"Saku-nee…" Mio's voice rang out through the small garden attached to the back of the brothel. It had no doubt once been beautiful, but years of unattendance had left it an overgrown mess. Sakura supposed it was lucky it had been, otherwise she most likely wouldn't have been able to use it. She sighed, glancing over at her sister who'd managed to find her in the mess that they called a garden. The dark green grass was overgrown and ridiculously tall, numerous vines creeping up the garden walls, large plants obscuring the sliding doors leading back inside. The few benches dotted around the place were still in surprisingly good condition, but the little brick shed was ruined. Well, the brickwork, at least, was tumbling down, forming little piles of moss-covered stones here and there. She was using the neat wooden flooring as a training ground for her katas, since it was still in fairly good shape, likely thanks to the roof being intact and protecting it from the worst of the elements. It was on that wood that her sister stood, staring at her levelly with tired eyes. "Saku-nee, what you doing?" Mio yawned, scratching at her mildly spiky pink locks. "You're always out here… every night…"
She'd been in the past for weeks now, and she hadn't wasted any time in getting back into her old routines. Well, what she could do of them. She was no longer a fully-grown adult, and her limp noodles of limbs were still taking some getting used to. Still, she wanted to get some semblance of her old fighting skills back, not that she was sure she actually could. Her chakra was different, and her control wasn't coming to her as easily as it had before.
Sakura bit her lip, extending her senses as much as her new body was able – which wasn't much – to see if anyone was listening. Anyone like Root shinobi. Fortunately for her, there didn't seem to be, but Sakura couldn't be certain. Not with how terrible she was inside her new body. It would take far longer than she'd like to actually get herself to a point where she was happy with. A point where she'd be able to defend her sisters to a satisfactory degree and make no mistake she would. They were all she had, and she'd defend them to her last breath. She couldn't—wouldn't—lose anyone else. Not that there were many people left to be ripped away from her. Her torn and broken heart proved that much. Sakura wasn't sure how it was still beating. It hurt. It hurt so much. But pain was good. Pain meant that she was alive… meant that she could see her sister's smiling face as they stared at each other in the dilapidated excuse of a shed. "I'm training," she said matter-of-factly, serious black eyes boring into her sibling's matching ones. "I wanna be strong so I can protect you."
Mio tugged at her sleeve. "But it's late, Saku-nee… We need to sleepy… Mum says rest is important too."
"I'll be done in an hour, Mio…" she mumbled, moving into another stance, a strange warmth in her chest as she stared at her sister. It wasn't a lie, in an hour she'd be done with all her physical conditioning, but she'd be working on her chakra after the sun went down. She wasn't used to her new chakra. It was nothing like the cool, earthen-feeling kind she'd had in her last body. The chakra coursing through her right that very minute felt like a firestorm, and she had the distinct impression that if she didn't master it to a satisfactory degree she'd end up getting burnt… in more ways than one.
"You gonna be a shinobi, nee-san?" Mio asked all of a sudden, her black eyes alarmingly sharp for someone her age, not that Sakura could judge.
"Huh? How'd you know 'bout shinobi?" she questioned. Sakura was fairly sure she hadn't even known what shinobi were a few days ago… then again, she had been hanging out with Sasuke and Naruto, so maybe that was the explanation for that.
Mio bounced up and down. "Naru and Sasuke-kun mentioned them, so I asked kaa-chan and she told us all about them. They can walk up walls! I saw some of them too… It was so cool!" she said, practically vibrating in excitement. Sakura, on the other hand, was far more concerned about the kun on the end of Sasuke's name. She'd have to go and supervise their next outing. "Being one would be super awesome! Why wouldn't anyone want to?"
Sakura smiled softly, two fingers prodding at her sister's forehead, annoyance at Sasuke forgotten. "Silly imouto… it's a dangerous job. That's why."
"But you gonna do it…" Mio said, biting her lip. "Aren't you?"
Sakura nodded. "That's right."
"Sasuke said he's gonna be shinobi too," she chattered, glancing at Sakura all the while as she went through her exercises. "So I wanna do it too!"
Sakura's eyes narrowed, her lips ready to say no – every instinct at her was screaming at her to protect what was hers… to bundle them up in bubble wrap and cotton wool, but she knew better. She'd seen what had happened to people like that… clueless and innocent… how they'd gotten caught up in the fighting and become casualties to it. She'd seen what'd happened to people like thatShe wouldn't always be around to protect her sisters no matter how much she wanted to, especially when she went off to the Academy. They weren't exactly living in the safest area of Konoha either. Her mother had told her stories about the akasen in her last life, and none of them were good. Shady people hung around there, or so she'd been told, and more often than not, the Uchiha Police Force was called in to deal with the more significant cases. The murders, the assaults, and the mysterious disappearances.
The last one worried her the most.
So it was for the best, Sakura decided, that her sisters had a way to defend themselves… just until she could make it back to them to beat the life out of the unfortunate imbecile who dared to lay a hand on her siblings. She'd be making a statement out of the first idiot who tried.
"Then you should get stronger," Sakura said, folding her arms.
Mio's eyes seemed to sparkle. "OK."
Sakura stared at her silently for a few minutes, waiting for her sister to say something – anything, but she just stood there staring right back at her with those pleading puppyish eyes all children seemed to have. Eventually she sighed, deciding to throw her sister a bone. "Maybe try running some laps around the garden," she said, uncrossing her arms, sliding back into her katas. "You need good fitness."
::
"Kura-nee?"
Sakura blinked, eyes narrowing on her other triplet, Akira. First Mio… now Akira… "Yeah?"
Her sister opened her mouth, spewing out the last words Sakura had been expecting. "I wanna be a shinobi too – if you're doing it."
She resisted the urge to wince, ignoring the frisson of worry that ran down her spine. It was like they were growing up right before her eyes. Something told her it was only the beginning of whatever it was, and over the years she'd learnt to listen to those instincts. They'd saved her life on more than one occasion, though they weren't much help for dealing with the tiny pinkette standing in front of her, an implore-ish expression on her face. "You shouldn't do it just because I am," she said, folding her arms as she tried to nail her point into her sister's brain. "You should do something you wanna do."
Akira stared at her with those puppy dog eyes. The ones she just had to know Sakura was weak against. "I wanna be with nee-chan. Always."
Red seeped into her cheeks at that statement, and she turned away from her pleading sibling. "Fine. Run some laps with Mio… then I'll teach you some exercises, kay?"
"You're the best!" Akira yelled, bounding over to join the last of their triplet group in her exercises.
::
In all honesty, it likely said something about her life that she was utterly unsurprised at the scene which she was seeing a scant two weeks after Mio had come up to her, and all but begged her to train her. She'd seen the world at its worst. She'd walked through hell and somehow managed to come out the other side. So, she supposed, there wasn't all that much that could surprise her. Her sisters all proclaiming they wanted to follow in her footsteps wasn't that much of a surprise, though it didn't mean her heart hurt any less at the thought. She knew, she'd told herself a thousand times, it'd be better for them to become shinobi. Better for them to become strong… but the thought of them dying on the frontline, slaughtered like cattle for a madwoman's war… it made her want to rip something apart, preferably a certain black plant creature. They'd just have to become stronger. So strong they could tear their enemies apart.
Looking at them now, it was safe to say that was a long way off, but Sakura had time. Lots of it, should things go according to plan. Tsunade had taken her from a weak husk and turned her into a monster who could punch through anything and everything in her path… except Kaguya… which meant she'd be able to do the same with her sisters if she had any luck, and she knew she did. She was the sole survivor of her torn dimension, and with that experience came strength and an iron will to boot. Though her sisters might never have that exact same strength of character, they'd at the very least inherit her sheer determination if she had anything to say about it.
Running about the garden, stretching, and doing various exercises were only the beginning of that. Sakura folded her arms, eyeing her siblings as they worked, occasionally moving in to correct their stances whenever she could. She winced whenever they sparred each other. She didn't want to see them hurt, but it was necessary. Sparring aside, it was a cute sight, especially with Mio copying her stances occasionally when she thought she wasn't looking. Key word there being thought. Sakura was always watching her siblings, and they were utterly adorable. She wouldn't change them for the world. She didn't have a world to change them for. Hers would be a husk of its former glory, and the only one to bask in it would be the madwoman who'd been the cause of that war. She didn't want that world back. It wouldn't be the same anyway, no matter what she did. Her Naruto, and her Sasuke would never exist anywhere outside her memories ever again. It was just Sakura and her siblings now… and god help the person who did anything to them.
Sakura would end them in the most painful and creative ways she could think of… whether it be with sharp implements or simply stringing someone up from a tree naked. That made a massive dent in someone's pride. Kakashi-sensei had taught her well in regards to that. That lesson had been drilled in – creativity was key… and far more effective than simply beating someone up. But Sakura couldn't deny the satisfaction she'd get from her fists impacting on the unfortunate sucker who'd had the gall to insult her sisters.
Though, in hindsight, she should've been far more worried about the hell which her own sisters would unleash on Konoha.
Mio was fine – she was practically an angel. It was her other triplet which was the problem child. Akira was the Naruto of the family. A thought that made her heart pound fiercely. Naruto was gone, but embers of his Will of Fire lived on, and her sister was one of them. So when she stormed out of the house just after sundown, worry clawing at her chest, stomping furiously towards where her sister's chakra signal was coming from, she was annoyed, and unsurprised oddly enough, to find her in a gambling den.
What surprised her, and shocked her to the core, was who she was winning against – and who kept giving her sister tips on how to gamble better.
Senju Hashirama.
