A/N: Sorry for being late. I— Oh wait, I'm early. I just updated yesterday, so for people reading in real-time, please ensure you are up to date. Thank you!
Chapter 39 — Smoke
Sasuke was pissed off.
This wasn't necessarily indicative that there was anything wrong with the world.
But he woke up before Naruto and Sakura, and by the time they woke up— two hours after he had— they looked rested and cheerful.
Nobody should be rested and cheerful at six in the morning. Especially when he had still barely woken up by that point.
He'd have to ask them for a sparring match later. Not for revenge, of course. Just training.
Sarada, the only ally he had in this house, chirruped quietly to his side as he sharpened his shuriken. This is where he had spent the brunt of his morning, slowly making his way through three cups of coffee.
He knew that since he was a ninja, technically, his chakra would burn up most of the caffeine before it could do anything. He'd have to get mission-ready condensed packs to really feel it. All the same, the hot liquid really did seem to dissolve the cobwebs from his head. He idly wondered whether Sakura knew the caffeine was negligible for non-civilians— before deciding, quite firmly, not to care.
Sakura sat with her coffee like a kid with chocolate milk at the small kitchen table with Naruto. She was swinging her feet and talking animatedly about— Sasuke briefly tuned into the conversation— the differences between shock wave and shrapnel injuries and how they applied to explosive seals. Of course.
He wasn't sure which was scarier; her bright eyes or Naruto's enraptured expression.
"Imagining either of you with explosives is terrifying," Sasuke cut in.
Sakura straightened sharply and fixed him with a glare. "You say that, but you still put one of my explosive tags on your kunai!"
He had. It was sitting in line with his freshly sharpened kunai, newly wrapped. "If I sneeze wrong, it will probably go off. I should just leave it at home." He shook his head. "Couldn't you have experimented with something less likely to cause a crater? Why not knockout tags?"
"Oh!" she exclaimed, digging through her notes. (At this point, the kitchen table was a fortress of paper rather than a place of dining.) She triumphantly unearthed a scroll and unrolled it. "See, I tried that, but it's not balanced correctly. I followed the instructions perfectly; I just translated them into my own language. Ten-Ten is still helping me figure out what's wrong with it, but now that I think about it—" she continued talking in a lower and lower voice. By the time he glanced back up, she was absorbed in her work, expanding and modifying small equations in the seal.
Naruto had lost interest when she stopped talking about types of civilian weaponry and had turned his full attention back to his meal.
Sasuke sighed and turned back to his weapons, packing them away. He paused and furtively glanced up, finding that Sakura and Naruto were still distracted. He carefully put the kunai with the exploding tag at the very bottom row of his holster. He'd probably never use it.
They had a brief training session, in which Sasuke had to grudgingly admit that practice with Lee and Neji had improved his teammates' reflexes. A strange corner of his mind had thought training together again for the first time in weeks would be special, somehow. In a way, it was; noting all the small changes in how they carried themselves. Naruto didn't seem to flail around as often, and his strikes and dodges now appeared to have an actual purpose. The way Sakura no longer hesitated in attacking instead of only defending, and the way she'd obviously been pulling her punches before because ow.
Of course, it helped that she could now regularly land a hit on him. Both of them could.
But the more he saw their improvements, the more pissed off he got. No, he'd known Naruto had improved. It was mostly Sakura. Was it because she hadn't been on as many missions as them, and he felt she shouldn't have improved at the same pace?
During their spar, she did an odd sideways spin and crashed her shin directly into his kidney. He lashed out, and his answering punch knocked her back several feet.
He wasn't horrified because he'd punched her. (She had, in fact, laughed victoriously at landing such a well-placed kick.) No, he was mortified because he realised why he was so angry.
She learned that move from Lee. She learned to be better at fighting from Team Gai.
"Ehh, come on Sasuke!" Naruto called. "The fight would have totally been over if she'd put any chakra in that! You shoulda just admitted she won, ha!"
Sasuke cracked his neck. "She didn't, and I was still standing. Unless she's ready to put me in the hospital, I'll keep fighting." He pretended to check the sun. "Anyway, it's getting late. We need to leave."
Sakura grumbled from her place on the ground. "But then I'll have to shower and look presentable for the court! Can't Naruto just henge into me and go in my place?"
Naruto's eyes widened. "No way! Make Sasuke do it; he already said he'd go anyway!"
Sasuke rolled his eyes. "You're a ninja, just wipe the dirt off, and nobody will care. Unless you want to be late like Sensei always is."
That ended the argument immediately.
It was with no small amount of regret that Sasuke slouched up to the Hokage Tower with Sakura. He couldn't fathom why he'd volunteered for this. It was just a formality, it wasn't like she needed him to be here, and there were so many other things he could be doing. He'd wasted so much time the last week trying to track her down and ensure she wasn't working herself to death, and he had fallen behind on his training. There were some old scrolls he'd found in the library that his uncle had kept…
Sakura shuddered as they made their way up the stairs, and his eyes finally focused.
Oh. Right.
He tilted his head toward her and rolled his eyes obviously. "What, are you suddenly going to be nervous now? I thought this was all no big deal?"
She wrung her hands, and her lips seemed to tremble. Shit, what? Is she really that nervous? "Don't you—?" he began, but she cut him off in a rush.
"Sasuke, what if they give me paperwork? What if I don't know how to fill it out? What if I get lost on my way to the correct room? What if I have to come in for multiple court dates to get things set up?!"
He stopped in place, halfway through the antechamber. "Are you afraid of… bureaucracy?"
She gave a pathetic whimper, staring at him with huge, round eyes.
"… Seriously? Out of everything in the world, this is what— You know what? Forget it. Just ask the receptionists, they'll tell you where to go. And stop panicking." He nodded at her hands.
She ceased wringing them at once and shook them violently. "You're the grumpiest cheerleader I could ask for. But good point. Thank you." She huffed and strode toward the front desk.
"The other desk," he called after her.
She paused in mid-step, where she automatically had started toward the side of the room where mission assignments were given. And then, like Sarada recovering from a fall, she slid her feet sideways and acted as though she'd always meant to traverse the room in a wide arc.
He scratched his nose to hide his smirk, but after only a few seconds, his mirth left him. Neji was waiting through the archway that led to the tower proper, standing still as a marble statue. His head rose to nod at Sakura before raising an eyebrow at Sasuke standing behind her.
"Emotional support," Sasuke said baldly.
Neji did not deign to reply, seemingly consigning Sasuke to the role of furniture as he turned back to Sakura. "I have a written statement prepared and am ready to give a verbal one as well. I checked, and Tsunade is already waiting in the fouth Chamber on the fourth floor. We are still early, so there may be a few minutes of waiting. Follow me." He paused just long enough to ascertain that Sakura was following before turning his back entirely to Sasuke, walking directly in front of him.
Sasuke followed, wondering if it were physically possible to send a handful of kunai through every vertebra of the spine in less than three seconds. He thought he could manage it with practice and a good training dummy.
"What's this rabble?" Tsunade droned as they walked into the meeting room. It was slightly less formal than Sasuke had anticipated, but like Sakura had said, this would hardly be a full criminal trial.
Three small tables were arranged in a triangle, the one at the head for the one ruling the case. The other tables were lower but longer, easily seating at least four people on each side.
Tsunade sat sprawled across no fewer than three chairs at her table. She only had one scroll and one folder, and a thermos of a liquid that, even at this distance, Sasuke could smell was alcoholic in nature.
"Hello, Tsunade-sama," Sakura bowed.
"That's Madame Opposing Counsel to you, little lady," Tsunade mocked. And then, "Oh, come on, don't make that face. We've already settled ninety per cent of this; I told you this was just a formality, didn't I? Have a seat and calm down. We're not even starting for five minutes yet, and in legal terms, that could be up to an hour."
"Hn," Sasuke muttered. "Finally, some context for Sensei. I bet he gets in a lot of legal trouble." He sat in one of the chairs, smirking slightly when he heard Sakura give out a small startled laugh.
Neji said nothing but sat on Sakura's other side, setting his scroll neatly in front of him and folding his hands.
It took precisely ten seconds for Sakura to start tapping her foot.
It took eight minutes for her to start turning and peering around the room rapidly like a bird.
Two minutes later, she added what were probably supposed to be covert looks at all three of them, clearly waiting for them to say something.
"He's an Elder," Tsunade finally drawled loudly, taking pity on her. "He's probably only made it halfway up the stairs," she nodded to the door behind the larger desk.
"Wait, are the Elders actually, like, elderly?" Sakura asked.
Her face flushed crimson as everyone in the room, even Neji, stared at her.
"I thought it was just a title, sheesh," she groused. She then muttered something to herself, but Sasuke thought it might have been in the southern language. And hadn't that been a fun conversation, when she'd explained the contents of that particular meeting? Why couldn't she just be normal?
Sasuke paused a moment to reflect on his entire life leading up to that point.
To be fair, she was probably the most normal person on their team.
"If you become any more anxious," Neji suddenly spoke out, "they'll presume your guilt for far worse than your actual so-called infraction."
"Huh?" she said. "What makes you think I'm anxious?"
Sasuke closed his eyes in second-hand embarrassment, but Neji's reply was unexpected: "Your chakra is practically screaming it out. If you're not careful, T&I will want to use you as a torture device for chakra-sensitive ninja."
"Oh," she replied in a small voice as Sasuke desperately tried to search out whatever the hell Neji was feeling. But nothing. Just Sakura's chakra, the same as usual, though perhaps a little stronger today than she had been.
Then she gasped. "Wait, is there a way to do that? Sometimes I think I feel feelings in chakra, like how the books talk about killing intent, but like other things, and I wasn't sure if it was on purpose or just—" she gasped for breath.
Neji stared at her dully. "Was your training so menial?"
"Words are coming out of your face that aren't explanations. Fix that," she bit back.
(Tsunade gave a quiet snort that quickly turned into an unconvincing cough, and when Sasuke peered at her, she seemed to be studiously reading a scroll.)
"Intent," Neji said simply, "doesn't have to be intentional."
Sakura stared at him silently for a further two seconds. "I know you're prone to illogical spirals of thinking, but that's a bit much, even for me."
Sasuke gave up pretending to study the wood grain of the table and gave the conversation his full attention. "I think he's saying it's indirect intent."
Neji ignored him, continuing to Sakura, "When you punch a target, physical chakra is all directed toward that hit. When you think about hitting, your physical chakra builds up. If you do not have control, it will bleed out and be wasted."
"So you're saying," Sakura furrowed her brows. "That I have bad emotional chakra control? Is that even a thing?"
Tsunade suddenly spoke up from her side of the room. "It depends on the person and the circumstance." Even Neji could not pretend disinterest at hearing the lecturing tone in the Sannin's voice. "Chakra is a vehicle of intent, yes, and emotion is a driver of intent. They tend to work together. But for something as slight as worry, as Hyuuga describes, would require more focus to discern than most ninja possess. His clan would necessarily have a strength for it, as would your young friend, Yamanaka Ino."
"Ino?" Sakura asked.
"Mind-Body Switch. There's a reason her father works in T&I." Her lip curled. "That whole clan are experts in mental chakra, inside and out." She huffed. "I should have nabbed you one. There's one on the other side of that family, not closely related enough to your friend to be a problem, a nice young man..."
Sakura flushed. "She means for a therapist!" she squeaked.
Neji and Sasuke, for once in unison, looked at her.
"Okay?" Sasuke asked.
"I would have thought training," Neji said, "but I suppose that would be an ideal field of study for those with such abilities."
Sakura slowly lowered her head onto the desk as Tsunade chuckled.
"Point being," Tsunade continued dryly, "While it's possible to focus an emotion through intent, such as killing intent, getting to the level where you can have others sense emotion through your chakra takes a great deal of training." She shrugged. "And there's a good reason it's largely only seen in killing intent. Most ninja would train for the opposite; to hide their chakra as much as possible. They say a trained ANBU can walk three circles around any elite jounin without them ever noticing."
Neji snorted in disbelief, but Sasuke nodded. He'd heard things about ANBU, and considering his brother had joined them…
"Well," Sakura said, seeming to recover herself. "I'll make sure to, ah, how do you even begin to..?" She frowned and closed her eyes.
And Sasuke nearly gasped as her chakra disappeared.
"Sakura!" he yelled, turned halfway in his seat but hardly knowing what to do— and then her chakra was back and she was blinking rapidly.
"Oh, did that work?" she asked.
"How—" Sasuke began.
"Barely," Neji cut. "No ninja with even the slightest sensing ability would be fooled by such lazy suppression."
Sakura took a deep breath and let it out before turning her back on Neji completely and beaming at Sasuke. "I did it on my first try! Do you want to know how I did it? I just pretended I was building up chakra, except like, in reverse, so where it normally builds up, it just clustered up like—" as she continued talking, Sasuke's heart rate returned to normal, and he found that he didn't really need to rip out Neji's tongue after all.
Or so he thought. "You're still screaming out your feelings. It's unbecoming of a ninja," Neji said. "Learn to suppress your emotions before you bother trying to suppress your chakra."
Sakura sighed. "How am I supposed to do that? The Elder isn't here yet, and I don't know how much trouble I'm in! How can I stop being anxious unless I can reasonably tell myself there's no good reason to be?"
It was a fair point.
Neji rolled his eyes and, smoothly with the motion, activated his Byakugan. Sasuke was confused until he saw him staring at the door and scanning slightly past it. "He's out there; he's just talking to someone. He'll be in soon. So stop being anxious."
"Oh. Thank you," Sakura said quietly. "You can see his chakra even through doors? How far away is he? That's amazing, Neji."
Annoyed and more than a little curious, Sasuke activated his Sharingan. Technically, there was no reason why solid objects would obstruct his view of the chakra; he'd just have to look past the natural chakra in the door, which he did just as naturally with all the air around him. He had to squint and focus harder than he ever recalled having to, but he finally found the faint shimmer of chakra slightly past the door.
He couldn't sense elements the way Sakura would; his sense of feeling in chakra was dull in comparison. But once he zeroed in on the appearance of chakra, it was far easier to discern. After a few seconds, he managed to separate out the two chakra signatures— ah, and that one was a little taller, with the more teal chakra, and standing next to him had to be the Elder. The Elder's chakra was dense and obviously well-defined, just what you'd expect to see in an older ninja with decades of training.
Neji, who had continued looking toward the door when he'd noticed Sasuke had, gave a quiet gasp.
… Things like quiet gasps were not supposed to come from guys like Neji.
Sasuke's eyes flashed to meet Neji's, but they were still glued to the door, eyes growing wide. Sasuke looked back and carefully looked at the chakra. What had he seen? Nothing seemed interesting besides how tightly the chakra was bound to the man's body. Except… The slight ripple of chakra, like something hidden underneath it. He actually leaned forward a little as though it would improve his vision and—
There was a shape. A shape like…
"The hell?" Sasuke muttered.
"Tsunade-sama. The Elder we are to see is Danzo, correct?" Neji said levelly. Sasuke glanced over; his eyes were still activated and facing the door, though his face was turned toward Tsunade. It was honestly creepy, but— oh, right— he had nearly 365 degrees of vision. It didn't particularly matter where he looked.
Sasuke stared back at the figure with the mixed chakra. The one who had, just barely visible under the slightest shimmer, what looked like dozens of purplish eyeballs covering his body. There were at least ten in his right arm, where the violet glow seemed strongest. Sasuke raised his gaze toward the man's own eyes. The chakra from one of them, so different from the other, seemed to pulse sickeningly.
In sudden realisation, Sasuke deactivated his Sharingan and leaned over to punch Neji in the arm, hard.
Neji glowered but almost immediately deactivated his Byakugan as well in comprehension.
They both knew that the Byakugan and Sharingan gave off slightly more chakra when activated.
They both would have been raised with similar stories.
They were likely the only dojutsu— visual jutsu— users in Konoha who would have bothered to carefully search through layers of this Elder's chakra. Particularly when that Elder was feeling relaxed in the village stronghold.
"I have to go," Neji said, standing from his seat. "Please give Danzo-sama my apologies along with my statement," he said, pronouncing the edges of the name like barbed ice.
Sasuke stood up as well. "No, you stay here with Sakura," he said quickly.
Sakura, for her part, looked rapidly between them both. Tsunade, across the room, had the beginnings of a concerned crease entering her brows.
"Don't be foolish; I could much more accurately—" Neji cut himself off, not seeming to know how to proceed.
"No, you need to stay. They'll be expecting you," Sasuke explained. His eyes darted back to Sakura, who looked more confused than hurt at his sudden announced departure. "Neji will look after you. I'll meet you back home, okay?"
Neji started in his seat, and Sasuke resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Evidently, Team Gai hadn't heard they began living together. Honestly, there were more important things to worry about.
"Okay," Sakura said slowly. "Will you be safe alone? Sensei doesn't like us wandering without each other, and we left the dogs with Naruto..."
He clenched his teeth. Shit. He hadn't thought of that. "I don't think I'll need to go too far." His mind flashed quickly through possibilities. Come to think of it, even if he wasn't let in to see the Hokage, there were far more people than he'd imagined that he could rely on right now. Not just Sensei, but Gai-sensei, probably Asuma-sensei, hell, even Inoichi-san wouldn't be too bad; he worked in T&I and—
Oh, duh.
"I just need to talk to Iruka-sensei at the mission desk, we saw him earlier, and I forgot I had something important to talk to him about," he said in a rush.
At his explanation, even Neji seemed to relax. There wasn't a student who'd gone to Konoha's Ninja Academy in the last decade who didn't trust Iruka-sensei implicitly. No matter how wild the story or panicked the student, he'd always listened carefully before responding and remained in control of every storm that hit them.
And Sasuke had to bring him one hell of a story.