Kill Your Heroes
Chapter Twenty-One
Counterphobia
Sakura left when Kakashi-sensei did, though the enormous, ugly bruise across her shoulder blades protested her decision. It was still preferable to the unnerving feeling that at any moment someone might appear at her door and make the windowless, sterile room her grave. Temari, despite Kakashi-sensei's assurances. Temari's teammate, with the soulless eyes and all that crushing sand.
Orochimaru.
That thought made her walk a little closer to Kakashi-sensei, her gaze skittering nervously over the people they passed in the halls.
He could be anyone, the paranoid part of her brain insisted, to which the rational part retorted, You aren't worth the trouble. She tried to believe the rational voice, but she was still raw from the inexplicable turn of events in the Forest of Death.
Nothing in her career seemed to be going as it should, so why would this be anything different?
"Sakura, if I stop suddenly, I'm going to have to peel you off my elbow," Kakashi-sensei said wryly. "I wasn't going to interrogate you like I did the boys, but I'm listening if there's something you want to tell me."
She worried her lip, sparing one last anxious glance around the entrance as they left the Tower—which seemed even more ominous with the on-site medical facilities—then rapidly recounted everything that had happened in the Forest in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. The jounin were keeping a corridor out of the forest clear of predators, which made their exit much easier than the journey in, and there was nothing to distract her from her story.
Kakashi-sensei was silent until she'd finished, which was just as well, because once she started talking, she couldn't seem to stop. She had to swipe at her eyes with the palm of her hand, but it wasn't just fear, but also rage and frustration and disappointment, all tangled together. Not just Orochimaru, but Naruto and Sasuke and all the rest—even though she'd tried hard to swallow back the bitterness, it felt so good to finally say it aloud.
Her breathing was slightly ragged when she'd finished, but she'd never raised her voice, not once. And while there'd been tears, she hadn't outright cried either, even though telling Kakashi-sensei about being inside the mouth of the snake had been like relieving it. Her excellent memory, so useful elsewhere, kept supplying the scent and the sound and the feel of it, her stomach clenching reflexively at the that weightless, waiting-for-the pain moments of beings suspended in space.
But she'd soldiered through, came to the Tower and Temari and brought it to a clean end.
Now she glanced up nervously at Kakashi-sensei, who was frowning intently, but when he noticed her attention he raised his brows in that sardonic way of his, twisting his mouth into a wry grin. "Let's just agree that when you retake the exam, you don't go so far out of your way to impress S-class missing-nin."
"Impress?"
"I sealed Sasuke's little memento and Orichimaru came calling after I'd finished. Didn't seem too perturbed by the sealing, which was a little unsettling, but he had good things to say about you."
Sakura was at first dubious, because Kakashi-sensei taught life-lessons by exposing genin to horrifying genjutsu, but then she realized he was serious. It felt like every fine hair on her body stood to attention in its follicle, because being mentioned by Orochimaru meant being taken notice of by Orochimaru. That was high on her list of Do Not Want, because it seemed to stand in opposition to her immediate life goal, which was Live Another Day.
She clasped her forearm hard enough to hurt, gritting her teeth against the shudder that wracked her body. "That's...really bad, Kakashi-sensei."
"I agree. But it didn't sound like he was interested in recruiting you, if that's any comfort. We'll have to keep an eye on Sasuke, though."
The dubiousness returned as she glanced sidelong at Kakashi-sensei. "Don't worry," he reassured her. "I'm not asking you to engage Orochimaru in a fight, just to make certain that Sasuke runs."
"...how? He only listens to Naruto," she muttered.
"Genjutsu if you have to," was Kakashi-sensei's immediate reply. "Rest assured, whatever you show him will be much, much preferable to what Orochimaru is capable of."
Sakura thought through the implications of that, that her Hell-Viewing jutsu was preferable, and was not reassured by this permission to turn her techniques against her teammate.
But, she reassured herself, for the next month, it was Kakashi-sensei's responsibility to watch after Sasuke. And someone else's to look after Naruto. Perhaps after that, her anger might have faded, Naruto once again merely irritating and Sasuke—well, she hoped that one day she'd glance over at him and not the exultant expression on his face as he broke Zaku's arm.
[Kill Your Heroes]
The ninken had at least allowed her to return home and shower after their morning 'walk,' since she was scheduled to meet her interim sensei and wanted to make an impression that did not involve mud and dog slobber. The dog hair was a lost cause, so she ignored the way her clothing below her waist seemed to accumulate it like it had magnetic properties.
She was down to only Bull and Pakkun, the latter of whom catching a ride on the larger dog's head, while Bull had his mouth full of a scroll case.
"Instructions for your feeding and care," Pakkun said when he noticed the direction of her gaze.
"Kakashi-sensei didn't tell my mentor what he wanted him or her to teach me himself?"
"That's not the boss's way," Pakkun said. "This way, if there's something they don't like, they don't have a chance to argue with it. At least not in person."
"Kakashi-sensei: The Path to Conservation of Effort," Sakura remarked dryly, which caused Pakkun to chuckle.
"That's about the way of it."
"So who is my sensei?" she prodded.
"That would be telling, kid. Besides, we're almost there."
'Almost there' was a neat little eatery that Kakashi-sensei had tricked her into treating him at, once, the memory of which made her scowl as she came in the door and was welcomed by the waitstaff. There were latticed screens seperating the booths, which leant everything had an air of privacy, but made it hard to pick out anyone even if she'd known who she was looking for.
Luckily, Bull seemed to know the way and the eatery, like most places that catered to ninja, had a relaxed policy when it came to ninja-animals.
Their destination turned out to be a booth in the back corner with a view of both doors—the paranoia stall, as it was teasing referred to, though beneath the humor was a tacit understanding that that seat belonged to whichever jounin was the first to be seated.
Kakashi-sensei apparently felt that unobstructed views of the exits were overrated. His requirement was good light and quick service, which usually saw them seated at the bar or near the kitchen.
The jounin seated at the booth was occupied with chatting up the waitress as they approached, so they had to wait until she'd taken her leave before Sakura could duck into a neat bow and introduce herself.
There was a beat as the jounin considered her, the senbon in his mouth flicking almost irritably, something echoed by the furrow of his brow. But then it smoothed out and she was left with a sardonically grin that seemed more earnest than Kakashi-sensei's expression. "Genma Shiranui," he introduced himself. "Kakashi called in some favors and uncollected bets, and I'm in the village to provide extra manpower for the duration of the exams anyway, so here I am. Sit?"
He indicated the bench opposite him with a tilt of his head and Sakura nervously seated herself.
"I took a look at your records already and I know all about your performance in the exams—perfect score on the first section, a loss in the second that was avenged in a nasty way. But I don't know what exactly Kakashi wants me to teach you."
That was Bull's cue to plop the scroll case on the table and after looking in distaste at the drool-slick surface, Genma-sensei opened it. His eyebrows swept up as he unrolled it, which Sakura felt didn't bode well, but it was Kakashi-sensei. She hadn't expected anything else.
Frankly speaking, if there was a chance she'd be meeting with Orochimaru again, she'd take twice his usual torture and like it.
"Shit," Genma-sensei said with feeling. "He's got a list of assigned readings in here as long as my arm. Some of them you need to be a jounin just to take out of the archives. Real heavy on chakra theory and manipulation and genjutsu, looks like, and enough anatomy texts to qualify you as a hunter-nin in Mizu. As for physical training, looks like you'll be working with his dogs in the morning for stamina training, which is good. I'm not a morning person. Work on your knifework, alright. Wants to press your limits with your projectile weapons, says your aim degrades too much when you're working at speed. Again, pretty basic. What is not basic, and really is just this side of crazy, is that he wants you to be able to do full-speed Shunshin by the time I return you to him."
"Is Shunshin that unusual?" Sakura asked timidly.
"For your first year out of the Academy? If you're any kind of prodigy, maybe not, but this seems like it might be a little much for you."
"Sakura is already capable of the basic movement," Pakkun replied. "She just needs work on fine-tuning her chakra manipulation so that when she enhances her ability to perceive rapid movement she doesn't fry her ocular nerve in the process."
"Really?" Gemna-sensei asked skeptically. "Because that wasn't in...," his voice trailed off and then he shook his head ruefully. "Sorry, Sakura," he apologized. "I should know better than to expect Kakashi to be completely explicit in your personnel files. He's a cagey bastard with his own abilities, no need to expect anything different when it comes to your record-keeping. A little more thorough on your teammates, but there's more people looking over his shoulder when it comes to them." His lips quirked up like that was a joke, but Sakura couldn't follow his humor.
"I don't know when he expects you to sleep with this kind of workload, but we'll do our best. But first, breakfast."
Working with Genma-sensei turned out to be a very different experience from working with Kakashi-sensei. His humor was less edged, less sardonic, and more abundant, which made learning under him more like exercises out of the Academy and less like Kakashi-sensei's prepare-you-for-life-if-you-survive-it style that had become the norm for their sessions since Wave. But Genma was also very, very good at what he did, at least on the armed and unarmed combat side of things, though he readily confessed to being good only at breaking genjutsu.
Which was fine. He hadn't been lying when he'd talked about Kakashi-sensei's reading list, much of which had to be tackled with note paper and dictionary in hand, even if most of them were short treatises rather than full-size books. But this was one area at least where Sakura had complete confidence and she enjoyed the challenge to her mind, setting to her assignments with a pleasure she didn't usually feel when doing physical training. Her motto for that was more suffering today, for less suffering tomorrow, but she was greedy for the knowledge. Even when that knowledge was endless diagrams of eyes and chakra flow and all the ways she could end up permanently blinding herself when using Shunshin if she misdirected the flow even fractionally or kept up the enhancement too long.
They were more than midway through the month when Genma-sensei was called away during one of their training sessions and Sakura knew something was wrong when he sent a note calling off the rest of the lesson. Unlike Kakashi-sensei, Genma-sensei, for all his humor, took his responsibilities very seriously. It had been strangely unnerving to have her sensei arrive before her to their training field.
Because she didn't receive any word to the contrary, she showed up at their training field on time and found a strangely sober Genma-sensei waiting for her. But he wasn't alone. "Hey, Sakura," he greeted her.
"Genma-sensei."
Genma-sensei's senbon flicked as he considered her, then he sighed. "All right, I've been checking out books under my name and letting you use them, I suppose I can trust you to be circumspect. We had an incident last night. Hayate—he's the one who proctored the selection round after the second round—is dead. And I've been appointed proctor of the third exam, which means I'll be taking on extra duties. Ergo, less time for you. But, Raidō has agreed to lend some of his time and help us out. He'll be training you with your knives." He grinned. "It's about the only thing he's better than me at, so we have to let him enjoy the chance to show off when it comes around."
The other man—Raidō—rolled his eyes silently. He was one of the few jounin Sakura had ever seen with facial scarring, well-healed but with thick ridges of scar tissue that swept across the bridge of his nose and widened in their path along his cheek. Otherwise he had a certain no-nonsense sort of look, his hair cropped short and with no personal modifications to his uniform.
"I'll be in your care," Sakura said politely.
Raidō nodded. "From what Genma tells me, you're easy to work with. My specialty is kenjutsu, so I can give you a good grounding in how to approach an opponent using a blade with superior reach. I didn't have any notice, so I didn't have time to clear my mission schedule. You'll have occasional afternoons to yourself—if you want my recommendation, fill them up with D-ranks instead of more training. I've seen your schedule. You don't want to burn yourself out and more missions to flesh out your résumé will do you good in the future."
Sakura took his advice and all his lessons to heart. She wasn't fond of him the same way she was of Genma-sensei, because he was as sober and professional as some of the guest lecturers at the Academy, more interested in imparting his knowledge than building any sort of connection. Somehow, that made her even more aware that she was taking up his time and she worked hard to not disappoint him.
He made her work hard for it. He'd said his specialization was kenjutsu, which was true, but he hadn't clarified that he was best-known as an assassin. There was little of what she thought of as 'sword fighting' in his style, which was bare of all flash and spare to the point of frankness. She spent most of their practices being 'killed' in a single blow, Raidō-sensei methodically exploiting every weakness in her defenses. And then just as patiently breaking down what she'd done wrong and what she'd need to do instead.
It was almost like being at the Academy again, except with the personalized attention that a natural teacher's pet like Sakura had always craved and competed for. It almost made being a shinobi fun again, helped her paranoia to ease, though every night reminded her exactly why she trained so hard each day. The newest nightmares did not get better, precisely, but just as she'd found with Wave, she grew better at managing them.
Trying not to sleep just made them creep into her waking hours and made her sloppy besides, so she learned all sorts of tricks to fall asleep, to stay asleep, and to fall back asleep when the second didn't work out. She was careful not to work herself to exhaustion just before bed, which made the dreams more vivid, and she sometimes regarded those moments of panicked waking with a dark sort of humor—she'd never had more practice controlling her breathing and easing her heart rate.
She didn't hear anything from Kakashi-sensei or her teammates during the month and she didn't have enough spare time to spend stoking her grudge. It dissipated, the heat of her former anger cooled, though her feelings never quite returned to their original state. Naruto was just irritating, he was dangerous, and while Sasuke was beautiful, she couldn't help but wonder about that flash of cruelty. How much of it was Orochimaru and how much was Sasuke.
Sakura did meet others. Ino, sporting ugly, slow-healing bruises that testified that Zaku hadn't spared her face, hadn't come to brag about her victory. She'd come instead to tentatively broach the idea of rekindling their friendship. "I looked at you down there in the arena and I saw the same stranger I met before—when I first saw that scar, you know—and I felt like...like I was losing to you, somehow. I didn't like that," she admitted frankly, which was so Ino that Sakura was back on the Academy's lawn during their lunch break. "So I couldn't lose my match, no matter what that freak did. I have you to thank for that, Sakura.
Ino didn't ask her about how she'd gotten the scar and Sakura didn't volunteer. Too much of their closeness had been lost and Sakura was too aware that Ino hadn't had a Wave yet, hadn't had a mission take her to the edge and bring her back a different person than when she'd arrived.
One day, maybe, they'd be best friends again. Until then, she was content to let Ino fashion-pick at her outfit and her shemaugh.
It was the first time in a long time that she'd had a conversation that was only peripherally related to her ability to kill someone.
Her other visitor was more alarming and less vocal. Gaara, Temari's teammate. Not a single word had been exchanged between them, but she'd been left with the impression it might have been a whole conversation to Gaara. She had no idea what he'd taken from it—his lack of eyebrows made him even more inscrutable than those eyes alone managed.
And then her month was at an end and it was time to be a part of Team Seven once again.