Hey! How's everyone doing?
So I ended up going on that trip back down south to help my family move the remainder of our stuff, and my god, I will never do that again. It was hell at every stage. I got back Tuesday, but frankly, I was way too exhausted to grind a chapter out that night. I hope you'll all forgive me.
It's done now, though, so at least I can go back to a normal, weekly schedule now.
...Probably?
...Am I just jinxing myself?
Anyways, without further ado, to infinity, and beyond.
Chapter 34: Reunited
The world swayed in her vision as Sakura fell to her knees, entirely spent.
"And that's that." A woman, far off behind a piece of protective glass, spoke out to the others in the room. "We've determined the effects a lack of chakra has on the curse mark, let her rest for an hour, and we'll continue then."
"Three hours." Another woman, stern and unrelenting, answered back. "And if I see you try and force her any earlier…"
"R-right," The woman from before sputtered out, utterly cowed. "Three hours it is."
There was the sound of shuffling feet, of boots upon stone echoing through her small room, and then nothing. A moment later, footprints echoed on the stone floor as they approached her, and she heard the sounds of ruffling cloth as someone bent down next to her.
"Sakura, you alright?"
She tried to ignore the way her vision spun as she met Anko's eyes, and gave the woman the weakest smile the land of fire had ever seen.
"Peachy."
Anko glared at her.
"I can't tell if that was supposed to be a wood-related pun, or if you're really just that out of it."
She certainly hadn't meant it like that, but she'd take the credit for the terrible joke anyways.
"Anyways, you're sure these tests aren't too much for you?" Anko asked once more, showing for the fourth of fifth time that day that she really did care for Sakura. "If you can't handle it, there's no shame in-"
"For the umpteenth time, I'm fine!" Sakura called to the woman, pushing herself up and doing some light stretches. "Even if I wasn't, my being here if the only thing keeping Zaku and his friends safe. Besides, this is actually some pretty good training… I think I figured something out while I was training a second ago, I'm going to try it… Uhm, this might go badly, so-"
Anko snickered.
"You talk as if anything in this place has gone well so far."
"Yeah, I guess that's fair." Sakura spoke, before beginning to concentrate.
She reached out for her chakra as she closed her eyes. She pictured a bundle of energy in the pit of her stomach, and urged that energy to flow, almost effortlessly, towards her left shoulder. She'd been told that she had sublime chakra control by many people she'd trained with, ranging from Kakashi to Anko, but she couldn't help but wonder how anyone could struggle with something so simple.
I wonder if this is how people like Sasuke feel about Ninjutsu?
She guided her chakra further, up onto a particular part of her neck and subsequently, into her curse mark.
The chakra that poured out from it felt dark and cold to her as she let her own collide with it. Even without digging deeper into it, it was obvious that it was malevolent in some way. She wouldn't have had to deal with the side-effects for nearly two months now to figure that out.
She pushed on it, gathering it up and herding it back into the small black indentations on her neck where it usually dwelled. She pushed and prodded on it until, like a flock of sheep in the countryside, it retreated into the only place it could, the very depths of her curse mark. With a bit more of her chakra, she enveloped the 'gateway' that the malevolent chakra had taken, surrounding it on all sides.
With one last push, and a gasping breath, she forced the curse mark into inactivity all on her own.
She might've fallen on her hands and knees a second later, but she couldn't help the rush of accomplishment at her ability.
"Did you just…" Anko's eyes were wide, but they held a certain pride within them that had Sakura practically beaming.
"Yeah, I did." Sakura choked out a laugh, letting herself fall prone onto the ground, staring up at the ceiling above her and giggling some more. "I can turn the curse mark off of my own volition now! That was… that's the one thing I've always struggled with. I never wanted to lose myself to it again, and now… now I might really not!"
Sakura briefly congratulated herself, before reality, as per usual, took all the fun out of her things.
Well, I closed it when I had no outward source to distract me, and I wasn't feeling particularly angry or negative, and I wasn't in duress, not to mention that it took me over a minute to do…
Y'know what, I'll just focus on the accomplishment for now. Sakura smiled sedately, looking back towards Anko, and shooting her mentor a smile. I'm sure Anko will praise me a bit more, too.
"Well, you closed it when there was nothing to distract you, and you weren't really feeling negative, completely ignoring that-"
"Not you too!"
Anko looked over towards her, evidently rather confused.
"Uh… me too?"
"Don't ask." Sakura sighed in exasperation as she spread her hands out on her sides, nearly making dust angels on the stone below her. "Thanks for telling them to wait a bit longer for the next tests, though… frankly, I'm exhausted."
"Yeah, it's not that hard to tell." Anko shot her a playful apologetic look. "You've sweated more in the last hour than you have all day. Frankly, you smell like shit."
"Why thank you, kind teacher," Sakura deadpanned. "With insights such as those, I'll surely have the knowledge I require to finish the remainder of these tests."
"Hey, the ability to smell is a fairly important skill, you know."
"Oh, suck it!"
Anko laughed audibly, sitting down on the floor opposite her and leaning against the wall.
"Still, I've gotta' admit… you impress me, kiddo."
Sakura's expression must've given away how much she'd been expecting that little revelation, because Anko laughed for quite a while at her expense as she tried not to blush too hard.
"S-sorry, sorry," Anko wiped a tear from her eye. "You should've seen your face though, honestly, it was-"
"You were saying earlier?" Sakura cut in with narrowed eyes.
Anko giggled quietly, but nodded, continuing from where she'd left off.
"I was just thinking… when I was your age, Orochimaru gave me a curse mark as well." Anko's face darkened slightly, though she never lost the smile that adorned her face. "He abandoned me, threw me away like trash. Instead of doing anything about it, I just sort of… rotted for a while."
Sakura sat up, giving the woman her undivided attention.
"I don't think anyone could blame me, and at the time, I received nothing but support from people all around the Leaf Village… but that didn't make me feel any better." Anko sighed, running a hand through her hair. "I think… when I'm with you, and I see you like this… I realize that this is what I could've been doing, y'know? Helping people, going on missions, training myself to be stronger instead of wallowing away in sorrow, thinking I wasn't good enough for some madman's idea of strength."
Sakura's eyes were wide as her teacher stopped briefly, gathering her thoughts before she continued.
"I think I've been doing a pretty good job teaching you, at least from my opinion, but… well, sometimes I sit here and worry… am I going to end up just like Orochimaru?" It was clear from how Anko said it that even she knew it wouldn't happen. But it, like many other fears and phobia's, was not based entirely upon reality. "I… I hate to come right out and ask for validation, or… or make you want to lie to me, or support me out of some weird guilt or anything, but…"
Anko looked right at her, an odd sense of vulnerability hanging around the woman.
"Do you think I've been doing a pretty good job as your teacher?"
Sakura sat stunned for a moment, too caught off guard by her teacher's show of weakness, however small it truly was, to think. She brought herself back a moment later, realizing that this wasn't a time where she could hesitate.
"Y-You've been doing amazing!" She shouted out, fists curling into balls as she held them both out in front of her, enthusiastically waving them around as she tried to break her teacher out of her funk. "I mean, my only other experiences with a teacher are with Iruka Sensei and Kakashi Sensei, but you're the only one of those three who really focused on me individually, and you always take time out of your schedule to help me! You've taught me a lot of awesome Jutsu, and you taught me about myself, too, and all kinds of different things!" She found herself ranting almost hysterically as she pushed further still, desperate for Anko to understand her appreciation. "But you've also joked around with me, and been a friend for me, and someone I could rely on and trust, so… so don't think that you're not doing a good job, because I think you're the best!"
The room was silent as she breathed the final line of her impromptu speech. It took a moment for a quiet laughter to break though, and she looked up at Anko's face to see the woman brush away a tear. It was an almost absent act. Sakura felt that, even having seen it firsthand, had she tried to remember the scene later, recounting it word for word, she wouldn't have believed it had been real.
"Honestly, where do you get off making a speech like that?" Anko spoke through a smile as she stood up, bracing herself against the wall behind her as she looked back down at her. "Don't think I'm going to curve your grade just because you're being a teacher's pet, little missy."
"Oh, please, like I'd need to do something like that to pass." She fired back.
The smile on Anko's face widened further as the woman stepped towards the door.
"I suppose you wouldn't, would you?" The woman laughed, placing her hand upon the handle with a delicateness that was entirely unlike her. "Alright, I'm going to get out of your hair. Get some rest, recover some chakra, and for god's sakes, take a shower."
Sakura snorted, but nodded as the woman checked for her reaction over her shoulder. As if she realized she had something more to say, Anko pulled the door back open, but hesitated in the entrance-way.
Her mentor turned back around, opened her mouth as if to speak, and then seemingly lost the words she'd meant to say.
"What is it, Sensei?"
Anko breathed out a second later, sighing slightly as various emotions played upon her features, until, at last, it seemed the woman could take it no longer.
If Sakura wasn't mistaken, then there was an actual, honest to god blush on Anko's face. To think, Sakura had found something that could actually embarrass a woman who wore nothing but a trench-coat and fishnet's not just in her own home, but out in public. Daily.
Being honest with their emotions.
"I…" She seemed to be trying to find the perfect thing to say, but a second later, she must've realized that keeping things simple was for the best. "I want the two of us to find a way to free ourselves of Orochimaru's grasp. I don't want to do it alone, either, but with your help. And…"
Anko met her eyes, smiling reassuringly.
"I want you to keep relying on me. Always."
Sakura found herself smiling as well, even giggling as she pushed herself up, and walked the distance of the room over towards her teacher. She brought her arms up and wrapped them around the woman's torso, bringing her into a tight hug.
"Of course." She answered.
She hadn't expected to be pushed away a second later, practically pried off as if Anko had been using a crowbar.
"Ack! What did I just say!" Anko coughed as she shook in place, trying to rid herself of the sweat that now caked her clothing. "You smell, and you're sweaty, don't go around hugging people when you're like that!"
Somehow, Sakura found the entire scene far too entertaining, and a giggle that broke through her defenses gradually gave way to a bubbly laugh. It hijacked her body, forcing her to brace herself against the wall beside her to keep herself upright as her body shook.
"Hey! This isn't funny, I'm going to smell like a sweaty twelve-year-old for two hours now!"
The woman's comments only made her laugh more, and by the time she realized she was far too exhausted from the day's events to be expending this much energy, she found her vision getting foggy.
Sleep threatened to overtake her in the next few seconds as she grew quiet, her laughter fading as her breaths evened out. Even Anko's complaints faded into the background. She smiled easily as the sound around her became entirely muted, snuggling up on the cold stone beneath her.
A second later, two hands gripped her from underneath her body, and she was airborne, clutched in Anko's arms as the woman carried her off to their shared room.
"Falling asleep in the middle of the hallway," She heard Anko speak from what felt like a million miles away. "Honestly, Sakura… What am I supposed to do with you?"
"Pamper me endlessly." Sakura answered almost silently.
Anko flicked her lightly on her forehead.
"Shut up, you."
Sakura could only giggle as sleep took her.
/-/
Gaara sat quietly upon a bench just outside the Sand Village's Sealing Corps workroom, doing his best not to be bothered by the lack of noises inside his head.
His siblings had gone out to get the three of them something to eat from a local shop, but that still left him on his own until they returned. Alone, both physically, and with his thoughts.
Normally, even when no one had been around, there had been a voice in his head to remind him that he was never truly alone, to whisper in his ear, now…
Now Gaara wasn't sure what to do.
He also wasn't sure if that was a terribly bad thing either.
The sound of the door opening beside him had Gaara looking up, and it was into the face of a elder member of the sealing corps, whose name he did not know.
"Right, you're good to come on in now, unless you'd want to wait for the others?"
"I'm fine." Gaara responded simply, standing, and stepping into the room. It was a fairly standard looking medics' office, though instead of the usual medical kits you'd expect to see, there were instead numerous diagrams set up on the walls, detailing different types of seals, and how they interacted with one another.
Gaara decided to cut right to the chase.
"How long will this take?"
"Shouldn't take more than five minutes, honestly." The man gestured for Gaara to lift his shirt, and Gaara did, showing off the seal on his stomach. "Hmm… yeah, I've been looking at the note the caster left, and it seems he was telling the truth. It's a relatively crude five-elements seal."
"What does that mean?" Gaara asked as he put his shirt back down.
"It means that the caster didn't lie, for whatever reason, he really did give me instructions on how to disable it." The seal master spoke, stroking his beard with one hand. "Course, I could've handled something of this level, but it's the thought that counts, really."
There was a knock on the door a second later, and the seal master let out a grunt before unlocking it.
"Sorry we're late, Gaara." Kankuro apologized as he and his sister stepped into the room, offering him an ice-cream cone, which he declined to take, as he sat down in a chair at the back of the room. "There was a huge line, you should've seen it."
"It must've been, to hold you two that long." Gaara remarked, turning back towards the older man in the room, feeling a bit more confident to speak now that his siblings were present. "Actually, sir, I wanted to wait until my siblings arrived, there's something I'd like to ask you."
The man before them seemed perplexed, but he nodded, drawing up a wheeled chair from his desk and sitting upon it, turning towards the three of them.
"Alright, kid, shoot."
Gaara took a deep breath, focusing internally for just a moment.
It was silent, and yet, over the past few days, that silence had been gradually changing for him. Where once it was maddening, driving his sanity to an almost fever pitch, now that feeling was gradually calming. It was still hard to focus, in an oddly oxymoronic way, without Shukaku's constant rambling, and yet…
He'd been able to sleep for the past few days. He'd been able to feel well rested, to feel like he was in his right mind. Even if it had taken him four hours to finally fall asleep, due to the utter quiet of his room, it had still come to pass…
He'd still been able to do it, as opposed to when Shukaku had controlled his mind.
And so to him the answer was simple, there was really only one thing to do.
"I'd like to propose leaving my seal partially locked," Gaara spoke calmly, trying to ignore the way everyone in the room turned to him with wide eyes. "Keeping Shukaku from interfering with my headspace… I'd like to leave my seal as is."
The seal master in front of him blinked, as if he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing.
"You do realize that the added seal is drastically cutting down on your power, right?" The man asked, eyeing Gaara weirdly. "If I left it, your ability to control that sand of yours would plummet, as would your chakra reserves."
"Then I'll learn to make up for both." Gaara countered simply, a serene smile set upon his features which seemed to leave his siblings floundering. "Right now… I feel an odd sense of… is this peace, perhaps?" He wondered aloud, watching as the expressions of his siblings softened. "Whatever this feeling is… I at least want to experience it a bit longer. You could undo this seal at any time, correct?"
The seal master rubbed the back of his head, seeming fairly deep in thought.
"Yeah, I suppose I could, but your father always said-"
"Our father is dead." Gaara interrupted, not quite glaring, but narrowing his eyes slightly at the man in front of him. "I will not allow him to ruin my life even now."
Instead of being offended like Gaara had thought the man would be, he received a sharp bark of laughter.
"Yeah, your old man was an asshole all right." The man's snarky grin told Gaara he'd had more than a few reasons to desire Gaara's father dead and wasn't that broken up about it now that it'd happen. "After a while, you get a bit tired repairing the same seal on an eight-year old's body, or tightening it and loosening it for experiments, and hell, that's leaving out all the other bullshit. Frankly, kid, if you want to keep that inhibitor, then you do you."
Gaara felt a small relief, but that was interrupted when the man before him leaned in, his eyes dark and foreboding.
"But know that your power will forever be dwarfed compared to what it could be. In comparison, you'd be like a sitting duck, just a regular Genin in terms of strength. You'd have to train your ass off to make up for it."
Gaara heard the man's warnings but couldn't quite muster the strength to mind that much. If it meant he got to live his life in peace, got to enjoy his time with his siblings, got some semblance of a chance to live a normal life, without his father's will or Shukaku interrupting, then…
Then there wasn't much he wouldn't give up.
"I want to." Gaara concluded.
The man sighed, but a wry smile on his face told Gaara he wasn't disappointed.
"Alright, well, I'm still going to loosen that seal as much as I can." The man spoke, turning around to his desk, and beginning to draw a small diagram on a sheet of paper. "I'll come as close to releasing Shukaku as I can, without letting the beast out of his chains. You won't quite be up to snuff to how you used to, but it should be about half your old power, as opposed to only a quarter."
Gaara smiled serenely, feeling a burden he hadn't known was there be lifted. He'd been worried about becoming an obstacle in Temari and Kankuro's way, one they'd have to look after.
"Thank you, sir."
"Don't thank me, kid." The man smirked. "You're the one that's gonna' have to live with this, I'm just slapping you in the chest with magic."
The man drew five blue flames onto his fingertips. After closing his eyes, he seemed to concentrate. The flames dimmed ever so slightly, as if decreasing in power.
"Alright, pull your shirt up one more time, be forewarned, this may feel a bit weird."
"Right." Gaara answered back, following the man's orders and bracing himself.
"Okay, here goes."
A sudden flash of… something encompassed his entire being. It felt like he was burning alive, and yet, at the same time, it didn't hurt. It was more becoming consumed in a bright warmth that was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable.
And then a second later it was over, and he felt no different to how he had before.
"What exactly did you do?" Gaara questioned, moving his arms as he tried to find if anything felt sluggish. "I don't feel any different."
"I'm guessing you haven't been playing around with your sand at all since you got back, then?"
"I saw no reason to."
"That'd be why, if you had, you'd have seen it was far different to what you were used to, in terms of your relative ability. This'll still be different, but not to the same degree." The man turned back around, wrote something on a small slip of paper, and then handed it to Gaara. "If you've got any other questions, you can come back in and see me any time, just show this to Candice at the front desk, and she'll send you right up."
"Thank you very much, sir." Temari spoke with a bow, nearly toppling her two scoops of ice-cream as she did.
"Likewise." Kankuro muttered, following his sister's example.
"No problem, hey, you take care of each other, alright you three?"
"Will do, sir." Temari spoke, and Kankuro nodded, handing Gaara the ice-cream he'd rejected earlier as the three of them stepped out of the room.
"Why are you giving me ice-cream?" Gaara couldn't help but ask as he looked up at his brother and sister.
"Well, we just…" Kankuro rubbed the back of his head self-consciously, evidently having not expected to be called out. "-thing nice for you."
"What?"
Kankuro glared at him, actually blushing.
"We just wanted to do something nice for you!" He shouted far louder than was really necessary. "There! I said it!"
"Actually," Temari spoke, a teasing smile set upon her face. "It was Kankuro's idea."
"Oi!"
A small breath of laughter escaped Gaara's nostrils, though even that alone was enough to cause his siblings to stop in their tracks. They smiled at him in an odd way, like he was a small child or an animal they'd been given custody over. He wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that, yet.
"I would like to go and try out my abilities, to see how much the loss of Shukaku has affected me." Gaara spoke simply, walking down the hallway with his siblings in tow. "I… could use training partners."
He didn't turn back to see their expressions, but judging from the way his siblings matched his pace, standing side-by-side with him, he assumed they were excited.
"Of course, we will." Kankuro smiled widely.
"That's what family's for, after all." Temari responded, an elated expression upon her visage.
Gaara smiled back, content in the knowledge that they would help him, and even more content knowing that, despite the quiet as they walked to the training ground, there was no one to break it. There was no voice to interrupt his thoughts, no worming malevolence trying to damage his psyche.
There was only he, Gaara, and his family.
Family, hm? Gaara pondered.
It sounds wonderful.
/-/
Zaku sat quietly inside of his 'room' in the root compound. It was more of a prison cell than anything else, but he was still technically free to wander around as much as he wanted, provided, of course, that he and his teammates didn't try to leave.
Not like we'd have the chance. Zaku moped silently, hitting his head on the wall behind him in a rhythmic motion. They'll torture Kin again if we try it.
The fact that the girl had come back alive at all stunned him. He'd been ready to say their entire journey was all for not when she'd been taken by Danzo's men a few days back. He and Dosu had screamed, fought, and nearly been killed themselves trying to free her, but it hadn't been enough.
And then she'd simply been dumped back into her cell, without so much an explanation as to why.
He hadn't really been in the questioning mood, either, more than willing to accept that they'd simply "gotten everything they could" out of Kin.
Even if, looking back, Zaku could tell such an excuse was bullshit.
After banging his head against the wall for a bit too long, and developing a headache that was entirely his fault, he decided that he could, perhaps, use a walk.
The Root compound might've actually been more dreary than Orochimaru's base of operations, which was really saying something. He chocked that up to the atmosphere that the people working there seemed to carry with them, which was one of cold indifference. It was notably different from how Orochimaru ruled through fear, but still fundamentally similar, Zaku supposed. The difference was in the people. Where in Orochimaru's base you had a fairly average rogue's gallery of people, from all different walks of life, here there were only trained professionals. Professionals who, from Zaku's experience, seemed to be pretty damn boring.
His steps echoed through the practically endless chasms which spanned the entirety of the root compound, built with bridges running through all different corridors, connecting them at seemingly random points.
To Zaku, at least, it seemed the person who'd designed this place was high on something, but he'd decided there were better things to be doing with his time than insulting the architect.
It was a while later when he spotted someone who shouldn't have been there.
It was a girl with pink hair, sweating profusely as black markings ran across her skin. She seemed to be focusing incredibly hard on something, although just what that something was, Zaku couldn't tell from his distance.
He decided to get a closer look.
He stalked his way into her room, and was instantly spotted by an older looking woman, who he thought he vaguely recognized, but whose name he'd either never heard, or he'd forgotten.
"You're that Zaku kid." The woman whispered, evidently trying not to break Sakura's concentration. "If you want to speak with her, wait a minute, she should finish here soon."
"Finish with what?" He murmured back, but by then, the woman had gone back to paying attention only to Sakura. "Ugh, fine."
He wasn't sure why he ended up staying around, it wasn't like he particularly cared what Sakura was here for, even if he was pretty sure it related to the curse mark Orochimaru had given her. Despite that, his feet didn't move until the girl suddenly let out a shout of pain, and crumpled to the floor, breathing hard.
"Sakura!" Her… attendant called out to her, rushing over and sitting the girl up in her arms. "You alright?"
It took Zaku a second to realize, with some small semblance of shock, that he too had stepped forward to help the pink-haired girl. He decided to pretend that hadn't happened.
"F-fine." The girl breathed out with some effort, looking down at a piece of paper on the ground that Zaku hadn't noticed at first. "But I did it, Anko! Look!"
Zaku gazed intently at the piece of paper below him. It was an intricate design of seals that, from his experience, were designed to combine chakra natures. In the middle lay a tiny, almost invisible seed, one which had a tiny leaf sprouting out of it.
"You really did!" The woman named Anko practically shouted, excitement causing her to raise her voice about a thousand decibels higher than Zaku really wanted. "That's my student! Hah!"
Sakura's laughter was cut short as she noticed him, and her face went through a wide range of emotions, not the least of which was, apparently, embarrassment. This was probably in large part due to her being held aloft in her teacher's arms.
Sakura scampered free a moment later, hitting the stone floor with a quiet "oof", before pushing herself up, walking over, and smiling up at him.
"You're OK!" She practically gasped out in relief. "I was worried they'd still be torturing you three! But… wait, they said they'd release you!"
"Uhm…"
"Yeah, thing you'll learn about Danzo is that he's trustworthy about zero percent of the time." The woman named Anko muttered matter-of-factly. "Still, good to see you're alright, kid, Sakura was panicked about you guys."
What…?
"Wait, you knew about us?" Zaku questioned. "What happened? How the hell did you even figure that out?"
"Well… long story, but the long and short of it is that I ran into Kin while she was being tortured yesterday. I… may've offered myself as a research subject so they'd let her go…"
The girl spoke as if she were embarrassed, and for once, Zaku felt he could finally understand the person in front of him.
Oh, so she's really just an idiot then. Zaku concluded. At least that makes things simpler.
"Don't sound embarrassed about saving my teammates life." Zaku chided, a bit of anger coursing it's way into his voice, though he bit down on it a moment later. "Honestly, where do you get off sounding like some kind of pure maiden! I've seen you fight, you're a vicious freakin' gremlin!"
Sakura's cheeks lit up once more, and she stared at the ground, an angry sort of pout materializing on her features.
"That was one time."
"Nope, when you fought that guy in the Chuunin Exams… what was his name… uh… guy from the leaf village who was a spy?"
Sakura seemed to blank as well.
"Eh, whatever, even back then, you fought him with all the grace of a chicken with its head cut off!"
"That's awfully subjective!"
Zaku glared at her, but relented a moment later, sighing.
"My bad."
"Er… it's fine?" Sakura seemed lost on just why he'd gone on such a tirade in the first place, and quite honestly, so was he.
A second later, he felt a mild blush come to his own face as he realized what he ought to do. He swallowed his nerve, tried to kill his embarrassment, and held out his hand.
A moment or two passed without anything happening.
"Uhm… what are you doing?"
His blush grew ten-fold, and he had to bite back a scream.
Couldn't someone just kill me!? Zaku wished. Please, it would be so much easier!
He sighed as no would-be killer emerged.
"I… I'm offering a hand-shake." He spoke, trying not to cringe at how horrible that sounded. "For… for saving Kin's life. I-I owe you one!"
He couldn't bear to open his eyes, and so he stood there, motionless, for perhaps twenty seconds, before finally, a hand reached his, taking it and shaking it a single time.
"Friends, then?"
His eyes snapped open.
"This does not make us friends!" Zaku shouted. "It means that I and my team owe you one! We'll repay a debt! That is entirely different from being friends!"
Unsurprisingly, the girl before him seemed to find all of this incredibly funny. Her laughter filled the air, and the blush in his cheeks only grew greater.
"Sorry, sorry." Sakura wiped a tear from her eye. "You just… remind me a lot of Sasuke."
The Uchiha?
"He's just like you, all edgy and worried about his image." Sakura's smirk told him she was joking. "But seriously, you're welcome. I don't know how you guys feel, but if anything, I'd like to think of my debt as being repaid, not you owing me one. I did try and kill Kin in the forest… so…"
"Eh, we probably had it coming." Zaku shook off her doubts, before his face went red again, and he turned around. "A-anyways, I'll see you around, alright?"
"Likewise!"
He walked out of the room, all too aware of the stare digging a hole into the back of his head. It wasn't Sakura's, but her teacher's. It also wasn't one of worry, or fear, or of doubt.
She was staring at him as if she had him all figured out.
He didn't quite understand why, but he could at least interpret what she might've meant. Did she think he was planning on harming Sakura in some way?
No… she didn't seem hostile, if anything, she seemed amused.
…Well, whatever. Zaku concluded. Probably doesn't matter.
Still, he couldn't help but focus on his own dumb behavior earlier. He'd acted like a complete fool, a massive, cringe-worthy fool. His own dialogue wouldn't stop playing over and over in his head, nearly causing him to tip over as he groaned out loud.
Could I have sounded any stupider if I tried? He tried to laugh it off. I mean, honestly, the way I was talking, I sounded like a kid with a schoolyard crush.
…
Zaku's eyes widened.
No. He tried to deny. No, no, no, no, no!
I do not!
His cheeks grew red, and yet, this time, he had a horrible feeling it wasn't from embarrassment at all.
Or at the very least, not the same kind as before.
She's annoying! And naïve! Not to mention that she's connected to Orochimaru, and… and…
"But she's kind, and caring, and she's beautiful too." Another voice, one that sounded annoyingly like his old friend Reis, seemed to tease him. "Honestly, what's not to like?"
Did you hear none of what I just thought!? He berated his own mind. I simply refuse! I won't fall for some… some… ignorant little child! Besides, the last thing I need right now is some boyhood crush!
His mind, as it perhaps should've from the start, offered no reply.
"Good!" He spoke aloud, breathing heavily as he walked back to his 'room'. "Glad we got that out of our system!"
…She is kind of pretty.
"God Dammit!"
/-/
"Sorry, but no, she's not here."
Sasuke watched Jiraiya visibly deflate, letting out an exhausted sigh as they walked out of the gambling parlor and back onto the busy streets.
The town they were in was one none of them had paid particular attention too. If anything, Sasuke could say that it hadn't left enough of an impression for him to remember it's name. It was a fairly standard tourist trap, with lines of shops as far as the eye could see dotting the sides of the roads. Peddlers shouted at him from all sides, asking, no, practically begging him to buy some of their wares.
Like Jiraiya and Naruto in front of him, however, he ignored them. It was, after all, an act, one they put on to entice people too kind for their own good. In his own, personal opinion, it was a disgusting and foul practice, but judging how even he had the urge to stop and purchase something more than once, he couldn't deny it must've been effective for business.
Sasuke sighed as Jiraiya caught sight of a curvaceous woman walking a few meters ahead of him, and groaned when the woman, clearly marking him as an easy target, winked and gestured him over with a finger.
"Alright, you two, this is the moment I've been waiting for my entire life!" Jiraiya the 'Gallant' told them both, turning and reaching into Naruto's pocket, and coming up with his wallet. "Wish me luck, and eh… here." Jiraiya pulled a small sum of change out of the overstuffed frog. "Get us a room, but… Hehe…" The man laughed shadily. "Don't expect me back tonight."
"Right…" Naruto spoke, squinting up at the man with a clear distaste. "Just how much of that are you planning on spending, exactly?"
"Naruto, Naruto, Naruto…" Jiraiya spoke as if he were a hermit atop a mountain, wise beyond his years. The illusion faded the moment he cracked a crooked grin. "Money is no object to a Shinobi! You should be thanking me for relieving you of your burden!"
"Why are we paid for every mission, then?" Naruto spoke, deadpan. "I suppose it's to tempt us, so that we may grow even stronger?"
"Exactly, now you're getting it!" Jiraiya hopped on over to the woman, who had, seeing Jiraiya's fat wallet, pulled her blue dress down slightly, exposing even more of her voluptuous figure.
He and Naruto simply stared for a moment, almost in awe at how easily the famed 'Toad Sage' was tricked.
"500 yen says he's back within the hour." Sasuke muttered to his friend.
"Are you kidding?" Naruto responded, cackling. "1000 yen says he's back in 15 minutes!"
"And where is that yen magically coming from?" Sasuke reminded the boy. "He just took all of your money."
"Oh…"
There was a brief moment of silence as Naruto seemed to realize just how screwed over he'd been.
"Well shit."
/-/
Naruto collapsed down upon their bed for the night with an exhausted sigh, still lamenting the loss of all of his hard-earned mission money.
I'm sorry, froggy! Naruto sobbed inside his mind. I couldn't protect you from that evil toad man!
"Y'know I feel like normally, I'd say something like "You've only yourself to blame!" or something like that," Sasuke began, gazing over at him with abject pity. "But no, you just got screwed. That sucks."
"My moneeeey…" Naruto whined as he buried his face in his pillow, letting out a fake sob. A second later, he raised his head and looked back towards Sasuke, curious about something. "What do you do with your money, Sasuke?"
"What brought this on?" Sasuke inquired, eyeing him suspiciously. "Because if you're asking me to lend you some, then I'm sorry, but your track-record on that-"
"Agh, I get it, I get it!" Naruto shouted, not wanting to hear about how he technically owed his friend about 8000 yen. "I'll pay you back… one of these days."
Sasuke merely glared at him.
"A-anyways, mind answering my question?"
"Don't think I'm forgetting about this." Sasuke growled under his breath, before taking a deep breath, choosing to let it go for the moment. "And I use them to buy ninja tools and things like that. Kunai, shuriken, they're not cheap, you know that."
"But surely that doesn't account for all your spending." Naruto spoke as he let his legs dangle off his bed. "I mean, I buy ninja tools and all that crap as well, and I was still able to save up enough to purchase a whole year's worth of ramen!"
Sasuke sighed, letting his head fall into his hands.
"You didn't think to, I don't know, upgrade your apartment or something?"
Naruto couldn't see why he'd want to do that over having an entire year filled with salty goodness but chose not to respond to the boy's comment anyways.
"So… what do you spend your money on?"
Sasuke glared at him some more, which as this point in their friendship might as well have been his default expression, before he let out a groan a second later, a small, almost absent blush coming to his face.
"I've been using my excess to… hire someone to go and clean around the Uchiha area of the village."
Naruto's eyes widened, receiving a far more depressing revelation than he'd been hoping for.
"Wait, you have to pay for it?" Naruto asked, feeling indignation swell up from his stomach. "I would've thought that the Third Hokage kept it in good condition!"
"He did, of course he did." Sasuke's words calmed Naruto's nerves slightly, but the way his face contorted told him that wasn't the full story. "Unfortunately, well… the Third Hokage can't actually come down and clean it himself, and the people who he hires to do it… well, they never do as good of a job as the place deserves."
"So you've been hiring someone to…"
"To come in and polish it all up, yeah." Sasuke brought his knees up in front of him, wrapping his arms around himself in a rare show of vulnerability. "It's a total waste of my money, and a waste of the cleaner's time, too. I get that there's no reason for it to look at all spiffy or anything but… but I can't stand the idea of my family's homes becoming some… old, decrepit ghost-town. I won't allow that to happen."
Naruto sighed, feeling a twinge of sadness inside his heart that he couldn't just ignore. Instead he decided he'd do the one thing he was best at.
Making light of a situation.
"Jeez, Sasuke." Naruto let out, faking a bit of annoyance. "Do you have to have some amazing, magnanimous goal for everything you do?"
Sasuke's glare really did carry some anger this time, and he sneered over at him as he let his legs fall back down off of the bed.
"That's a big word for you, magnanimous, where'd you hear it from?"
"Oh, making fun of my lack of big words now, are you?" Naruto harrumphed. "How original. I've never heard that before."
"Maybe if you'd actually learn one or two of them, I'd stop."
"Well, If you must know, I heard it from Pervy Sage a few days ago."
"There's no way he used the word 'magnanimous' in an actual sentence!"
"Actually, I'm fairly sure he's a writer. I see him writing in this little notebook all the time."
"Ah, so his obsession with big, needlessly complicated words is because he's a writer." Sasuke concluded. "I guess that makes sense, in an awfully stereotypical kind of way."
There was a moment of silence as they both contemplated what Naruto could only assume were very similar things.
"What would someone like him write, though?"
"Perhaps… it's best not to think about it." Sasuke added wisely. "That way lies only madness."
"Fair but firm."
There was a knock on the door a moment later, and Naruto looked to the clock on the back wall, trying to see who'd won their little bet.
"Hah!" Naruto shouted, looking back towards his friend with a victorious grin. "14 minutes. You owe me a thousand yen!"
"I never agreed to that though." Sasuke spoke with a sigh. "Well, whatever, I suppose it's fine. Gods know you need the money."
"Bet your ass I do, I'm poor now!" Naruto joked, walking over to the door and unlatching it. "Oi, Pervy Sage, you better not have spent all-"
His voice cut off as he got a look of the man stood before him. He was significantly shorter than Jiraiya, and his hair was black, as opposed to the older man's white. His eyes were fearsome as well, drawn down into an uncaring glare as he looked into the very depths of Naruto's soul. What really stood out to him, however, were the man's pupils.
They were Sharingan.
Naruto heard Sasuke let out an almost inhuman noise behind him and listened to the bed creak as the boy seemingly stood up.
"I… ta… chi." Sasuke's voice came out in a whisper, as if the boy were reliving every single experience he'd ever had with the man in front of him, who Naruto realized must have been his brother.
Naruto caught the older Uchiha's eyes widen, ever so slightly as they darted to Sasuke. A second later, however, they seemed to return to normal, as if what Naruto had seen was no more than an illusion.
From what Sasuke had told him about the man standing before him, it very well might've been.
"Well, I certainly didn't expect to see you here." Itachi Uchiha spoke apathetically, his eyes traveling from Naruto's knuckles on the door handle before him, which were rapidly becoming white, to Sasuke's own form, which seemed to tense more and more by the moment. "It's been an awfully long time."
"Yeah." Sasuke breathed out, a growl in the back of his throat as the sound of a thousand birds filled their tiny hotel room. "Too long."
The boy's teeth nearly cracked as he ground them together.
"Brother!"
End Chapter 34
Bum-bum-bum!
Yeah, not the most shocking cliff-hanger, since this happens in canon, but hey, if it ain't broke.
Not a ton to say about this chapter. Zaku has a puppy crush. Well, less puppy, more crush. Next one will obviously feature Itachi and Sasuke squaring off, but with Naruto and Sasuke's relationship, will it still go the same way it did in canon?
Oh, and about the Sakura curse mark thingy:
Obviously, in the show, Sakura doesn't have a curse mark. We only ever see Sasuke struggle with closing his curse mark the one time, the first time he really uses it, and even then, with some slight prodding from Sakura to stop, he's able to regain himself. But for Sakura, I feel like the thing she's always struggled the most in the show are her emotions, ranging from her feelings with Sasuke clouding her judgement to almost getting killed by him on the bridge during the Kage Summit arc as she knocks all her teammates out to "settle a score", and constantly wanting to catch up to Naruto and Sasuke's level.
And so I felt like playing those emotions up to 11 in this story, preventing her from acting rationally and keeping the curse mark out longer than she should. This is her flaw when using it. Obviously, the same way that Sasuke was able to circumvent his issues for a time, Sakura is also able to do this, thanks to her immaculate chakra control, which she can use to manually seal her curse mark. Of course, time will tell if that actually works in live combat.
This is a very long-winded way of saying that Sakura has different problems controlling the curse mark than Sasuke, for different reasons, and as such the curse mark will be represented on Sakura differently.
How much does any of what was just said matter? Eh... probably not a ton. But I feel like explaining myself now will prevent confusion in the future, so yeah.
See you all next week!