Sakura was, of course, the first to arrive in the classroom.
The room itself was remarkably unremarkable. It was much like any other classroom, for all that she was currently in a restricted wing of the hospital controlled entirely by Tsunade of the Sannin. Rumour had it that the legendary medic never actually left the hospital except to go out on her wild nights of drunken gambling and debauchery, but Sakura was not sure how much of that she really believed.
After a moment's hesitation she sat down in the centre of the front row and began sorting through her inventory. Pencil and parchment quickly found their way onto her desk, as well as scrolls with introductory coursework that she had already read a hundred times over. It was strange how after spending nearly a year in the field, she still felt that same fear of being caught unprepared for an unannounced test the moment she sat down at a desk.
Slowly, students began to trickle into the room, but none of them paid her any heed. She should probably have tried to strike up a conversation with one of them, but they were all older chūnin and spending a year in a team with Naruto and Sasuke had not done much to make her more sociable. She stared at her notes some more, feeling an odd sense of shame at her reluctance.
"Hey, if it isn't everyone's favourite forehead girl! Look everyone, it's Sakura of the Haruno clan!"
Sakura's papers crumpled between her fingers as a pair of slender arms draped themselves around her neck. "Ino. What are you doing here?"
"Entering medical school alongside you, of course." The arms retreated from Sakura's neck, and there was the sound of a chair scraping as Ino sat down next to her. "Somebody has to stop you from becoming a total recluse. Besides, it'll be fun!"
"Ino, application to a medical apprenticeship is limited to chūnin only. You didn't even make it past the second round."
"Oh, but I am a chūnin," Ino said with a wide grin. She tossed back her blond locks to display a new pair of silver earrings that matched her flowing white dress. "Asuma-sensei gave us these on graduation. They're not as pretty as the ones I already had of course, but still pretty nice, don't you think? Turns out, the proctors were entirely susceptible to our argument that support ninjas cannot reasonably be expected to show off our talents in a 1-on-1 tournament, so we did a separate examination on the side. Shika aced it of course, and you could hardly separate the legendary Ino-Shika-Cho trio, so…"
"Ino, I am a support ninja! I had to fight my own teammate to get this promotion. Some of us nearly died!"
Ino looked at her with wide, innocent blue eyes. "Oh Sakura, I had no idea you were struggling so much. If you needed a handout from me, you only had to ask."
Sakura was interrupted from trying to strangle Ino in full view of the entire class by the sudden arrival of the teacher, which she rather strongly suspected was not a coincidence given Ino's sensing ability.
"My name is Katō Shizune," the teacher said as she took up position in front of the class. She looked rather unassuming, with black hair and eyes and an equally dark kimono with white trimmings. "I am Lady Tsunade's personal assistant and apprentice, and I will be guiding you through this program. I will do my best to answer any questions you have in the short time we have until the end of this session."
Don't be fooled, Ino thought in Sakura's head. That's the niece of the late Katō Dan, who was renowned as the Ghost of Konoha. Bet you ten ryō that she's actually ridiculously strong.
Be quiet, Sakura thought back. I told you Ino, I can't tell your thoughts from my own. It's really distracting.
"Lady Tsunade can usually be found within her own ward, where she conducts crucial research and medical experiments in service to the Leaf. You are not to disturb her for any reason unless I give you explicit permission. In case of any problems, you are to come to me first. I hope that's understood."
Ooh, check it out. Major hottie at nine o'clock.
Sakura glanced to the left despite herself. It took her a second to place the bespectacled older boy sitting next to her: It was that information card shark, Kabuto, who Naruto had been so suspicious of during the exams. Not that Naruto was ever not suspicious of anyone who was better looking than him, but still. In this case she thought she could see where he was coming from. There was something about that confident, winsome smile that seemed just a little too slick. I'd probably still do him, though – damn it, Ino!
What? That wasn't my thought. That was your thought. You thought that.
I most certainly did not!
"The initial focus of your training shall be on mastering the Mystical Palm technique. This technique works by carefully injecting medical chakra into the target's cells to stimulate their natural healing process. We shinobi are immune to most civilian maladies because of our unusually strong chakra, and this technique serves to amplify that effect. However, it will do nothing to heal injuries that one could not naturally recover from. Furthermore, improper usage of the Mystical Palm technique can result in uncontrolled cellular division at the local area, inflicting ravenous cancer if not worse."
Listen Sakura, I just want you to know that if you need any help coming to terms with your sexuality, I'm here for you.
Damn it Ino, don't think I won't strangle you to death inside my mind!
"You are not, under any circumstance, to attempt a medical technique on a human target without having acquired sufficient mastery first. Later in the program, you will be learning the Chakra Scalpel technique, which can help to… Miss Yamanaka, are you really going to make me do this?"
"Nope," said Ino, smiling beatifically. "I don't know what 'this' is, but it will certainly not be necessary!"
"I'm very glad to hear that," said Shizune-sensei. She glanced at her schedule with a weary expression. "I think that covers most of the standard introduction, anyway. You are expected to study the remainder of the safety instructions in your own time – I guarantee that you will be tested on this, as well as on everything else. The remainder of the day shall be spent on studying the underlying principles of medical practice as well as the basic rules governing the behaviour of medical ninjas in combat areas. You are dismissed."
"Great," said Ino, looking at her own timetable. "Looks like we have a five minute break until our next class. I know who I'll be sitting next to!" She hopped over to the seat on Sakura's left and nestled up next to Kabuto. "Hey handsome. You ever wonder what it's like to hear the voice of an angel inside your head?"
Sakura groaned. This was looking to be a very, very long year.
Sakura smiled in satisfaction at the flopping fish on her desk. It had been touch and go for a second there, for the wounds that had been inflicted on their 'patients' had been getting deeper and more complex with each iteration, but in the end she had managed to restore the site of the injury without affecting any of the surrounding organs. This had been made all the more difficult by the fact that fish could not, in fact, breathe, and so had to be continuously fed oxygen throughout the entire process.
Sakura felt a familiar presence lurking at the edge of her mind, but she flared her chakra before it could take hold.
"No fair," complained Ino, whose dead fish was staring at her with a single accusing eye. "I just wanted to know what trick you're using. You shouldn't hold out on your friends, you know." She pouted at her.
"No trick," Sakura said, smiling. "Unless of course, you count patience, hard work and actually paying attention in class as a 'trick'. Well, I suppose those things would be pretty tricky for you, so…"
The two were interrupted in their bickering when the teacher approached Sakura's desk, looking genuinely impressed. "I have never seen anyone master the Mystical Palm technique so quickly," she marvelled. "I don't suppose you've received any prior training, have you?"
"Kakashi-sensei taught me the basics," Sakura admitted, blushing. "I used it on my teammates once, but I don't think I did a very good job."
"If they didn't die you did a better job than most," said Shizune. She did not seem to notice Sakura's reflexive flinch. "Getting early practice in is nothing to be ashamed of. The key to being a great medical ninja is hard work and focus, and I'd say you already show great potential."
Sakura smiled brightly, more from the invectives that Ino was thinking at her than the compliment itself.
The teacher seemed to think something over, for she was quiet for several seconds. "Your name is Haruno Sakura, isn't it? Could I speak to you in private?"
"Of course," said Sakura, already getting up. "I'd be more than happy to." Though not nearly as happy as Ino resentful thoughts were making her. She pictured herself sticking her tongue out at Ino as she nearly skipped after her teacher.
A short walk later saw them in Shizune-sensei's office, who closed the door to the office behind them. "It's about Lady Tsunade," she started. "I've been stretched thin lately with my responsibilities as a doctor and teacher, and I fear I've been neglecting my duties to her as her personal assistant."
Sakura's eyes widened. "You want me to assist Tsunade of the Sannin?"
"You wouldn't have to do much," Shizune said hastily. "Just help me deliver some items to her now and then, and promise not to tell anyone about the, ah, circumstances around the delivery." She sat down in her office chair, deep bags appearing underneath her eyes as she released the transformation technique that she must have been maintaining the whole time. "There used to be others assistants, but I fear Lady Tsunade can be somewhat… difficult to work for. I need someone who I can trust to be discrete."
"Of course," Sakura said reflexively. "I'll help however I can."
"You will?" Shizune's eyes seemed to regain some of their energy. "Oh thank you, Sakura, that's such a relief." She retrieved a sealing scroll from a drawer and handed it to Sakura. "All you have to do is go to her office and leave this at her desk. She probably won't be in, so just make sure nobody sees it or takes it from you."
"Of course," Sakura said again. She doubted the scroll could really be all that secret if she was allowed to just leave it in an empty room, so it was probably just a personal matter. Come to think of it, she was rather surprised that there were no seals in Tsunade's office to keep her out in the first place. "Shizune-sensei," she said after a moment's hesitation, "could I ask you about something unrelated?"
"Go ahead," she said. "The walls here are sealed – you can ask anything you like."
"About your abilities – I heard a rumour that you're able to use the Poisoned Wind technique. I was wondering… is it by any chance true that you're also able to imbue your weapons with this technique so that they can release a cloud of poison when desired?"
"What?" She blinked. "Where did you… No, I suppose there's no point in denying it if I'm already trusting you with Lady Tsunade." She rubbed her temple with her fingers. "I must be getting careless. Please don't tell anyone else about that: A shinobi's life is measured by their secrets, as they say. When you run out, you die."
"Of course," said Sakura, her heart pounding. Naruto was right. He was right all along.
As she left the room and headed for Tsunade's office, she did her best to recall his exact words: "Dividing techniques into just five elements always seemed really arbitrary… I figured the way it really works is you have one jutsu for controlling fire, one for creating shadow clones and one to make poison clouds and so on, and all those different 'techniques' for making bigger or smaller attacks are just variations of the same basic thing."
What did that imply? When Naruto claimed to have created 'light release' as well as 'explosion release' during the chūnin exams it had struck her as simple bluster. Combining a flash-seal on your palm with an academy-level technique to bend light around your body was a mere trick. An ingenious trick, yes, but it was not the same as learning a real technique. Even when she watched him fight in that arena against Gaara, it had seemed to her that he was merely using cleverness to compete with the Sand ninja's true power.
But if Naruto was right then there was no difference. The two were exactly the same thing: Shizune sensei had mastered poison-release without even realizing it, imagining instead that she had simply learned a number of poison-related techniques. That meant that she could use it like any other elemental nature, even combine the technique with shadow clones to get poison-clones if she wanted to, and that meant that… everything Sakura had been taught at the academy was a lie. Techniques were not distinct. Abilities were not unique. It was all a lie spread by the strongest ninjas in the world, the ones who did understand and who were desperate to keep that knowledge to themselves.
The thought occurred to her that you could not possibly keep such a thing secret forever, no matter how powerful you were or how eager to assassinate anyone who defected from that unspoken agreement. But what you could do was to spread so many lies and misinformation that nobody trusted anything anymore. Create a deliberate culture of paranoia so that anything more complicated than the most simplistic model of reality would be mistrusted, weakening your own country just to hold on to power…
How much of it? How much of what I thought I knew has been a lie? How big a fool have I really been?
She arrived at a pastel green door with Tsunade's name on it, barely having registered the indistinguishable white corridors that had let her to this point. She knocked tepidly on the wood, and did it again more loudly when she received no answer. A light push caused the door to creak open.
This can't really be the office of one of the legendary Sannin, can it?
She peered inside, but could see little in the darkness. She tried to ignite the gas lamp on the ceiling, but aside from some clicking sounds the mechanism produced no effect. This room must still be under maintenance, she decided. No wonder there are no seals in place to keep me out.
As she entered further into the room the sharp smell of alcohol invaded her nostrils, and as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light she realized that the entire room was stained and littered with broken glass: Old medical bottles that had been broken and left there by careless workmen, no doubt.
The door slammed shut behind her, and Sakura jumped inside her skin. She turned around to find a wiry old woman lying on the floor in a corner of the room, her leg still extended from where she had kicked shut the door. There was a bottle in her hand; one of the few ones in that room that was not yet broken.
"Oh, I'm very sorry," Sakura said hastily. "I did not see you there, obasama. I have a scroll with me for lady Tsunade. I don't suppose you would know where she is right now?"
The old woman stared at her for a long moment, and then held up an open, greasy palm.
"I suppose you're offering to give it to her when you next see her," said Sakura. "That's very kind of you, but I was told to give it to her personally. So I shall just take it with me and return later, shall I?"
The old woman raised a single eyebrow. Sakura stared back at her, defiantly.
"I am Tsunade," the woman said at last.
"Right," said Sakura. "Of course you are. I knew that. No really, I did. I just thought it would be good to have some confirmation before I accidentally embarrassed myself by confusing you with your crazy old aunt or something." She held out the parchment, which Tsunade instantly snatched from her hands.
The woman unrolled the scroll and began touching each of the seals inscribed on it. Plates and bowls laden with food began to pop into existence and were immediately tossed aside. There was plain fare in there like rice balls and a steaming bowl of Miso soup that Sakura only barely managed to catch in time, but there were also far more exquisite delicacies such as Sashimi and an endless variety of grilled vegetables and fried dumplings that could have fed Sakura's family for days.
At last the torrent of dishes came to a halt, and the old woman shook the scroll above her head in frustration. "Is that it? Where's the booze?"
"If you mean alcohol," Sakura said archly, "I think you've had enough." She set aside the soup and picked up the bottle which Tsunade had been holding. She stared at the label in horror: It really was rubbing alcohol, as she had feared. "Have you been drinking this? Lady Tsunade, that's mad – you'll go blind!"
She sniffed. "Wouldn't need to drink it if useless bloody Shizune would just do her useless bloody job." She tossed the empty scroll at Sakura, which she did not even bother to dodge as it merely fluttered to the ground at her feet. "'sides, it's not like I can't just heal it. I'm the world's greatest medic, you know." A crooked smile appeared on her lips. "Watch, I'll show you a neat trick." She retrieved a kunai from her green haori, and before Sakura could say or do anything she had stabbed herself in her own eye.
"Seventh Path!" Sakura's hands flew to her mouth in horror. "Are you insane?"
"No, no, is fine," she mumbled. "Watch." She touched the diamond shaped mark on her forehead with a finger, and all of a sudden purple lines began spreading out across her skin. Wherever the lines touched her body seemed to be invigorated, and one by one the signs of age began to vanish. The bags beneath her eyes disappeared as her loose skin grew taut, and even though mucus bubbled up from the wound in her eye Sakura could see that the gap itself was closing. By the time the purple lines retreated, an athletic young woman stood before her, with luxurious blond pigtails and a truly voluptuous pair of breasts.
"That," said Sakura, "that's impossible."
"Not impossible," Tsunade said, smiling crookedly. "Just very, very hard – unless you're the world's greatest medical genius, that is." She scanned around the room, and her eyes suddenly widened in horrified realization. "Oh Sage! I think I've gone and accidentally made myself sober."
"You used your Creation Rebirth technique," Sakura said slowly, still coming to terms with what she had just witnessed. She would have found it hard to believe she was even still talking to the same old woman if not for the cold and jaded look that had remained in the Sannin's eyes. "But, your yin seal – you must have spent ages charging it with chakra, and now you've used up so much!"
"Pfff, that bloody thing? What else am I going to use it for? It's not like I'm a ninja anymore." Tsunade stood up with youthful vigour and began to rummage through the medical equipment displayed on the shelves and cabinets all around her. "Blast it, there has to be something here which I can use to distil alcohol. Is this a place of science and progress or not?"
Sakura stared at her former idol in amazement. At least she had stopped drinking medical ethanol, she supposed. "What do you mean you're not a ninja anymore? I mean, sure, you don't fight on the frontlines, but you're still a legendary shinobi. You heal the ninjas who fight for Konoha, and that's basically the same thing…"
Tsunade spun on her. "The hell it is! I take no responsibility for anyone I may or may not have healed. I spent a decade convincing the council that creating a medical corps was worth it, and look how they treat me. You can all fall on your swords for all I care." She grabbed a green bottle from a shelf and looked at it in distaste. "Embalming fluid? No, that won't work…"
Sakura placed her hands on her hips. "Why can't you just buy your own alcohol? It's not like you're too embarrassed to be seen outside."
"Because that bloody thief stole all of my money!" Tsunade slammed the bottle onto her desk, causing a crack to appear in the bottom and leaving a rather significant dent in the wood beneath it. "She put me under curatorship, like I'm some senile old woman who can't take a shit without a full medical team to support. And she won't even use it to buy me anything good!"
"She? You mean Shizune-sensei?" Sakura frowned. "It sounds to me like she's protecting you from yourself, which is exactly what a true friend should do. You're very lucky to have someone like her, Tsunade-sama."
"She's moral fucking busybody is what she is." She yanked open a window to let in more light, glaring only briefly against the afternoon sun before giving up on the staring contest. "She took all my money, and where is it now? Who knows! But I'll bet she has herself a nice new house by now."
Bile was rising up in Sakura's throat, too much even for her prodigal allowance to contain. "Don't talk about Shizune-sensei like that! Can't you see how much she cares for you? She is running the whole hospital in your name while you're wasting away, even covering for you so people won't realize the state you're in…"
"I never asked her to do any of that," Tsunade muttered. "She's just a little puppy that keeps following me around because she's too dumb to realize why she keeps getting kicked." She held up a vial of pale liquid, examining it against the sun. "Distillation is just a matter of concentrating the alcohol level, isn't it? So if I were to run a lightning-style current through this, and then separated the vapours…"
"Tsunade-sama, don't. You're going to get yourself killed."
She snorted. "You even sound like her, now."
"Well, good. Somebody ought to be here to tell you the truth." She glared at the buxom blond woman in front of her. "You know, I used to idolize you when I was younger. Tsunade of the Sannin, one of the three heroic students of the Third Hokage who went around saving the world…"
She burst out laughing. "Heroic – oh, that's a laugh! Really, is that what they tell you at the academy?"
"I know the team fell apart after Orochimaru turned evil," Sakura protested. "But that doesn't change all the good things you did before that. One of my teammates was raised by your friend Jiraiya, and he's still as much of a hero as ever." Though even as she said that, she recalled her own words to Naruto: "Well then he is just as mad as you are! This whole world is insane, and you're the worst of them all!"
"Jiraiya! A hero!" She laughed again. "It sounds like he's starting to believe his own useless stories. Do you wanna know what his 'top secret S-ranked missions' really are about?" She leaned towards Sakura with a conspiratorial look in her eyes. "Retrieving me. Retrieving a crucial Village asset! That's what they call it." She turned and hurled the vial out the window. "Every time I manage to sneak out to get decently drunk off my rocker – you know, play some games and just forget about my troubles for a while – they send him after me. And each time I run away a little bit farther, and each time I think to myself that this time he won't find me. This time I'll be free. And then I look up, and there he is, already waving a drawing of some poor half-dead orphan boy in my face."
There was a dangerous expression on her face as she imitated his voice: "Oh Tsunade, you're the only one who can save him! Why don't you come back, just for a little while? His parents would be ever so grateful, and have I mentioned how the kid kind of looks like your dead fucking baby brother."
Sakura looked at her with renewed horror. "He uses your dead brother to make you come back?"
"Not just him!" Tsunade seemed to be working herself into a proper fury now. "My husband, too! The person I was going to marry, the only man who shared my dream of founding a medical corps. But Jiraiya just goes, oh Tsunade, he wanted to be Hokage so badly, don't you want to honour his memory?"
Sakura felt sick to her stomach. "That's awful. He shouldn't use their memories against you like that. That's just wrong."
"Oh, but it's all for the greater good of Konoha," Tsunade said with a twisted smile. "But wait, it gets better: When he brings me back, he gets paid for it! He gets paid a small fortune for his troubles, and I get a line of bodies shoved under my face and I'm told to go fix them. After a while, I can't even remember which ones I saved and which ones I didn't." She collapsed into her chair, the anger seeming to have drained out of her. "And I don't even get to have a fucking drink."
Sakura fell silent, finally at a loss for what to say. For a moment she had almost thought herself like Naruto, screaming all her anger and resentment at the nearest authority figure she could find. But this… this felt almost familiar. It was just like that time when Kakashi-sensei had first shown her the Mystical Palm technique, and through his stories of the past revealed himself to be just another mortal man.
This time, she did ask the question she had meant to ask back then. "How did they die?"
Tsunade glanced up at her, looking too drained to be angry at the directness of the question. "My little brother, Nawaki, died storming off into battle the first chance he had. They had filled his head with stories of heroism and I, fool that I was, thought his wide-eyed idealism too cute to teach him better." Her eyes narrowed, and some of her earlier rage seemed to return to her. "Dan, though…" Her hands gripped the edge of her desk, and the wood began to splinter under her grip. "Dan was known as the ghost of Konoha because of his spirit transformation technique, which allowed him to project his spirit and even possess the bodies of his enemies. Orochimaru wanted that technique. He had always wanted that technique, but Dan refused him every time. And then one day he just… disappeared."
"You think Orochimaru killed him?"
"I know Orochimaru killed him!" The desk groaned dangerously under her assault, and she forcibly pulled her hands away before it shattered into pieces. "He even took the First Hokage's sealing crystal that I inherited and which I had given to Dan as a token of our engagement." There was a dangerous glint in her eyes as she looked at Sakura. "As the Sage is my witness, or by whatever thing of value there is left in this world for a ninja to swear on, I will wrap my hands around that snake's neck and squeeze."
Sakura took a deep breath. All of this was becoming rather heavier than she had intended. "Well," she said lightly, "if you do ever fight him, it sounds like you could use some help from your friends. So I hope that if that does happen, you'll wait for us all to fight together rather than just running off in a drunken fury."
Tsunade stared at her for a long second, and then she burst out laughing. "Friends? I don't even know your name."
"I was thinking more of Shizune-sensei," said Sakura. "But my name is Haruno Sakura, lady Tsunade."
"Haruno Sakura," she said, a smile appearing on her lips. "All right, Haruno. Next time you come here, remember to bring something to drink and I just might come to tolerate you." For a moment her expression seemed to soften, but then her eyes suddenly widened. "Wait, I've got it! If I can regenerate from being drunk, then I can also regenerate my cells into an already drunken state. How come I never thought of that before? This solves all of my problems!"
Sakura groaned. It was looking to be a very long year indeed.