Diet Soda Society
"My mind is on the brink of supernova"
Nothing was going right. Well, maybe that was dramatic of me. After all, I'd basically been the top of the class at every other subject. But damnit, why couldn't I be good at chakra?
I came back from school the day we'd tried the transformation jutsu in a dismal mood. Tsunade, who was picking me up from the Academy in the afternoons now, shrugged me off when I told her about it. She had been so distant ever since she'd gotten home from the war. These days I always felt my words drifted through her like smoke in the wind.
Thus instead of venting profusely to my cousin, I saved my frustrations for Biwako. Thankfully, she listened. I burst through the doors to the Sarutobi household, dangerously close to tears, and gave her my full tale of woes.
In response, she frowned.
"You? Chakra problems?" she muttered, like the entire concept didn't make sense to her. Then her hand blue and pressed against my forehead. Her palm felt oddly warm against my skin.
"Is there something wrong?" I asked, apprehensively.
She lowered her hand, shaking her head. "You're not sick, and you've got plenty of chakra circulating your system," she told me, always with the matter-of-fact tone.
"Then why can't I do jutsu?"
"If it's not your body, it's your mind," Biwako scoffed. "Maybe some meditation will help."
That had been exactly what Jin-sensei had said, but it didn't sit quite right with me. I'd never been more focused on achieving something before in my life. How could this possibly be some sort of... concentration problem? Nevertheless, I had to try. I spent the rest of the night in a meditation pose, going through the hand signs for the transformation jutsu to no avail.
I was at a complete loss.
Feel your chakra Natsuki, I told myself, but there was nothing there to feel. It was like day camp, back at home, when the counselors told us to go snipe hunting. No matter how much evidence people presented to convince me that my charka existed, that it was there, I still felt like I was looking for something imaginary. Closing my eyes to reach for it felt stupid. My new body didn't really feel any different from the last one, so how was I supposed to tap into these hidden super powers?
It was incredibly frustrating.
When I went to school the next day, Jin-sensei had a new exercise for me to try during lunch time, but once again I was unsuccessful. Jin-sensei was completely beside herself. By the end of the session, she was had summoned the school nurse, Rika-san, with my medical records to try and shed some light on things.
Two nerve-wracking medical exams later (I still hated all things to do with doctors), she turned out to be equally unhelpful.
I dragged my feet leaving the Academy that day. Unlike me, Asuma was starting to show some progress, and I was feeling very bitter. On my way out though, I happened to bump into Guy doing pull ups on a door frame. He'd been absent from chakra training today, just like the one before. As always, Guy was off working on his taijutsu.
I don't know exactly what hit me, as I stood there, watching Guy's crazy training. Instead of continuing out the door, where Tsunade was undeniably waiting for me, I decided that it'd be a good idea to stop to chat.
I was going to regret this later.
"Hey Guy-kun," I paused.
"Fifty thr- oh hi Natsuki-chan!" he said looking over his shoulder. "One moment please, I need to get to one hundred before I take a break."
I waited as he pulled his little body up and down forty-seven more times. Towards the end, he was getting worn out. His little arms shook badly, and sweat was rolled down the back of his neck. Still, nothing was going to stop Guy. He finished out the set like a champ, just like he said he would. I had a feeling that this was just a mid-day warm up too. Usually when he set his rep goals in the 500 range.
Once he finished, he dropped down to the ground beside me.
"Because I was able to do 100 pull ups, now I'll only do 200 laps," he grinned at me with a signature thumbs up. "I'm getting stronger every day."
"Yeah," I scratched the back of my head. "About that. I was wondering if maybe I could tag along one of your work outs some time?"
The smile on Guy's face bloomed instantly. I might as well have asked him to be in my wedding ceremony. He was literally that happy. "Of course Natsuki-chan! My Dad says the springtime of youth is always better with a friend. We can push ourselves to be stronger together," he said enthusiastically.
"Um, great," I smiled weakly. If I couldn't be good at chakra, then I might as well invest in my strengths. From the beginning I'd never wanted to become a taijutsu specialist, but that didn't mean it was beneath me. I was going to get that headband one way or another. If training with Guy was my only option, I'd train with Guy. "Let's start tomorrow."
"I look forward to it!" he grinned.
I nodded and then continued on to go find Asuma and Tsunade.
The next two weeks were a little bit better than the previous ones. Not much changed when it came to chakra training, but I've got to say, training with Guy turned out to be a better idea than I'd ever imagined. Even in a village of crazy ninja, Guy's training habits were probably amongst the extreme of the extremeists. He was constantly tacking on extra exercises to his work outs - going the extra mile, literally.
When I started hanging out with him after school, I felt the consequences immediately. My entire body rebelled against me. I used to think training with Asuma was bad, but boy was I wrong. The day after my first foray into Guy's daily routine, every muscle and ligament of my being ached. Asuma took it as an opportunity to torture me. Ninja kids spent a lot of time play-ambushing each other, and I was suddenly too achey to fight back properly.
Of course, as the days started to pass, I got used to the soreness in my joints. In fact, it actually felt good to wake up to a new pain. Every ache I fostered now would eventually bloom into newfound strength. With the struggles I was having with my chakra, feeling like I was making progress, even in another area, was everything.
So I started falling into a new routine. In the morning, I'd go to school with Asuma. After school, I'd train with Guy. When the work out was over, Tsunade would pick me up and we'd go back to my house for dinner. Then I'd spend the last few hours of the night reading a book or playing a game with the boys. Weekends became my rest days. I spent them with my family, only carving out an hour or two for stretching and recovery work.
Interestingly enough, Guy, of all people, was adamant that I didn't overdo things.
"Youth is most beautiful when it's healthy," he told me sagely during our first training session. "When you change your training schedule, you have to be careful not to injure yourself!"
Vaguely, I wondered how many times he had injured himself learning this lesson.
Still, I wasn't going to complain about some time off. Throughout my childhood, weekends had always been reserved for my family. It was nice to have some consistency remain, even now after the war had taken so much from us.
It wouldn't last. I guess change is unavoidable sometimes.
"Nat, come walk with me, I want to talk with you," Tsunade poked her head into the living room.
Like I said, weekends were my rest days - and today was no different. It had been a normal Saturday morning, up until Tsunade's surprise visit. I had gotten up, done some stretches, and eventually found myself on the couch with a book. Asuma was playing a single-player strategy game on the floor with some colored tiles. Everything was as it should be.
It was unusual for Tsunade to come over randomly like this though. Recently she'd been spending more and more time holed up in her house, alone or with Shizune. Outside of her daily excursions during the week to pick me up from school, I only got to see her if I sought her out.
I'm not going to lie. She was really starting to worry me. As the days rolled by, there was no improvement to her mood or attitude. Lord knows that Shizune and I tried to keep her engaged, but there was only so much the two of us could do. I think she still viewed both of us as children. We were either too young or too naive to understand her.
However, today was different. For once, my cousin looked present. There was color in her cheeks, and her eyes were looking at me, not off into the distance. I wouldn't say that she looked happy necessarily, but there was an air of content around her. It was an abrupt change from the unresponsive ghost she'd been the past few weeks.
"Alright," I nodded.
She led me outside and down the street. I waited for her to start the conversation, but she didn't. Instead we walked in a peaceful silence that seemed to fit the mood of the day. The sun was out and there was a calm over the village that reminded me of the good old-days, before the war. The impatient part of me desperately wanted to know what Tsunade was up to, but suddenly, I didn't want to disrupt the moment.
Eventually, we wound up in an outer part of the village, close to some of the ninja training grounds. Tsunade had us turn onto a side street, leading us towards a small wooden bench that overlooked one of Konoha's various parks. It was rather secluded- a place we could talk without worrying about any sort of disruption.
"Sit for a minute?" Tsunade nodded towards the bench. Wordlessly, I pulled myself up onto the seat, while she plopped down beside me. Her eyes were staring out towards the field, as if she could see something there that I couldn't.
"I used to have picnics here with your parents," Tsunade said suddenly. I looked at her and blinked. I didn't know what I was expecting from her, but this wasn't it. "It was right after they started dating, and your dad wanted to show her that he was serious, or something mushy like that. He would always make a big basket full of food, and we'd sit while Nawaki ran around in the grass. He was smaller than you back then. My parents were alive too, and they'd tease Kojirama and Mura that they needed to get used to chasing toddlers around. We went every Sunday."
She shook her head and closed her eyes.
"Like we always used to go to the park on Sundays?" I asked quietly. She nodded, and for a brief moment, I thought I could see the ghost of every person Tsunade had ever lost in the shadows of her face. I had been so focused on Nawaki and Dan that I'd forgotten Tsunade had been born when the Senju clan had still been at large. The first Hokage had been her grandfather. She'd known him, his wife, her parents. She'd known Tobirama, and his children, and his children's children. There'd been others too- cousins, and cousins of cousins, branches of the Senju clan that could be traced to a common relative generations back. I'd read books about a Senju clan that had been so big it could've populated a quarter of the village all by itself.
All of them were dead now. Tsunade had been to each of their funerals during her short life. That's why Nawaki had been so important to her, because he'd been the last living part of her family. He'd been someone to share that burden with her. Dan too. He'd understood her so well that she was going to make him family.
Tsunade was the opposite of me, I realized. I had left everything I knew behind when I'd died. I got to start over in a new life, knowing that my family was out there somewhere, learning to move on without me. Tsunade had been the one left behind though, by absolutely everyone she'd ever cared about. There was no comfortable knowledge that they were all okay somewhere just beyond her reach. She was just simply alone. I stared at her for a moment, and then looked at the park again.
"You're leaving aren't you?" I said, feeling my voice crack. I'd been worried about this, but I didn't think it'd happen so soon. She'd been back for what, two weeks, three maybe? I hadn't really had any time with her at all.
Tsunade opened her mouth, surprised. "I- uh. Yeah, I am."
"Ah."
I didn't know what to say. I had thought that maybe if I'd been able to fill all the gaps in Tsunade's heart, that she'd be happy again and would stay. There were too many holes to fill though. I wasn't enough.
"It won't be forever," Tsunade said, sounding guilty. "I'll stop by and visit whenever I'm in the area. I just, I can't stay here anymore Nat. You'll understand one day... Everywhere I go reminds me of people that I lost. It hurts, in here." Her hand went to her necklace. She was crying.
"Where will you go?" I asked sullenly.
"I don't know. Everywhere?" she answered with a shrug. "I've always wanted to travel, you know. It was my dream to see all sorts of different towns and villages." She smiled, just talking about it. "I want to try dango for you from every nation. Sarutobi-sensei's already given me permission and everything."
"Well... what if I came along with you too?" I asked impulsively. "You can't go see everything all by yourself. I could keep you company, and we can go to a new park every Sunday, just like before and-"
Tsunade leaned forward and kissed my forehead suddenly. "You don't actually mean that kiddo," she smiled. "If you came with me, you'd have to say goodbye to Asuma and Isamu and Biwako. You wouldn't be able to become a ninja. You wouldn't be happy. You belong here, okay?"
"But you can't go alone," I muttered, knowing in my heart that she was right.
"I won't be," she snorted. "That Shizune is insisting that she tag along. She said I need somebody to take care of me out there. She... she lost a lot in the last war too. I don't think I'm going to be able to convince her to stay."
"Oh..." I said.
We sat in silence for a few more minutes after that. My eyes were pinned to my feet while my stomach felt like it was swirling in knots. Tsunade was watching me silently. She seemed like she might've felt guilty for this, but at the same time, she wasn't going to change her mind. She felt trapped here in the village. Now that the thought of freedom was stuck in her head, nothing would keep her from it.
"Come on," she said after a few minutes. "I'm going to take you out for dinner. Then we'll hit up the book store. Okay?"
I nodded, numbly, and started following her back towards the village center. The rest of the evening drifted by like a dream. We went through the motions of a normal afternoon, but everything felt so final. When we walked into her favorite ramen store, I realized that it wouldn't be the same dining there without her. Stopping by the park almost felt like an empty gesture without Asuma and Nawaki there with us. Even the book store didn't cheer me up much. All I could think about was how my little bubble of perfection here in Konoha hadn't lasted very long. Nawaki was gone and now Tsunade was leaving me.
Why couldn't I have done more?
Two days later, I found myself standing outside of the Konoha gate with Hiruzen, Biwako, Orochimaru, and the boys. Tsunade and Shizune were waving as they walked further and further down the road, off to run away from their grief. Hiruzen and Biwako actually didn't seem to be in poor of spirits seeing them off. Interestingly enough, Orochimaru and I were probably sour enough for the whole lot of us.
"Try and be happy for her Natsuki-chan. This is what she wanted," Hiruzen said as I rested my head on his shoulder. I hadn't cried during our goodbyes, but I definitely felt close. If Hiruzen wasn't holding me right now, I might've actually felt like breaking.
On his other side, Orochimaru let out a disgusted snort - though he didn't say anything. Hiruzen shot him a look, and they exchanged something silently.
"I'm going back to work sensei," Orochimaru said suddenly before sweeping down the road. Hiruzen watched him carefully as he left, but quickly turned back to me. I was too emotionally exhausted to worry about the exchange.
"When you see her next, she'll be happier. Trust me," he said quietly. "Sometimes the best healing for someone like Tsunade is a bit of fresh air."
I nodded, and tried to listen to him. Maybe he was right and my sulking was purely selfish. Guess it didn't matter in the end - she was gone either way.
Tsunade leaving felt like an important turning point in my life. It was the end of a chapter filled with war and pain and loss. The minute she exited the gates of the village, life really could truly fall back into routine. There was no more urgent change looming on the horizon, no constant worry about friends not returning home and family not being okay.
I didn't feel like the same person I'd been when I first woke up in this world, and I wasn't quite sure what that meant. The one thing I did know for sure was that my days of being the helpless were finally numbered. The next time the world turned on it's head, I wasn't going to be confined to a hospital bed or a crib. I was going to be a ninja, able to fight back.
With that knowledge in my back pocket, I forged forwards.
Biwako was finally settling into a somewhat normal schedule. She worked at the hospital the way my last mother worked in the office everyday. She'd get up in the morning to take us to school and be back home for dinner. Hiruzen also started to be more present at home - or at least he was around in the same quantity that he used to be before the war. The village was had officially transitioned back into peacetime.
Asuma could finally be pissy about his Hokage father missing dinner again. Somehow I found his moodiness over this nonsense endearing now.
Meanwhile, there was a stark shift in the way the two of us were treated. The house didn't revolve around our wants and needs like it once did. Chores that belonged to Isamu a life time ago were suddenly handed down to us now that he was taking missions on a regular basis. While Asuma whined about it incessantly, I didn't think it was so bad. With the added responsibility also came a great deal of freedom. We were now allowed to come and go as we wanted, as long as either Biwako or Isamu was kept updated on our location.
To Asuma, that meant we could go and play with our friends from the Academy at our leisure. To me, it meant a good deal more. I could more or less get permission to go anywhere, excusing my absence as "training". Half the time, of course I was being honest there - Guy and I took no breaks - but I usually stayed out longer than was actually necessary when I could. I finally got to explore the village without a babysitter. It almost made me feel like half an adult again, finally being able to be completely alone with my thoughts. Long winding walks through the Konoha streets became a regular habit for me.
Most of the time, these walks were rather uneventful. Just me taking some time to enjoy the peace of the day. But every now and then, I'd happen upon something half interesting. One particular day, for instance, I was taking the long way home from an evening of running with Guy when I turned the corner and noticed a bulky figure laying in the grass.
It was an odd place to run into somebody. Guy and I had raced pretty far into the outskirts of the village during our work out, and I was taking a pretty secluded path back home. Maybe if I'd walked past someone on the road I would've thought nothing of it. Given that the man was just sprawled out on the hillside though, my curiosity had idly been peaked.
Pausing, I stared at him for a moment. A few things were immediately obvious. For one, I'd happened upon a ninja, probably chunin or jonin in rank. He was wearing a traditional flak jacket and Konoha blues, and he had a white sleeve with red spiked trim poking out from his left shoulder side. Second, I think I recognized him. His hair was the same color white as mine, and longer too. It was pulled back into a spiky pony tail that was frayed out above his head. His mouth had deep lines around it, and the bags underneath his eyes were noticeable. If I had to guess I'd say he was probably about thirty? Maybe thirty five?
Something was clearly off with him.
His dark eyes were staring up at the clouds almost lethargically. It was like he wasn't there in the grass at all, but off somewhere else instead. The breeze was gently disturbing the grass around him, yet he could have been dead. He was lying so still. Looking at him made me feel inexplicably sad, and I suddenly felt like I was intruding on his privacy. Yet at the same time, I couldn't move my feet to leave him in peace.
I resolved after a moments deliberation that I needed to check on him. It just seemed the right thing to do.
"Um, excuse me sir, are you alright?" I asked tentatively.
The man didn't move right away, but the minute he heard my voice, his entire being came to life. The ghostly look vanished all at once as he buried whatever emotion he'd been feeling like a reflex. I might have brushed off the moment for some trick of my imagination if not for a nagging feeling in my gut.
"Mm, yes, I'm sorry. Just cloud watching," he said, sitting all the way up. Once he was half vertical, I realized almost immediately who I was talking to.
"You're Kakashi's father!" I exclaimed suddenly. I don't know how I could have missed it. He was literally the spitting image of my classmate. In fact, I think I'd seen him picking up Kakashi a few times from the Academy.
The surprise lasted for all of ten seconds before quickly transitioning to something to the effect of "oh shit".
Let's think about timing okay? The war was over, Tsunade had just left the village, Kakashi was in the Academy, and I'd just caught the village's favorite scapegoat looking unusually sullen in a grassy field. My stomach twisted as I looked at the man like a deer in the headlights. What are you supposed to say to someone you know is probably suicidal?
"Yeah I am. Are you in Kakashi's class? I don't think we've met," Sakumo blinked at me. Whatever he'd been thinking about a moment before was seemingly gone from his mind. There really wasn't a trace of sadness left on his face. Then again, ninja were notoriously good at covering up their emotions. If he was suffering with depression, I'm sure he'd make a point to ensure nobody knew about it. I could almost imagine the loneliness he was probably feeling.
"Oh yeah, sorry. My name is Natsuki Senju. It's nice to meet you Hatake-san," I corrected myself quickly, giving him a respectful bow. I had to make sure I was following all my formalities correctly. Otherwise Biwako wouldn't have been happy with me.
"Please call me Sakumo-san," he gave me a warm smile. "It's always nice to meet a friend of my son's."
"Oh well, I don't know if we're great friends or anything," I rubbed my arm awkwardly with a shrug. "I just, uh... You were the captain of my cousin Nawaki's unit during the war." Shit, I didn't even know where that came from. The thought just came out of my mouth the minute it popped into my mind. It was true of course, I think Biwako had been the one to tell me just after he had been deployed. Sakumo didn't need to know that though. He probably had enough on his conscious without me reminding him of another comrade he had failed to save.
Sure enough, I don't think the mighty White Fang had been expecting that either. He shifted awkwardly in the grass, looking like he suddenly didn't want to be having this conversation. I had opened the door now. I needed to make sure that I didn't make things any worse.
"Nawaki Senju, right? He died in action?" Sakumo mumbled quietly. I nodded.
"Yeah," I swallowed. "He was really proud to be working under you, and my Tsunade-nee was happy that you were watching over him too. She said you cared the most of all the captains about keeping your team safe."
"Well, that's part of a ninjas job," Sakumo said. He seemed kind of distant again. We were teetering around the elephant in the room- the infamous failed mission, Sakumo's chance to end the war that he sacrificed to save comrades in need. I thought back to the Academy, about how Kakashi isolated himself from the rest of us, and about how the civilian kids would say mean things underneath their breath. The village had made their opinions of Sakumo's deeds clear. They were even taking it out on his only son.
I couldn't fix that. In fact, I probably wasn't going to make much of a difference here at all, but I wanted to leave this conversation having told Sakumo my thoughts. The ninja system is the wrong one, not your judgment.
"It's their whole job," I shook my head, suddenly feeling determined. I wanted to convey this message right. "I want to be the type of shinobi that saves my friends just like you." For a moment, something flashed across his face. It was brief and fleeting. I almost didn't catch it at all, but I hoped it was gratitude.
"Well, thank you I guess," Sakumo said with a small smile. "I'm sorry for your cousin and your loss."
"He would've been happy to see the village was safe now," I shrugged. Sakumo looked at me for another moment. I'm not quite sure what he thought he was seeing.
"You should probably be heading home," he said gently. "It's getting late. Someone will start wondering where you are."
I nodded. He was probably right.
"Well you should probably start heading home soon too Sakumo-san. I'm sure Kakashi-kun will be missing you. Cloud watching isn't very interesting anyhow," I replied.
I spent the rest of the walk home preoccupied with thoughts of Sakumo, Tsunade, and the war. Just reflecting on everything that'd happened. It really was a strange encounter to find the White Fang hanging around in the grass, but I guess I was leading a strange life now. It was almost too much to contemplate it all at once. Some days I wished that some cosmic force would just come down and give me an explanation. What cruel joke were they playing at, putting me in situations like this? I was too small to handle all of this world's grief and issues on my shoulders.
Nobody was going to show up and hand me a road map though, and thinking about my place in this world was going to get me nowhere. By the end of the evening, I had put it all out of my mind and was working on the small things once again.
I still needed to fix my persistent chakra problems, and trust me, that one problem alone was enough to keep a girl plenty occupied.
Arc Title and Chapter Quote from song Diet Soda Society by The Maine
A/N New update for you all. This chapter was kind of long, but I got it out relatively quickly so that's a plus. I promise things are going to start looking a bit cheerier in the next few chapters haha. The last few have been kind of dark. Anywho, this is the end of the Second Shinobi War Arc (Bye Tsunade), and we'll be looking at a change of pace in the next few chapters for different reasons as well.
As always, thanks to everyone whose left reviews. They mean the world to me (so tell me what you think about this chapter as well :P).
Until next time,
Aule.
