Chapter 3
Chapter Summary
"Waves,
Picking you up,
Pushing you down,
They're always around,"
Sakura masters the Tiger's Fury style within a year, as promised.
Well, 'masters'. She's learned all that she can be taught by Unabara, and now it's up to her to use it in combat and really master it. "You'll be a powerful force at this rate, Sakura-hime." Unabara says as she eyes the seven year old. "You're young. Ridiculously young. But you're even more ridiculously smart. I have faith in you."
Sakura smiles at her brightly, remembering two other sensei's. One had told her the same, and the other, she knows, had at least thought it. Even if he never said it.
That was just how the Kakashi in her dreams was, she remembers.
"What next?"
"Nothing." Unabara says with a shrug and Sakura blinks at her in surprise. "My job here is done." The jōnin offers, raising her hands helplessly at her sides. "I've got nothing left that'll be useful for you. So keep at the usual stuff, I suppose. You're an Uzumaki. Learn some seals. Something you can use in combination with taijutsu."
Sakura wrinkles her nose a bit at that but nods.
She dreams of a boy with blonde hair and a seal on his stomach and knows she should learn as much about seals as she can, to help the person she cares so much about in her dreams. But seals aren't her forte, she'd learned quickly enough.
She still studies them, though. Knowledge is power. Even if she doesn't plan to use seals regularly, she still needs to understand them.
"I know you've been learning other things in your downtime - keep working on them. And talk to your father." The woman suggests with a sigh. "I'm sure he has something more for you."
And he does.
Sakura goes to his office immediately after, and the first thing he does is hand her a small square of paper. "I talked to Unabara-san. She says she's wiping her hands clean of you. Good job." Her father says with a grin. "Now put some chakra in this."
Sakura looks down at the paper with new understanding, dream memories clicking into place. Chakra paper to determine her nature.
She gives it a small zap and the paper instantly soaks through, slumping pathetically against her fingers. She looks up and her father is positively beaming at her.
"Water. Perfect." He says with a grin, shoving away from his desk and yanking his robes off. He tosses them carelessly on his chair, leaving him in the usual Uzushio shinobi uniform, sans the vest. "Come with me, then. Work can wait."
Sakura eyes him, remembering a certain woman with a penchant for ditching work, and frowns suspiciously. "Are you sure?"
Her father shoots her a wounded look. Then he glances back at the desk, frowns a little, and shrugs. "Probably. Let's go." He declares, scooping up the katana propped against his desk before sweeping out of the office.
She rolls her eyes but follows him to the nearest training ground. "You probably figured it out by now," Her father starts off once they've settled in, "but I was given the name Akataki for my skill in water jutsu."
"The 'taki' part implied that." Sakura admits and his lips give a faint twitch, his face otherwise unusually serious.
"I didn't rise to this position without a reason, Sakura." Her father tells her seriously, setting his sword against a boulder and turning his full attention to her. "You're young. Too young, most would think - but you're also too smart by half. You know what this world is like. You know what it is to be a shinobi - and you know what I must've done to earn my position in this village." He says severely.
Hokage.
The word lingers on the tip of her tongue but it stays there, locked behind her closed lips, because it isn't right. He isn't Hokage. He isn't even a Kage, Uzushio's far too small for that. But he's the closest thing to it - the Village Head. A military commander and a civilian leader in one.
But like a Kage, one doesn't reach such a position of power without proving themselves worthy - and from a shinobi's standpoint, that means a death toll.
"I know." Sakura confirms quietly.
"I was a chūnin when the First Shinobi War started." He tells her, leaning back against the rock, his sword propped beside him. "I never enjoyed the bloodshed. No sane man does. But I had my reasons to fight - everyone does. The Land of Fire is our brother country, did you know that? Konoha is our brother."
She nods at this, remembering this from her history lessons in this life.
"We share a bond, our countries, forged by blood in both marriage and battle. We fight together. We die together. And we founded our villages together. The Uzumaki bloodline flows through both Konoha and Uzushio, binding us together. When Konoha went to war, we followed without hesitation." He pauses for a moment at this, frowning down at the ground before returning his gaze to her. "Konoha believes in the Will of Fire. It's what drives them to war, to fight, to even kill. What do you think drove me to kill, Sakura? To cut a swath so bloody that it took me from a chūnin to a celebrated commander in three years time?" He asks quietly.
It's a heavy question. Too heavy for any seven year old, really - but Sakura's only sometimes seven. The rest of the time she's seventeen, and that allows her to give the question the thought it deserves - even if it doesn't take her long to draw the conclusion.
It is, after all, the same thing that drives her. Her 'Will of Fire'.
"The desire to protect." She decides and her father takes only a moment to smile, soft and vaguely unhappily.
"Yes. And that's what drives you too, isn't it?" He asks quietly. She nods immediately and his lips twitch at that. "I figured. Healing, Sakura? To learn both healing and combat at the same time, to be mastering both at a speed even I couldn't hope to match…" He trails off for a moment before he smiles warmly at her. "You truly are my daughter, aren't you? You've inherited my genius and carried it so much further that you make me look slow. But more importantly, you've inherited my drive, and your mother's determined stubbornness to make it even worse." He chuckles softly and Sakura can't help but grin, preening a bit.
"You're our daughter, there's no doubt about that. Uzumaki blood is strong in your veins. But stronger than that is our will, inherited by you - and one day, someday soon at this rate, you'll surpass us all." Her father pushes himself to his feet, approaching her. "So I think it's time we start to work, you and I. I'm going to teach you everything I know - and one day, hopefully sooner rather than later, you can be the one doing all the damn paperwork." He huffs out.
She's still processing the idea of someone thinking her capable of being village leader when he throws the first jutsu at her.
Akataki is the only name she really knows her father by. Everyone calls him that - everyone, even her own mother sometimes. The Red Waterfall.
A master water jutsu and kenjutsu wielder, legendary for his ability to cut his opponents down with sword and water alike. The blood was said to mix with the water in such numbers that it would turn his water jutsus red - though Sakura knows well enough that that's exaggerated.
But by how much, she doesn't know.
She does know with certainty that the man is a jutsu genius.
By the time she's eight, she's learned more jutsu from him than she'd learned in her entire dream life. She's officially been her father's apprentice for nearly ten months by the time he sits her down and tells her about becoming a chūnin.
"At this point, it's practically a joke to send you through the exams." He admits. "You've been ready for it since you were six, really. But… Uzushio is small, though she is strong, and that means we're a target. Any time we were on the battlefield in the War, Uzushio's shinobi were the first to be targeted, and that's for a damn good reason. We're small, but we're strong. " Her father says firmly, a hint of darkness behind his eyes.
"So I waited. This year, the exams are being held in Konoha. I can trust that you'll be safe there, so I'm sending you. It's in a month. I'll break the news to your mother, so be ready to endure some coddling tonight. Get ready for it - I'll introduce you to the two other genin going with you, so use the month to practice teamwork with them. You'll need it to get through this."
And with that announcement, he abandons her in the training yard, leaving her blinking rapidly in confusion at the abruptness.
"...Okay."
She's dreamt of the Chūnin Exams. Of a giant forest with giant creatures and a monstrous man who had made the black haired boy scream in pain. Of the idiot blonde boy confronting someone far too strong, and her having to protect them after. She remembers being proud of getting beaten half to death but refusing to bend.
This time, she isn't beaten half to death. This time, the Chūnin Exams really are a joke. She's trained, skilled, and surpasses the other two genin assigned to her - even though they're twelve and thirteen respectively and she's just eight.
Luckily, they don't seem too perturbed by the age difference. One of them, Akira, just shrugs it off. "I mean, her father is the Village Head." He points out to their other teammate, a kunoichi named Shinku.
"Hey, some of the skill is my own." Sakura complains against the disregard of her training.
Akira shrugs again.
Sakura huffs and ignores him.
Together, they blaze through the exams and straight to the final round of one-on-one matches. Sakura had defeated her opponent easily enough, though she'd ended up having to focus on her taijutsu to defeat him. He'd just earth jutsus to combat her water ones, which had made it difficult for her to show off a bit. Instead of making it a flashy fight, she'd had to make it a quick one, deciding to dazzle the judges by taking the Iwa genin out with rapidfire taijutsu.
He'd put up a good fight for a genin - good enough that he might get promoted - but one on one, the Hidden Dragon style really was hard to stand against.
Shinku, unfortunately, didn't pass the finals. It was an unlucky pairing, really, and Shinku simply hadn't been the stronger one. Apparently, she was an earth jutsu user - rare, but not terribly so, for an Uzushio shinobi - and she was paired against a Kumogakure genin. She was pretty jutsu-focused and the Kumo shinobi had known enough jutsus to counter hers.
In the end, she lost - but she'd put up an admirable fight, in Sakura's opinion.
Akira, on the other hand.
Akira made even her fight look ridiculous.
The genin was, apparently, a seal master in training, and he made the practice look like a work of art. Sakura could only watch in fascination as the boy dueled, using tags, quick brushes, and even just summoning seals with his palms to take out his opponent. From paralysis to explosions to chakra draining seals, Akira took the - frankly much stronger - Konoha shinobi down with far too much ease.
Sakura watches the fight with intense focus, attention narrowed mostly on the chakra draining seal the boy had laid down with just a touch of his hand - and the beginnings of an idea churn in her mind.
Being in Konoha is weird.
It looks so much like the world of her dreams, but so very different at the same time. There is no Kakashi or Sasuke or Naruto. There's not even the same faces on the cliffs. The village is smaller, less sprawling, and the Hokage is wrong. The name doesn't fit the face that she remembers. Hiruzen Sarutobi, younger than she thinks he has the right to be. He looks barely fifty, hair more brown than gray, without liver spots or half as many wrinkles as she saw in her dreams.
The shinobi don't even wear Uzushio's symbol on their vests now.
This Konoha is wrong, and she couldn't be happier than when they return to Uzushio.
The entire way there, Sakura turns her new idea over and over in her head until she's come up with a basic plan - and then she accosts Akira the moment they're home.
"I need your help with a seal." She says after she's hunted him down.
He blinks at her from his doorway, looking utterly bewildered. "...Okay?" He offers uncertainly.
"I need to know how to place a seal with my hands."
"...Okay." He repeats slowly.
"And I want to channel a jutsu through the seal."
"Alright?" Akira frowns a bit now, finally looking more attentive.
"A really complicated jutsu."
"...Okaaay…"
"On a person." She specifies.
He blinks, then frowns deeply, his brow furrowing. "How complicated?"
She considers for a moment how to respond vaguely enough to not give away potential trade secrets. "A jutsu that will have to be constantly channeled through the person's circulatory system, channeled in a way that I can adjust without any difficulty."
"...Okay." Akira opens the door a bit wider. She steps past him and into his apartment, frowning a bit at the bland, yet somehow messy interior. "You realize that'll be insanely difficult? When you use a seal to channel a jutsu you're channeling both the jutsu and the seal itself."
"It's fine, I've got great chakra control. Teach me." Sakura commands.
He frowns at her.
"...Please?" She asks, blinking up at him.
Akira sighs heavily. "Yeah, sure. I don't suppose you'll make my life easy and tell me what jutsu we're making this seal for? It'll have to be tied into the seal itself, so without me knowing, I can only do half the job here."
"Half is all I need." Sakura assures him, even though she's not entirely sure of that herself.
She's kicking herself now for not paying more attention to her father's fuinjutsu lessons - but she'd memorized most of what he'd taught her, at least. She knows the components of a seal.
She just doesn't know very well how to tie the components together. "Help me out?" Sakura asks Akira earnestly.
The older genin sighs before nodding. "Yeah, yeah, I'll do what I can." He promises.
She grins widely at him, trying to hold back her excitement. His best is all she needs.
It takes two weeks for her father to call her and Akira both into his office and toss a chūnin vest at them both. "Congratulations, sorry but no time for ceremony, please get out I have way too much paperwork after all this." He bemoans, and there really is an alarming amount of paper on his desk, so Sakura just gives him a quick hug and scuttles out of the office.
She follows Akira back to his place, both of them feeling a little underwhelmed by their promotion. "Well. At least we got it?" Akira offers, eyeing his vest skeptically.
Sakura shrugs and pulls it on experimentally.
It takes Akira all of two seconds to snorts softly. "You're eight. You look ridiculous wearing that."
She glares balefully at him for that until she looks at a mirror and immediately shrugs the vest off. It does look ridiculous. "I'll figure out something else." She decides.
"Good call. Besides, you're the Village Head's daughter - you can get away with skimping on uniform regulations." Akira points out, already migrating to the table they were using to work on the seal.
The poor wood was covered in paper and ink, but they'd already made good progress.
Sakura had started to subtly weave her jutsu into the seal, and luckily for her Akira didn't recognize it even a little judging by the weird look he shot her when he examined her work. "Well at least you have the connectors right." He said mildly when he'd tried to look it over. She'd just shrugged at that and gotten back to work.
A week later, though, she finds herself hunting down her father, finding him sequestered away in his officer with a peculiar tenseness to him. "Dad?" She questions, frowning a bit at him, and he looks up from the scroll he'd been reading to look at her curiously.
"Hm?"
"Is there a seal to store chakra?" Sakura asks, thinking about the purple diamond her dream-mentor had worn and all its many uses. The seal she herself had used in her dreams.
He blinks at her, lowering the scroll. "You'll have to be more specific."
"To store my own chakra on my body, and then let me release it back into my own system when I need…" Sakura pauses, groping for the right word here. "When I need an overabundance of chakra."
"An overabundance." He repeats blankly, staring at her.
She stares back, mildly confused by his response. "An overabundance." She confirms.
"How much of an overabundance are we referring to here."
"I may or may not be inventing a seal that may or may not require to me to channel chakra into a large number of people, and it may or may not require a very large supply of chakra to perform the jutsu on them all at once."
He stares at her.
She continues to stare back.
Her father lifts a hand to his forehead and covers his eyes, exhaling a sigh far heavier than she thinks this situation warrants. She waits patiently, and after nearly a minute he abruptly lowers his hand, nods decisively, and pushes away from his desk and to his feet. "Alright, follow me, and never, ever, show this scroll to anyone. This was invented by Mito Uzumaki herself so don't take it lightly." Her father instructs sternly before guiding her to the forbidden scroll section of his library.
Later on, she'll deduce that it's really weird trying to learn the Yin Seal from both her memories and a scroll. Her dream-mentor had taught her with words and demonstration, while the scroll teaches her with written instructions and the seal work itself. Her dream-mentor had adjusted the seal to suit her particular needs, whereas this was the original, untouched version.
It's a fascinating feeling that goes through her, but a very, very weird one of almost-but-not-quite deja vu.