A/N: Everyone, you continue to be fantastic. It always makes me laugh whenever someone apologizes for a long review, because I really enjoy reading them. If you were waiting patiently for this chapter, it was because I find Absolute Magnitude research-intensive. It's an OC-heavy chapter, because I feel that it's an OC-heavy interlude-this should be done in four, maybe five parts before we hit Shippuden territory.

Kill Your Heroes

-Chapter Thirty-Three-

Toward Better Days (Part II)

[centophobia]

Sakura had a growing Box of Shame stashed beneath her bed, though her parents were gone again and her Tsunami novels weren't half as shameful as Kakashi-sensei's Icha Icha series. Tsunami hadn't so much as kissed Neko-kun, Hebi-kun, or Usagi-kun in the three books she'd read, but the sheer tension was enough to leave her blushing. And quite enough to assure that outside Lemon&Lime, she didn't read them outside the privacy of her own room.

That third novel had been a consolation prize to herself after a disastrous three-week mission. A sunny southern isle, full to bursting with plant and animal life—it should have been pleasant, but whether it was the fault of bug or bacteria, Sakura had spent most of the mission very sick. The kind of sick that involved haunting a bathroom for days on end; by the time she'd come home she'd lost almost seven pounds. As it turned out, regardless of her former thoughts on dieting, it wasn't weight she'd needed to lose.

The only redeeming point in the whole mess had come near the end. While the team she'd been appended to had been completing the actual mission—they'd been hired to protect a building site from criminals the islanders had been exiling into the forest for years, who'd finally overcome their differences long enough to raid the supplies for a temple restoration that it had taken the entire village almost a decade to gather the money to fund—she'd gotten several very hands-on lessons about the use of a blowgun.

Using poisoned darts to hunt monkeys in the trees might be a practical method of hunting on the island, but she'd seen the utility of it for wider applications. Once she'd come home, she'd found a synthetic version that could be unscrewed into short sections and Hasekura-san had found her a pouch that sat horizontally at her beltline—unlike senbon, a blowgun could be used in almost complete stillness to the same effect.

And since Fū had first introduced her to poison, she'd discovered that the world was a far more inimical place than even her Academy classes would have had her believe. Something as harmless seeming as a grub could be used to kill if it happened to be the progeny of a diamphidia beetle—not that she'd choose that particular one, because that particular toxin took its time and ended in fevered delirium. Local frogs had provided the toxins to kill the monkeys she'd helped hunt; almost half of the flowers that resided in Ino's mother's shop had some sort of toxic component. Judging by her reading, every second animal and third plant in Suna was in some way toxic. It was almost mind-boggling, but it was for the moment her "light" educational reading.

Her serious reading involved the introductory texts of the medic-nin course. It hadn't exactly been difficult to discover what the training curriculum was and while the books had been expensive, her mother had been more than pleased to purchase the textbooks for her before leaving again. For Sakura's birthday, she'd said, and Sakura had silently accepted the fact that her mother wouldn't be home for it.

She still hadn't seen her father since her promotion, which wasn't to say he hadn't been back to Konoha; their missions weren't allowing them overlapping days at home. He'd resorted to leaving her notes posted all around the house—on the cabinets in the kitchen, on the bathroom mirror, once a whole conversation's worth of text around the frame of her door. It had been work being equally clever in responding to them.

But it was nice, the silliness, because while the Academy curriculum had been easy enough that Sakura hadn't needn't to really apply herself—she'd spent more time admiring Sasuke than reading their handouts and still managed the highest scores in written work—the medical jutsu was challenging even in the groundwork stages. A good kind of challenge, though. Safe, relaxing, almost. Compared to what she put her body through physically and what Gozen-san did to her emotionally, it was reassuring to be naturally good at something again. Only time would tell if she would feel the same way once she moved on from endless memorization and chakra exercises to actually attempting the techniques.

[agraphobia]

Sakura wasn't quite certain why Gozen-san owned a half-dozen futons, as she never had any guests, but the woman made her air them out regularly and refresh the sachets of dried herbs that kept all the drawers and closets of the house sweet-smelling. So far, the futons hadn't spewed out bugs or burst into flames or had a texture not unlike stroking nettles, so Sakura was uneasy.

And apparently that was easy to read from her expression, because Gozen-san chuckled as she came even with Sakura, her arms full of herbs that had come out of her garden and had been carefully dried on her porch. "Ah, the look on your face. Sometimes it isn't the illusion, it's the expectation of it that's important. The right mood," she said with a small, quirked smile.

"You know there are two types of genjutsu. Invocative, which you control. And evocative, which you draw from the mind of your victim. Your Magen: Narakumi no Jutsu is of the latter type. It's gentle enough, as those things go. Once, when we were in the field and didn't have a Yamanaka or Uchiha handy, we had to interrogate a young kunoichi. Time-sensitive. So we made implications, but no real threats, made our body language just so, and waited until the light was just right—and then I loosed the kunoichi's imagination. We did it too well and I didn't stay to supervise, which was a mistake. She brutalized herself so badly that she went into shock."

"What—what did you do?"

"Well, she wasn't high value enough to keep as a prisoner, so once our window of opportunity to obtain the information closed, I killed her," Gozen-san replied. "There's few injuries so difficult to heal as the ones you can inflict with genjutsu."

[euphobia]

Sakura had been laboring under a grueling mission schedule for months—sometimes with her peers, very occasionally leading squads, but mostly joining more experienced chūnin squads—but now she was receiving a more permanent assignment.

She had tangled feelings. Resentment, because this assignment drove home the fact that Team Seven was scattered to the four corners and might never find its way together again. Excitement, because she was eager to find a place to belong again, to wrap herself in the comfort of a group identity. Sasuke might have sneered, but belonging was important. Ino's shadow had kept her safe from Academy tormentors; being included in Team Seven had been something to be proud of. She was tired of being pitied and shouted at in turns, ready to associate herself with something different even if it felt a little like a betrayal.

She wasn't being assigned to another four-man cell, which made it slightly better. Konohagakure's chūnin ranks had been in disarray after the invasion. And what with mission demand, there hadn't been the luxury of carefully considering how to put all the broken pieces back together. Instead they'd been using conglomerate teams, like the one they'd assembled for the mission to Miyakowasure.

Tsunade-sama had slowly assembled new specialized teams, until the number of unaffiliated chūnin had shrunk to roughly the same levels as they'd been pre-invasion. But rather than continue to assemble teams herself or put more pressure on the mission office, Tsunade-sama was gathering the rest into twelve person units under the supervision of an experienced chūnin who would accept missions and assemble teams from their members as needed.

Sakura was developing a real skill for research nowadays, learning who and when and where and what to ask to achieve an answer, but it hadn't been hard to find information on her new squad commander. Mariko had recognized the name of her team leader, but what she'd been able to tell Sakura hadn't been encouraging. Aihara Cho had only been a genin in the last war, but though the details on the how were sparse, both of her teammates had been killed and her jounin-sensei had committed suicide after returning the young girl to the village. She'd never integrated back into another four-man squad, had instead spent her career as a generalist but never gone on to become a jounin.

There were soundproofed rooms set aside for briefings and meetings for jounin, but everyone else made do. Team Seven's place had been a bridge; her new team's place was a sunny terrace that overlooked an equally pleasant patio. Everyone else on the team had been working together for several weeks, or so she'd been told—Sakura was the last person to be assigned to the team.

There was a set of exterior stairs that led upward onto the terrace and Sakura's soft-soled boots were almost completely silent against the wood, but her appearance surprised no one. She took in eight ninja lounging on comfortable padded benches, which made for more of an audience than she was perfectly comfortable with. It wasn't a hostile audience, though. Most of them were smiling, but not so broadly that it seemed mocking. All of them were older, which wasn't unexpected, but several of them appeared to be closer to her age than she'd expected. Sixteen to twenty, if she had to guess, but a slightly older woman approached her before she could do more than take in the usual numbers divide of kunoichi to shinobi.

For someone with a name as delicate and ephemeral as Aihara Cho, the woman was a study in irony. Her black hair was ruthlessly bobbed to her jawline, and while she was petite, her frame was sturdy and her hands were rough with calluses. And she had the iciest blue eyes Sakura had ever seen, like the winter sky she only ever saw in movies. Sakura ducked her head and offered greetings and an introduction; when she glanced up, those eyes hadn't precisely thawed, but some of the hard lines around her eyes had relaxed.

"Welcome to the land of broken teams, Haruno," Aihara-taichou said. She followed this with a lightning round of introductions, which Sakura scrambled to follow, then dismissed most of the others. They'd apparently assembled only to nod hello to their newest member, which was sort of flattering. "I expect they told you a little about how this squad will operate?"

"Yes, ma'am," Sakura replied promptly, then repeated what she'd been told.

"Good memory," Aihara-taichou complimented her. "And they got it almost right. If we had about three months where I could drill you all together, it wouldn't be a problem to switch members in and out at will. As it is, I've paired everyone off, balancing the safety of someone who is very familiar with your fighting style with the flexibility of working with other pairs as needed. You have a surprisingly long mission record for such a recent promotion, with more high-ranked missions than I'd expect," she said, some hint of a question in the statement. Sakura didn't have a good answer for that—Kakashi-sensei using his influence wasn't exactly the impression she wanted to make—and the moment passed.

"I've known that you were going to be assigned to me since the squad was first being readied and I've read your files, so I have some idea of your style. Chakra-enhanced strength, though not as refined as Tsunade-sama's," Aihara-taichou commented, one hand touching her opposite shoulder, elbow, and wrist in an echo of the black compression wraps that had made themselves a part of Sakura's wardrobe in an effort to alleviate the joint and muscle discomfort that was the price she was paying for her training. "Also considerable speed training, something of a knife specialist—it was in your file that your trained under Raidō Namiashi. And that Genma Shiranui had supervised your speed training. A dabbler in poisons. Your files have you classified as a genjutsu type, but it doesn't mention special training."

Sakura still wasn't certain whether she would call what Gozen-san did "teaching," because in all these months the old woman had shown her more about the nature of fear and the human mind than she'd ever wanted to know, but she'd never walked her through the use of a single technique. She kept silent, because that part of her life ruled by Gozen-san and her cynical view on people and the history of the village was somehow even more private than her books.

"It's not a bad resume for someone your age. It sounds—and there will come a time when I ask for a demonstration—very adaptable. So I paired you with someone equally flexible." Sakura glanced over the remaining ninja, but Aihara-taichou shook her head. "Not here. We'll be going to meet him—your partner is already in the field."

[ereuthrophilia]

The first time she met him, he was unremarkable in the way only truly excellent infiltrators are capable of. He'd even been described to her and she was ashamed to admit she might not have looked twice at him if she'd not been looking specifically for him. His hand ghosted over her hip as he gently shifted her out of his path on his way through the packed room, his polite, 'Sorry, excuse me,' accompanied by a brief but impersonal smile—if she'd really been the twenty-something woman whose face she was wearing, it might have been totally innocuous. As it was, there was a message in her pocket now, but its contents would have to wait until it was safe to leave.

The second time, there was no mistaking him. His Hyūga bloodline was unmistakable in some things, like the color of his eyes and the shape of his face, but that was where it ended. His coffee-brown hair had a natural wave and though he wore it traditionally long, he had it swept up into a messy knot. Those distinctive Hyūga eyes were partially concealed by glasses just as sleek and stylish as her own, only his lenses were tinted a somewhat startling red. And unlike most Hyūga she'd met, there was nothing traditional about his clothing choices. He had the panache and fashion sense of a rock star, a half-unzipped sleeveless vest with its fur-lined hood revealing the light armor common to ANBU, scarlet rather than white or grey, boots instead of sandals, loose black pants tucked into those boots.

"Hyūga Tatsuo. I've heard a lot about you, Haruno-san. Please treat me kindly." While his fashion was very modern, there was an easy, old-fashioned correctness to his manners.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Sakura replied, "I look forward to working with you." And while the words might have been rote, they certainly weren't a lie.

[scotomaphobia]

"Are you okay?" Tatsuo asked worriedly as Sakura crouched down, the heels of her palms pressed hard against her aching eyes.

"Yes," she hissed, but she didn't move her hands, even as her temples ached with almost equal intensity. Tatsuo was skilled, trained in the Hyūga Jūken style, and seventeen. Which made it perfectly normal for him to be quicker than her, but she'd been driving herself harder in her speed training in an effort to match her partner. Even outside of shunshin he could move at speeds she couldn't follow without using chakra to artificially manipulate the speed at which her eyes and brain could process visual stimuli, so she'd been augmenting her eyes more often.

For the first few weeks, it hadn't been an issue, but then had come the headaches. Not all the time, just occasionally. And now, something that felt like eye strain, if eye strain felt like someone jabbing a senbon into her optic nerve.

Tatsuo's hands settled on her shoulders. "That doesn't look like 'okay'," he observed gently.

"I'll be fine," she snapped, then tempered her voice and repeated, as if she could make herself believe it, "I'll be fine."

[cainophilia]

Ino's nails were biting into Sakura's arm and only tightened when she tried to pull away. "Alright, forehead girl," Ino said, "not only do you go clothes shopping without me, but you get assigned to a new team and you don't even introduce me to your new teammate?"

Sakura winced at the real hurt that underlay Ino's anger. Team Ten had met her other chūnin friends, Mariko and Rie, Sakuya and his team, but she'd never introduced them to any of the members of Aihara-taichou's squad. It wasn't that she was ashamed of Team Ten. She wasn't ashamed of her new squad, either. But they weren't the way she'd assumed a squad should or would be, not like Team Ten or even Team Seven.

Aihara-taichou was her commander, not her friend. The others were her coworkers, which meant she got along with everyone, respected their contributions just as they respected hers, but no one went out of their way to socialize outside the celebratory dinners after a successful mission. There was an unspoken understanding that they weren't a real team, just the broken remnants of teams that were, and for most of them that loss was still too sharp to want to pretend otherwise. There was also the added complication of the work rotation—there were always pairs in the field and it might be weeks before she worked with a particular pair again, which put a damper on any fledging friendships that might have developed.

So there was only Tatsuo, who'd once been a tokubetsu jounin with a specialization in recon before an attack had ruined his eyes and they'd returned him to chūnin status. That had been offered in confidence, when she'd gotten a particularly blinding headache after a rough session of training. She'd already observed that he never used his Byakugan on missions, but she'd thought it was just an idiosyncrasy.

As it turned out, he could only use his bloodline for a very brief time before the pain became debilitating; the ever-present sunglasses were to combat an extreme sensitivity to UV light, their tint to correct the color spectrum he saw the world in. The attack had done something to the chakra channels that were the key to the Byakugan and the unleashed chakra had mutated the cells of his eyes in a way that most healers would find irreversible.

She'd asked why he hadn't asked for Tsunade-sama to examine them. His answer had been an explanation of the clan law that prevented Tsunade-sama from meddling with the doujutsu of clan members—they had their own medics for that, though non-clan medics could treat any other wounds.

Her eyes trailed over to Tatsuo, who probably had no interest in hanging out with shinobi several years his junior. But he only smiled. "We were about to get something to eat. Would you like to come along?"

[hodophobia]

Takigakure would hold the next chūnin exam. It, alongside Amegakure, Kusagakure, and their erstwhile ally Suna had a treaty with Konoha that agreed to acknowledge a promotion awarded by the leader of any of these villages in the course of the chūnin exam.

It was an honor to hold the exam, but it was also expensive in terms of resources. Not only did the host village have to provide security and proctors for the event, but it also lost whatever income those ninja might have provided if they'd been sent on missions instead. So it was also therefore a kind of boast. Konohagakure and Sunagakure hosted the exam far more often than the smaller villages and when it was the turn of one of the less prosperous, populous villages, other villages often sent extra personnel along with the examinees to assist.

This was doubly true after the fiasco of the last exams, because while it was assumed that Orochimaru's target had been Konoha and its Kage, no one was willing to trust that the snake had gone into hibernation.

So it was that Sakura found herself traveling to the Waterfall Village as part of an extra security detail. Tatsuo was there, of course, and it was Shino and Shikamaru who rounded out the squad. For them, at least, it was convenient because their squads were retaking the exam, which in Takigakure did not require a team of three. From what she'd been told during her briefing, their squad would be providing security for the Konoha contingent during the night. She'd not noticed it during her own exam, but Waterfall was instituting a curfew for the foreign ninja in an effort to prevent any trouble, so they would patrol the quarters assigned to the Leaf shinobi. They were to make certain that no one snuck out or slipped in.

To a long-ago Sakura, this might have produced a premonition of boredom, but the Sakura who walked to Takigakure kept her knives honed and treated the blades with topical anesthetic. Boredom was occasionally a welcome friend.