Happy New Year, everyone
Genma kept a tight arrowhead formation with him leading, Aoba and Raido on either ends and Sakura right behind him. He'd made the mistake of thinking Sakura wouldn't be able to keep up for long, but after she 'accidentally' stepped on the back of his sandals twice, he took the hint and sped up to an almost breakneck run through the trees.
Raido and Aoba had complained plenty about going in with an untested chunin on the way to the Senju compound and he had to reign in his own anxiety on the matter. They would act like Sakura was a full fledged jounin and if she showed any signs of fatigue, they would slow down. For now, his goal was to reach Iwa in two days.
When they finally stopped for the night, letting their packs fall on a gathering of trees, the crescent moon was already high up in the sky and they'd been running in the dark for a couple of hours. All four of them were winded, but he was relieved to see Sakura wasn't much worse than they were.
"Here you go, Flower." He nudged her elbow with the water pouch they were sharing. "You have first watch."
"Thanks, jiji." She replied reflexively and took a few gulps before passing it back to him. "Do you think we'll reach Iwa tomorrow?"
She sat down next to Aoba and accepted the ration he offered her with a slight nod. Genma sat on the other side of them next to Raido and moved his senbon around on his mouth, not touching his food.
"Anko is going to be okay." Raido nudged him with his shoulder but Genma kept his face to the forest floor.
"It's been almost a week." He took a deep breath. "You and I both know we can't be sure of anything at this point."
The small clearing was filled with uneasy silence, the darkness around them seeming overwhelming to Genma. His chest felt constricted, like someone was sitting on it. He had lost enough friends over the years, Anko was one of the few good ones he still had and he wasn't ready to let himself dwell on her situation much.
"Mitarashi Anko?" Sakura asked, her voice low and sharp. Genma looked at her and had a hard time finding the fourteen-year-old girl she was supposed to be. He imagined she'd had to grow up fast — they all had to — and that she probably was as much a kid as he was at this point in her career. It was still jarring to see how she transformed when on a mission. It was like someone else had taken her place and she stood that much taller, her eyes noticing every single detail around her even as her chakra remained sealed to less than half of what it was.
Sakura on a mission didn't look like a girl at all. She looked like a five foot six pile of pure muscle and kunoichi. He could count more than seven weapons on her — some of them really well hidden — and the uniform she wore most days seemed somehow more like an armor.
"Yes, that's right." Raido answered when he didn't. "We all were at the same class at the Academy."
"Ah." Sakura nodded again, this time more pensively. "She was one of the proctors for my chunin exams."
"So was I, kiddo." Genma smirked at her, pushing the chill he felt at seeing her so transformed away and giving himself an internal shake. Head, say goodbye to ass. "But I don't remember you fighting in the arena."
"That's because I didn't." Sakura shrugged.
"How the hell did you become a chunin without making it into the final rounds?" Aoba was looking perplexed at her and Genma could feel the judgement from afar and didn't really blame him. Sakura had a lot to prove on this mission if she couldn't even qualify for the finals during the chunin exams.
"Field promotion." Sakura's voice was clipped and it signaled the end of conversation for the night.
Genma admitted that he was curious about that. He remembered the first time he saw her, covered in blood with just her wrappings and mesh shirt to cover herself, three bodies on the ground as she bared her teeth to the enemy that was about to end her. She'd already been a chunin at that point so that meant she had received her field promotion right after the Konoha Crush.
The Council must have pushed for it, he decided. It made sense to put a fierce kunoichi like her as a chunin, specially with how much damage control they'd been doing for the past year. Cannon fodder, his mind supplied and he shivered. Field promotions always happened when the village was unbalanced and it scared him that Tsunade had sent her on this mission without considering that Sakura had been wrongly promoted.
Sure he knew she was good. During their sparring sessions he could see how she was always improving herself and her movements were fluid and unpredictable, keeping him on his toes. That didn't mean he thought she'd survive if he went all out on her. He was still a jounin and she was still a chunin, after all, but what did that say about this mission?
Anko's squad was composed of two jounin besides her and one veteran chunin and they'd still been captured. That meant the enemy was either much more powerful than speculated or their numbers exceeded what the mission intel had gathered.
They went to sleep without much more conversation that night, Sakura's sharp gaze watching over them and a perimeter set. Genma was woken up by Aoba for the last shift and he sat on a branch up high and watched the sunrise. Not even fiddling with the senbon between his lips could calm the nervous energy coursing through him.
Ideally, this mission would have gone to an Anbu tracking squad — preferably with Hatake in it — and the situation could be handled as safely as possible. With the shortage of shinobi in the village and particularly how Kakashi never seemed to be at Konoha for more than three days at a time, they had to make do. Raido and him had just gotten back from missions and were still tired and the only source of intel was Anko's tiny snake that came with the appropriate coordinates and code for rescue. If the enemy moved their base, they would have to do the tracking by themselves.
"You should be sleeping," he spoke around the senbon, not bothering to turn and look at Raido who had perched himself silently on the three branch beside him.
"You woke me up with all the sighing you've been doing," Raido joked and nudged his shoulder with his. "We need to keep our heads clear if we're to get this right, Genma."
"I know," Genma grunted. They stood in silence for a while, both of them watching the sky get lighter.
"I didn't expect you to know the iryo-nin." Raido looked at him sideways. "Much less for the two of you to have nicknames for each other."
Genma knew what he was implying but didn't rise up to the bait. The casual way he'd teased her before and her immediate response despite having kept a professional tone with him so far had been completely unintended on both their parts but it couldn't be helped.
Sakura was young, that much he was aware, but he still considered her as a friend.
"We spar sometimes and we've met up around the village." Genma frowned at his best friend. "And it's not like you're implying."
Raido raised his hands in surrender. "Hey, I'm not judging. She's a fine kunoichi from where I'm standing."
"She's fourteen." Genma narrowed his eyes.
"Huh." Raido stared dumbly at him. "She looks older." He scratched at his scar. "I feel kind of gross now."
"She's fourteen," Genma said again, this time in a voice so quiet he barely heard it. The weight on his shoulders became that much heavier.
"She must be good." Raido looked at him. "You wouldn't waste your time sparring with her if she wasn't. Do you not think she can handle this mission?"
"She's fucking amazing for a chunin that has had exactly one year of experience, Raido." Genma pinched the bridge of his nose. "This mission should have been given to Anbu."
Raido was silent for a while, his gaze like a heavy weight on Genma's shoulders before he spoke up, his voice quiet but strong.
"But it was given to us instead."
Genma wanted to rip his hair out. They'd just come back from a week long mission in Kumo and he had barely had any sleep and now one of his friends was being held hostage in the border with Iwa while the other, much more inexperienced one, was the medic on the rescue mission.
"Look, you have two options here." Raido turned him around by the shoulders so that he could look him in the eye. "You either believe in your Hokage's choice and Haruno's abilities and see this mission through or you start second guessing everything about this and gets us all killed."
Genma stared wide eyed at his best friend for a second before a snort escaped him. He punched him in the shoulder.
"Your pep talk is still shit, asshole." He smirked at him. "Wake the others up. We leave in ten."
"There are twenty one ninja in the compound." Genma stared blankly as Aoba retold what his stakeout had resulted and wondered how they had gotten into this mess. "Four of them just changed stations and are outside doing a perimeter check."
"This is the best time to move in, then." Raido took a kunai out of his thigh pouch and nodded at him.
"Intel said there were seven missing nin in the compound." Sakura had her arms crossed over her chest and an annoyed frown on her features. "How the fuck did we get such unreliable info on a mission so close to Iwa?"
Genma exchanged a look with Raido before meeting her gaze. He saw by how her features darkened that she reached the same conclusion they had. Before he could speak it out loud, though, Sakura raised her finger to her lips to shush him. With quiet steps, she moved around the small clearing, placing tags on the barks of the four threes without saying anything. When she was done, she came back to where they were huddled together and spoke up.
"We have a mole, then."
"What was that?" Raido asked as he and Genma examined the carefully woven seals on one of the tags.
"Looks like a privacy seal," Genma pondered out loud.
"I didn't know you knew anything about fuinjutsu, Genma." Sakura cocked her head to the side.
"I learned my way around it when I was on the Guard Platoon for the Yondaime." Sakura's eyes widened a bit but he didn't let her speak up. "Why did you put them up?" It wasn't really what he wanted to ask, of course, but they didn't have much time and he figured he could leave the question of just how did she know enough of fuinjutsu to make her own tags for later.
Sakura cleared her throat. "During my first mission as a captain, a group of missing nin managed to listen to our plans and later on ambushed us so I figured looking into privacy seals was a good idea. Who did the initial report on this compound?"
"Anko's team," Raido answered, his voice as grave as his face.
"You think someone inside Konoha is working with these missing nin?" Aoba scratched his head. "Why would someone do that?"
"I don't think anything." Genma moved his senbon around his mouth. "It's most definitely one of the ninja on Anko's team. We may have to fight eighteen ninja today, folks."
"There's only four of us, Taichou!" Aoba fiddled with his glasses. "Some of the chakra signatures I picked up were strong."
"I could send a clone to get a better layout of their chakra," Sakura offered. "It will be pretty much undetectable under a genjutsu and it will get closer than Aoba-san can. Let's see what we're up against before we rush in on such odds."
Genma nodded at her. "Do it."
Sakura weaved a seal and with a quiet pop another one of her appeared. The clone sent Sakura a quick nod before weaving a seal herself and completely disappearing, her chakra fluid and barely present.
"No smoke." Raido raised his eyebrows.
"There's no unnecessary chakra expended if you have enough control," Sakura shrugged. "I only used about two percent of my chakra on that clone. As soon as it releases we'll kno — " She stopped mid sentence, a frown gracing her features one more. "There's only four jounin level ninja in the compound. One of them is in the middle of it while the other three are in a back room. I think it's safe to assume that the enemy forces only have one jounin." She took a deep breath and her eyes focused. "Six chunin level ninja and ten others who could pass for genin or even civilians."
"The odds are fairly better, I guess." Raido returned his kunai to his pouch and rested his hand there, waiting for Genma to give out further orders.
"No matter what level they are, we can't attack twenty ninja that have hostages with them." Genma bounced ideas around in his head, his eyes wandering around the tiny clearing and falling on Sakura. Her bottom lip was in between her teeth and he knew she wanted to say something. "What, kid?"
"I can get to the hostages without the enemy knowing I'm there," she said quietly.
"It's too dangerous," Raido blurted.
"It's our only choice." Sakura was firmer this time. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. "I can get inside, heal them and as soon as I signal, we both attack from opposites sides."
"How do you plan on getting past the sentinels?" Genma asked.
"Aren't you an assassination specialist?" She smirked a bit. "I'm sure you can handle taking three genin and a chunin out without making a fuss."
Genma rolled his eyes at her sass but chose not to comment on it. Raido's words from earlier came back to him. As much as he hated putting her in that position, Sakura had just presented a very valid solution to their problem. They talked some more, hashing out the details of the plan before he finally nodded at her.
"I trust you." It was a concession and a warning but Sakura only smiled.
It was a smile so brilliant and unexpected that Genma was floored for half a second before returning it.
"Move your pretty little ass, Blossom." He grinned at her, his own resolve settling as he felt her reduce her chakra so much and make it so smooth, he couldn't feel a difference between her and the three behind her.
"When we all get back to Konoha," she disappeared from their view just like her clone had, "you'll owe me a fuinjutsu lesson, old pervert."
My dudes, something terrible happened. My computer broke down with everything I had written for this fic (and quite a few Adobe files) and I was completely ruined for about two weeks when I realised I had saved original drafts of the chapters on my google drive ha ha. I lost quite a few updated versions of things but all in all I managed to keep my chapters. Sorry about the delay, it was because I wanted to die.
BUT new year, new life, your crazy author is officially BACK and I've been writting a lot recently. Sorry for the short chapter, it was really transitiony and sucky but more will come soon, promise. Next chapter our baby Sakura is going to show them all she's not much of a baby anymore. Next chapter is one of my favourites actually. You'll see.
I absolutely LOVE writing Genma, you guys, he's such a sweet baby I love him. Getting into his mindset was surprisingly easy and he's become a more important character than what was initially planned for him. Oh well, at this point I'm just rolling with it. Hope you guys enjoy it. This chapter was from his perspective because I wanted to show Sakura's progress through someone else's eyes. We don't normally realise how far we've come and I think Sakura is at that point where she knows she improved but she's still more focused on getting better and better and can't really appreciate just how good she already is. It's time people start noticing.
Anyways, my loves, I just wanted to take the time to thank you all for all your love and support. I'm really sorry I haven't been able to get back to all of you when you guys review but I get so anxious sometimes, it's kinda hard for me. I want you guys to know that I read every single one of them, sometimes more than once haha, and they mean so much to me. You guys really make me feel so good about writing this and I'm so happy I get to share this little piece of madness with y'all. In about five days it'll be a year of writing this and, really, you guys keep me going. I'll do something for that date, what do you guys suggest?
See you soon : )