Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Puppet in Pink
8. Little Things
To journey away, is a windy wasteland,
Empty, cheerless...
So riders and ridden
Sleep in the ground; pleasure is gone,
The harp is silent, and hope is forgotten.
-Beowulf
"Sakura-chan!" Naruto exclaimed, once he'd overcome the shock of seeing the pink-haired girl hit all ten targets. "How the hell did you do that?" He gave a snide grin. "You even beat Sasuke-bastard over there!" Sakura said nothing. Naruto continued to chatter. "I just knew you had it in you! Did you do some extra training or something? If you did, it sure shows—you look ten times as hot as you did before-" Out of instinct, the blonde-haired boy cringed; he knew he'd said the wrong thing. He waited for the punch that was sure to follow.
It never came.
In fact, it seemed as if Sakura hadn't even heard him. Like she was off in her own little world...
"Yo! Sakura-chan! You listening?" He waved a hand in front of her face. She blinked and looked up at her teammate, as if noticing his presence for the first time that day. Satisfied that he had Sakura's full attention, Naruto rambled on. "So tell me, did ya train? How'd you get so good at that?"
Sakura yawned. She had an excuse for that one, too. "Well...you see...I haven't been getting the best of sleep lately...nightmares...you know... And I didn't really have anything else to do, just to keep my mind off of...everything..." She allowed her voice to trail off, as if unwilling to talk more on the topic.
Naruto stared blankly for a second, then looked at his feet a bit sheepishly. "Oh...um, sorry that I asked." He meant it with all of his heart. He didn't know Sakura was suffering so much; how could he know? He'd never had to face the pain of losing both parents within the same year—he didn't have parents to begin with. Poor, poor Sakura-chan.
The pink-haired girl caught Naruto's sympathetic expression and reeled it in for inspection. Just great, she thought. Now he pities me, too. My whole entire team... Sakura was disgusted. But really, what did she expect? The fact that they couldn't get over the belief that she was weak; that they couldn't see beyond her illusion of sadness—it all told her one thing.
She was a much better actress than she thought.
"Shit!"
Sakura cursed out loud. She'd decided to try a new technique that had a whole scroll devoted to it, to make up for the easy time she had at "training" earlier. The method consisted of two parts; Sakura had already mastered the first section and was determined to move up to the second.
It just took so much chakra...
The technique that the pink-haired girl was focusing on was yet another that the translators had garbled. Users of the skill could cast chakra through their eyes to freeze an enemy into place on sight. Such a method could easily prove valuable—but it wasn't included in Ninja Academy curriculum, mainly because the faulty translation had left out most of the facts and substituted others. Whatever modern ninja knew of the skill were either too old to use it, or were unable to master the first level. Now that...that was pathetic.
According to the scroll, a user who had completed the second stage could permanently paralyze an opponent, or even kill him. All this with a single glance at the enemy. But while this level required an iron hand in chakra control, it also called for an enormous burst of energy. And so far, Sakura hadn't been able to do that.
Then again...hadn't that always been her main weakness? The pink-haired girl was born that way, had been that way all of her life...But she could change.
Oh, yes, she could change...