she slowly moved her hand up her throat. "I feel it in the back of my neck and then it ends up behind my eyes."
Eagle's head cocked. He squatted down and then slouched, because he was still too tall, looking close enough at Sakura that she could see his eyes through his mask. "Do you get headaches after you channel it? Sore eyes?" he asked. Sakura shook her head. "How many times have you actually performed the jutsu?"
Mentally, Sakura tallied it up. "Uh, three times? Kabuto, the Suna-nin, and just now."
The ANBU looked over his shoulder at the destroyed dummy, then back at Sakura. "Three times? Are you sure?"
"Well, technically I've only been me again for three days, so I'm pretty sure."
Anko stifled a snort, but Sakura held the ANBU's eyes, daring him to try and second-guess that. Eventually, he slightly dipped his head.
"Very well. One moment." He turned his head and Sakura knew that she heard him mumbling in his mask. It had to have been a transmitter because a second later another ANBU appeared, this one shorter and just as thin. She - and Sakura was sure it was a woman because of her long black hair - squatted down next to eagle-mask.
"Watch her eyes close," he told her, and the woman, wearing a badger mask, nodded. She made a strange seal, her index finger being the only finger up, right in front of mer mask.
It was a seal Sakura recognized. She had seen it, once, months ago in the Suna desert. It was the seal Hinata made when she activated her dojutsu. Badger-mask was a Hyuuga.
Sakura looked down at the ground, knowing that it wouldn't help any, but she didn't want to look the woman in the eye. She hadn't met any Hyuuga after coming back from the village; they probably all hated her.
Eagle clicked his tongue to get Sakura's attention. "The back wall," he said. "Can you fire another shot like the last one?"
"I feel pretty tired," Sakura said. She reached into her pouch and pulled out the little black bag. "Should I?"
Anko sighed. The sound made Sakura's shoulders slump, but it wasn't Sakura she was aggravated with. "You didn't have a Hyuuga watching her for the first one? You know we only have three of these soldier pills, right?"
The lanky ANBU stood back up to his full height. "Badger was watching, but there's something particular I'm looking for now. You were going to have her take one for the rest of her training anyway, right? We can look for it while you do that."
So, Sakura was told to take a pill. "Crunch it," Anko told her, laughing a little at the sour face Sakura made when she did. It was disgusting, like biting into a piece of chalk. Sakura was about to demand some water when the effect hit her.
Every muscle, every joint, ever chakra pathway in her body tensed like it was trying to hold back a raging river. She felt so powerful! So strong! Stronger than she everfelt in her old body!
"Oh, she's feeling it now," Anko laughed. "Like it? Feel like you could take on the whole Suna invasion by yourself, don't you? Go on. Try a shot at the wall for our audience."
Eagerly, Sakura raised her hand and molded as much of the new chakra as she could take. She should put on a show! One blast and she would knock a hole in the tower! As Eagle quickly moved out of the way, Sakura took aim.
"Shinra Tensei!"
The rush of chakra filled her like a hurricane and she was grinning like a fool in the eye of it, feeling like a tool of god himself touching the face of the earth! She felt -! She felt…!
Anko caught Sakura as she vomited all over the floor. Everything was coming up and it was terrible. Sakura knew that someone had just punched her straight in the gut when she was concentrating on the blast, because everything under her ribcage felt sore. Off in the distance Sakura heard her push hit the wall, but she didn't have the strength to look up at it. All she wanted to do was collapse but Anko wasn't letting her.
"Weaker than the last one," Eagle said. That did make Sakura look up. She had expected to blow out the far wall, but there wasn't even any sign that she'd hit it other than the last scraps of the ruined training dummy being knocked away.
What had happened?!
Anko was still chuckling as she dragged Sakura away from the mess she'd made. "I want you to remember this feeling," she said, chipper. "Soldier pills are fake. Never, ever, let one tell you you're invincible especially when you were running on empty before you took it. Now drink this."
The woman thrust a water bottle under Sakura's nose and she snatched it. She washed out the horrible taste of bile from her mouth then downed the rest of the bottle. The nasty taste was still there, though.
The ANBU were conferring with each other, so Anko helped Sakura back to her feet. "Take another one," she said, which surprised Sakura. That would leave only one left! "Don't look at me like that. What do you think the training is for? I'm going to get it so you can do a few of those things before you get tired."
Was that even possible? Anko looked cocksure, but Sakura… every time she'd used one it had completely drained her. Sakura rolled the next-to-last pill out into her hand and considered it.
"I felt like I used to when I took the last one," she told Anko. "I felt strong again. Like I could do anything. It was all fake, though. Just like the body was. It just lets me pretend I'm not me for a few minutes."
Anko didn't immediately respond to that. Sakura looked up at the woman, expecting to see her laughing or rolling her eyes at such a dramatic thing, but to her surprise Anko was just staring off into the distance, rubbing her neck right under her coat collar.
Wasn't even listening. "Nevermind. It's stupid," Sakura muttered, blushing. Just yesterday Anko had said she was too serious and then Sakura drops that on her? Anko must be thinking she's a total kid.
But, then Sakura felt a hand rest on top of her head. It wasn't Anko's usual ruffling, either, but a soft, hesitant, almost gentle, touch. "It's not stupid," she said, thickly. Sakura had never heard Anko like that before so she was quiet while the woman gathered her thoughts.
"Listen, I know that your whole situation is pretty weird, but I understand you more than you think. Tenzo didn't stick you with me just because he wanted to hog the Yamanaka's time for himself; he thinks I'm better for relating to you."
Sakura frowned. "Ever lose your body and have to relearn everything you thought you knew?" Sakura asked, feeling a twinge of annoyance. What did Anko know about something like that? What did anyone?
Anko's coat shifted as she stepped around to face Sakura, squatting to look her in the eye. The woman's pale eyes were unusually serious, which looked… frightening, from the ANBU.
Not like Naruto at all, Sakura thought as she stared into those eyes. Anko was a laughy, jokey, prank-loving type of woman, yes, but in her face now Sakura could see something deeper, with a lot more sharp edges than her teammate.
"Power doesn't come from nothing," Anko said, her hand coming down to rest on Sakura's shoulder. "You're feeling bad because you lost all that fake power you had for the last year. That's a fine way to feel, and I would be pissed about it too, but think about what it wanted you to give up. It took your humanity from you. You weren't Haruno Sakura, little kid from Konoha. You were whatever kind of lab experiment that bastard Kabuto cooked up in his spare time. It wasn't you."
Anko looked over her shoulder at the other ANBU. They were still talking amongst themselves. "Okay, so I want you to keep a secret," she told Sakura, looking back. Slowly she tugged down the collar of her coat.
Sakura felt her mold chakra and then a strange seal appeared on the left side of Anko's neck. It was a strange, three-tome pattern, surrounded by a circle of writing. She made sure Sakura got a look before it disappeared and she pulled back up her coat.
"What is that?" Sakura asked. She'd never seen a seal like that before.
"Power gained for more than I was willing to pay," Anko told her, sighing. She rubbed the spot on her neck where the mark was and Sakura realized she'd seen the woman doing it all the time. "Like I said, I understand you more than most of the people in this village. Kabuto learned from Orochimaru and Orochimaru used me as a test subject for a lot of his work. Did I get strong in a short amount of time? Sure. Did it end up costing me years of work? That too."
Sakura sagged. Orochimaru, Kabuto - they cast a shadow over everything, didn't they? "Years, huh?"
"Years, but I started late. You? You're already stronger than the Haruno Sakura you were before you met Kabuto, aren't you?" Hesitantly, Sakura nodded. "Right. And right now you're probably stronger than the Yamanaka Ino of a year ago, aren't you?" Another nod. Anko smiled again and used Sakura's head to push herself back to her feet, ruffling the girl's hair as she went. "So there you go! All you have to do is put in more effort than anyone else you know and you'll catch right up in no time. But remember what I said last night - she won't be sitting still either. So I want you to take this training seriously, right?"
A nod from Sakura, but Anko glared down at her. "I want more enthusiasm than that from my student! When I say 'right', you say…?"
"Right, Anko-sensei," Sakura muttered, blushing.
"Well, I was just going for a shout or something, but sensei works too," the woman teased. Then, she turned to the ANBU. "We're done over here! You can stop pretending to be considerate!"
As they walked over, Sakura tugged on Anko's sleeve. "Does Ino know about…" She vaguely pointed to her neck.
Anko put a finger up to her lips, winking at Sakura's surprised look. "Nope, and let's keep it that way. She already has enough dirt on me."
Sakura didn't miss the way Eagle looked at her and she hoped against everything she wasn't blushing too hard. "What's the verdict?" Anko asked the pair.
"Undetermined," Eagle said, before Badger could answer. "More testing will be needed, but Badger is fairly certain you can regulate that Shinra Tensei jutsu. We would like you to try, with Badger helping you regulate your chakra."
So that's what Anko had meant earlier. Being able to do more than one push a day sounded like a pretty good deal, so she pulled out the little bag of soldier pills and fished one out.
Badger stepped forward before she could take it. "May I try something?" she asked Eagle. Some nonverbal permission must have been given between the two, because after a moment she stooped down to Sakura's level. "Please, just relax. I want to do a chakra exercise that may help with the aftereffects of your jutsu."
The woman's hands were glowing faintly with chakra, which reminded Sakura of Kabuto's hands in the Yamato Works. She shied away at first, looking to Anko for help, but the woman just smiled lopsidedly at her. "They know what they're doing, kid," she said.
So, Sakura forced herself to stay still as the masked Hyuuga reached out to her. The woman put a hand on either side of her head, right at the corner of her eyes, and started working the skin in slow circles. A soothing feeling of chakra started to pool up and down her face, but mostly right behind her eyes, which was a weird feeling at first until Sakura got used to it. After awhile it started to feel really, really nice.
"This is an exercise that many young Hyuuga use when they first develop the Byakugan, because that can be a very painful process before the proper chakra pathways manifest themselves," Badger explained, still massaging. It felt amazing and all the tension Sakura was still feeling in her body was draining away.
It felt so good, in fact, that Sakura couldn't even find the words to ask why the Hyuuga would use this just for their dojutsu and not for everyday aches and pains, because it made her feel a hundred times better than before.
"She's like a happy cat," Anko laughed. Sakura didn't even budge when Anko plucked the little soldier pill out of her hands and slipped it between her lips. "Here, take this now while you're feeling good."
Chakra exploded back into her system, but it wasn't painful like before. Badger's glowing hands soothed and regulated, turning the wild river into a gentle stream, filling everything the Shinra Tensei had drained dry. Sakura didn't have that immortal feeling now; only a sense of completeness, like she'd had the best night's sleep of her life and a huge breakfast.
Then the hands were gone and Sakura sorely missed them. Badger stepped back beside Eagle. "I have done what I can," she said, more to the tall ANBU than Sakura or Anko. "The rest will develop-"
"Badger," Eagle cut her off. "The radio, if you would."
Sakura was still too out of sorts to really notice the sudden tension in between the two ANBU, but she did catch the suspicion in Anko's face as the pair stared at each other down from behind their masks. Eventually, though, Badger did dip her head in deference which seemed to be the end of the standoff.
Eagle gestured with his hand. "We will continue to watch from down here," he said, the pair walking well back from Anko and Sakura.
Anko blew out a huff of air as she watched the two walk away, but didn't elaborate on what she was thinking. When she turned back to Sakura her attention was back and the weird look was gone. "Whatever. Feeling better? Ready to try this out?"
Sakura still didn't know what Anko wanted to do, but after that massage and soldier pill she was ready to give just about anything a try. Anko clapped her on the back and she gathered up another training dummy from the edge of the room, over by that massive statue of a man making a tiger seal.
This time Anko only put it around half as far away as the first one. Sakura could see individual bits of straw sticking out of it, she was so close. "It's not going to be hard to hit that one," Sakura pointed out.
Anko fussed with the armor it was wearing. "Goal isn't just to hit it," she said. "I want to see how lightly you can hit it. See if you can just push it over."
Shrugging, Sakura raised her hand. Just knock it over, she told herself. That should be easy, shouldn't it? All she had to do was release the jutsu sooner, like the difference between a fireball and a flamethrower.
Sakura settled into a firm footing and started gathering chakra, focusing on the dummy. A little push. A little push. A little-
"Haruno-san?"
The concentration, and chakra, was gone. "What?" she snapped, but felt a little bad when she realized it'd been Badger who had called out to her. "Am I doing something wrong?"
Badger walked up to her. "I believe you will simply waste your chakra this way," she said, walking behind Sakura. Out the corner of Sakura's eyes she saw the woman's glowing hands, which instantly made her feel better. "May I?"
"Yes!" Sakura happily chirped, but realizing she sounded a little too anxious, she cleared her throat. "I mean, sure. If you think it'll help."
Once again the ANBU went for the spot right at the corner of her eyes, almost right on top of her temple, but there wasn't any massaging. Instead, Sakura could feel the alien chakra going deep down behind her eye sockets. "Focus on drawing out that new chakra," Badger whispered. "Mold as much as you can, but don't fight me when I try to guide it."
It was a little weird channeling chakra while someone else's chakra was messing around near her coils, but Sakura still had amazing chakra control if nothing else, so it wasn't too difficult for her to separate the two chakras. When she molded for the Shinra Tensei, she felt Badger's chakra weaving in with it behind her eyes, thinning out how much she was kneading.
Shouldn't she be fixing it in my arms? Sakura wondered. The Shinra Tensei was released out of her fingertips… wasn't it? That was how she aimed, but Badger wasn't the least bit interested, focusing all of her attention behind, and even in, Sakura's eyes (which was just about the weirdest feeling Sakura had felt since Kabuto had stuck his hand into her skull in the Yamato Works).
"Try activating the jutsu," Badger told her, which made Sakura blush. She'd completely lost focus for a second.
"Shinra Tensei!"
Immediately Sakura knew something had gone differently, because she was still on her feet. And while she felt a bit tired, she didn't want to sink to her knees and start wheezing.
And the target had been blown clean in half. It hadn't been pushed over like Anko wanted, but the whole thing hadn't been pushed away either and Sakura felt like she could do another one.
"Good job, kid," Anko called out. She and Eagle had retreated a safe distance away while she'd fired. "Knock over the other half now?"
Oh, Sakura felt up for it. When she raised her arm Badger pulled back her chakra. "If you need the help, ask," she said.
But Sakura was determined. She molded her chakra in the small amount Badger had done earlier, pooling it in and around her eyes and regulating the flow to just a trickle.
She held up her hand and focused on the remains of the scarecrow. "Shinra Tensei!" The chakra flowed from her like a wave and the bottom half of the target went flying just a heartbeat later, spinning off through the air.
Badger caught her when Sakura collapsed. The second shot felt like her limit, but it was better than only being able to do one. Sakura was happy with it, and even happier when she felt the Hyuuga ANBU's soothing chakra flood back into her.
"Very good work, Haruno-san," the woman said, and Sakura smiled, but she heard something else besides Badger's gentle breathing. A crackle of static, coming from the woman's mask.
'Her growth is uncanny.' That was the Eagle-masked ANBU's voice! Sakura looked up sharply at the Hyuuga woman, but Badger gently forced her head back straight and applied more of her chakra to fight off the worst of Sakura's fatigue.
'Do you have an idea what we're dealing with?' Anko asked over the radio, her voice tight.
Across the room, Anko and Eagle were standing casually near each other. Sakura couldn't even see their lips moving. 'It's not a futon, or any other nature manipulation we can detect. Nana believes it's an undeveloped dojutsu and her treatments seem to enforce that.'
Sakura went rigid, despite the massage. Her eyes flicked up to the Hyuuga, but she was staring straight ahead, her pale eyes only just visible behind her badger mask. Those eyes met Sakura's and an extra cool touch of chakra seemed to say, just listen.
'You're telling me that the kid has an undiscovered dojutsu and nobody caught it? And you're not going to tell her? That's pretty shitty of you, Okuda.'
'You and Nana should compare notes, but it's not your call. Not my call, either. Or even Tenzo's. Danzo doesn't want even a whiff of this getting to Suna, or Orochimaru. Danzo's been placed in charge of the ANBU, so there's nothing I can do. And that Yamanaka girl -"
Suddenly the feed cut out. Subtly, from across the room, Anko caught Sakura's eyes - and smirked.
It hadn't just been Nana sharing her radio channel.
"Mitarashi-san and I are more on the same page than Okuda-san believes," the Hyuuga said, not doing anything out of the ordinary, looking straight ahead. "We both do not feel that the spirit of the Hokage's orders are being carried out if you are left in the dark. Neither does Okuda-san, although he has taken enough of a professional and personal risk already."
Sakura swallowed, feeling lightheaded. A dojutsu. It was a type of kekkei genkai that manifested in the eyes of a person, but Sakura was sure that her father hadn't had one. And her mother's side of the family were all civilians. There was no one in the Haruno line with a kekkei genkai so… so…
Oh. There was one person Sakura knew of with a dojutsu she was related to. He had told her himself. The ringed, pale eyes of the Sage of Six Paths - who had said that both she and Ino were his descendants.
Did that mean that Ino also had a dojutsu? What would that even mean for them? Had the Sage anticipated this? What part did Danzo have in any of this? He'd washed his hands of them, hadn't he?
Sakura had no idea of the answers to those questions, because Hyuuga Nana wasn't talking and the Sage hadn't appeared to her since the fight on the cliff. Maybe he couldn't appear anymore?
She didn't want to think about it. She closed her eyes and drifted off while Badger did her best to stop the chakra headache brought about by the pathways in her eyes growing and rearranging themselves into something completely foreign to the girl.
Loyalty is officially over 300k words now! Huge milestone for me! See you all next time!
